A2i bags 8 int’l awards for digital innovation in 2018
Officials of the a2i program with the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) Prize 2018 in Geneva, Switzerland on March 20, 2018 Courtesy
The most prestigious award that the program has won is the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) Prize 2018 in the ICT sector, for the fifth time in a row, for two innovative projects
The Access to Information (a2i) program, supported by the ICT Division, USAID and UNDP Bangladesh, has won at least eight international awards and one local in 2018 for digitally innovative projects.
The most prestigious award that the program has won is the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) Prize 2018 in the ICT sector, for the fifth time in a row, for two innovative projects.
One of these projects is Muktopaath (www.muktopaath.gov.bd), an e-learning portal designed to educate and train youth, women, professionals and overseas workers. Using the platform, anyone can get general, technical, vocational and life-oriented education.
The other project is Online Police Clearance Certificate Management System, which a2i developed jointly with the Bangladesh Police. The project was implemented by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP).
Water Resources Secretary Kabir Bin Anwar, the then project director of the a2i program, received the award for Muktopaath, and Deputy Inspector General of Police Harun Ur Rashid and Additional DIG (ICT) Md Ruhul Amin received the award for the police clearance project on March 20, 2018 at a function held at the headquarters of International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland.
Muktopaath also won the PIB-Sohel Samad Memorial Award-2018 on September 5.
The a2i program also won the International Invention Innovation and Technology Exhibition (ITEX) Award 2018 in three different innovation categories on May 12. For the very first time, a2i participated in the exhibition held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center in Malaysia and won two gold and one silver awards.
The a2i received the gold awards for the innovation project titled Centralized Nebulizing System in the Biotechnology, Health and Fitness category and for the project Fuel from Plastic in the Environmental, Renewable Energy category. The silver award came in the Special Care and Child Care category for a project titled Portable Infant Incubator.
The “EkSheba” platform of a2i won the Award of Merit at the 18th Asia Pacific ICT Alliance (APICTA) Award 2018 in Guangzhou, China on October 13.
This year, a total of 17 countries – including Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam participated in the APICTA Award, popularly known as Oscars in the ICT arena.
The a2i program also received the President Award of the Open Group of India for the second time for EkSheba on February 22.
The program's national consultant for accessibility, Vashkar Bhattacharjee, a visually impaired Bangladeshi national, was awarded the Unesco/Emir Jaber al Ahmad al Jaber al Sabah Prize for Digital Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (2018-19) for developing the country's first “Accessible Dictionary.”
Bhattacharjee received the prestigious award as the first-ever Bangladeshi at a ceremony organized in observance of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities at the Unesco Headquarters on December 3.