At the recently held APICTA 2018, Sri Lanka won 3 Gold Awards and was also able to secure 7 Merit awards. In addition to that, Sri Lanka also emerged as the third highest achiever in the awards tally at APICTA 2018 as well. Now the question on your minds right now probably is “What does all this mean?”.
Firstly, what is APICTA?
APICTA or the Asia Pacific Information Communication and Technology Alliance is an association of national ICT organizations representing their respective economies. Their aim is to build and enhance a mutually cooperative network to promote ICT.
Further, APICTA also aims to encourage the development of native ICT solutions for the global market. Currently, 17 permanent member economies are part of this alliance. They include Australia, Bangladesh, China, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam
What are the APICTA Awards?
As the name explains, the APICTA Awards are organized by APICTA. The aim here is to increase awareness in ICT by awarding those countries and their respective products that aim to bridge the digital divide. This, in turn, would result in ICT being available to all at an affordable manner. Companies and organization are nominated by their respective countries where they can present their products/services to a panel of judges.
Sri Lanka has been attending APICTA for quite a qhile (Image Credits: .jkcsworld)
The APICTA 2018 was held in Guangzhou, China, from the 9th October to 13th October 2018. For 2018, awards were given under 22 categories. To be a bit more specific, a grand total of 24 Gold Awards and 77 Merit Awards were announced.
For Sri Lanka, nominees for the APICTA Awards were selected from the National Best Quality ICT Awards, better known as the NBQSA. Organized by the British Computer Society, the NBQSA aims to identify the best technological achievements of the year under a wide range of categories.
On to the APICTA Awards 2018
For 2018, 38 nominated entrees from NBQSA went on to take part in APICTA 2018 representing Sri Lanka. As we mentioned above, Sri Lanka was won 3 Gold Awards and 7 Merit awards, becoming the third highest achiever at APICTA 2018. Given below are the details of those who won Gold.
Consumer (Wealth and Retail)
- DirectPay – DirectPay (Pvt) Ltd
The team behind DirectPay
A smartphone app that can be used to transfer funds between customers and merchants via a Clearing House. As such, they would do away with costs involved in dealing with third parties and additional equipment.
Business Services (Professional & Property Solutions)
- MintHRM – Infoseek (Pvt) Ltd
The team behind MintHRM
Developed by Infoseek (Pvt) Ltd, MintHRM is an all-in-one HR (Human Resource) dashboard that can keep track of employee attendance, employee management, payroll, employee performance etc. The system also has a social media platform builtin so that employees can share their achievement and stay informed of what’s happening with the company.
Tertiary Student Project
- Komposer – Dual S Dias (University of Sri Jayawarenepura)
Dulan S Dias – The brains behind Komposer
This is an AI Programme that has the ability to generate a tune after it has been provided with lyrics. On an interesting note, Sri Lanka won a Gold award under this category after 11 years. The last time Sri Lanka won an award was in 2006.
You can click here to see more details of those who won the 7 Merit Awards.
So, what does it all mean?
Well, quite simply, this means that Sri Lanka is indeed making a name for itself in terms of ICT and related fields. But just because we won these awards, that doesn’t mean that we can sit back and relax. Rather, we should always be on our toes and have constant vigilance.
On the other hand, winning awards is pointless if those who won the awards don’t go on to improve their products. For example, attending hackathons and the like are not viable if nothing good comes out of it.
Overall, we congratulate all winners of APICTA 2018 and we hope to see them obtain bigger and better achievements in the future
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