MTSSR tops Brunei ICT Awards

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Category: News

Published on Sunday, 18 December 2011 16:04

THE ICT industry participants of this year's Brunei ICT Awards (Bicta) are urged to take their products to bigger markets by engaging in strategic collaborations with existing industry players.

Chief judge Dr Yong Chee Tuan, in his report, said that some of the ideas proposed by the ICT industry category are still concepts that need to be moved into the next phase of development and implementation.

He acknowledged that most of the products presented during the competition demonstrated a "high level of creativity in addressing the applications of ICT to make significant impacts". Some of the concepts, he said, were what the bigger industry players have been aiming for.

"Many of them are making good use of social networks, mobile applications and cloud technologies, a trend that is not likely to slow down," he said.

Similar comments were said of the Tertiary Education category where Dr Yong highlighted the judges' delight in seeing more products centreing on multimedia and mobile applications, the more attractive and popular selections of the ICT fields as opposed to developing information systems.

Touching on the Secondary Education category, the chief judge expressed their interest in seeing the participation of more schools in future competitions after being impressed with the confidence displayed by this year's students through their presentations.

"It was clear that the students have developed a very good understanding of the strengths and challenges of ICT," he said.

Dr Yong pointed out that only a handful of schools participate and they are thinking of ways to reach out to the remaining 30 plus secondary schools so "students can put up a good fight in the coming years".

Yesterday's award ceremony took place at the Indera Kayangan Ballroom, The Empire Hotel and Country Club which was attended by Minister of Communications Pehin Orang Kaya Hamzah PahlawanDato Seri Setia Hj Abdullah Begawan Mudim Dato Paduka Hj Bakar as the guest of honour.

The only first place winner yesterday was Sultan Saiful Rijal Technical College (MTSSR) in the Tertiary Education category with their "Brunei Experience Multimedia Project", walking away with a $7,000 cash prize.

Merit winners were Iplussoft Technology's "Brunei Lifestyle Mobile Application", SocialBuzz Advertising's "Social Deal Brunei", Crescent Sdn Bhd's "Islamic Brunei Educators" winning $5,000 each under the ICT industry category; Institut Teknologi Brunei's "Simple pay" winning $3,500 under Tertiary education category and Chung Hwa Middle School's "Waseven Resource Reservation" winning $2,000 under the Secondary education category.

Third place winners consisted of ICT Industry Indah Sejahtera Development Services Sdn Bhd with their "Where2kerja.com" service as well as Masin Secondary School with their "Easy Text Book" idea, winning a cash prize of $2,500 and $1,000 respectively.

In addition to the awards, special awards were given to Megamas Training Company Sdn Bhd and Crescent Sdn Bhd in achieving the Green ICT and Islamic ICT Award respectively.

The trophies and certificates were handed over by the guest of honour accompanied by Permanent Secretary Dato Paduka Hj Alaihuddin Pehin Orang Kaya DiGadong Seri Lela Dato Seri Utama Hj MohdTaha as chairman of Bicta steering committee.

The Bicta awards were first introduced in 2004 by various government and semi-government agencies to encourage innovation and creativity among individuals, educational institutions, and small to medium enterprises as a spin-off of the Asian Pacific ICT Awards.

The annual Bicta awards are to benchmark the development of local ICT products and solutions and to create partnerships across the Asia-Pacific ICT industry.

The Brunei Times