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World Summit on the Information Society 2016 Prize Winners
WSIS community recognizes 18 winners from around the world for
achievements
in promoting a more inclusive Information Society
Geneva, 3 May 2016 – ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao this
morning announced the 18 winners of the WSIS Prizes 2016 at the WSIS High-Level
Opening Segment, which was held at the Geneva International Conference Centre
(CICG).
The WSIS Prizes 2016 contest provides a platform to
identify and showcase success stories across the
11
WSIS Action Lines defined in the
Geneva Plan of Action.
The awards are conferred through an open online voting process, which this
year engaged over 245,000 stakeholders from around the world. A total of 311
projects were nominated for the 2016 contest, a significant increase on the
number of nominated submissions in 2015, reflecting both the prestigious nature
of the award and the growing importance of ICTs in national development
strategies.
In line with the inclusive, multistakeholder character of the WSIS Process,
the prizes recognize the outstanding achievements of a wide range of
organizations in strengthening implementation of the vision and targets set by
the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 (Phase
1) and 2005 (Phase
2).
“ITU and its WSIS partners strongly believe in the critical importance of
ICTs in achieving the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals,” said ITU
Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. “The WSIS Prizes recognize all players in the
effort to improve global connectivity, from governments and global ICT companies
to grassroots NGOs leading innovative ICT-oriented projects at the local level.
All of these stakeholders are equally vital to the success of the WSIS Process.”
WSIS Project Prize winners include government departments, international
organizations, private sector companies, NGOs and academia. An innovation in the
WSIS Prizes contest this year is the nomination of 70 ‘WSIS Prize Champions’.
This new award category recognizes outstanding projects that were among the
most-voted entries and which also received the best reviews by the members of
the Expert Group. Of these 70, 18 winners were selected to receive the coveted
WSIS Prize, with the remaining projects to be celebrated at a special event to
be held on
Wednesday 4 May entitled: Implementing Best Practices and Addressing
Challenges: Meet the Winners and Champions.
This year’s 18 winners are:
- Action Line C1 The role of government and all
stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development
Winner: Fostering integration of Argentine
Academia in the activities of ITU, Ente Nacional de
Comunicaciones (ENACOM), Argentina
- Action Line C2 Information and communication
infrastructure
Winner: Data Centres for Government Agencies, National
Information Technologies JSC, Kazakhstan
- Action Line C3 Access to information and knowledge
Winner: Connected Homes, Presidential Social Council,
Costa Rica
- Action Line C4 Capacity building
Winner: Smart Online SMEs (S.O.S.) by Thaitrade.com,
Department of International Trade Promotion (DITP), Thailand
- Action Line C5 Building confidence & security in the use
of ICTs
Winner: Certification Programme for Better ICT
Services, Office of Electronic Communications, Poland
- Action Line C6 Enabling environment
Winner: Life Long Learning and Employment for
People with Disabilities, Ministry of Communications and
Information Technology, Egypt
- Action Line C7 E-government
Winner: e-National Judicial System, Ministry of
Justice of Turkey, Turkey
- Action Line C7 E-business
Winner: ATTA’A System, Atta’a for Helping
Charity Organizations, Saudi Arabia
- Action Line C7 E-learning
Winner: MexicoX-Platform of Massive Open Online Course
(MOOCS), National Digital Strategy, Mexico
- Action Line C7 E-health
Winner: Informatization of the Public Health System,
SOFTEL, Cuba
- Action Line C7 E-employment
Winner: Technology for Education, Employment,
Entrepreneurs, and Economic Development Project, Information and
Communications Technology Office, Philippines
- Action Line C7 E-environment
Winner: Asia Pacific Green Data Center Farm,
Green Data Center LLP, Malaysia
- Action Line C7 E-agriculture
Winner: Harmonized Information of Agriculture,
Revenue and Irrigation for a Transformation Agenda – Precision
Technology for Agriculture, Centre for Development of Advanced
Computing, India
- Action Line C7 E-science
Winner: R-package to compute confidence intervals for
heritability, reliability, and heterogeneity, Ilia Vekua
Institute of Applied Mathematics (VIAM) of Ivane Javakhishvili
Tbilisi State University (TSU), Georgia
- Action Line C8 Cultural diversity & identity, linguistic
diversity
Winner: Connectivity is Productivity, Bridge
Africa, United States of America
- Action Line C9 Media
Winner: Youth Women in Community Media and
Journalism – the beginning of a new era in rural broadcasting
journalism, Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication,
Bangladesh
- Action Line C10 Ethical dimensions of the Information
Society
Winner: EmpoderaLive, Cibervoluntarios
Foundation, Spain
- Action Line C11 International & regional cooperation
Winner: ICT Development in Arab Region, ICT Development
in Arab Region, United Arab Emirates
Detailed descriptions of winning projects are available
here. A full list of 70 WSIS
Background
WSIS Project Prizes is an international contest developed in response to
requests from WSIS stakeholders to create an effective mechanism to evaluate and
recognize individuals, governments, civil society, local, regional and
international agencies, research institutions and private sector companies for
outstanding success in implementing development-oriented strategies that
leverage the power of ICTs. The WSIS Project Prizes contest is an integral part
of the WSIS stocktaking process (www.wsis.org/stocktaking).
The contest was held for the first time in 2012, and rapidly gained attention
and popularity within the ICT for Development (ICT4D) community.
Video interviews and photos of winners along with live and archived event
webcasts and transcripts of speeches can be found at http://groups.itu.int/stocktaking/WSISProjectPrizes.aspx#home
or on the main event website at www.wsis.org/forum.
Be part of the WSIS discussions and get the latest WSIS news on Twitter at
#WSIS.
For more information, please contact:
Sarah Parkes
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information, ITU
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