The Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) has taken steps to promote the development of quality software at national level.

As part of this move ICTA has partnered with the National Best Quality Software Award (NBQSA) competition at national level. Applications for The NBQSA 2010 competition had been called and the deadline for submission of applications was the 16th of June while presentation of awards to the winners of the competition will be held at a ceremony at Hotel Galadari, Colombo on Friday 01st October. The press conference of the official launch of this competition being held this year for the 12th time was held in Colombo on 8th July.

(From Left) Intel Sri Lanka Education Promotion Manager W. Priyantha, Bank of Ceylon Assistant General Manager W. G. Ariyaratne, LK Domain Registry CEO Prof. Gihan Dias, BCS the Chartered Institute for IT Sri Lanka Section Chairman Prof. Gihan Wickremanayake, ICT Agency of Sri Lanka COO Reshan Dewapura, NBQSA 2010 Chairman Vajeendra S. Kandegamage and Industrial and Financial Systems Manager Marketing Shiraz Lie at the head table during the press briefing)

The National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA) competition is an annual event organised by the British Computer Society Sri Lanka (BCSSL) Section. It is conducted over a period of months and comprises a series of 'mini' events.

Speaking on the importance of quality software, Chief Operating Officer of ICTA Reshan Dewpura said that while as many software as required should be developed and should be available to as many users as possible it was very important that they were of high quality.

ICTA, being the apex body mandated for making the benefits of ICT accrue to the people under the e-Sri Lanka initiative, realises the role of quality software, ICTA COO said. " In implementing 'e-Sri Lanka' as a national development initiative, ICTA tries to use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to make people's lives more comfortable and quality software is pivotal in this endeavour," Dewapura pointed out.

Explaining the plans of the event, NBQSA 2010 Organising Committee Chairman Vajeendra S Kandegamage also emphasised its uniqueness and underlined its content succinctly as follows: " The12th National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA) competition is planning to be held during the first week of October this year. It has been identified as the only outstanding ICT event in Sri Lanka which recognizes, benchmarks, evaluates innovative Sri Lankan ICT products. NBQSA is organized annually by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT - Sri Lanka section".

Currently the National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA) competition is an annual event organised by the British Computer Society Sri Lanka (BCSSL) Section with the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) as the national partner.

The competition serves to showcase and benchmark Sri Lankan ICT products, which fulfills a much needed requirement of the software industry in this highly competitive globalist economic structure.
The objectives of the NBQSA competition come within the scope of the e-Sri Lanka initiative.

The objectives of the NBQSA are : (1) To provide recognition to outstanding achievements of individuals and organisations in Sri Lanka who/which have contributed to the development of ICT; (2) to create a window to gain international recognition for locally developed ICT products and (3) to improve standards and the quality of local ICT products and services to be able to compete in the international market place.

The NBQSA 2010, the 12th competition, is specifically significant in view of great strides that have been made in the ICT sector this year. This competition currently open to 17 categories of ICT products and projects ranging from applications and Infrastructure tools to in-house application has been held every year from the inception in 1998. (ICTA website:http://www.icta.lk; BCS

Sri Lanka website: http://www.bcssrilanka.org;NBQSA website: http://www.nbqsasrilanka.org)