e-Swabhimani 2011 awards gala on 22 Nov.

The ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) will be hosting the e-Swabhimani Awards Gala 2011 under the patronage of President’s Secretaty Lalith Weeratunga at Water’s Edge Colombo on 22 Nov ember.  

Commenting on the event ICTA COO Reshan Dewapura said, “e-Swabhimani serves to unearthing the hidden talent in developing content and application which will benefit society. Being held for the third consecutive year the event will go a long way in due recognition being given to the creativity and innovation of the country’s developers of digital content and applications.”

e-Swabhimani 2011 attracted 150 applications, and came from nine categories: 1. e-Government and Institutions, 2. e-Health and Environment, 3. e-Learning and Education, 4. e-Entertainment and Games, 5.  e-Culture and Heritage,6. e-Science and Technology, 7. e-Business and Commerce, 8. e-Inclusion and Participation and 9. m-Content.

Out of the above-mentioned 150 applicants, 20 will be winners and 12 will receive special merit awards.

There will be one recipient of the special youth encouragement award introduced for the first time this year with a view to encourage young applicants.

Furthermore, there will be two recipients of the Jurors’ Distinction Award. In the final category of recognition there will be 20 certificates of appreciation given at the awards ceremony on Tuesday.

Recognising the fact that the disparities in accessing information and communication technologies that exist in our society today stem not only from inadequate infrastructure but also from the lack of appropriate content, the ICTA initiated the e-Swabhimani Award in 2009. The aim of this Award is to encourage local developers to come up with innovative applications and digital content that will impact on society as a whole.  

The design and development of good quality content and applications require creative imagination, engineering know-how as well as financial resources. Moreover creation of content and applications for societal use is often not addressed by commercial software developers since it does not generate much profit.  

It is therefore recognised that there is a need to give incentive to and facilitate content creation.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) recognised this need as far back as 2003 and introduced the World Summit Award (WSA), a global initiative to select the world’s best e-content and innovative ICT applications.  

The WSA encourages member countries to organise national awards and the ICTA, as the apex body responsible for setting ICT policy direction in the Country and implementing the e-Sri Lanka Initiative, came to the fore with the e-Swabhimani Award, the National Award for the country’s best digital creations.

The e-Swabhimani is conducted along the lines of the WSA which ensures transparency and fairplay. All applications are reviewed by a Grand Jury comprising eminent experts chosen from different subject areas.   All e-Swabhimani winners will be eligible for consideration as the National nominees to the WSA where each country can submit only one nomination for a given category out of WSA’s eight categories.