BPN 1588: The year that was (1): Arab spring

In December last year I was in Abu Dhabi for the World Summit Mobile Award Ceremony. With hotel on the Formula 1 circuit it was an exciting stay. It was not exciting because of the circuit itself as once a day a car sweeping the circuit passed the hotel room, an hour later followed by a cohort of professional bicyclists. It was really exciting as the World Summit Award had created a competition in mobile content and found a sponsoring partner willing to invest in the competition, the winners and the network. And there were many exciting applications, enough to change the name of Abu Dhabi in the city of Apps Dhabi. After Abu Dhabi I was in more Arab countries like Kuwait and Bahrain in February and March. In Kuwait there was some unrest. I was there in the framework of the Kuwait Content Excellence Awards. Again the WSA local representative had organised a jury to judge new multimedia applications. Again here apps were popping up like mushrooms in fall. In Bahrain I was invited to do two workshops and be an observer to the Bahrain eContent Award competition. The unrest that started in February formed a difficulty for the workshop. On the first day of the workshop, when we were just in the second hour, a burial procession passed under the window of the class room. We had to improvise a lot as the students could not always reach the classroom. So we decided to form a closed user group on Facebook and do a lot of the work online. This worked as most of the students were computer graduates. A month later I arrived for the Bahrain eContent Award jury. And again the unrest formed a difficulty. We had to move hotel to a hotel close to the airport and had to work online, not seeing each other and missing out on profound debates. I left the country being very sad. A month later I was in Hong Kong for the World Summit Global Award jury, organised by Alexander Hung with the support of Elisabeth Quat and Winny Tang, members of the ICT professional association iPROA. It became a good meeting ground with the colleagues from the Middle East: Faouzi from Tunesia, Effat from Egypt, Nawaf from Bahrain and Manar from Kuwait, Suleman from the United Arab Emirates and Nibal from Syria/Lebanon. We even managed to put out the Arab eContent Awards, which were later on awarded in a ceremony linked to a conference. For the coming year there are already some fixed dates in the diary. In April the World Summit Award Ceremony will be held in Cairo; hopefully a sign that Egypt is recovering. Later that year The World Summit Mobile Award jury will be held in Abu Dhabi, followed in December by the award ceremony. Among the best wishes from 2012 I found an image sent by Faouzi from Tunesia, which sums it up: Thanks to the people. Thanks Facebook!

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BPN 1346 Bahrain eGov Jury half way

It is weekend in Bahrain. Today is the second day of the weekend and it is very quiet on the roads, as far as I can see from my hotel room. After breakfast I took some pictures from the 10th floor, where the swimming pool is. Yesterday I took a dip and stayed on the sun deck and I might do so again after the lunch outside the hotel with a friend.

We are now half way with the jury deliberations. The jury members are busy evaluating all the entries. In the past week, I have gone through all the entries and made sure that they qualify for the contest. The rules have been tightened since last year. This has been done to avoid winners of last year in the same category, as the contest is more a demonstration of applications than a competitive contest. In total 100 entries have been registered, but after cleaning up the list of entries there were 63 entries left. However evaluating all these 63 entries is no small task.

The jury will decide on the list of winners by May 13, with an option to continue on May 14. Winners of the current edition of the awards will be announced at the Award ceremony at the eve of the start of the eGov Forum in Manama on 25.05.2009. This year there will also be a catalogue of the winners with a summary of the entry and the jury judgment.

Blog Posting Number: 1346

Tags: e-Government

BPN 1345 eGovernment contests in the Gulf

I am in Bahrain since late Sunday evening after a KLM flight from Amsterdam. The route has been changed from Amsterdam to Kuwait via Bahrain; the route used to go to Bahrain to Abu Dabi or Dubai. At the airport there was a welcome committee. Later I was told that at the airport heat sensors have been installed to detect heat, i.c. body temperature, in case of Mexican flu. All I saw was an official with plastic gloves behind the customs picking out people from the crowd.

I have been invited by the e-Government Agency to chair the jury for the second edition of the e-Gov Excellence Award contest. So far I have been talking to the people involved, reading the documents and going into the entries.

Last year the agency started the contest and everything had to be done from scratch. Yet on the evening before the opening of international e-Gov Forum, the awards were presented and everyone was happy: the agency that it was all over and the jury that they had finished in time. It was decided straight away that there would be a second edition of the e-Gov Excellence Award contest and the international e-Gov Forum and the agency has not wasted the time for preparing the second round. Many things have changed such as contest rules, but also the composition of the jury; besides a very interesting category was added and a jury system developed.

The rules for the contest have happily been refined. If the same rules of last year had been applied there was the risk that the same winners would snatch away the awards. By changing the rules, entrants are limited in their participation and receiving awards; on the other hand there will be more competition and a broader distribution of awards.

The composition of the jury was surprising. Last year the jury was composed of Bahraini and people from India, working in Bahrain, This year there are Bahraini, two Saudi, an Omani lady and two people from India, working in Bahrain. I love this open attitude. The Saudi and the Oman lady have been invited as they are also planning an e-Gov contest in their respective countries; besides Oman has offered to organise the e-Gov contest for the Gulf States by December. I met the Omani lady, Fatma, last year in Muscat, when I presented a two-day workshop there.

Interesting is also the addition of a new category, not for the ministries or governmental agencies, but for the citizens. They can deliver an eConcept for the government and the winner in this category might see his idea realised; a budget has been set aside for this purpose. I was happy to see that the category had receive a good number of entries. I still have to go through them to see how inspiring they are.

Last year the jury requested to evaluate the submissions remotely, either from their working place or from home. This year the eGoverment Agency has developed a full grown system, taking in the submissions electronically, allowing jurors to access the sites, reading the submitted material and supporting documents and recording the scoring. It looks an interesting system, which aroused already interest with the jurors, despite some teething problems. Also the remote judging will have to be proven. I will be on duty to answer questions.

The second edition of the e-Gov Excellence Award has taken a step forward in the Gulf region and in using technology for judging.

Blog Posting Number:1345

Tags: eGovernment

Going back in time

Holiday in the Netherlands has started for some time now. But last night it was officially kicked off. It was Friday 13th of July and it will be 11 months on before another Friday will be on Friday. Reason enough for Arko van Brakel of the Nieuwe helden (New Heroes) to throw a party, complete with music. For the party he invited people he had worked with in the past, which makes up a nice group of internet experts.

Arko (see photograph) and I got to talk about I told him about my Bahrain trip and he was very interested, more than a casual listener. It turned out that Arko had been to Bahrain in 1995 to talk about internet. He would be completely surprised to find out that internet is now part of life, also in Bahrain. He should see all the government systems such as the electronic visa application and the hospital information system. But he has never been back in Bahrain since.

I had also taken my text iPOD iLiad along and showed it to him and other people. They were very impressed with the immaculate and beautiful screen. They toyed around with it and leaved through some books on the iLiad.

So the holiday can start. I will not be on holiday now. So I will continue this blog. Tomorrow I start with a mini-series on content artefacts from my museum. I will go back in time starting with the iLiad and going back to 1977, stopping to commemorate DVD, CD-ROM and CD-I, but also the three waves of electronic books, my first portable PC, the videotext executive terminal, but also the first PC software. I will end the series with the Apple IIe. Main focus will be on the content side and my personal recollections. So go with us back in time.

Blog Posting Number: 812

Tags: history