Ms Liu Jing, a training executive with the National Institute of Education, explaining ecareers.sg to visitors at the iGov Global Exchange exhibition.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Land Transport Authority (LTA) have emerged among the winners of the 2009 IDC Enterprise Innovation Awards, which honours the top 10 organisations that that demonstrate excellence and achievement in IT in the Asia Pacific region.

MOE: Education & Career Guidance portal

MOE stood out for its use of web 2.0 technologies in a portal advising students of their career choices. The Education & Career Guidance (ECG) portal (ecareers.sg) is the first computer-assisted career guidance system to be implemented in Southeast Asia.  

Launched in February 2009, the ECG portal uses various profiling instruments to help students clarify their interests and aptitudes, and provides them with a range of suitable career possibilities. One such instrument is the Personal Globe Inventory, which allows students to gauge their interest and confidence levels in a range of activities. Then based on their interest patterns, the portal will surface a list of occupation choices and information on the nature of these occupations. It will also direct students to a list of relevant courses offered by local and overseas tertiary institutions, hence helping students take steps towards realising their career aspirations.

According to Dr Patrick Chan, Chief Technology Advisor for IDC's Asia Pacific Emerging Technology Council, the judges liked the idea of using the web 2.0 approach to help students understanding their own personality traits better so as to help align their career decision path and suitability. The project is novel in the way it connects various stakeholders such as the students and teachers, he said. “The updated information will better equip teachers, career vendors, parents to understand the students and to groom them into better citizens.”

There is also strong potential to further innovate and interconnect the EGC portal with other web 2.0-related student information and sources to evolve this into a comprehensive and critical platform for engaging students and grooming them for the workforce, he added.

The ECG portal will be available to secondary and post-secondary schools by August 2009 and to primary schools by early 2010.

LTA: GIS@LTA

LTA cemented its place in the top 10 for its innovative approach in using emerging Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies and IT processes to rejuvenate, sustain and empower business growth.

The Data Hub of GIS@LTA manages more than 70 layers of road and rapid transit system features.

At the centre of GIS@LTA is the Data Hub, which manages more than 70 layers of road and rapid transit system features. By integrating this with LTA’s workflows, the system enables knowledge sharing across business units and with the public, and enables LTA to plan, collaborate, and manage its roads, traffic, regulatory function, and civil works more effectively and efficiently.

For example, the system can be used to enhance LTA’s services such as the submission of work permits, the monitoring of geotechnical instrumentations at construction sites and the provision of real-time information on traffic conditions via an online portal.

“IDC recognises LTA’s effort in developing a solid GIS platform which supports the successful reuse and extension of GIS information,” said Dr Chan.

The number of business applications and stakeholders that connect with these resources and platforms are also impressive, he added. Describing GIS@LTA as a “good example of an IT refresh strategy done right”, he commended the agency for its data cleansing, enterprise rationalisation and business processing re-engineering work. “The holistic execution of IT makes LTA a winner.”

In all, over 200 nominations were received for the IDC Enterprise Innovation Award 2009, which were presented at IDC’s Asia Pacific CIO Summit on 14 July 2009. The other organisations to make it to the top 10 were: Altium (Australia), Bharti Airtel (India), CLP (Hong Kong), Haier (China), MTR Corporation (Hong Kong), the New Zealand SuperComputing Center, Reliance Communications (India) and Sun Life Financial (Hong Kong).