Sri Lanka to lead biggest-ever delegation for Asia Pacific ICT Awards 2016

The apex body for the ICT industry, the Federation of IT Industry Sri Lanka (FITIS) Software Chapter (formerly known as SLASI) and BCS the Chartered Institute for IT Sri Lanka Section is leading a 70-member delegation to the prestigious Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) 2016 scheduled to be held in Taiwan during 2-5 December.

This will be the biggest-ever delegation from Sri Lanka to be taken to APICTA during the premier organisation’s history. The team representing Sri Lanka to this international event will be headed by FITIS Software Chapter Chairman Abbas Kamrudeen. He also serves as member of the APICTA panel of judges.

Expressing his views on this global awards program, Kamrudeen said: “In 2015, we conducted the APICTA Awards very successfully in Sri Lanka. In that event, our team was able to win a Gold award plus a string of other accolades. This time, the APICTA Awards will be held in Taiwan. We are optimistic that the Sri Lankan team participating in this global event will be able to bring honour to Sri Lanka by performing exceedingly well. The winners will be locally and internationally recognised for their feats.”

In addition to Kamrudeen, Dr. Dileepa De Silva, Chairman of Asia Pacific ICT Alliance and Prof. Gihan Wickramanayake, University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), will also serve as judges of the APICTA panel.

The Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards (APICTA Awards), an international awards program organised by APICTA, aims to increase ICT awareness in the community and assist in bridging the digital divide. By providing networking and product benchmarking opportunities to ICT innovators and entrepreneurs in the region, the program is designed to stimulate ICT innovation and creativity, promote economic and trade relations, facilitate technology transfer and offer business matching opportunities via exposure to venture capitalists and investors.

As the sole bodies to nominate products for APICTA every year, FITIS and BCS Sri Lanka Section conduct local competitions modelled on the APICTA concept to nominate winners to represent Sri Lanka, namely Young Computer Scientist Competition (to select winners for the school category) and National Best Quality ICT Awards (to select winners for commercial and tertiary categories) and they are the sole bodies to nominate products for the APICTA every year.

FITIS and BCS Sri Lanka Section jointly hosted APICTA 2015 in Sri Lanka in November last year and handed over the event to Taiwan for 2016. Many opportunities opened up for the country, especially for the Software Industry by hosting this historic event in Sri Lanka in 2015.

The 17 Member Economies of APICTA are Australia, Brunei, China Taipei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Macao, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, People’s Republic of China, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Federation of IT Industry Sri Lanka (FITIS) is the apex body that plays a pivotal role in the development of the ICT industry in Sri Lanka. FITIS conducts many flagship events in partnership with major universities, state agencies and departments. FITIS represents Sri Lanka in Asia Pacific ICT Alliance (APICTA) and ASOCIO, two major international ICT alliances.

The BCS Sri Lanka Section (BCSSL) established in 1996 has over 2000 corporate members (MBCS) and about 2,500 student members. Over 300 members are Chartered Information Technology Practitioners (CITP)s. BCSSL counts more than 25 Fellow Members (FBCS) amongst its membership. The parent body, the BCS is the industry body for IT professionals and a Chartered Engineering Institution for Information Technology (IT).