Sri Lanka leads at Manthan Award South Asia 2010

Sri Lanka topped the region by winning six awards out of 57 projects nominated by the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) at the Manthan Award South Asia 2010 held in New Delhi recently.

 The 10.5 to 100 ‘awards to nominations’ ratio puts Sri Lanka ahead of all the other seven participating countries. Bangladesh came a close second to Sri Lanka with a 9.8 % awards to nominations ratio on the basis of the five awards it won out of 51 nominations while India’s 28 awards came from 313 nominations – 8.95 per cent ratio. The overall ratio yielding 41 awards out of a post-screening total of 434 nominations stands at 9.4 %.

This year eight countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – participated under 15 categories resulting in 41 winning projects. With the addition of the two new categories ‘e-Agriculture’ and ‘e-Travel and Tourism’ in the 2010 list of categories, applications submitted were considered under – ‘e-Agriculture and Livelihood,’ ‘e-Business and Enterprise,’ ‘e-Culture and Heritage,’ ‘e-Education,’ ‘e-Entertainment,’ ‘e-Environment,’ ‘e-Government,’ ‘e-Health,’ ‘e-Inclusion,’ ‘e-Learning,’ ‘e-Localisation,’ ‘e-News and Media,’ ‘e-Science,’ ‘e-Travel and Tourism’ and ‘Community Broadcasting’.

The Manthan Award organised by the Digital Empowerment Foundation and centred in New Delhi, India, aims to bring to the fore projects in e-content and promote best practices and creativity in e-content. The two-day session of the seventh edition of the Manthan Award for presentation of projects culminated with Awards Gala held on 17 and 18 December at Parkland Exotica Hotel Delhi.

The Foundation has been guided by its founder Chairman Osama Manzar since inception in December 2002 and selection of award winning projects is carried out by an international jury comprising relevant specialists under a stringent selection procedure.

This year the international jury consisted of 22 professionals including ICTA e-Society Project Manager Indumini Kodikara who spent long hours in meticulous consideration of the nominated projects.

ICTA prepares the ICT enthusiasts of the island for both regional awards like the Manthan Award and the international awards like the World Summit Award. This preparation by ICTA was articulated by its e-Swabhimani programme. ICTA nominated respectively 42 and 57 best e-Content projects submitted for e-Swabhimani 2009 and 2010 for Manthan Award 2009 and 2010.

Referring to the awards and in particular the progressive achievements in making the mark at the regional event, ICTA CEO Reshan Dewapura said that being awarded five and six awards at Manthan Awards South Asia 2009 and 2010 respectively confirmed that Sri Lanka was making steady progress in the ICTA sector.

“Regional and international awards like Manthan and World Summit Awards for participation in which ICTA’s e-Swabhimani plays an important role, give great impetus for e-Content development in Sri Lanka. These projects on their part greatly assist in putting into effect President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s goal of making the lives of all people, in particular the differently-abled, distanced, rural and otherwise disadvantaged, as comfortable as possible by the use of ICT,” the ICTA CEO added.

The projects that won awards at Manthan Awards South Asia 2010 and short description about them according to the producers are as follows:

1. Aba, a 3D game produced by Game Core under the category of e-Cutlure and Entertainment centres on a series of events that took place about 2,400 years ago in the Panduvasadeva Palace of Upatissa Nuwara. Set in 400 BC the player in the game is Prince Pandukabhaya and the weapons he uses are those which were used in the era concerned. (www.gameslk.com)

2. SALA Pro Sat GPS Navigator submitted by producer Sala Gis Pvt. Ltd. under the category of ‘e-Localisation’will guide travelers and help them to find any location in Sri Lanka such as hotels, ATMs, fuel stations and places of historical interest . The voice guidance is available in many languages including Sinhala, English, Russian and German. It is noteworthy that it is developed according to the Sri Lankan traffic laws. (www.salagis.com)

3. Ceylonmap.com. Produced by Marius Sanjeeva Jayasuriya under the category ‘e-Localisation’ and available in Sinhala, Tamil and English aims at providing an easy way for locating places and tourist attractions. Just by rolling the mouse over the required part of the map the users can immediately obtain information about the area concerned by way of text, links and illustrations. (www.ceylonmap.com)

4. SiyaBasScript, produced by Keheliya Bandara Gallaba coming under category e-Localisation, is a Mozilla Firebox and Google Chrome extension which can convert web-sites with non-Unicode Sinhala fonts to Unicode. It not only allows viewing of numerous web pages but also copying and pasting of earlier non-Unicode content to Unicode enabled sites using browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. (www.google.com/profiles/keheliya.gallaba)

5.Ada Derana. Produced by Derana Macroentertainment Pvt. Ltd. that falls under the category ‘e-News’ is available in Sinhala, Tamil and English. Ada Derana offers consumers an interactive platform to comment on the latest stories. The feature ‘My Report’ allows viewers to submit their own news reports through ‘Newsdesk’. (www.adaderana.lk)

6. The Sri Lanka GovSMS Portal which is a project implemented by ICTA enables Government Services to reach the public via mobile short message service (SMS). Under this project currently railway timetable and train delay information, crop prices in popular markets and weather information are provided. Facility for payment where payment is due from the public when obtaining Government services is under preparation within the ambit of this project. (www.icta.lk; contact: [email protected]; [email protected]).