Annertech-built Inspiring Ireland "sweeps" Irish eGovernment Awards 2015

The Irish eGovernment Awards held last week in Dublin Castle showcased some of the work of Annertech. Our projects won in three categories: "Overall Winner", "Open Source", and "Promoting Ireland Overseas". Inspiring Ireland which we built for the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) won all three.

The website is a fantastic idea that seeks to fulfill the ambition to digitise, curate, and present Ireland's cultural assets to make them available for anyone across the world to access. The present incarnation of the site is a first phase interactive exhibition entitled "A Sense of Place", showcasing objects from the National Library, the National Museum, the National Gallery, the National Archives, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Crawford Art Gallery, the Chester Beatty Library and the Abbey Theatre.

Open Source

We were delighted to have developed two of the three nominees in this category: Inspiring Ireland and the Building Control Management System which we developed for the Local Government Management Agency.

Inspiring Ireland was built on Drupal 7 with some custom modules to allow integration with the DRI's API and present its artefacts on the website. Award-judge Declan Tuite from the School of Communications at DCU called the Inspiring Ireland project "substantial" and went on to say "it’s the front end of a larger digital repository. They had to go and create some new processes…they weren’t  thinking small.”

The DRI say that the concept of open source is "close to the heart of DRI’s overall mandate, which emphasises openness at every step, from software and technology choices, to open access, to the concept of opening up collections that are otherwise difficult to access". As an open source development agency, we are particularly delighted for the DRI in winning in this category.

Promoting Ireland Overseas

Inspiring Ireland also won in the "Promoting Ireland Overseas" category, seeing off some very stiff competition from huge names in this sector such as Fáilte Ireland. Presenting, award-judge Paddy Hopkins said that "this project was about making [Ireland's cultural] information – that richness of cultural heritage – available to the country and to Irish citizens abroad. But not only Irish citizens – equally people who have an interest in Ireland". This can only be a positive thing for promoting Ireland, and encouraging engagement with all things Irish - culture, tourism, business, and more.

Overall Winner

The Digital Repository of Ireland then went on to claim the prize for "Overall Winner" - the best project on showcase at the awards. This award was presented by An Taoiseach Enda Kenny to Dr. Sandra Collins and Dr. Natalie Harrower who said they were "absolutely speechless, overwhelmed, thrilled."

Here at Annertech we are equally thrilled, but not overwhelmed or speechless - we always knew such a great platform would win out in the end and wish them the very best for the next phase of the project.

When the project was finished, Dr. Sandra Collins, Director of the Digital Repository of Ireland, said "it was a pleasure working with Annertech on Inspiring Ireland and we hope to work with them again in the future". As do we!

If you want to discuss Annertech helping you build an award-winning website, please feel free to contact us by phone on 01 524 0312, by email at hello@annertech.com, or using our contact form.