The first ever SIDN Internet Awards were presented during the ECP-EPN Annual Congress at Scheveningen’s Circus Theatre. For the last few months, it has been possible to put forward initiatives that make the internet more accessible and more secure for consideration by the awards jury.
Entries were invited in five categories: Government and citizens in dialogue, Everyone on line, The power of the network, A secure internet and The internet and the environment.
The winners: exciting and innovative
Awards were today presented to Verbeterdebuurt.nl (in the ‘Government and citizens in dialogue’ category), SNS Bank’s no-threshold internet banking service (in the ‘Everyone on line’ category), Zwolle Sports Foundation (in the ‘The power of the network’ category) and MyBee (in the ‘A secure internet’ category).
Verbeterdebuurt.nl (a website whose name means ‘Improve the neighbourhood’) provides an application that allows people to draw attention to local problems and share them over the internet. Carl Lens: ‘Many people don’t know how to communicate with their local authorities about neighbourhood problems, and certainly aren’t inclined to speak on the community’s behalf at consultation evenings and during neighbourhood tours. By having a presence at the places people go in the course of their everyday lives – including many places unconnected to municipal websites – Verbeterdebuurt facilitates communication between citizens and their local authorities.’
SNS Bank’s no-threshold internet banking service features an easy log-in procedure, thus providing access to online financial services for people with functional disabilities. Peter Eikelboom: ‘SNS is the first financial service provider in the Netherlands to secure the No Threshold quality mark from the foundation that operates drempelvrij.nl, for its no-threshold internet banking service.’
For its contributions to knowledge sharing and the reinforcement of social bonds, the Zwolle Sports Foundation won acclaim in the category ‘The power of the network’. Jeroen Heethaar: ‘A good internet platform has to have a successful editorial formula. Zwolle Sports Foundation’s formula consists of publishing and broadcasting material about everything sports and exercise-related that local people are involved in: from entertaining live commentaries and announcements about club evenings, through razor-sharp analyses and professional event reports, to video and photographic reviews.’
MyBee is a browser that enables children up to the age of about eight to surf the net easily and safely. The MyBee editorial team maintains a whitelist of websites that are suitable for the age group. Remco Pijpers: ‘The thing that distinguishes MyBee from all other children’s browsers, filters and such like is the role of parents. As well as being a browser (the program that runs on your PC), MyBee is also what’s known as a Web 2.0 application. The whitelist that the child sees is collected from a server, which automatically takes account of what other parents think is suitable for their children. In ranking sites, distinction is made between tolerant parents, average parents and strict parents.’
The jury decided not to award a prize in the category ‘The internet and the environment’. SIDN had invited entries under this heading from people and organisations whose applications had contributed to sustainability or encouraged people in the Netherlands to take a more active interest in the environment and their surroundings. Despite not making an award, the jury did commend the entry ‘SRE for data centres’.