KUALA Belait’s Chung Hwa Middle School’s ‘Chemistry Flash Education’, Teleconsuft’s ‘TeleGis’, Maktab Teknik Sultan Saiful Rijal’s ‘Sports Day System’, Mars Enterprise’s ‘Bru-link e-custom’ and TT mobile’s ‘Mobile Coupon’ all walked away with first prize cheques from their respective categories, yesterday afternoon, during the 2009 Brunei ICT Awards at the Empire Hotel and Country Club.

A total of 17 entries were received since the competition commenced in June under five categories: Secondary Student Project, Tertiary Student Project, e-Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Start-up and General.

According to Dr Yong Chee Tuan, Chairman of BICTA 2009, the most challenging part of the competition was to bring together the representatives of industry experts, academics and government officers and successful entrepreneurs to decide on the criteria for the judging and the judging of the innovations themselves.
“The participants of the competition were judged based on their uniqueness, functionalities and features, quality and application technology, market potential, proof of concept and presentation of products,” he added.

BICTA is a component of the Asia Pacific Info-Communication Technology Awards (APICTA) whose vision is to widen the influence of ICT industry in the Asian region. The main objective of BICTA is to stimulate innovation and creativity in the local ICT industry amongst individuals, SMEs and education institutions as well as to be a benchmark for local companies to compete amongst each other for a chance to participate in the annually held APICTA competition.

There were no second place winners in this year’s competition “because they did not meet APICTA’s marking standard”, it said in a statement.

The first and third place winners were presented with their trophies and cheques by the Minister of Communications, Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Kerna Dato Seri Setia Haji Abu Bakar bin Haji Apong.
The winners will represent Brunei in the 2009 Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) to be held in Melbourne, Australia, later this year.

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