And the winners are ...

The Computerworld Excellence Awards were held in Auckland on Friday night with Toll Tranz Rail's Garry Collings taking the award for CIO of the Year and the Computers in Homes project winning the Bang for the Buck award.

Bang for the Buck
· Computers in Homes: The scheme provides opportunities for low-income families to access IT previously unavailable to them and highlights technology's role as an effective educational tool. The original focus was to train parents in how to support their children with homework, but the project has produced the added benefit of renewed enthusiasm from parents who, after attending the training course and using the internet, have pursued education with new confidence.

CIO of the Year – sponsored by Symantec
· Garry Collings, Toll Tranz Rail: Collings has supported and boosted Toll’s business, both through the use of innovative technology and through clever improvements in business processes and the reporting of information.

E-Business of the Year
· Foodstuffs for the Foodstuffs Exchange: The exchange is a collaborative e-commerce initiative among three Foodstuffs companies that minimises transactions costs for the company and its suppliers. The exchange gives smaller suppliers a low cost/no cost e-commerce solution, while larger suppliers can use the B2B connectivity to automate their business processes and achieve significant savings.

Excellence in the Use of IT for Business Intelligence
· Vector, Auckland, for its business information group: The custom-made BI system developed by this group has allowed Vector to schedule maintenance work based on graphically presented historical data and network parts replacement on the basis of historical failure rates. This strong business intelligence environment has been provided at significantly less cost than traditional approaches.

Excellence in the Use of IT for Customer Service
· New Zealand Automobile Association for the Road Comms project: This system brings together the customer, the response centre and the roadside mobile patrol using closely integrated call centre technology, GIS, GPS and roadside communications. It has halved the number of abandoned calls, improved productivity by 6%, cut costly voice communications by 98% and improved service through faster response times.

Excellence in the Use of IT in Education: Primary and Secondary Schools
· Kelston Deaf Education Centre, Auckland, for its personalised media resources project: Tailormade CDs, twenty of which have been produced so far, allow deaf children to see themselves and their peers using their own language and in their own environment. They have opened up educational opportunities for students not always visible in the education system.

Excellence in the Use of IT in Education: Tertiary, Community and Commercial
· New Plymouth District Council for the Taranaki Information Network: This project is managed by Puke Ariki, a ground-breaking regional knowledge centre where library, museum and visitor information centre are integrated to offer a comprehensive suite of visitor experiences. TIN was created to make the rich resources of Puke Ariki available to the remote, rural schools and libraries of Taranaki.

Excellence in the Use of IT in Government – sponsored by Unisys
· Te Taura Whiri i Te Reo Mäori (Maori Language Commission) for the Mätäpuna Dictionary System: Mätäpuna is the web-based open source system MLC has built for a Mäori dictionary being compiled by contributors from all over New Zealand. The dictionary is written entirely in Mäori and is a first for an indigenous language. Mätäpuna has been made available under general public licence, so that other groups may use it for their own languages.

Excellence in the Use of IT for a Mobile Workforce
· New Zealand Automobile Association for Road Comms: This system brings together the customer, the response centre and the roadside mobile patrol using closely integrated call centre technology, GIS, GPS and roadside communications. It has halved the number of abandoned calls, improved productivity by 6%, cut costly voice communications by 98% and enhanced service through faster response times.

Excellence in the Use of IT in a Not-for-Profit Organisation – sponsored by Westpac
· Carers New Zealand: This group provides information, advocacy and support to caregivers who look after sick, frail or disabled family members. Using technology for the dissemination of vast amount of information and the links to relevant support organisation frameworks within New Zealand, it has enabled the sharing of experience and knowledge amongst a needy community.

· Horowhenua Library Trust: Koha, reputedly the world’s first open source library management software, was developed to meet the need to transfer large amounts of information between parties within New Zealand and globally and to structure the information to be globally accessible. The ease of access to the knowledge base created through this initiative, and its ability to be reached by all the people of the Horowhenua, is improving the intellectual wealth of the region.

Excellence in the Use of IT in a Small to Medium Enterprise – sponsored by Microsoft
· P&A Construction, Wellington: P&A can enter timesheet data from anywhere via any mobile device and have the data available via the internet. P&A project managers can also update each other with new information submitted via mobile handsets. The project has improved timesheet workflow considerably.

Most Successful Project Implementation of the Year – sponsored by BearingPoint
· Broadcast Communications Ltd for EXTEND: Project Ceres implemented the EXTEND network to deliver broadband access and voice services to rural and provincial New Zealand. The project met or exceeded every objective in the project charter and delivered in full, on time and within budget.

Overall Excellence in the Use of IT – sponsored by IBM
· Toll Tranz Link, Auckland, for the EVS project: Its vision was to take the company from the "Stone Age to Star Wars”, with IT playing the leading role. To realise this vision the company developed its own software system, for a fraction of the cost it previously paid on annual maintenance alone. Its key processes have been automated, so that freight traffic is tracked door to door and it now claims a customer satisfaction rating that others envy.

Technology Innovator of the Year – sponsored by Gen-i
· iVistra, Auckland, for the Enterprise Visibility System: EVS visualises a business’s key performance indicators updated from real-time tracking of vehicles and commodities, linked by wireless technologies, to information drawn from the enterprise management information system. Mission-critical events are just as accessible to the loading dock as they are to the executive suite so employees can see and understand the systems and processes that drive their success.