By Vajeendra S Kandegamage - Chairman, NBQSA 2009

The National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA) competition is an annual event organized by the British Computer Society Sri Lanka (BCSSL) Section. The competition serves to showcase and benchmark Sri Lankan ICT products, which fulfils a much needed requirement of the software industry in this highly competitive globalist economic structure. The competition has been conducted by the BCS Sri Lanka Section since 1998 to recognize and honor significant technological developments in the software industry.

The avowed objectives of the NBQSA competition are threefold. To provide recognition to outstanding achievements of individuals and organizations in Sri Lanka that have contributed to the development of ICT; to create a window to gain international recognition for locally developed ICT products; and, to improve standards and the quality of local ICT products and services to be able to compete in the international market place.

Since 2003 the NBQSA has been tied up with International Awards programmes such as the Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA), and the World Information Technology Summit (WITSA) Awards.

The NBQSA 2009 competition marks the 11th successive year in recognizing Sri Lankan ICT achievements. It will cover over 16 categories of ICT products and projects. The competition covers over 14 commercial categories and includes Tertiary Student Project category to make up the category list. In 2009 NBQSA will introduced a new category for Open Source technologies where any organisation would able to participate with specific products developed using this technology.

The commercial category competition is open to any Sri Lankan organization, group or individuals that have developed ICT products within Sri Lanka. The Tertiary category is open to students from Sri Lankan Tertiary Education Institutions.

The judges for the competition have been selected based on their knowledge of ICT and expertise in the specific fields they judge. Each Award Category will be judged by a separate Panel of Judges. Gold, Silver and Bronze awards will be presented in each category if the entries meet required standards. Award winners will be eligible to participate at the Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) 2009 to be held in Australia in November 2009.

In 2008, Sri Lanka won 5 awards at the Asia Pacific Information Communication Technology Alliances (APICTA) Annual Competition and Awards. The awarding ceremony was held in Jakarta, Indonesia on 15th November, bringing great honour to Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka emerged not only as the highest calibre of the contestants placed before this prestigious international competition, but also excellence in judging and selection process, as five out of the eleven nominees from Sri Lanka were placed at the APICTA in the same order of ranking as were awarded at NBQSA 2008.

This speaks volumes of the calibre of the national judging panel who officiated at the National Best Quality Software Awards.

It was the first time ever in APICTA a Gold award was won for a commercial category and by EPIC Lanka Private Ltd - The winner of the Gold in the financial category and the overall Bronze Award at NBQSA 2008.

Ganidu Nanayakkara won the Gold at the Young Computer Scientists Competition 2008 under secondary schools category.

APICTA Merit Certificates, awarded to those scoring 95% of the Gold awardees Score were clinched by

• Group project by Gehan Panapitiya and his team from SLIIT comprising of Thilini Ranaweera, Supun Kodithuwakku, Nadeesha Pallewatta, Roshini Pathiraja.
• Primal Wijesekera of UCSC - Community Mobile Network (COMONet) - the first one in mobile communication that emphasizes the concept of community of mobile users. Commercial category – Media and Entertainment
• Microimage Mobile Media (Private) Limited – New generation comprehensive video play-out system.

The NBQSA 2009 culminates in a magnificent awards night - gala dinner in October 2009 at Water’s Edge, Battaramulla, Sri Lanka.