Zappware wins international award for T-Government application
13/04/2005

Following the nomination last week, Zappware is proud to announce that today it has received the prestigious AFDESI award for "Best Stand Alone Service".

Zappware, the Belgian one-stop provider of interactive digital television solutions, is supplying both creative and technological support for the new interactive series of Peking Express TV shows.

The award was handed out during the International iTV awards ceremony in connection with the MipTV / Milia show in Cannes, France. The award was received for the T-Government service developed by Zappware last year for the Government of the Flanders region in Belgium. The T-Government services were launched on Telenet's Digital Interactive TV Cable Platform in Flanders.

The winners were selected by an international jury with amongst others Robert Chua, President, The Interactive Channel (Hong Kong) and Scott Higgins, ITV Manager, Echo Star (US). The jury was chaired by iTV expert Tracy Swedlow (www.iTVt.com). Tracy praised the Flemish government for the initiative to use interactive television to bridge the 'digital divide'. Now even the 40 % of Flemish people that do not have PC's and Internet have access to the public data services like job-databases, public transport schedules and local municipality info that were not available to them before. According to Tracy, we will see a lot more T-Government services in the near future.
Competition for this award was fierce with high quality nominees such as "A la Une" from Canalsat in France and the "Sky Active" portal from BSkyB in the UK.

"Winning this international award is strong support for our strategy to play an important role as a creator of interactive TV applications, not only in our home country Belgium, but also in other markets". Says Koen Swings, Managing Partner and CTO of Zappware. "And our nomination for Best Technology proves Zappware's competence to design and develop innovative solutions in the digital interactive television domain.
"With interactive digital television, it is now possible to offer a large amount of interactive and digital services through the world's most widely distributed medium, the TV. Telenet would like to play a pioneering role in this field and has therefore asked the government to develop applications that add value to viewers, including these t-government applications. Together with the government, we believe that doing so will contribute to a bridging of the digital divide. In this way the information of "De Vlaamse Infolijn"(an information portal of the Flemish government), the job offerings of "De VDAB" (a job offering portal) and the information of local municipalities are now available 24 hours a day to citizens that do not have a PC at home. This prize is also an award for all parties involved in making these applications user friendly and easily accessible" says Peter Goyvaerts who is responsible for iDTV information services within Telenet's Media Partnership programme.

This project is also a high priority for the Flemish government who are keen to promote this iDTV project because the number of Flemish people that have a PC with an internet connection and that are able to access the online information and services of the government, is rather restricted. On the other hand, almost everybody has a TV with an iDTV-ready cable connection and by offering these online information and services through iDTV a broader and more differentiated public can be addressed because television is a more accessible and user friendly medium than a PC. For this reason, the Flemish government has invested in the development of these t-government applications.