"Empowering India" receives international digital content award

[Barun Mitra, New Delhi]

Empowering India receives international digital content award

40 Winners of World Summit Award announced, two from India

New Delhi, July 5, 2011

Multi-channel and multi-device content for savvy citizens and creative
use of biometric, wireless and conventional services are the hallmarks
of the stellar products which are announced as this year’s winners of
the UN based World Summit Award (WSA).

Empowering India <www.EmpoweringIndia.org> from India has made it to
the group of outstanding best-practise developments. Empowering India
is a database of elections at state and national level, with unique
analytical tools. It seeks to “make democracy meaningful” by informing
citizens, encouraging participation in the electoral process, and
promoting transparency and accountability in the political process.
For its innovative contribution in the category e-governance and
institution, Empowering India was selected among the WSA winners in
2011.

As part of the UN activities following the World Summit on the
Information society, the WSA recognizes the outstanding achievements
of content designers and application producers in eight categories. It
started in 2003 and will continue until the UN review in 2015.

“All those winning the WSA, from Colombia to India and from Ghana to
Lithuania, can be proud as they have shown that great digital contents
are produced all over the world and as they have won against over 460
other competitors for this prize,” states Prof. Dr. Peter A. Bruck,
Chairman of the World Summit Award Board of Directors.

In a recent email, Dr Y S. Quraishi, Chief Election Commissioner of
India, wrote “"I am happy to see this initiative. Voter awareness is
key to a successful democracy."”. Barun Mitra, the director of Liberty
Institute, said, “the World Summit Award is a recognition of the fact
that e-governance is not just about how governments use ICT to inform
and interact with citizens, but also how citizens could contribute by
harnessing ICT to make democratic governance more effective.” Liberty
Institute, an independent, non-profit, public policy think tank, is
the producer of Empowering India

Winners will present their outstanding products and projects, network
with business partners and meet other experts in the field of ICT at
the WSA 2011 Winners Events in Egypt, later this year.

Europe hosts the most of the world’s best in e-Content and Creativity
- 18 winning projects. China, India, New Zealand and Singapore won 2
awards each by producing superior websites, content rich apps or
creative digital content. Egypt, famous for its new media revolution,
takes home one World Summit Award.

The Winners were decided on by a prestigious Grand Jury in Hong Kong.
Jury members come from all continents and have backgrounds in the
creative industries, telecommunication, advertising, journalism and
research, as well as in teaching. They evaluated the over 460
submissions from 105 countries on the basis of content and creativity.
Each UN Member State can only nominate one product per category to the
World Summit Award and thus, a lot of countries organise national pre-
selection awards prior to the international jury.

About the WSA

The World Summit Award (WSA), was started as an initiative by the
Republic of Austria as a contribution to the United Nations World
Summit on Information Society(WSIS) and is organised by the
International Center for New Media (ICNM) in Salzburg. It partners
with UN organisations and agencies in the implementation of the Geneva
Agenda and the Tunis Action Plan and selects and promotes the world’s
best e-Content and innovative ICT applications; to date more than 160
countries are actively involved. Through national pre-selections and
contests and a global jury process, WSA demonstrates the local
diversity and rich creativity of ICT use. WSA is a global hub for
everyone who values the crucial importance of local content to make
today’s information society more inclusive.

For further information, go to www.wsis-award.org or contact
w...@icnm.net.

WORLD SUMMIT AWARD
c/o ICNM – International Center for New Media
Moosstrasse 43a | 5020 Salzburg | Austria
+43-662-630408 | w...@icnm.net

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