Guidelines

This section provides the relevant information to all APICTA member economies to nominate organisations (which include companies, and local/national accredited academic institutions e.g. school, university, research institution) and their products and applications as entry nominations to the APICTA Award, on general organisational eligibility and on eligibility for the different categories of award.

While the eligibility of local/national accredited academic institutions are quite straight forward, the general eligibility of companies is elaborated below.

The company eligibility guideline describes the criteria and attributes for company eligibility to submit their entry nomination for APICTA Awards competition.

The companies which are eligible to nominate their ICT applications and products must meet the following criteria:

  • The company must be locally registered in the respective APICTA member economy.
  • The company can be a 100% local company, or a joint venture between a local company and a foreign company. The foreign company in the joint venture can be either a company(ies) registered in the APICTA member economy or a company(ies) from outside the APICTA member economy. Local shareholders must own at least 51% of the total shares.

The product or application for APICTA entry nomination must meet the following criteria:

  • The Intellectual Property Right for the product or application must be owned by the company which is eligible to be nominated according to the Company Eligibility guideline, or its Intellectual Property Right is owned by the offshore parent of the local company where the majority owner shareholding is the local company.
  • At least 51% of the development efforts, including research and development and design, must have been undertaken within the APICTA member economy from where the application is submitted.

The followings are non-eligible for entry nomination:

  • A product, of which the main R&D and design efforts have been undertaken in non-APICTA member economy or of which the company being nominated within the APICTA member economy is providing code-cutting outsourced services.
  • An entry which has won an APICTA Awards during one of the last three APICTA competitions is not eligible as a new entry. In addition, substantial enhancements must have been made on the original winning entry for it to be considered eligible as a new entry. Any such consideration and decision will be at the discretion of the APICTA Judges Sub-Committee.

It is the absolute responsibility of the member economy to ensure that the nominating entries are submitted to the appropriate category. It is highly recommended that a person within the economy, who is familiar with the definition of APICTA categories (for example, an experienced APICTA judge) to screen the nominations before submission.

In case of doubt, the Panel of Advisory Judges should be consulted. Nominating an entry to “the wrong category” would potentially results in low judging scores and opportunity loss (if it were submitted to the right category).

1) CATEGORY: STUDENTS’ PROJECT

Please ensure eligibility of entries to the 3 streams of

  • JUNIOR STUDENT (primary school to junior secondary school (to Year 9))
  • SENIOR STUDENT (last three years of secondary school before university)
  • TERTIARY STUDENT PROJECT (undergraduate) – Each economy can nominate a maximum of 3 entries per stream. Entries to the Students’ Project Category are exclusive, and not eligible to enter to any other category awards. – The nomination form will also ask for the application nature of the entry e.g. Consumer, Industrial, etc. as reference, in case when the number of entries in a subcategory is so numerous that additional judging panel(s) needs to be formed to judge logical grouping of applications/products of similar nature. – The nomination for each entry will incur a registration fee of US$25.

2) CATEGORY – HEAD CATEGORIES of

  1. CONSUMER,
  2. INCLUSION AND COMMUNITY SERVICES,
  3. INDUSTRIAL,
  4. BUSINESS SERVICES,
  5. PUBLIC SECTOR AND GOVERNMENT

Except for entries to the STUDENTS’ PROJECT Category, all entries MUST enter in one of these 5 Head Categories relevant to the application, product, project or service offered by the entry.

Entries to the Head Categories are open to all organisations (which include companies and academic institutions). For example, a postgraduate/research team of a university, or even a perceivably and exceptionally innovative project by an university undergraduate team, can enter its project/product as an entry to one of the 5 Head Categories, and such entry if relevant and eligible, also be optionally nominated to one of Cross Categories, and/or optionally be nominated to one of the 4 Technology Categories.

An entry is allowed to be nominated to only ONE Head Category.

While an economy can submit up to a maximum of 9 entries to each of the 5 Head Categories, the total number of entries to these 5 Head Categories must not exceed 35.

The nomination form will also ask for the application nature of the entry e.g. for the Consumer Head Category, whether it is relevant to Media & Entertainment; Tourism & Hospitality; Retail and Distribution; Banking, Insurance & Finance; Real Estate; etc. as reference, in case when the number of entries to a Head category is so numerous that additional judging panel(s) needs to be formed to judge logical grouping of applications/products of similar nature. It is important that the application nature is specified.

The nomination for each entry will incur a registration fee of US$25.

3) CATEGORY – CROSS-CATEGORY AWARDS

If eligible, an entry to the Head Categories is optionally allowed to enter in ONE of the Cross-Category awards of

  • RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECT OF THE YEAR

OR

  • START-UP OF THE YEAR (for the organisation which develops the application or product or service of the nominated entry)

Please ensure eligibility of the entry (Section 4.10) before nomination.

Each economy can nominate up to a maximum of 3 entries for each of the 2 cross-category awards.

The nomination form will also ask for the application nature of the entry, e.g. consumer, industrial, inclusion and community services, etc. as reference, in case when the number of entries to a cross-category award is so numerous that additional judging panel(s) needs to be formed to judge logical grouping of applications/products of similar nature.

The nomination for each entry will incur a registration fee of US$25.

4) CATEGORY TECHNOLOGY AWARDS

If the technology deployed in an entry to a Head Category is believed to be exceptionally innovative, such an entry, where relevant (details in Section 4.10), is optionally allowed to be nominated for ONE of the following Technology Awards

  • BUSINESS DATA ANALYTICS TECHNOLOGY OF THE YEAR
  • INTERNET OF THINGS TECHNOLOGY AWARD OF THE YEAR
  • ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNOLOGY OF THE YEAR

Each economy is allowed to nominate up to a maximum of 3 entries to each of the four Technology Awards.

The nomination for each entry will incur a registration fee of US$25.

  1. The three streams of the Students’ Project Category
    • JUNIOR STUDENT (primary school to junior secondary school (to Year 9))
    • SENIOR STUDENT (last three years of secondary school before university)
    • TERTIARY STUDENT (undergraduate) are respectively open to eligible students as defined. Entries to the Students’ Project Category are not eligible to be considered for any other APICTA Award categories.
  2. Other than the afore-mentioned students’ entries, ALL entries MUST enter in one (ONLY ONE) of the five Head Categories. Entries to the Head Categories are open to ALL organisations (which include companies and academic institutions)
  3. While an economy can submit up to a maximum of 9 entries to each of the 5 Head Categories, the total number of entries to these 5 Head Categories must not exceed 35. Therefore, theoretically the maximum number of unique (different) entries nominated by an economy stands at 44 entries.
  4. To put it simply,
    • An entry is entered to just a Head Category (incurring an entry nomination registration cost of US$25), OR
    • An entry is entered to a Head Category, AND also, if eligible, optionally nominated for ONE of the two cross categories of the Research and Development Project of the Year and Start-Up of the Year (with nomination to two categories the entry registration fee here is US$50 in total) ,
    • An entry is entered to a Head Category, AND also optionally nominated for ONE of the two cross categories of the Research and Development Project of the Year and Start-Up of the Year, AND also optionally nominated, if relevant, for ONE of the Technology Awards (Business Data Analytics, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, ) of the Year. With nomination to three categories the entry registration fee here is US$75 in total.
  1. Therefore, an entry (other than the students’ project entries) can be considered, if eligible and relevant, for a maximum of three awards (Head Category, Cross Category and Technology Category).
  2. In the event that an entry is nominated for multiple categories, presentation to each of the category’s judging panel would be required. As the judging criteria is different for each category, it is strongly advised that different presentations with relevant focus should be given taking into account the specific judging criteria for each category nominated.