India's C-DAC wins WSIS Prizes 2016 at Geneva

NEW DELHI: India's Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has bagged the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 2016 prize in the e-Agriculture category at Geneva.

C-DAC  has won the prize for its project, Harmonized Information of Agriculture, Revenue and Irrigation for a Transformation Agenda- Precision Technology for Agriculture or HARITA-PRIYA.

HARITA-PRIYA is a pilot project assigned to C-DAC, Hyderabad by Andhra Pradesh State Government, India to acquire micro-climate information from farmer fields using Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), thereby enabling the dissemination of location specific advisories to farmers. ‘Decision Support Models’ are executed based on the data received from the field and alerts are generated for pest/disease forewarning and irrigation scheduling. Based on the alerts generated by the system, Agricultural Officers of the state government send personalized crop advisories to the farmers in the regional language, Telugu, via SMS.

The prize was announced by  ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao along with other 17 winners of the WSIS Prizes 2016 at the WSIS High-Level Opening Segment, which was held at the Geneva International Conference Centre (CICG).

The WSIS Prizes 2016 contest provides a platform to identify and showcase success stories across the 11 WSIS Action Lines defined in the Geneva Plan of Action.

The awards are conferred through an open online voting process, which this year engaged over 245,000 stakeholders from around the world. A total of 311 projects were nominated for the 2016 contest, a significant increase on the number of nominated submissions in 2015, reflecting both the prestigious nature of the award and the growing importance of ICTs in national development strategies.

In line with the inclusive, multistakeholder character of the WSIS Process, the prizes recognize the outstanding achievements of a wide range of organizations in strengthening implementation of the vision and targets set by the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 (Phase 1) and 2005 (Phase 2).

“ITU and its WSIS partners strongly believe in the critical importance of ICTs in achieving the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals,” said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. “The WSIS Prizes recognize all players in the effort to improve global connectivity, from governments and global ICT companies to grassroots NGOs leading innovative ICT-oriented projects at the local level. All of these stakeholders are equally vital to the success of the WSIS Process.”

WSIS Project Prize winners include government departments, international organizations, private sector companies, NGOs and academia. An innovation in the WSIS Prizes contest this year is the nomination of 70 ‘WSIS Prize Champions’. This new award category recognizes outstanding projects that were among the most-voted entries and which also received the best reviews by the members of the Expert Group. Of these 70, 18 winners were selected to receive the coveted WSIS Prize, with the remaining projects to be celebrated at a special event to be held on Wednesday 4 May entitled: Implementing Best Practices and Addressing Challenges: Meet the Winners and Champions.

  This year’s 18 winners are:

Action Line C1 The role of government and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development

Winner: Fostering integration of Argentine Academia in the activities of ITU, Ente Nacional de Comunicaciones (ENACOM), Argentina

Action Line C2 Information and communication infrastructure

Winner: Data Centres for Government Agencies, National Information Technologies JSC, Kazakhstan

Action Line C3 Access to information and knowledge

Winner: Connected Homes, Presidential Social Council, Costa Rica

Action Line C4 Capacity building

Winner: Smart Online SMEs (S.O.S.) by Thaitrade.com, Department of International Trade Promotion (DITP), Thailand

Action Line C5 Building confidence & security in the use of ICTs

Winner: Certification Programme for Better ICT Services, Office of Electronic Communications, Poland

Action Line C6 Enabling environment

Winner:  Life Long Learning and Employment for People with Disabilities, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Egypt

Action Line C7 E-government

Winner: e-National Judicial System, Ministry of Justice of Turkey, Turkey

Action Line C7 E-business

Winner: ATTA’A System, Atta’a for Helping Charity Organizations, Saudi Arabia

Action Line C7 E-learning

Winner: MexicoX-Platform of Massive Open Online Course (MOOCS), National Digital Strategy, Mexico

Action Line C7 E-health

Winner: Informatization of the Public Health System, SOFTEL, Cuba

Action Line C7 E-employment

Winner: Technology for Education, Employment, Entrepreneurs, and Economic Development Project, Information and Communications Technology Office, Philippines

Action Line C7 E-environment

Winner: Asia Pacific Green Data Center Farm, Green Data Center LLP, Malaysia

Action Line C7 E-agriculture

Winner: Harmonized Information of Agriculture, Revenue and Irrigation for a Transformation Agenda – Precision Technology for Agriculture, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, India

Action Line C7 E-science

Winner: R-package to compute confidence intervals for heritability, reliability, and heterogeneity, Ilia Vekua Institute of Applied Mathematics (VIAM)  of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU), Georgia

Action Line C8 Cultural diversity & identity, linguistic diversity

Winner:  Connectivity is Productivity, Bridge Africa, United States of America

Action Line C9 Media

Winner: Youth Women in Community Media and Journalism – the beginning of a new era in rural broadcasting journalism, Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication, Bangladesh

Action Line C10 Ethical dimensions of the Information Society

Winner: EmpoderaLive,  Cibervoluntarios Foundation, Spain

Action Line C11 International & regional cooperation

Winner: ICT Development in Arab Region, ICT Development in Arab Region, United Arab Emirates