The Jury

Thursday, June 08, 2006

The jury most likely originated in early Anglo-Norman property proceedings, where a body of 12 knights or freemen who were from the area, and usually familiar with the parties, would take an oath and answer questions in order to determine property rights
- Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law

The decision on who are the actual winners each year rests with the jury. The PCQuest team audits the nominations, shortlists and researches the shortlisted ones. But finally it is up to the jury to pick out the winners. And there are no set rules for the jury to operate. There is no stipulation even on the number of awards each year. What we do give the jury is a synopsis of what pervious year's juries have done and what yardsticks they have used. Though we request the jury to identify one 'project of the year', even that is not mandatory. The jury sets its own rules and decides on the number of winners to be awarded.

(Left to Right: Shyam Malhotra, Sunil Kapoor, Satish Naralkar, Pradeep Gupta and Alok Ohrie)

How do we choose the jury? The jury is from three industries-IT users, IT industry and media. We take special care to ensure that those who have their projects in the running are not on the jury. And with almost a hundred and fifty projects in the running, that can become a difficult task. The winner of the 'Overall Best' award of the previous year generally chairs the jury. That would have meant Indian Railways this year. But with another Railways project in the running, we had to bid goodbye to that tradition.

The IT industry itself had many projects in the running. Similarly, we had projects from almost all major media houses also in the running. So, we were indeed extremely lucky to get a very experienced jury to judge the projects this year.

Our jury, this year, was chaired by Satish Naralkar, MD and CEO of NSE.IT. NSE.IT was the winner last year for their project on 'Online Risk Management System'. The jury member representing IT users was Sunil Kapoor, CIO of Fortis Healthcare, who again was a winner last year, with their Hospital Information System. Representing the IT industry, we had Alok Ohrie, Director, Systems & Technology Group, India/South Asia of IBM.

Representing media, we had Pradeep Gupta, the CMD of CyberMedia and Shyam Malhotra, Editor in Chief of all CyberMedia Publications, including PCQuest.

The jury met in Delhi in end May. For one of the awards, the jury asked for more research to be done; and that award was finalized over e-mail over the next couple of days.

Satish Naralkar, MD and CEO, NSE.IT Satish Naralkar joined NSE in 1994 and became CEO of NSE.IT in 1999. He is responsible for managing the NSE's large IT infrastructure and electronic trading facility including the world's largest private interactive VSAT network.
Pradeep Gupta, CMD, CyberMedia Pradeep Gupta founded CyberMedia, South Asia's largest specialty publishing group. With over 27 years of experience, he is also a member on the boards of many institutions and government think tanks.
Alok Ohrie, Director, Systems & Technology Group, India/South Asia, IBM Alok has spent over 18 years in the IT industry, with ESPL, Wipro and IBM. He is a senior member of the IBM management team for India /South Asia.
Sunil Kapoor, CIO, Fortis Healthcare Sunil has over 20 years of experience in industries as diverse as Healthcare, Manufacturing and Hospitality. He also has proven expertise in corporate planning and business process restructuring.
Shyam Malhotra, Editor in Chief , CyberMedia Shyam has over 25 years of experience and heads the publishing operations of CyberMedia as Executive Director and Editor in Chief. He is also the founding editor of PCQuest.

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