The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia won the top position award in information security for the Government Service Bus, which is one of the Infrastructure projects, at Asia’s 3rd annual Government Technology Awards 2009 held in Bali in October 2009. Known as the “Oscars” of the Asia public sector IT, the Government Technology Awards award outstanding government projects across Asia.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia together with Australia, South Korea, Philippines and Vietnam, each won an award out of the twelve awards for different categories, while Malaysia and India won two awards each. Singapore won three awards.

Open to public sector organizations in Asia Pacific, there were 622 individual nominations from 16 countries spanning central and local government, healthcare and education organizations. From the gulf region, United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain were also shortlisted in the final list together with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Eng. Ali Al Soma – Director General of the Saudi e-Government Program (Yesser) received the award in the Information Security category for the GSB (Government Service Bus) as part of the Saudi e-Government Program for Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom was also shortlisted for a second award on Asia level in second position in the Information Management category. Information Security comprises of confidentiality, integrity and availability of information, while Information Management refers to the organization of the structure, processing and delivery of information.

The Judging Committee of the Awards consisted of number of experts and specialists from private and public sectors; such as Laurence Millar, the former Government Chief Information Officer of New Zealand, James Smith, Managing Editor of FutureGov magazine, Professor Yang - Dean of the Academy of e-Government, Peking University, Dr Vandama Sharma - Deputy Director-General, National Informatics Centre, India, and Chan Meng Khoong - Government Chief Information Officer, Qatar, to name a few.