What is WSA

The World Summit Award (WSA) is the global initiative to select and promote the world's best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. WSA was started in 2003 in the framework of the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) as a contribution of the Austrian Government to the global effort to bridge the digital divide and close the content gap. WSA activities include national contests and selections of best practice, a global contest held every 2 years and content-focused national and international conferences with exhibitions — the WSA Road Show.

WSA works to strengthen entrepreneurship within content industries and to bring about economic and cultural development through the creative use of ICTs. It supports the UN Millennium Development Goals of ending poverty, hunger and disease, saving the environment and giving a fair share to women.

WSA is an invitation project and a global activity for all who share the understanding of the crucial importance of excellent e-Content creation within the information society. Partners in over 160 UN member states are actively involved in WSA. New partners from all over the world are welcome to join!

Mission

WSA works towards a global information society that enables all people to create, receive and share information and knowledge for their own economic, social, cultural and political benefits. The UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in Geneva in December 2003 and in Tunis in 2005, intends to make this vision real and its Action Plan will be reviewed by the General Assembly in 2015.

The World Summit Award (WSA) is conducted in the framework of the WSIS and its follow up process organised in the UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development. WSA directs the focus of the UN on global efforts to support and develop high-quality e-Contents and innovative ICT applications. By selecting, presenting and promoting the best products from all over the world in that field, it makes a contribution to bridging the Digital Divide and narrowing the Content Gap. It cooperates with the relevant UN organisations and agencies such as UNESCO and UNIDO, national governments and agencies, the ICT industries and e-Business organisations, NGOs and civil society in all UN member states.

What is the Digital Divide?

Great disparities in opportunity to access information and communication technologies are facts of today’s state of the global information society. In many countries of the world the access to a simple phone is still a huge challenge, while in other countries the use of broadband internet has become a routine part of everyday life.

Digital divides split not only information-rich and information-poor countries but are also characteristic of the internal state of most if not all societies at present.

WSA addresses the digital divide in terms of access but also in terms of the use of ICTs. To overcome information poverty and make good use of the access to ICT requires skills and knowledge in terms of applications and contents.

What is the Content Gap?

Information and communication technologies are omnipresent and they become more powerful every day. Pictures, texts, data are sent and received faster, more target-orientated, anywhere around the globe.

Good contents and quality applications need time. Their use can’t speed up beyond the human capacity to use and learn, to pay attention and manage. Good contents and quality applications need resources to create. Their design and development requires creative imagination and engineering know how.

The content gap results from the focus on technology at the expense of content.

About ICNM (Host organization of WSA)

The activities of WSA and its global networking are coordinated by the WSA Office at the International Center for New Media. ICNM is a independent non-profit organisation chartered in Austria. It aims to promote innovation and creativity in multimedia and Internet by means of best practice selection and showcasing.

ICNM projects are supported by the public funding and private sector sponsorship and include the EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards and the Austrian State Prize for Multimedia & e-Business.

Professor Dr. Peter A. Bruck, General Manager of the Research Studios Austria, is the ICNM’s Honorary President.