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Islamweb on top of Islamic websites
The World Summit Award (WSA) is a global initiative to select and promote the world’s best e-Content. The WSA, held in the framework of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), puts its emphasis on a core part of the Information Society that is often overlooked: high-quality e-contents and applications. By selecting, presenting and promoting the best products from all over the world, it makes a contribution to bridging the Digital Divide and narrowing the Content Gap. It involves representatives from 168 different countries on every continent and mainly focuses on the cultural identity and cultural variation.
The WSA is a unique global worldwide contest to honor and promote the world’s best e-Content in the following fields:
1. e-learning
2. e-Culture
3. e-Science
4. e-Government
5. e-Health
6. e-Business
7. e-Entertainment
8. e-Inclusion
The WSA first phase took place in December 2003 in Geneva. The Geneva summit dealt with the most important issues concerning the development of the information society. The summit at that time involved representatives from 136 countries. The WSA second phase took place in Tunisia in November 2005 and 168 countries participated in the contest. As for this year’s World Summit event, it was held in Venice, Italy where 160 countries took place in the contest.
The member of the Experts Committee referred to the method of selecting the winning website by an international Grand Jury convening each two years and consisting of 36 experts, technicians, academics, diplomats and businessmen in the field of information technology and e-content production who are selected from among 1000 experts from around the world.
The Grand Jury, applying strict international criteria, evaluates the proposed products from different countries and selects the best in each field. Among the most important criteria applied to select the winning websites are:
1. Quality and comprehensiveness of content
2. Ease of use: functionality, navigation and orientation
3. Value added through interactivity and multimedia
4. Quality of design and technical realization
5. Strategic importance for the global development of the Information Society
As for the present version of the WSA (2007), islamweb.net has won the Award as the best interactive edutainment website for Arabic-speaking children by the consensus of the Jury which met in Croatia, in evaluating the productions nominated from 160 countries, from which only 24- including Qatar - have won. The winning countries received their Awards in the 3rd and 4th of November in Venice, Italy in the presence of heads of states and world top officials.