Kurdistan Regional Government's COVID-19 information webpage wins international award

Wladimir van Wilgenburg 2021/10/06 22:16

The KRG's Department of Information Technology (DIT) won the Special Achievement award for its COVID-19 internet resources. (Photo: Nawzad Al-Salihi/Twitter)

Kurdistan Digital Reform IT Krg Kurdistan Region COVID-19

ERBIL - The Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) Department of Information Technology (DIT) won the Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) award at this year’s Esri User Conference in July.

Kurdistan Region DIT officials made the news public this week after receiving the award by post. Esri describes itself as “an international supplier of geographic information system (GIS) software, web GIS and geodatabase management applications.”

.@KRGDIT is honoured to have received the @esri Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) award at this year's #EsriUC for an astonishing work on https://t.co/9nSIsA96go COVID-19 Awareness Dashboard. This couldn’t have been achieved without an excellent team work in DIT. pic.twitter.com/jQQ89uesLL
— Nawzad Al-Salihi (@NawzadAlSalihi) October 6, 2021

Nawzad Al-Salihi, the Head of Outreach and Capacity Building at the KRG’s DIT tweeted on Wednesday that the department was honored to have received the award for “astonishing work on http://GOV.KRD COVID-19 Awareness Dashboard. This couldn’t have been achieved without an excellent team work in DIT.”

“We created a dashboard showing the number of infected people in different areas which is still available,” Al-Salihi told Kurdistan 24. “Furthermore, we created a section in http://GOV.KRD portal for COVID-19 awareness.”

Very proud of the @KRGDIT team.

This was a serious campaign with @DMI_KRG, partnerships with Facebook, Twitter, Viber, and local telecoms/Internet providers and TV networks.

Guiding citizens/visitors to the https://t.co/XjIat03XhL portal was a byproduct.#StrongerKurdistan https://t.co/1TH0jXFrMS
— Aziz Ahmad پابەندین# (@azizkahmad) October 6, 2021

He added that the DIT “is the core of the KRG’s digitalization reform and more services can be found on the http://gov.krd portal in near future.”

Aziz Ahmad, Deputy Chief of Staff to Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, tweeted that he is very proud of the team.

“This was a serious campaign with @DMI_KRG (KRG Department of Media and Information), partnerships with Facebook, Twitter, Viber, and local telecoms/Internet providers and TV networks,” he wrote, adding, “Guiding citizens/visitors to the http://GOV.KRD portal was a byproduct.”

The Special Achievement in GIS (Geographic Information System) Award ceremony is held at the annual Esri User Conference, with about 19,000 participants each year.

Esri president Jack Dangermond personally selects recipients and presides over the ceremony. Organizations stand out from over 100,000 others around the world to win the SAG Award.