IT champions celebrated in Kazan

The winners of stage three of an IT Champion competition, in the Most Active School Student nomination, and winners in the nomination Tatarstan Website of State and Municipal Services Promotion, were on Saturday awarded at the Kazan’s IT Park. The most active participants were given an iPad tablet PC.
Tatarstan’s Prime Minister, Ildar Khalikov, and communication minister, Roman Shaikhutdinov, as well as education minister, Engel Fattakhov, attended the meeting.
The competition, that had begun on 1 March, 2013, and included 3 stages, had had over 253 thousand participants, who had trained over 320 thousand adults to work with the state services website. Based on the results of the 3 stages, 459 students in Tatarstan received tablet PCs.
R. Shaikhutdinov thanked President of Tatarstan for the initiative to hold the competition. The competition had allowed increase the number of rendered services 60 percent, to 25.8 million in 2013, he said. Besides, the number of personal accounts increased to 900 thousand.
“You are the future of the republic, users of information technologies,” said R. Shaikhutdinov.
Tatarstan education minister, E. Fattakhov, thanked the teachers, directors and education authorities chiefs, especially in the rural regions, for the explanation work they had carried out, as well as for help to the students.
Students’ entries had been assessed in several categories including Best Banner or Logotype for Electronic Services, Best Video, Best Presentation, Mobile Application for OC Android, and Web Application Supported by Web Browers. In all, 298 entries had been submitted.
Gifts from the competition’s partners, including a trip to the Paris Disneyland, were presented within the ceremony as well.
The competition was organised by Tatarstan Ministry of Information Technologies and Communication, and Ministry of Education and Science. The competition was held with the support of President of Tatarstan and Prime Minister of Tatarstan.
The competition was, according to the Yandex search engine’s statistics, one of the top ten queries in 2013.