Fulfilling the Promise of the Digital Age
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASENovember 13, 2021Contact: Anders Halvorsenahalvorsen@witsa.org +1 571 265-5964
Dhaka, Bangladesh: On the second day of the 2021 World Congress on IT (WCIT 2021) Dhaka, Bangladesh hybrid event, the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) announced that fourteen private and public sector organizations from four different continents were selected to receive the 2021 WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards, a special WITSA Chairman’s Award as well as a WITSA Eminent Persons Award. WITSA is the leading recognized voice of the global digital technology industry, whose members from over 80 countries and economies represent more than 90% of the world’s ICT market. The WITSA Awards recognize the entities that made the most significant contributions to mankind in 2021.“The Selection committee for the 2021 the Global ICT Excellence Awards had the honor of reviewing well over 100 well-qualified, unique and remarkable award submissions,” said WITSA Chairman Yannis Sirros. “I would also like to congratulate all of the winners for the superb job that they are doing in bringing the benefits of digital technology to children, citizens, governments, education, science, healthcare, the environment, industries and societies as well as nearly every aspect of our life; thus, contributing to WITSA’s vision and the theme of this congress “Fulfilling the Promise of the Digital Age,” continued Mr. Sirros.The Awards also recognized an investment solution that uses unique innovative technologies to allow people without bank accounts to make low risk investments for capital conservation; a smart building digital platform that effectively reinforces productivity of building facilities, reduce operation cost and achieve sustainable development using AI; a company that helps the planet by remanufacturing and repurposing computers, thereby significantly reducing the carbon footprint and e-waste in its country; a tele-health contact center that provides important health services through digital technologies in a country with limited resources; a cloud-based infrastructure where people everywhere can get critical information and help to improve their health and fitness, bringing enormous benefits to not only the local sports industry, but also society as a whole; a one-of-a-kind cloud-based eBook creator that allows educators to create interactive eBooks in any format and engage students in both the online and offline worlds; and a company that uses innovative technologies to include AI and machine-learning to save lives and billions of dollars by effectively, as well as affordably eliminating the risk of catastrophic bird collisions at airports worldwide.Governments were also recognized for building a highly successful startup ecosystem; for creating an all-hazard preparedness and response digital government platform; for measurably improving and easing the everyday quality of life and productivity of citizens and businesses through the simplification and digitization of the state; for creating a digital dashboard that has helped safely guide its country through the COVID-19 pandemic; for a proven project that reduces crime using digitized automation processes using deploying advanced data analytics and graphing technology and connectivity analysis of big data; for a celebrated public platform for learning resources that utilizes cloud and advanced technology and is used by hundreds of schools and millions of students and teachers.The nominations submitted to this year’s awards program spanned WITSA’s entire global membership, from Egypt to Bangladesh, from Argentina to the United Kingdom and beyond. “This year’s awards are occurring at a unique time in history. Despite going through a global pandemic, we are delighted that we will be able to recognize some of the very best ICT solutions from governments, institutions, individuals, and industry”, stated WITSA’s Secretary General, Dr. Jim Poisant.The WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards is one of WITSA’s most popular programs. Started over 20 years ago, at the 2000 World Congress on IT in Taipei, WITSA has – as the leading recognized international voice of the global ICT industry – utilized its unprecedented reach into the ICT industry in over 80 countries, from Australia and New Zealand to Bangladesh and Malaysia, to South Africa and Nigeria, to Argentina and Canada, in order to select the most impactful and innovative candidates from every corner of the world.Over the past 21 years, WITSA has recognized its award winners on the world stage, starting in Taipei, to Adelaide (Australia), Athens (Greece), Austin (Texas), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Montreal (Canada), Guadalajara (Mexico), Brasilia (Brazil), Hyderabad (India), Yerevan (Armenia), Penang (Malaysia), and now Dhaka, Bangladesh.What makes the Global ICT Excellence Awards unique is that nominations are made by experts that know the industry best; the national and regional WITSA ICT industry member associations. With unparalleled insight, the most innovative and impactful solutions are brought before an independent panel of judges, consisting of select industry leaders and luminaries from key international organizations, corporations and government entities, who spent countless hours reviewing submissions from all around the world.The following are the winners of the 2021 WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards:
WITSA bestowed its highest award, the Eminent Persons Award, to the Honorable Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, for her fight again fundamentalism, militancy and terrorism as well her dedication to the Bangladeshi people’s fundamental rights, dignity, self-sufficiency and prosperity.As in 2021 this year’s WITSA Awards received a large number of highly qualified nominees, received from WITSA’s network of ICT industry associations across the globe. WITSA therefore, decided to also recognize the most noteworthy Runner-up candidates and Merit winners. While not being selected as winners of one of the award categories, these nominees nevertheless displayed first-rate use and innovation of ICT.On November 13th, WITSA recognized 13 Runner-up and 17 Merit awards. All winners of the 2021 WITSA Awards are profiled in detail below:About WITSAThe World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) is the leading recognized international voice of the global ICT industry, whose members from over 80 countries and economies represent more than 90 percent of the world ICT market. WITSA is dedicated to advocating policies that advance industry growth and development; facilitating international trade and investment in ICT products and services; strengthening WITSA’s national industry associations; and providing members with a broad network of professional contacts. WITSA hosts the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT), the premier global industry sponsored ICT conference.WITSA members are leaders in a globally interconnected marketplace. Because the challenges facing the ICT industry are undisputedly global in nature, WITSA members work together to achieve a shared vision on important issues of common interest. WITSA makes it possible for its members — ranging from Mongolia and Argentina to Kenya and the United States — to identify common issues and priorities, exchange valuable information, and present a united position on industry issues.For more information on WITSA, please visit www.witsa.org
The Honorable Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of BangladeshIn 2010, WITSA decided to broaden its awards to include individuals who have made and are continuing to make a significant contribution to mankind. These contributions are not necessarily ICT related.The first winner of the award was President Nelson Mandela of South Africa. Additional winners include Co-Fathers of the Internet Drs. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, the Fathers of WI-FI Drs. John O'Sullivan and Terence Percival, Dr. Miguel Ângelo Laporta Nicolelis, best known for his pioneering work surrounding brain-machine interface technology, Mike Lazaratis, Founder of the Smart Phone, as well as other luminaries such as Dr Bill Magee the founder of Operation Smile, and Mr. Karen Vardanyan for his pioneering work in establishing the IC industry in Armenia.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is the longest serving prime minister in Bangladesh’s history. Sheikh Hasina is a staunch crusader against fundamentalism, militancy and terrorism who has been a consistent force ensuring people’s right to food, to vote and protecting other fundamental rights. Despite a life filled with hardships, under her leadership, people of Bangladesh achieved democracy and freedom of speech. Bangladesh earned the dignity of becoming a lower middle-income country under her rule, having earlier been designated as a Least Developed Country (LDC). The country has achieved tremendous success on socio-economic fronts during her tenure. She has been bestowed many honorary degrees from esteemed universities around the world and was honored with numerous awards for her outstanding contributions to social work, peace and stability from notable institutions such as The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in recognition of her outstanding contribution to promotion of girls' and women's education. She was conferred on the United Nation’s highest environmental accolade ‘Champion of the Earth Award 2015’ in policy leadership category for her forefront role at home and abroad to face the adverse impacts of climate change. The International Telecommunication Union gave her the ‘ICTs in Sustainable Development Award 2015’ for her outstanding contributions in spreading information technology in the country.For more information, see, WITSA’s Eminent Persons Webpage.
Mondly – Learn 33 Languages (Romania)Romanian-based, Mondly is a leading online language learning platform that enables over 80 million people from 190 countries to learn 33 languages. Launched in 2014, Mondly quickly became a leading app in the mobile space, reaching #1 in Education in most European countries, Latin America and Asia. According to Statista, Mondly now ranks among the top 5 language learning apps worldwide. It is a state-of-the-art speech recognition and chatbot technologies that has won multiple awards from Apple, Google and Facebook. The tool is available on iPhone & iPad, Android and web.Mondly was the first to launch language learning apps in VR and AR with chatbot and speech recognition and have since further disrupted the language learning industry with innovative solutions such as Hands-free learning. Mondly’s mission is to advance the way people learn languages and endorse cultural and linguistic diversity through cutting-edge technologies.Contact: Alex Iliescu, CEO and Co-Founder at MondlyE-mail: alex@mondly.com | Phone: +40733969116Nominated by: ATIC, RomaniaFor more information, see: Award Nomination | www.mondly.com | Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin
Poincenot’s Investment Solution (Argentina)In 2018 there were over 450,0000 custodial accounts in Argentina. This reflects that only 1% of the population had access to invest in the financial system, which was far below average in comparison to other countries of the region. Those who were banked and had some kind of knowledge of investments were the target. In light of the chance of providing access and the possibility to invest to a huge sector of the population, which was left out of the financial system, in October 2018, Mercado Pago launched an investment solution targeted at users of its digital wallet, who were able to open a custodial account and invest their money on Bind mutual funds with just 5 clicks, in only 3 minutes. By clicking on the “invest” option, the user can start getting returns from the account balance. Moreover, the solution is in compliance with the monitoring process required by regulatory bodies. This initiative was quite innovative and allowed including an audience that, the majority of them, had not had access to investments. Mercado Pago´s goal is to bring a Mutual Fund to the market aimed at small investors, with a straightforward solution, 100% online. Thus, by means of the use of technology, a sophisticated product becomes an accessible option for everyone.Argentina has a large number of people without access to the financial system. This solution uses innovative technology to allow unbanked people to make low risk investments primarily for capital conservation. This technological innovation promoted the opening of more than 3,700,000 new investment accounts. Nowadays, the daily average of opening is 6,000 investment accounts, and transactions (subscription and redemption) reach 1,000,000 daily.Apart from the Mutual Investment Fund, users can also make use of the benefits brought by this digital wallet: Make transactions with QR code; Utilities payments; Cellphone recharge; Transport card recharge; DIRECTV recharge; Balance transfers.Contact: Sebastián Rodríguez Coordinador de Desarrollo de Mercados CESSI ArgenTIna Ciudad de Buenos Aires Tel: (+5411) 5217-7802 | sebastian.rodriguez@cessi.org.ar | www.cessi.org.arNominated by: CESSI, ArgentinaMore information: https://poincenot.com/; Award nomination
Ministry of Digital Governance, Hellenic Republic (Greece)The Chief goal of the Ministry of Digital Governance is to improve and ease the everyday quality of life and productivity of citizens and businesses measurably, through the simplification and digitization of the state and to transform Greece into “digital by default” by 2023.Featuring all the contemporaneous digital services (501) plus two new ones which are the most popular services by citizen demand of the Greek government (“Solemn Declaration” and “Power of Attorney”) in order to help alleviate the citizen’s need to physically travel to a government service center.It is estimated that just one of the new services will quash about 8.5 million visits to government service centers. It has deployed teleconference, teleworking, healthcare (drug prescriptions on the cloud,) remote education, arts streaming digital solutions as well as a “Digital Solidarity” platform. It has deployed a digital service for citizens to request work commute and extraordinary movement permits, as well as a COVID-19 patient registry, paperless prescriptions for all patients to simplify drug purchase and delivery and eliminate unnecessary visits to drugstores and physicians.It has applied for European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs), which will function as one-stop shops that help companies dynamically respond to the digital challenges and become more competitive.Contact: Dr. Thanos Dimas Email: a.dimas@mindigital.gr Phone/Mobile: +3069 4695 7695Nominated by: SEPE, GreeceMore information: Award nomination; ;DG-Connect;KEP Video;Digital Review video;MyHealthApp video;NDA Teaser video.
Arup: Neuron Smart Building Digital Platform – Empowering Building Sustainability and Wellbeing through AI & Digital Technology(Hong Kong)A scalable, innovative, proven solution with global potential, the Neuron Smart Building Digital Platform serves as the ‘digital brain’ for buildings to monitor their systems and respond in real time. It consolidates and connect data from disparate equipment and devices to provide customized insight and machine learning models for building performance management and improvement, new building design, asset and operation management, energy monitoring and optimization – which makes our buildings, districts and cities healthier, and creates more sustainable places to live and work.It enables prompt and adaptive response to dynamic environment, helping users effectively reinforce productivity of building facility, reduce operation cost and achieve sustainable development.The application is beyond buildings to other infrastructures as part of their digital transformation journey. It has been successfully implemented at One Taikoo Place in Hong Kong, and the National Aquatics Center in Beijing, and will be adopted at Two Taikoo Place to be completed in 2021/22. It is a milestone for the creation of an ecosystem for smart buildings and is not only beneficial to construction industry, but also paving the way for further adoption in various fields and sectors from hardware to services, bringing a new momentum to smart city developmentContact: Jerman Cheung / Manager – PR and EventsEmail: jerman.cheung@arup.com | Phone/Mobile: 3447 6159Nominated by: HKITF, Hong KongMore information: Award nomination.
Emergency Dada Platform, all-hazard preparedness, and response for a digital government (Taiwan)Has won multiple awards, demonstrated high impact, scalable, using innovative technologies, wide range of digital applications that benefit Taipei population on multiple levels. Five strategies:
In accordance with these five strategies, NTPC has developed an emergency data platform (EDP) to provide four major applications, namely incident visualization, monitoring and early-warning alerts, potential analysis and prediction, and hazardous information announcement, to respond to the impact of imminent catastrophes. The successful experience of the EDP can be shared worldwide, especially with the cities confronted by various natural disasters and epidemics. By introducing this disaster prevention and relief platform system, the government’s disaster response efficiency can be improved, and civilian casualties and loss during disasters can be reduced.Contact Name/title: 林晏達 科員 | Email: ae2810@ntpc.gov.tw | Phone/Mobile: +886938232362Nominated by: CISA, Taiwan.More information: Award nomination.
RENTWISE SDN BHD (Malaysia)A Global impact, scalable, and proven solution, Rentwise began operations in 2001 and from inception have been championing the need for a circular IT business model. The company acquires computers from the market when organizations retire these computers. Through a remanufacturing process, these computers are then restored to a ‘as-new condition’ and put back (repurposed) into the market either through a lease to use model or a sale, both of which the user is subsequently encouraged to return or sell back the computer to Rentwise at the end of use.For the past few years, the company has been processing an average of 20,000 computers - a combination of laptops and desktops purchased back from the private and public sector annually. This reduces the country’s annual IT carbon footprint by 9,500 tons which is equivalent to 105 metric tons of e-waste.Rentwisers are also on a social empowerment mission to inculcate within society the importance of repurposing than mere recycling. As a recognition to our cause, we were recently conferred the winner of the Circular Economy Leadership category of the Asia Responsible Enterprise Award (AREA) 2020 by Enterprise Asia, a regional non-profit organization that includes panel judges and support from UN Social Impact Fund and other like-minded leading authorities.Contact PIKOM, Malaysia: Mr. Ong Kian Yew: oky@pikom.org.myMore information: Nomination;Presentation;Company Profile
National Tele-Health Contact Center -Shastho Batayon 16263 (Bangladesh)Providing important health services through digital technologies in a country with limited resources. Scalable, some degree of innovation and proven benefits. This is the First & Largest Gov. initiative for doctor based tele health contact center in Bangladesh. Shastho Batayon is the ONE STOP & LARGEST DIGITAL HEALTH SERVICE FOR THE CITIZEN OF BANGLADESH.Won the Digital Bangladesh Award 2020. It is an integrated, innovative health service model accessible 24/7/365 from anywhere by land line & mobile phone by dialing the short code 16263. It provides more than 10 innovative health services and even this service is also integrated with other nationally important citizen service. Shastho Batayon has created exciting opportunities for providing the responsive, low cost & high-quality health services for citizen with diversified solutions and additional resources. More & more innovative health services can be added to deliver from a single ONE-STOP platform- strategic plan will guide us.Contact: Shohorab Ahmed Chowdhury, Managing Director (MD); Synesis IT Ltd.Email: md@synesisit.com.bd, shohorab@synesisitltd.comAlternative E-Mail: mamun@synesisit.com.bd, zunaid@synesisit.com.bdPhone/Mobile: +8801912499989 ; Alternative Phone/Mobile: +8801751866600 NNominated by: BCS, BangladeshMore information
Taipei City Government Covid19 Dashboard and Data Analysis(Taiwan)The COVID dashboard provides the city government’s decision-making team with key data including trends of the pandemic across the world, in Taiwan, and Taipei. In addition to statistical data, TUIC have more detailed COVID-19 data for Taipei City including Hot spots of confirmed cases, PCR positive rate, home isolation, total of rapid screening positive rates, real-time data on the flow of people entering the public spaces, and the number of people in epidemic prevention hotels.In addition to using dashboards for monitoring data, TUIC has also conducted in-depth analysis and research. It uses epidemic investigation data to analyze infection associations, grasp the connections between confirmed cases and close contacts, expand the scope of the contact list, and clarify the infection chain of those diagnosed with the virus. It also uses the data of the confirmed cases to calculate the Rt value (Effective Reproductive Number) and the map of the confirmed growth rate of each area in Taipei City, assisting decision-making teams to quickly assess the weekly development of the pandemic in Taipei City.Contact Name/title: Sun-Yi, Yang/ Sub-section Chief Email: ic-sofiayang@mail.taipei.gov.twPhone/Mobile: +886-2-2720-8889 ext.8588Nominated by CISA, TaiwanMore information: Award Nomination
AEB (Acer e-Enabling Service Business Inc.) and Taiwan i-Sports Information Platform for Taiwan Sports AdministrationThis Project is well established (since 2015) and have proven successes. Half the Taiwanese population use the service and has resulted in a more active population. The Project is a partnership between Taiwan Sports Administration, the governing authority of sports activity in Taiwan, and Acer e-Enabling Service Business Inc. (AEB), an IT service provider for organizations looking for solutions of digital transformation. The Project set a goal at the inception to “instill health lifestyle to general public to meet the challenges brought upon by ageing society” through the nationwide promotion of sports/health activity and the establishment of well-architect information infrastructure.It is a cloud-based infrastructure where people everywhere in the country can easily access sports information such as the nearest sports facility and services provided by the facility. It provides “data” to people for them to understand their status of physical fitness, creates an ecosystem where those in needs of professional sports advice can find coaches with authenticated certifications, and those in pursuit of a professional coaching career can be properly trained and certified.The Taiwan i-Sports Information Platform was built and started to operate from 2015 until today, and in the process has concluded 5 sub-projects and implemented 15 systems. The Project brings enormous benefits to not only the local sports industry but also the overall society. 50% of Taiwanese have visited the platform for various purposes, accounted for around 12.3 million persons and 600% growth since the Project was initiated in 2015. More than 2600 sports events are published per year. Sports event participation rate has increased to around 85%, and the participation rate of events for the elderly also increased 51% in 2021 as compared to 2015Contact: Olive Chang, Marketing ManagerEmail: Olive.C.Chang@aceraeb.com | Phone/Mobile: (886)2-26963131# 5022 / (886) 909132661Nominated by CISA, TaiwanMore information: Award Nomination
Singapore Police ForceA proven project that reduces crime using digitized automation processes using deploying advanced data analytics and graphing technology and connectivity analysis of big data, Project POET is a collaboration between Singapore Police Force (Public Sector Category) and three private sector banks, namely Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), Oversea-Chinese Bank of Singapore (OCBC) and United Overseas Bank (UOB). POET leverages technology and process automation to facilitate the way data is retrieved and provided. These partner banks have optimized the process so as to speed up turnaround time.Banking information that used to take between ten days to ninety days is now made available to investigators within one working day. This prompt exchange of banking information has improved the agility of law enforcement. Investigators are able to react faster to prevent the perpetuation of crime, improve crime detection and enhance solvability. With the improved speed of detection, potential victims are prevented from falling prey early and potential money are saved. POET has also significantly transformed the way data is managed to strengthen the surveillance and sense-making capabilities of the financial industry.Contact: Camille Ang / 3 Planning Officer, Organization Dev
