The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column, Monday May 24 2004
Our report of the Stockholm Challenge for IT projects below should say that seven British projects were finalists, not two. The two mentioned are the city of Sheffield's e-democracy programme, and the Leonard Cheshire employment programme. The five we fail to mention are: ABCtales.com; Adilisha: human rights capacity building in southern Africa; Real: creative learning; Shalom from Israel; and talk2learn. Apologies to all concerned.
Just a year ago, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Chan was facing the apocalypse. A terrifying new disease, Sars, was raging through his manor, Hong Kong's crowded tower blocks. With hundreds of cases, each potentially infecting 10 others, "it looked like Hong Kong was going to sink," he says. The police joined the all-out effort to identify and isolate cases. "We still investigated murders, but set aside street gambling."
Chan's team had a powerful new weapon in the fight. A computer system called MIIDSS (major incident investigation and disaster support system), designed for criminal investigations, collected admissions data from 14 hospitals. It helped police identify and track down every person who had been in contact with a victim. It traced more than 26,000 potential carriers of the disease, mostly in the peak month of March 2003.
MIIDSS, similar to the Holmes major inquiry system used in Britain, had only been installed the previous year. These tactics helped contain Sars in one of the world's most densely populated cities. "At the peak, there were 110 cases a day, but we pulled it down to single digits in six weeks," says Chan.
Last week, Chan and his colleagues were in Sweden to collect a Stockholm Challenge prize. The award, organised by the City of Stockholm, is a kind of Nobel prize for IT work that benefits society. This year, the competition attracted around 900 entries; the 100 finalists exhibited in Stockholm last week. Entries came from more than 100 countries, including projects in e-government, e-business, culture, education and health.
The challenge was set up in 1994 by Martin Bangemann, then European commissioner responsible for IT, to encourage Europe's e-services to catch up with those in the US.
One of the first winners was Manchester, for providing public access to IT in the early days of the world wide web. The award survived Bangemann's fall in 1999, when he left the disgraced commission to join a telecoms firm. The City of Stockholm, which always hosted the event, diplomatically renamed it.
This year's winners weren't all about the bad things in life. The Archaeological Map of Egypt offers virtual tours of Egypt's most important ancient monuments, including translations of hieroglyphics. Singapore's national archives also won a prize. Its online attractions include an exhibition on the Indian National Army, recruited during the Japanese occupation to fight the British in India.
In a project called Swing, Sniff and Swipe 2, New Zealand school students help Auckland zoo design ways of enriching the environment of animals in captivity, encouraging "species-typical" behaviour. Ideas include refreshing lions with blocks of frozen blood and a device for luring giant tortoises on to weighing scales.
Prizes for projects in e-government went to Mexico and the US. Mexico's award was for a government web portal that gives citizens access to sources of help and transactions from more than 100 institutions. Oregon Helps anonymously tells unemployed and the needy whether they are eligible for state benefits. Since the service went live, demand for food assistance has increased by one-fifth. However, because people are more likely to apply for the right benefits, the cost of processing claims has fallen.
Two African projects won prizes. Basket weavers in Botswana have found a way to get higher prices for their work by marketing directly on the internet. A gallery accepts orders by email. Tele-Health, a solar-powered wireless intranet connecting health, education and police services in South Africa's Eastern Cape, is improving healthcare and education.
Solar-powered telemedicine also figures in the Hispano-American Health Link, which connects health workers in south and central America with experts in Spain.
To complete the remarkable geographical spread of the competition, the Pacific Environmental Information Network in Samoa won a prize for promoting awareness of environmental issues across the Pacific.
Alfonso Molina, chairman of the Stockholm challenge jury, says that the spread and high quality of the entries point to the emergence of an information "utility" which organisations around the world are plugging into to solve local problems.
Runners-up ranged from Maison de Quartier, a French language school on the web, to the community nurses of Funabashi, near Tokyo, who file reports on mobile terminals connected to the DoCoMo mobile phone network. On the waterways of Bangladesh, another finalist has equipped river boats to carry mobile internet services and multimedia presentations on protecting the environment to remote villages where roads and telecommunications don't normally reach.
Two British projects made the finals: the city of Sheffield's massive e-democracy effort, which last year allowed citizens to vote by internet, phone, SMS, public kiosk or polling station, and the Leonard Cheshire employment programme, which provides IT and personalised training to people with disabilities.
Stockholm Challenge
www.challenge.stockholm.se
The Archaeological Map of Egypt
www.cultnat.org
Singapore's national archives www.a2o.com.sg
Swing, Sniff and Swipe 2
http://education.otago.ac.nz/nzlnet/sss/home.html
Mexico new government web portal
www.gob.mx
A Botswana art gallery
www.botswanacraft.bw/gallery
Maison de Quartier
www.maisondequartier.com
