UAE Contest for eContent begins hunt for best e-Content applications to represent country in World Summit Awards (WSA)

The World Summit Awards (WSA), a global competition backed by the United Nations, seeks to select the world's most innovative and creative e-content applications. The Awards were initiated by UN member states in cooperation with the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), a summit endorsed by the UN and organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to help move towards a common global vision on the Information Society.

The UAE Contest for eContent is open to all e-content producers - both individuals and companies without discrimination in terms of language, technological platform or nationality. Products can be submitted in any of eight Award categories: e-learning, e-culture, e-science, e-government, e-health, e-business, e-entertainment and a special category: e-inclusion. The UAE contest will be judged by an eminent panel of UAE-based experts. The deadline for submission is 30th May, 2005. Further details of the contest are available in a specially constructed website: www.uae-econtent-contest.com. Contestants can enter the competition by registering on this website.
National e-content contests are being held in UN member nations across the world to select nominees for the World Summit Awards (WSA). The winners of the UAE contest will join other national winners in a global competition to select the winners of the WSA.

The WSA will empanel an International Grand Jury, which will evaluate all the winners of the national competitions around the world to select the winners in the eight categories. These awards will then be presented at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in November 2005.

To fulfil the WSA jury statutes' requirements of international diversity and expertise, Grand Jury members have been chosen from each of the following contest regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, North and Latin America, the Arab Region as well as Europe.

"We are very glad to support such an initiative, especially as it has a truly global perspective. Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City and Dubai Knowledge Village are pleased to support, encourage and recognise excellence in eContent," said Dr Abdulla Al Karam, CEO of Dubai Knowledge. "Our three communities are strongly aligned with the goals of this competition. There is a lot of talent here, not only in Dubai but across the country and we would like to see this represented on a global scale," he added.

"The UAE Contest for eContent is not just another technology-related contest; it's more about empowering people through technology and it aims to improve the quality of digital products within the UAE. Ultimately, we want to ensure that the best are recognised and encouraged and that the bad are prevented from taking over in the vast ocean of digital products we see on the market today," explains Hind Al Mualla, UAE Multimedia Expert, WSA 2005 and IT Faculty member of Sharjah Women's College and one of the judges of the UAE Contest for eContent. "This contest is not technology-centred; it's people-centred: the purpose of the product and how it serves its users must come before anything else," she added.

The eight categories of the World Summit Awards cover the following:

1. e-Learning

The e-Learning category is for applicants who can demonstrate qualitative standards in disseminating knowledge and skills for a complex and global environment that improve schools, universities and educational institutes through interactive, personalised and distributed learning resources.

2. e-Culture

This category looks to candidates to demonstrate how they have preserved and presented cultural heritage in line with the challenges of the future; demonstrating valuable cultural assets clearly and informatively using state-of-the-art technology.

3. e-Science

Fostering global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure that enables this; this category shows how scientific processes are promoted, demonstrated and made more accessible to citizens.

4. e-Government

The e-Government category shows how citizens and public services clients can benefit from improved quality and efficiency of information exchanges and communications services in government and public administrative processes.

5. e-Health

For improving the customer-centric model of healthcare, this category demonstrates how ICT and Internet technologies help to manage health issues and health care systems.

6. e-Business

This category covers the support and optimisation of business processes, such as creating new business models in e-commerce and m-commerce, business to business, business to consumers, Internet security and supporting SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) in the marketplace.

7. e-Entertainment

This covers the supply of on-line entertainment products and services, entertaining users in the global variety of languages and cultural diversity, supporting movement to multiple channels of entertainment as well as interactive entertainment platforms and creating synergy between analogue and digital platforms.

8. Special Category: e-Inclusion

This special award is for candidates who demonstrate how they have reduced the "Digital Divide" and "Content Gap" through the support of IT integration in least-developed countries in the Information Society. This also includes bringing technology to rural communities and women and bridging society through multimedia.

The UAE has already scored highly in the previous contest, held in 2003, when online procurement portal Tejari won the award for best e-Content in the e-Business category.