Dapat Vista won the Prime Minister's “Best of the Best” Award, the top award at the MSC Malaysia Asia Pacific ICT Alliance (APICTA) 2009 awards at the Putra World Trade on the evening of 8 October, for its Rakancop (Friends of the Police) SMS e-community.

That same day, Dapat Vista also won the award in the the Best of e-Inclusion and e-Community category for Rakancop.

The “Best of the Best” award was received jointly by Dapat Vista chief executive officer Aziz Arshad and Royal Malaysian Police assistant director of operations, Superintendent Alwee A Ghani, since Rakancop is operated in partnership with the police to encourage the public to collaborate with the police to fight crime together.

All the public need do is to register with Rakancop by sending an SMS message from their phone with the message “RC <state> DAFTAR <nickname>” and send it to 32728 and the sender will receive the Rakancop code via SMS. “We don't want to know the member's real name,” said Sup. Alwee.

Thereafter, they can submit alerts of suspicious activities, accidents, traffic jams or other problems to the police, which will direct a patrol car to the scene within 15 minutes or even faster in some cases as Sup. Alwee claimed.

“In one instance, a family from outstation got lost whilst looking for the National Heart Institute and sought our help via Rakancop and a police car arrived to escort them to the institute,” said Sup. Alwee.

Rather surprisingly, despite being known only be their nickname, Rakancop receives less than 0.1% of crank SMS from the public. “Even then, rather than false reports, they messages are trivial, such as - it's going to rain,” said Sup. Alwee.

The police on average have received 1.2 million Rakancop notifications per year over since Rakancop began in 2004.

Rakancop is operated for the police by Dapat Vista, though all identities are known only to the police. The police do not pay for the service, whilst Dapat Vista earns revenue share from SMS charges with the respective mobile operator.

Dapat Vista also operates the help desk handling enquiries and complaints with the Rakancop system.

More information about Rakancop is available at www.rakancop.net

As the recipient of the Prime Minister’s “Best of the Best” Award, Dapat Vista representatives will attend a week-long entrepreneur development programme at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sponsored by Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC).

Meanwhile, there were APICTA award winners and merit winners in each of the 17 other categories.

MySaas' MySaas No Ordinary Learning smart queries  won the Best of e-Learning award for the most innovative solution for e-learning delivery.

MAMPU (Malaysia Administrative Management Planning Unit) won the Bes of e-Government & Services award for its mySMS 15888 Government Gateway mobile government solution, whilst there were two merit award winners – namely Dagang Net Technologies for its Electronic Preferential Certificate of Origin and the Public Service Department (JPA).

GHL Systems' NetMATRIX Terminal Line Encryption solution won in the Best of Security category, whilst the merit award went to Magna Quest Solution.

The Best of Industrial Applications Award when to ICADAM Technologies for its AI Tool Design CAD/CAM solution, whilst the best of E-Logistics award went to POS Malaysia for its Pos Integrated Track and Trace Information System (PITTIS).

The Best of Communications Applications award went to University Malaysia Sarawak for its Application of AR Network in E-Counseling Services System, whilst merit awards went to Tranglo and GHL Systems.

Best of Financial Applications award went to eBworks for its Digital Credit Management System, whilst the merit award went to Riskk.com.

There only was a merit award winner in the Best of e-Health category which went to  Genseq for its Health Drive solution.

Best of Media and Entertainment award went to Shock3d! for its Alamaya, Garden of Beautiful Creatures product, whilst the merit award went to Jayonic MSC.

Best of Tourism and Hospitality award for the most innovative ICT solutions supporting the tourism and hospitality industry went to Creative Advances Technology Sdn Bhd for its Standard On-line Tourism Architecture (SOTA) tourism industry portal which hosts the websites and operations of all players and facilities related to the tourism industry, whilst the merit award went to Interactive Pixel.

Arkibiz MSC's Saffron product won it the Best of Applications and Infrastructure Tools award, whilst the merit award went to CRM Solutions.

The  Best of Research & Development award for the most outstanding ICT R&D project went to Polarizone Technologies for its Jam Proof Wireless Link solutions, whilst the merit award went to CRM Solutions.

The Best of Start-up Companies award for the most entrepreneurial ICT company went to Packet One Networks for its P1 W1MAX service.

The Best of Tertiary Student Project – Software / Hardware award for the most innovative ICT software and or hardware project from students of institutions of higher learning went to Multimedia University (Cyberjaya) for its TRAX wayfinding solution for the blind using a combination of mobile phones and radio-frequency identification (RFID), whilst merit awards went to Multimedia University's Airsense product and to International Islamic University Malaysia for its Education Kit for Satellite Technology.

The Best of Tertiary Student Project – Creative Multimedia award for the most innovative creative multimedia project from students of institutions of higher learning went to Limkokwing University of Creative Technology for its Smog Busters product which uses X-Box 360 arcade games for learning, whilst the merit award went to Universiti Kuala Lumpur.

The Best of Secondary Student Project award for the most innovative ICT project from secondary school students went to Sekolah Sultan Alam Shah for its Robotic Angklong Player, whilst the merit award went to Foon Yew High School.

The Best of Primary Student Project award for the most innovative ICT project from primary school students went to Sekolah Kebangsaan King Edward VII (1) for its Come Rain or Shine product which offers a new dimension for the future of education, whilst the merit award went to Sekolah Kebangsaan  Putraja Presintt 9.

With the exception of the winners of the Best of Student Projects-Primary category, each of the other category winners and some of the merit award recipients will be sponsored to represent Malaysia at the International APICTA awards which will be held in Melbourne, Australia as part of the Asia Pacific Digital Innovation Summit from 14 to 17 December 2009.

Also, two students from the winning team of the Best of Secondary Student Project will be given scholarships to undertake ICT related courses at the Asia Pacific University College of Technology and Innovation (UCTI).

“MSC Malaysia, our national ICT initiative that is the catalyst for development of ICT in Malaysia, has seen much success since its inception in August 1996. It has played a significant role in the creation of many home-grown ICT-related products and services, talent and technopreneurs; the creation of hundreds of thousands of ICT-related jobs; and in shepherding industry development that has helped ICT companies and entrepreneurs to generate revenues amounting to billions of ringgit in total,” said Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation.

“It is also a special occasion in more ways than one that we celebrate tonight, for this is the 10th anniversary of the Awards which was first held in the year 2000. MSC Malaysia and the Malaysian ICT industry as a whole have made great strides and moved far ahead since then,” Dr Maximus added.

The MSC Malaysia APICTA Awards provides recognition to outstanding achievements of individuals, students, entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as organisations with operations in Malaysia who have contributed to the development of the MSC Malaysia initiatives; or in building ICT applications and services for that benefit Malaysians.

Jointly organised by MDeC and the Association of the Computer and Multimedia Industry, Malaysia (PIKOM), MSC Malaysia APICTA this year is themed “Stimulating Creativity & Excellence in ICT”.