National website competition results declared to mark the occasion

ICT: The Ministry of Agriculture and Forests was declared the winner of the third national website competition, conducted by the Department of Information Technology and Telecom.

This is the second consecutive time the ministry has won the first prize.

Meanwhile, the National Council and Druk Holding and Investments Ltd won the second and third prizes respectively.

The declaration of the website competition results was a part of the World Telecommunications and Information Society Day (WTISD) celebration at the Ministry of Information and Communication (MoIC) conference hall yesterday.

Of a total of 126 websites registered in the first round of evaluation, four were eliminated from the list due to inconsistent uptime and duplicity.

Some 14 private firms voluntarily registered their websites for the evaluation, six less compared to the preceding competition.

The competition was conducted over a period of nine months where all the websites were evaluated thrice in three rounds. Each round was conducted for a period of one and a half months.

An official with MoIC said that the website evaluation was carried out to encourage agencies to use their websites as major channel for sharing information and services. It is also to ensure regular updates and enhancements are made to increase the utility of websites for citizens and to improve public service delivery.

The frequency of uploaded information on the sites has improved since the first assessment of the competition, the official added.

Eight experienced information and communication technologies (ICT) personnel from domestic private IT firms and Internet Service Providers (ISP) carried out the assessment.

The day is observed every year on May 17.

MoIC secretary Dasho Kinley Dorji said that world information society means having an informed society. An information society means giving everyone, both people and government access to information and knowledge using technology.

Therefore, instead of just celebrating the day, it is important to think of what needs to be done, how technology can and should serve society, which includes everyone.  “We should also not only think about what we are doing and what we should do but what we are not doing and what we need to do,” Dasho Kinley Dorji said.

Dasho Kinley Dorji explained that in Bhutan awareness is relatively low on technological skills and there is much to do to strengthen that area. He said it is also important to have people involved in telecom and other ICT areas to think how they can help other members of society.

As part of the WTISD celebration, MoIC had started an initiative to recognise an ICT champion every year. However, this year’s ICT champion award was postponed to June 22, due to poor turnout of nominations. The nominations are still open and will close on June 3.

Dasho Kinley Dorji awarded prizes to the winning agencies. The prizes for the top three websites were an iPad Air 2, Samsung Galaxy Tab A and 3G data card dongle with prepaid voucher card worth Nu 2,350, respectively.

Dechen Tshomo

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