| World Summit Award Grand Jury 2009 @ INDIA |
| The World Summit Award Grand Jury 2009 was held from April 3-9, in NCR Delhi and ended successfully. As a part of the Grand Jury, 35 global experts assembled for eight days to scan through the global nominations on digital content innovations to select the final winners.
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The Grand Jury was hosted by Department of Information Technology of Ministry of Communication & Information Technology, Government of India and organised by Digital Empowerment Foundation.
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| About The World Summit Award |
The World Summit Award (WSA), based in Austria, is a global initiative to select and promote the world’s best e-Content, started in 2003 in the framework of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). This event is held every two years through national contests, a global contest and numerous content-focused national and international conferences and workshops, the WSA Road Show etc.
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WSA is positioned as a global hub for everyone, who sees the crucial importance of excellent e-Content creation within the new Information Society. As of today, 168 countries are actively involved in WSA.
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| Selection & Promotion of Outstanding E-Content |
The principle of a global Information Society is to enable all people, wealthy or not, to create, receive and share information and knowledge for their own economic, social, cultural and political benefit. By selecting, presenting and promoting the best products from all over the world in that field, WSA makes a contribution to bridging the Digital Divide and narrowing the Content Gap.
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| WSA Global Contest |
WSA was started as a bi-annual Austrian initiative in 2003 in the framework of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). In 2005, 168 countries actively entered the competition and over 40 national pre-selections were held. Winners of these national contests automatically get nominated for the WSA global contest. Products are submitted in eight categories: e-Government, e-Business, e-Learning, e-Health, e-Culture, e-Science, e-Entertainment, and e-Inclusion. Submissions are preceded under the responsibility of national experts through the WSA registration database and then evaluated in the WSA Grand Jury. On average, over 1000 products are being submitted for the WSA global contest.
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| WSA 2009 Winners Announced |
The World Summit Award Grand Jury 2009 selected 5 winners each from 8 categories across 5 regions.
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| Winners |
Australia won in the categories of e-Business & Commerce (“Karma Currency Website”), e-Culture & Heritage (“Twelve Canoes”) and e-Health & Environment (“Tree People”).
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Austria presented its strongest products in the categories e-Business & Commerce (“Remediation Check”), e-Learning & Education (“E-DysGate”) and e-Science & Technology (“Water World”).
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The World Summit Award Grand Jury 2009 selected 5 winners each from 8 categories across 5 regions.
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Canada is represented in the categories e-Culture & Heritage (“A Journey into Time Immemorial”), e-Inclusion & Participation (“Homeless Nation”) and e-Science & Technology (“Genomics Digital Lab”),
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New Zealand features with winning projects in e-Learning & Education (“Our Space”), e-Government & Institutions (“National Broadband Map”) and e-Entertainment & Games (“Casebook”).
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Two awards each went to China, Egypt and Italy, which have shown excellent results already in the last years, but also to the newcomers Ghana and SriLanka, showing that excellence in the content use of new ICTs.
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One award each went to Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, India, Israel, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Oman, Poland, Slovenia and Spain.
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Two newcomers from countries with less developed content industries that returned home with 2009 World Summit Awards leapfrogging technologies with creative innovations are Democratic Republic of the Congo (“Congoblog”) and Nigeria (“Mark of ‘Uru’ ”).
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The WSA 09 Winners’ Gala is scheduled in Monterrey, Mexico, on June 12, 2009 in collaboration with the UN GAID’s Global Forum.
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