The Kingdom of Bahrain will host the Arab eContent Award 2011 for the second year. The award recognizes the outstanding achievements of content producers, application developers and new media providers who use the Internet to create exceptional value for users and are leaders for the region and Arab world.
The awards ceremony will be held under the patronage of His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister, Chairman of the Supreme Committee for Information and Communication Technology during the Bahrain International eGovernment Forum from the 16th to the 18th of May 2011.
The Arab eContent Award is part of the World Summit Award (WSA), it implements the vision of the World Summit Award and shares the awareness for the need for local digital content. It is headed by Professor Peter A. Bruck , and all registration, evaluation, and jury proceeding are done according to international standards set by worldwide experts in the domain of eContent.
The Arab eContent Award’s main objective is to promote and encourage creativity in the Arab eContent domain and to outline the collaboration between the countries in the region regarding its field to reach an international level. Through this award, participants will be evaluated with the same published international standards set by WSA. The winners, who will be awarded during the Bahrain International eGovernment Forum and IT Expo 2011, will automatically be eligible to compete for the WSA 2011.
The Winners of the Arab eContent Award 2011 were evaluated by the Grand Jury of the World Summit Award which convened in Hong Kong in last April to select the world’s best eContent and creative use of ICT. The jury moderator and jurors were appointed by the Chairman of the WSA and its Board of Directors. The Grand Jury of WSA has done the evaluation and the selection of the winners based on the published criteria (www.wsis-award.org).
The registration and evaluation was done according to the rules of the contest and to the procedures governing the evaluation of the entries to WSA 2011 by international experts in the field.
The jury committee included experts in the domain of eContent from different countries in the world. The jury was moderated by Jak Boumans from the Netherlands. The members included Anya Sverdlov from the Russian Federation, Suleman Bakhsh from the United Arab Emirates, Nawaf Abdulrahman from the Kingdom of Bahrain, Alexander Felsenberg from Germany, Mr. Nibal Idlebi from Syria, Effat elShooky from Egypt, Faouzi Zaghbib from Tunisia and Manar Alhashash from Kuwait. Notably the jury members do not vote for their country’s projects in order to preserve a fair and a transparent selection.
The Arab eContent Award consists of 8 categories eGovernment and Institutions, eHealth and Environment, eLearning and Education, eEntertainment & Games, eCulture & Heritage, eBusiness & Commerce, eScience & Technology, and eInclusion & Participation.
Since the Kingdom of Bahrain will host the Arab eContent, the eGovernment Authority is honored and delighted to welcome all the participants and the guests to the Arab eContent Award 2011 from all over the Arab countries and the world.
According to the rules and regulations set by the WSA Board of Directors, 150 United Nations member countries including 22 Arab countries were eligible to compete in the Arab eContent Award 2011 through their inventive eContent projects.