ITAC Ingenious Awards Program Seeks Excellence in the Use of Information and Communications Technology

OTTAWA, May 15, 2013 /CNW/ - The Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) will celebrate the achievements of Canadian organizations that have demonstrated excellence and innovation in their use of information and communications technology (ICT) with the 2013 edition of its Ingenious Awards Program, which opened its call for nominations today.

The program celebrates enterprises demonstrating measurable evidence of productivity improvement, efficiency gains, revenue growth, overall business transformation or other organizational outcomes through the use of technology. Organizations may nominate themselves or be nominated by others. The nominations process runs from May 15 to July 15, 2013. Two panels of distinguished judges will assess the nominees and identify program finalists and award winners.

The winners will be presented with their awards at a gala ceremony on November 27^th in Toronto. Their stories will be featured in a year-long communications program celebrating excellence in the use of technology. Awards are presented in five categories: large private enterprises, large public organizations, small and medium-sized private companies, small and medium-sized public organizations and not-for-profit organizations.

What does excellence in the use of technology look like? Here are the previous winners of Ingenious Awards:

• The Globe and Mail's Catalyst Program, which used social media to forge a direct engagement with its readers to improve interaction between readers and journalists and to improve the quality and quantity of online commentary at globeandmail.com.
  
  
• Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation's Data Analysis and Retrieval Technology which retrieves data about any OLG lottery sale and is an indispensable tool for fighting fraud, building trust with OLG's customers and even finding lost winners.
  
  
• Pointe-de-l-Ile Community Health Center's remote patient monitoring system which helps to provide high quality care through the use of technology to significantly reduce the number of home visits the centre's nurses make in their community in East-end Montreal.
  
  
• The Ontario Telemedicine Network, which delivers access remotely to the province's finest diagnosticians and specialists from even the most far-flung Ontario communities.
  
  
• TinyEYE Speech Therapy Services, a small business in Saskatoon, that has addressed the chronic shortage of speech-language pathologists by putting therapy services on-line and thus cutting time lost to travel while giving the company access to a global market for its services.
  
  
• The Children's Treatment Network of Simcoe York's single plan of care treatment model that unites educators, clinicians, therapists and parents in an electronic platform that shares information and measurably improves the care of the centre's young patients.

To be considered for the 2013 edition of the Ingenious Awards Program, candidates or their nominators are required to submit a short project description and clear evidence of the correlation between the technology and measurable business outcomes.

Nomination forms, rules and regulations and other information can be found at the Ingenious Awards program website (ingenious awards.ca).

The program is made possible through the support of ITAC members, sponsors and partners including CGI, Cisco Systems Canada, Dell Canada Inc., Intel of Canada, Softchoice Corporation,  Xerox Canada Inc., Oracle Canada, Hewlett-Packard Canada, Backbone Magazine, IT World Canada, and the CIO Association of Canada.

About ITAC:
The Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) is the voice of the Canadian information and communications technologies (ICT) industry. ITAC represents a diverse ICT community spanning telecommunications and internet services, ICT consulting services, hardware, microelectronics, software and electronic content. ITAC's community of companies accounts for more than 70 per cent of the 572,700 jobs, $155.3-billion in revenue, $6.2-billion in R&D investment, $30.4-billion in exports and $11-billion in capital expenditures that the ICT industry contributes annually to the Canadian economy. The ICT sector currently represents 4.9 per cent of Canada's gross domestic product (GDP) and accounted for 9.4 per cent of all real GDP growth since 2002. ITAC is a prominent advocate for the expansion of Canada's innovative capacity and for stronger productivity across all sectors through the strategic use of technology.

SOURCE: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION OF CANADA

Lynda Leonard
Senior Vice President, ITAC
[phone] ext. 2239

Wayne Hendry
Manager of Communications, ITAC
[phone] ext. 2224