The 20th anniversary event of the National Best Quality ICT Awards (NBQSA), a national competition to recognise ICT products developed locally, is due to take place on October 19.
The official announcement of the competition took place at Hotel Galadari recently.
The NBQSA is open to organisations, groups and individuals in Sri Lanka for locally-designed and developed ICT products. This year’s event will be organised under-19 categories for student and commercial categories with three special awards. The BCS the Chartered Institute for IT Sri Lanka section (BCSSL) has been organising the NBQSA since 1998.
Chairman, BCSSL, Ruwan Amarasekara and Secretary Vajeendra Kandegamage outlined the evolution of the competition and how it has impacted Sri Lanka’s fast-growing ICT industry.
Excerpts of the interview conducted with them.
Q. What is the National Best Quality ICT Awards (NBQSA) all about?
A. The National Best Quality ICT Awards (NBQSA) is the only national competition that is conducted to evaluate and recognise ICT products developed in Sri Lanka by commercial organisations, individuals and tertiary students. NBQSA also showcases and benchmarks the countries’ ICT innovations.
Q. What are the objectives of NBQSA?
A. From its inception the core objectives of the NBQSA were to uplift the quality and the standards of the ICT products developed in Sri Lanka, identify local talent and recognise the outstanding achievements of commercial organisations, individuals or groups, to act as the gateway to the international market and to support them to improve the quality of the products so that they can compete in the international market.
We have assisted the best of these organisations to participate in many international competitions and events to connect Sri Lanka talent with the global market.
Q. How has NBQSA grown over the years?
A. NBQSA has evolved considerably over the past 20 years in terms of the number of participators, from only five applications at the very first year to over 200 applications at present.
It was limited only to a handful of companies at the initial stage and due to the wide publicity provided, the awareness created in local media and extensive guidance given to the industry,today’s applications come from all parts of the island.
Q. How has NBQSA impacted the local IT industry?
A. I am proud to state that most of today’s ICT industry giants are past winners of the NBQSA. Over the years, the impact created by the NBQSA has been significant to the national economy.
Products which have gone through the NBQSA process get valuable recognition than those that have not. The people who lead the products have become key decision makers in the countries’ largest organisations. Many individuals and students have used the NBQSA experience, victories and recognition as a platform to transform themselves as real entrepreneurs within a very short period of time.
Q. What’s the process for picking the winners?
A. The process starts with basic filtering of the relevant applications according to the respective categories.
The applicants are taken through the NBQSA awareness and briefing sessions prior to the evaluation process. Finally, two levels of evaluations will be conducted by an eminent panel of judges appointed based on experience and qualifications that suit the relevant categories.
Final results are further taken to a validation process to guarantee the quality of judging and the entire process will be done using a well-tested online system developed in Sri Lanka.
Q. Could you describe the award categories?
A. The competition is open to more than 19 categories. Gold, Silver and Bronze awards are presented in these categories subject to that there are winners in these categories.
Winners are selected only if the products receive the required threshold marks against the judging criteria.
We award three special recognition awards: An ‘ICT Lifetime Achiever Award’ or the ‘ICT Most Outstanding Contribution’ presented to an outstanding personality for the invaluable services rendered to the development of the local ICT Industry for an extended period of time, an ‘ICT Entrepreneur of the year Award’ presented to a budding entrepreneur who will be recognized for his or her effort for venturing into organisational development in an ICT organization and a ‘Public Sector Most Outstanding ICT Achievement Award’ presented to a public sector organisation in recognition and appreciation of the effort rendered towards the introduction, nurturing and development of the ICT environment to provide better quality services to the citizens in Sri Lanka.
Q. In what way would the 2018 NBQSA be different from previous years?
A. As we celebrate the 20th year of the NBQSA, we intend to extend the post-event support provided to the winners by way of additional Business/product promotions in the countries where BCSSL has strong relations in addition to the introduction of the new changes with the evaluation process as we strive to continuously improve it.
A new team appointed for the NBQSA project will take it to a different level. With these improvements, we expect product quality and standards to rise while more winning opportunities will also be introduced to recognise the best products out there.
Q. What are the future plans for NBQSA?
A. NBQSA has already driven home the message that due recognition is an important element to uplift the industry talent and therefore, initiatives have been taken to move forward with the international market to promote Sri Lankan products.
The initiative named ‘Biz2Biz’, introduced parallel to NBQSA, has evolved and connecting them together will be the next phase.