Dataquest launched the first edition of ‘Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards’ in January 2006 to recognize and award individuals for championing the cause of e-Governance in India. We are into the second episode of ‘e-Gov Champion Awards’.

The Award is the first of its kind in India, which emphasizes on the importance of e-Governance in a comprehensive manner. It is a salutation to the ‘change leaders’ in the government who have been making a difference in people’s life through technology intervention, thereby ensuring ‘Good Governance’ at the local, regional and national level.

The award aims at recognizing the e-Gov Champions at three level in a regional format—East, West, North and South—and would be across all departments and States in each of these regions. Besides, a fifth category—Central—has been added in 2007 to include champions working with various agencies, departments and ministries directly under the Central Government. A jury comprising industry experts, senior government officials, academicians and civil society would select the champions.

This is part of Dataquest’s culture of participating in nation building exercise and pushing a cause driving high societal impact in bridging the digital divide, information gap and bringing in transparency in the governance thereby enabling the country meet the Millennium Development Goal of ‘good governance’.

OBJECTIVE

The aim and purpose of organizing the ‘e-Gov Champion Awards’ is to recognize, encourage and further disseminate e-Governance practices and delivery to break the traditional mode of public delivery mechanisms in day-to-day governance. ‘Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards’ has been trying to achieve this objective by identifying the champions of e-governance in India from all the zones – north, south, east, west, and central India.

The purpose is to recognize initiatives to empower citizens and serving public services clients and strengthening participation of citizens in information society decision making.

The message to be delivered through the award ceremonies which promise to emphasize the importance of e-Governance mechanisms and practices—its vitality and relevance among people, institutions, civil society and others.

BACKGROUND

e-Governance is no longer a mere buzzword amongst government and industry circles but a reality, which cannot be ignored. Given the central and state level support, various departments are now vying to have their place etched in the annals of successful e-Governance projects. So there is an urgent need to share and deliberate on the factors for building effective e-Governance solutions.

The Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards 2007 continues its attempt in this direction by recognizing champions not based on any one particular project but on the basis of their overall initiative in the space. The Summit attempts to look at how various departments are going about the e-Gov business, processes, delivery, and citizem empowerment.

AWARDS CRITERIA & SELECTION PROCESS

The Award is open to all government officials who have been championing e-Governance at any administrative level they are entitled to, at the State, District, City or Tehsil and even Panchayat level. However, the e-Governance service should directly and/or indirectly benefit the citizens. The efforts could well be to increase the efficiency of government departments itself as such efforts would ultimately make sure the ripple effect improves the government to citizen transactions at all level.

All entries will be evaluated according to the broad criteria and parameters as mentioned below, which are tied to the concept of value added for users accessing e-Governance mechanisms to serve multiple purposes. The evaluation criteria is based on quality of vision of the e-gov champions, past work and implementations of various government and governance projects, their personal achievements and so on. Besides, soundness of technology being used, the scalability and sustainability issues and finally the impact it has made on the citizen’s life.

The awards will be judged region wise. A total of three champions shall be chosen from across the States and departments in a region. Hence, overall 15 e-Gov champions will be felicitated at the Dataquest e-Gov Summit 2007.

AWARDS PARAMETERS

• Nominees' vision statement: The applicant or the prospective e-Gov Champion would explain his/her vision
• E-Gov Projects handled by the Nominee in previous assignments and the role played
• Present e-Gov Project being handled by the Nominee
• Contribution of the Nominee in including ICT into various projects and administrative assignments
• Nominee's role in GPR as a part of e-Gov implementation
• Originality & Innovativeness of Idea in all e-Gov Projects handled by the Nominee
• Impact on G-2-C services in e-Gov projects handled / initiated by the Nominee

The Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards 2007 would be decided by certain procedures and rules governing the evaluation of the entries. It is pertinent to clarify the process needed to carry out the evaluation and reporting, together with a schedule for the operation. The call for nominations for the ‘Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards 2007’ will be open till December 25, 2006. Professionals, ministries, departments, civil society are being invited to nominate their most eminent persons for the Award who in their view is spearheading e-Gov efforts in any of the regions in India.

An eminent Jury including representatives from government, academia, industry, media and civil society would selected the Dataquest e-Gov Champions for year 2007. The Grand Jury would be constituted by the Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards 2007office.

Initiatives and projects handled by the nominees would be evaluated by the selected Jury in phases of selection process including online and in-person jury and the main task of the Expert Panel will be to select and propose the 15 award winners out of as many nominations that come by as being nominated by various stakeholders.

The selected Champions and their projects / applications will be invited to the ceremony of e-Governance champions at the Regional level wherein the Awards shall be presented in the midst of an august gathering.

E-GOV CHAMPION AWARD JURY MEET

Online Jury: The Online Jury process would be held between January 4, 2007 till January 10, 2007 enabling each Jury member to evaluate nominees based on certain parameters to evaluate the initiatives and projects handled by the nominees to shortlist champions for the second, ‘In-Person Grand Jury’ from out of as many nominations that come by as being nominated by various stakeholders.

In-Person Jury: The final shortlisted nominations from Stage 1 (Online Jury) would be invited for a workshop with the 12 member distinguished Jury for a three day off-site workshop from Jan 18, 2007 till Jan 20, 2007 to make presentations on their vision of an e-Governed India and strategies for NextGen Government.

The main task of the Expert Panel member, steered by the Chairperson would be to select and propose the 15 e-Gov Champions for 2007 as per the selection guidelines, provided by The Dataquest e-Gov Champion Award office.

Some of the eminent experts, professionals and organizations have been roped in to be part of the Jury to select the e-Gov Champions.

The Expert Panel will select eminent champions of e-Governance from the 35 Indian states and union territories. Twelve Jury members have been assigned the task to select the awardees from the list of nominees.

The main task of the Expert Panel member is to select and propose the 12, in his/her opinion, best champions of e-Governance in the country. The selection shall be made according to the selection guidelines, provided by The Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards office.

The Jury shall evaluate all nominations and the selected champions shall be invited and awarded as per the five classified regions—East, West, North, South and Central.

JURY AND EVALUATORS BRIEFING

There will be an official instruction of the Jury regarding the call for entries, the award rules and the rules governing the jury evaluation based on the documents approved by the Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards office and the Jury Evaluation Guide.
An informal meeting will also take place in order to introduce to the evaluators the general idea of e-Gov Champion Awards project and to encourage the importance of working within a team.

REASONS FOR DISQUALIFICATION

Entries can be disqualified for the following reasons:

• There should be no incomplete nomination Form.
• Nomination from previous year’s Dataquest e-Gov Champion will not be accepted for the year 2007 Awards. However, the Dataquest e-Gov Champions can nominate others for theAward.
• Malfunctioning of the product, project or application during the time of the jury evaluation. Nominees are held responsible for the smooth functioning of their products and applications
• Non-possession of creative rights or infringement of copyrights of others
• False or vastly incomplete registration information
• Submissions that do not conform to the rules of the contest guidelines will be disqualified without any notice. There is no legal recourse possible against this decision. Special forms will be available

Benefits

The Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards focuses on the honor and prestige of being got selected for championing the cause of e-Governance as one of the best practices in this direction and a prize certificate is granted. The Award stands out as a contest with benefits for every entry. It is a showcasing and networking platform for e-Governance products and a unique chance for producers to receive recognition outside their existing markets and customer communities.

Rules

• The Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards is open to any department, ministry, and civil society organisation active in e-Governance activities and based in one of State or UT of India.
• The Award is directly organised on a regional level and no national pre-contests will be organised.
• Nominees selected in the first phase of Online Jury Process [January 4-10, 2007] will have to make presentation at the In-Person Jury Process [January 18-20, 2007] before the jurors. Non participation in the In-Person Jury Process will disqualify the nominee/nomination.
• No drafts, demonstrations or unfinished prototypes are accepted.
• Incomplete submissions and those not conforming to the published guidelines will be disqualified without further notice. There is no possible legal recourse against these decisions.
• Submitters are held responsible for the smooth functioning of their products and applications. This is important for the Jurors to check and research during the Jury process.
• Pictures, sound, content and software etc. must have copyright permission and the uses of all software should be legal
• There is no limitation on the number of submissions that can be made from one state/UT/department.
• All materials submitted become the property of the organizers and will not be returned. One copy of the submitted product will be archived for the record. No commercial use of this archive may or will be made.
• All offline products must be sent by the person sending nomination to the Award office at Cyber House, B-35, Sector 32, Gurgaon, NCR Delhi – 122 001 on or before January 25, 2006. The award office does not accept mailing or transport costs for any entry. All shipments are at the cost of the sender.
• With completion of registration, participants in the Award accept the rules, guidelines and Award criteria governing the e-Gov Champion Awards.
• The registration and submission process of a product to the evaluation itself does in no way entitle it to specific benefits. There is no possible legal recourse against the organizers.
• Jury’s decision would be considered final and binding. No complain would be entertained in this regard, and no complain would be considers liable of any legal consideration.

The Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards 2007 will felicitate its entire winner during the Dataquest e-Gov Summit 2007. The Summit will take place on a regional level in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. Even the award will be given on the regional level. Of the 15 e-Gov Champions, three each will be selected from each region.

The Award ceremony is organized to host conference, a gala and dinner facilities across the four regions. The expected time of the Gala would be some time in February, the dates and venue for which will be announced soon.