By Dionisia Tabureguci of Islands Business Magazine

It is time to bring out those pet ICT projects. The search for digital content in the Pacific has begun and is being spearheaded in the region by New Zealand World Summit Awards (WSA) coordinator,  Jan Bieringa.

She is scouring the Pacific for projects that focus on e-content in the hope to find potential entries for the upcoming WSA 2009.

“We submitted five Pacific projects last year and hope for maybe another eight this year,” said Bieringa.

“We will be promoting the idea in Rarotonga on the first week of September to coordinate with the PICISOC (Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society) conference.

“What we’d like to do there is to select from the top 40 entries from around the world (that won the last WSA), including some from the Pacific and from New Zealand, and showcase them at the conference.

“It would then be up for the week of the conference and if people are then interested to take that roadshow to their own countries, hopefully we could make it available so people could tour it around the Pacific.

“And simultaneously then, we would be looking for new projects in the Pacific that we could enter into next year’s competition.”

Bieringa explained the WSA started in 2003 “as a small but significant event within the bigger umbrella of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).”

Now embraced by 186 countries, the bi-annual event endeavours to showcase entries in e-Health, e-Learning, e-Science, e-Culture, e-Government, e-Business, e-Entertainment and e-Inclusion.

The major aim is to shift the focus away from technology, networks and access issues to the actual applications and the resultant digital content.

“The infrastructure and access issues are what people often think about and they’re easiest to think about in the traditional ICT thinking. When you start investing in making local content for local use, it is more expensive and much harder to find funding for.

“So the idea of WSA is to try and see if that discussion can be stimulated and enhanced as well as to try and shift the money into creating opportunities for people to make things,” Bieringa said.

The WSA, she added, is a global showcase of 40 outstanding projects in eight categories—all with a special emphasis on those which show the benefits of ICT for the development of communities and society at large.

In her search this year, Bieringa is running against time as the organisers of the WSA have brought the timeframe of the selection process forward.

National contests and pre-selections are now scheduled to take place between April and November 2008 while deadline for registration will be on January 30, 2009.

The important deadline is February 2009 when products are to be checked in—this would mean that by then, all entries, including those from the Pacific have been identified by coordinated like Bieringa.

While the ICT industry in the Pacific may still be very green and much public attention is still being put on connectivity, infrastructure and technology, Bieringa’s effort to find Pacific entries for last year’s awards did result in a number of good Pacific entries.

“I was seeking eight entries from the Pacific and ended up with five, all of which were very impressive,” said Bieringa, who was also one of the judges in last year’s awards.

Last’s year’s highlight—which incidentally received almost no public attention in the Pacific—was the success of the Pacific’s e-Culture entry, a Participatory 3D Modelling for Resource Use, Development and Planning and Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (P3DM).

Using Global Positioning System (GPS), the Ovalau P3DM resulted in the production of a three-dimensional map of Ovalau island in which were merged geographical information of the island with traditional knowledge imparted by elders from 28 villages.

With partners that included Fiji’s Native Land Trust Board, WWF Fiji, Locally Managed Marine Area Network, Department of Culture and Heritage and the Fisheries Department, the local island community now uses the model as a tool in the preservation and development of their natural resources as well as in the preservation of traditional knowledge.

The Ovalau P3DM went on to win the e-culture category of the WSA (more information on the Ovalau project can be found on: www.iapad.org <http://www.iapad.org> ).

“It might be difficult to find another bunch of really good applications this time around but you know, it’s not about winning or losing. It’s more about promoting this dialogue in the Pacific because I think it can really genuinely make democracy and communication much more efficient.

“I think it’s a way of strengthening the cultural, economic and environmental arguments and also puts the Pacific into the global dialogue which I think is really important,” said Bieringa.