Bucharest, 27 September 2004 - The European Commission recently announced the nominees for IST Prize, among which the eLearning platform AeL, developed by  SIVECO Romania (http://www.ist-prize.org/nominees/).

This performance obtained by a Romanian software is truly out of the ordinary, IST Prize being the most significant European competition rewarding innovation in the field of IT&C  -  the equivalent of the Oscar Awards for IT.

It is important to mention the high exigency of the evaluations - in order to be nominee, a product goes through a tough evaluation procedure, being examined by 16 independent experts from different countries. 20% at the most, out of the eligible applicants are nominee each year, meaning 50-70. There are at the most 20 "Winners" among the "Nominees" and three "European IST Grand Prize Winners".

This year brought the nomination for 70 out of the 430 products that entered the competition, counting for less than 17% nominees. There were 29 countries in this year edition of the IST Prize. Products from 18 countries received nomination, but only 3 come from Eastern Europe. Romania applied with 12 products, only AeL being nominee, as the jury highly appreciated its pedagogical qualities, technical performances, innovation spirit and the Romanian solution quality.

Romanian Academy member Florin Filip , also member of the IST Prize since 1997 considers:

"The IST Prize competition (http://www.ist-prize.org/ ) is a very strong one, the strongest in Europe in my opinion. The differences from other similar international contests which award the IT&C products are:

        - the number of participants,

        - the percentage of nominees and winners (there has to be mentioned that most of the times there are slight
          differences between winners and nominees in terms of gross points,

        - the amount of money representing the awards (around 1 million EUROs),

        - high visibility,

        - the objective and well founded evaluation procedure (in three stages), 

        - jury membership (50% from the Academic environment and 50% from the industry).

The prestige makes the competition grow stronger every year . SIVECO Romania has been very active in applying for the IST Prize all these years and it was only bad luck which prevented the company from being a Winner, for incredible small differences in scoring.

 The fact that AeL tops 350 applications from countries with tradition in IT  makes it remarkable and worthy of our deepest respect. I hope that AeL’s breakthrough will be an impulse for even stronger Romanian participation in the years to come. At the moment, Romania ranks, after the Czheck Republic in terms of applications for IST Prize."

After the "Best Practice" label awarded by the European Commission in 2001 to the Romanian software dealing with the national computerized high school admission and distribution - ADLIC, AeL is the second Romanian educational software, developed and implemented by SIVECO Romania, receiving top level European.

 "The quantitative measure of the total effort invested by SIVECO in developing and implementing AeL in 1,365 high schools is impressive, but more important is the passion invested by the team in this project. It is difficult not to invest in a product addressing all the high school students in the country. It is interesting to notice that many members of the AeL team are not parents yet; with an average age around 25, they are almost children themselves", says Florin Ilia, Internet Space Department Manager within SIVECO Romania.

"We are proud that, although highly appreciated locally, AeL was rewarded mainly abroad."

The "European IST Prize Nominee" logo implies international visibility, credibility and commercial perspectives for the product (direct contact with accredited investors, access to financial resources, markets and partnerships).

 "The success gained by AeL in the IST Prize competition is a pride not just for us as "AeL’s parents" who see their child rewarded. I think it is a victory we, Romanians, have to be very proud of, as there are now testimonials for a massive catch up with the latest technology adopted by the western European.

Recognition of Romania’s performance in this field, education, and educational software in particular are very promising signs for the future of the Romanian educational system and of the young generation.", says  Irina SOCOL, General Manager SIVECO Romania.

Due to its unique constitution and access to the most distinguished experts in Europe, Euro-CASE organizes the European Information Society Technologies Prize, with the support and sponsorship of the IST Programme of the European Commission.

The European IST Prize is the most distinguished Prize for innovative products and services in the field of Information Society Technologies. The Prize is open to companies or organisations in 33 countries that present an innovative IST product with a promising market potential.

50-70 European IST Prize Nominees are selected among all applicants. The Nominees have undergone a thorough, highly competitive evaluation procedure.
Subsequently the European IST Prize evaluation group selects the 20 European IST Prize Winners among the Nominees. The Winners receive each €5,000 and are invited to exhibit their products at the annual IST Event.

Finally, at the annual IST Event, the European IST Prize Executive Jury, consisting of 18 Executives nominated by Euro-CASE, selects the three European IST Grand Prize Winners among the 20 Winners. Each Grand Prize Winner will receive € 200,000 and the European IST Prize Trophy. In 2003, 420 companies from 28 countries have applied for the European IST Prize.

Euro-CASE, the European Council of Applied Sciences, Technologies and Engineering, is a European non-profit-making organisation of national Academies from eighteen European countries. Euro-CASE has access to top level European experience and provides impartial, independent and balanced advice on technological issues with a clear European dimension.

The individual members of the Euro-CASE Academies are elected for their excellence and knowledge in specific fields and for their contributions to technologic, scientific, economic and social progress. This unique resource of experts, counting 5,200 individual Fellows of 18 national Academies, is the core of Euro-CASE