NIC wins national award for best IT usage

NEW DELHI: "IT is here to stay and is transforming rapidly, but we should endeavor to ensure that it is moving the right way. For IT to succeed in India language barrier has to be breached as only five percent of the Indian population knows English," stated Prof. MGK Menon, former Minister for Science and Technology while giving away the Computer Society of India (CSI) National IT awards for the year 2003-04. He also called upon the industry to collectively work towards breaking this language barrier and build a truly global economy.

An annual affair, the National IT Awards is an important milestone in the field of IT in India that acknowledges original and outstanding development work in various technical fields. CyberMedia India along with other industry majors-Infosys, KPIT Cummins, QAI, TCS and Wipro, have been associated with it for many years.

Announcing the winners, CSI National IT Awards convener Kewal Kohli said, "It has been the constant endeavor of the Computer Society of India to promote IT talent in India. The Awards are a platform to recognize and honor key people responsible for the creation of outstanding applications and achievements."

While the Best IT usage award was bagged by NIC for its highly visible implementation of the examination result system, the runners up in this category were Online Integrated System from SUMUL Dairy, Surat and E Chaupal from ITC, Kolkata. Power Grid Corporation's Load Despatch System and NIC's AGMarket System also got special mention for their efforts.

The Best Packaged Application Award was presented to Opus Software Solutions for successfully installing and implementing Electra EFT Switch, allowing transactions within Multi-bank ATM networks. The runners up in this award category were Neat IXS from NSEIT Mumbai and SARAS from Excelsoft Tech Pvt Ltd, Mysore.

Special mention was given to Softcorder from Pace Soft Silicon Pvt Ltd and Ensure Synchronization Server from Persistent Systems Pvt Ltd.

Modular Info Tech bagged the Best Shrink-Wrapped Application Award for its paperless office automation product Ankur. The runners up in this category were Third Dream from Nihilent Technologies, Pune and Endorser from NSEIT, Mumbai. Special mention was given to RAP CTI from Servion Global Solutions, Chennai and Enquire from Persistent Systems Pvt Ltd, Pune.

Vinod Gulati of NHPC won the Best CIO Award sponsored by KPIT-Cummins. This award was given on the basis of the achievements made in the NHPC Intranet site, creation of optimum level of IT infrastructure, effective use of web

technologies, with wide acceptability within the various ranks and files of the organization. Amrita Gangotra of Bharti Televentures jointly shared the first runner up award with Anil Vaidya of Philips, while the second runners up award was bagged was VVR Babu of ITC, Kolkata. Special mention was given to AG Tawde of Mahindra & Mahindra.

Outlining the methodology of selection, CyberMedia Group, managing director Pradeep Gupta, said that an eminent panel of nine IT experts screened the projects and shortlisted the outstanding projects for the final presentations.

Stating the criteria, he said that the IT solutions and projects were judged based on criticality of IT usage, improvement in customer service, impact on quality and productivity and impact on society and innovation.

In all, there were 71 entries for the five categories of awards, of which 20 were short-listed for the award.

The keynote address was delivered by HCL Infosystems chairman and CEO, Ajai Chowdhry.

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