The eGovernment Authority (eGA) and Bahrain Internet Society (BIS) will jointly host the fourth Bahrain eContent Award to honour innovative projects in the Kingdom.

Bahrain eContent Award 2011 is being held under the patronage of Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak AI Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Supreme Committee for Information and Communication Technology.

Announcing this on Monday, Nawaf Abdulrahman, chairman of the organizing committee and BIS representative, said the awards aim to improve quality and stimulate creativity and innovation.

The award will be given in the following categories: eGovernment, eEntertainment, eHealth, eLearning, eScience, elnclusion, eBusiness, eCulture, eBanking and eMedia.

Abdulrahman said these awards aim to encourage the ICT industry in Bahrain and also promote the winners globally as the qualified ones will represent the kingdom at World Summit Awards (WSA).

'It is an opportunity for all Bahraini businesses and individuals from both public and private sectors to register and be nominated for the award,' he added.

On the evaluation criteria, Abdulrahman said the registration is open for all Bahraini individuals, government ministries and entities, private sector businesses and civil society institutions and will run till February 28.

The panel will oversee the award processes which cover two phases. The first phase includes the registration of participants, classification of submitted e-products and ensuring that all entries comply with the terms and conditions of the competition.

In the second phase, the jury committee evaluates participated e-products according to the criteria applied by the WSA.

The panel chairman also announced a series of activities starting with an awareness session to public and private sectors.

'On February 13 and 14, a workshop will be held for the public and private sectors to educate them on previous winners experience and criteria of eContent Award and WSA.

'From March 5 to 9, the jury committee will evaluate the Bahrain participations and from March 10 to 23, the participations for the nomination of the WSA will be selected.'

'By March end the winners' names will be announced and will be awarded by Shaikh Mohammed at a gala dinner,' he added.

Ubaidly AI Ubaidly, member of organizing committee and representative of the private sector, said the award was a result of increasing role played by the ICT industry in the national economy, in line with nationalisation of the industry as per 'Bahrain Vision 2030.'

On private participation, AI Ubaidly said, 'Bahrain eContent award is a perfect example of a marriage between public and private sectors backed by the current leap of the ICT sector in the kingdom.'

'The private sector can indeed play a key role in this sector as there is no big investment needed,' he stated adding, 'Here the content is the king and all that the e-content industry will need to provide is data and services.'

He pointed out that Bahrain had all the right ingredients to make a perfect e-content hub as 'the Kingdom was small in size, had good IT infrastructure and legislative system.'

Ahmed Naeemi, committee member and BIS representative, said the award has been launched to support the local electronic products according to international standards, competitive, and high efficiency.

'All the electronic products will be evaluated as per global version of the award, which will focus on quality and comprehensive of content, ease of use, added value, attraction of design, quality of technical realization, and strategic importance for development of information society,' Naeemi noted.

'The jury comprises a number of Bahraini experts in the ICT, web design, and multimedia fields as well as WSA officials,' he added.

Bahrain eContent Award is an initiative launched in 2005 by BIS, in co-operation with the public and private sectors.-TradeArabia News Service