FAQs

  • The Hong Kong ICT Awards aims at recognising and promoting outstanding information and communications technology (ICT) inventions and applications, thereby encouraging innovation and excellence among Hong Kong's ICT talent and enterprises in their constant pursuit of creative and better solutions to meet business and social needs. The Hong Kong ICT Awards was established in 2006 with the collaborative efforts of the industry, academia and the Government. Organised by the Digital Policy Office, and led by Hong Kong ICT industry associations and professional bodies, the Awards aims at building a locally espoused and internationally acclaimed brand of ICT awards.
  • The Hong Kong ICT Awards tentatively plans to open for enrolment yearly in the second quarter. Please stay tuned to the updates on our website (https://www.hkictawards.hk/) and Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/hkictawards).
  • Application fee is not required for the Hong Kong ICT Awards.
  • During the enrolment period, you can refer to application procedures of call for entries which will be available under Award Categories.
  • Winning entries of the Gold/Silver/Bronze award in previous years of the Hong Kong ICT Awards can participate the Awards again, provided that there are significant changes or enhancement in the product/service, or the applicant is participating in a new Award Category. For entries that had won the Hong Kong ICT Awards before, and are participating in the competition again with “significant changes”, the assessment will focus on the part with significant changes.
  • During the enrolment period, you can refer to eligibility requirements of call for entries which will be available under Award Categories. Leading Organisers may make additional specific eligibility requirements for their respective award category.
  • Any non-profit organisation, like professional body, trade association, and social service agency, can apply to become a LO of any one of the 8 Categories of the HKICT Awards. For 2024 and 2025 edition, the LO engagement exercise was completed.
  • LO is responsible to plan, organise, manage and run the award category. The duties include devising the rules of award competition, receiving and processing entries in particular to assure the eligibility of the entries, appointing the assessors and judges, arranging the adjudication to select the winning entries, and holding its Category Awards Presentation Ceremony, and be responsible for handling complaint concerning the entries and the assessment and adjudication processes. For details, please refer to the Judging Manual upon appointment.
  • Yes. Usage guidelines and templates on promotional, enrollment and other awards related materials will be provided. Overall event schedule, adjudication rules and procedures will also be provided.
  • Yes. A sponsorship of $250,000 at maximum for each edition is available for each LO to organise its Category event of HKICT Awards 2024 and 2025 on the areas such as manpower, equipment and promotion. Detailed scope as well as terms and conditions for using the sponsorship fund can be found in the Request for Proposal and Proposal Form which are available from the Secretariat Office of the HKICT Awards.
  • There are two types of Awards Presentation Ceremony (APC) in the HKICT Awards. The first type is Category APC to be organised by LOs on their own for their respective Categories. The other type is main APC cum dinner. This main APC cum dinner is the pinnacle of the whole event of the HKICT Awards where winner of the Award-of-the-Year would be announced. If a LO has difficulty in finding a suitable venue for its Category APC, or a LO wants to share the ambience of the main APC, dedicated venue adjacent to the venue of main APC cum dinner can be used for free by the LOs in the morning as well as afternoon on the date of the main ceremony.
  • Applicants may submit different works on information and communications technology products/solutions under the same or different award categories, but they are not allowed to submit the same entry for multiple award categories. There is no limit to the number of award categories the applicants participate.
  • Different Categories of the HKICT Awards are led by different LOs. Before deadline of enrollment, a contestant can raise a request of Category change to the LO of the applied Category (original LO), withdraw the application there, and then submit a fresh application to the new Category. Please note that the request for Category change must first be made to the original LO, otherwise subsequent re-submission to the new Category will not be allowed if the enrollment deadline is passed. In case enrollment deadline has already passed, switching Category is still possible within the entry screening period of around 7 working days following the enrollment deadline. For this situation, request for Category change must be (i) raised by the contestant through the LO; or (ii) raised by the LO who considers there is another Category more suitable for the contestant, and the LO must obtain consent from the contestant before raising a switch Category request to the Secretariat Office.
  • “Residents in Hong Kong”, in the context of HKICT Awards, include both permanent and non-permanent residents. If an entry is submitted by more than one person, at least half of the members of the group must be Hong Kong resident at the time of closing for entry enrollment.
  • An applicant can choose to present in English, Cantonese or Putonghua. However, applicants are required to indicate their choices of presentation language in the application form so that Leading Organisers could have sufficient time for necessary arrangements including to arrange suitable assessors and judges.
  • The prizes include Gold, Silver and Bronze awards as well as Certificate of Merit. For each Category of the HKICT Awards, there is a Grand award winner selected from among Gold award winners of its streams. The 8 Grand award winners so selected will compete for the Award-of-the-Year of the HKICT Awards. In a bid to foster the innovative use of artificial intelligence (AI), each of the eight categories will establish a new distinguished accolade: the "Best Use of AI" award, magnifying and honouring outstanding achievements in harnessing the power of AI in respective areas. Except for those awards mentioned above, no other awards are included in the HKICT Awards.
  • It is not mandatory. For each Award Category, at most one Best Use of AI award could be given out among the shortlisted entries of all streams (i.e. entries that entered into Round 3, Category Judging).
  • Best Use of AI award focuses on general use of AI of an entry. Applicants are required to declare the use of AI-generated content (AIGC) during application. This includes arts, code, sound etc. generated with the help of AI tools in the development and execution of the entry(ies). Applicant(s) shall ensure that the entry(ies) submitted are in compliance with all applicable laws and do(es) not infringe any intellectual property rights.
  • According to Section 3.1(e) of the Request for Proposal, "For eligibility screening, in addition to the screening staff, there must be a supervisor to address problems encountered and to sample check screened entries. Upon completion of the assessment round of adjudication, and except for the Student Innovation category, this supervisor has to review and reconfirm on eligibility for all entries that are to be recommended to the judging panel. Due care and diligence must be exercised, and clarification must be raised for any doubt identified. Procedural guidelines are provided in Annex F. ". Besides, according to Section A (I) Manpower of Schedule 5 of Proposal Form, "All outsourced and staff resources must only be dedicated to the administrative work of assessment / judging only, rather than involving in the process of assessment / judging itself, such as screening of eligibility of entries.".
  • Non-profit organisations are invited to submit proposal to take part in the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2024 and 2025 as Leading Organisers. According to Section 1.1(a) of the Request for Proposal, "The proponent shall provide supporting documentary proof such as memorandum of article, business registration certificate or other document as appropriate.".
  • According to Section 3.1(b) of the Request for Proposal, "The proponent shall propose multiple streams (with maximum of THREE streams in general, and a maximum of FOUR streams for students in primary, secondary and tertiary education for Student Innovation Award) under the Award Category.". Besides, according to Section 3.1(c) of the Request for Proposal, "All proposed streams can only target at products, solutions, applications, schemes, service programmes, technologies, or startup companies directly related to ICT.".
  • In general there is no limitation on the number of people (and no need to be listed on the application form) to attend a presentation, but we would suggest a reasonable size with the presenters who are preferably equipped with marketing and technical skills.
  • For Assessment and Category Judging, each applicant will be given 3 minutes for equipment setup and around 20-30 minutes, set by individual Leading Organisers, for presentation followed by Q&A session. Primary and secondary student streams of the Student Innovation award may have their arrangement of adjudication flexibly adjusted, to suit specific needs. For Grand Judging, each applicant will be given 3 minutes for equipment setup and 15 minutes for presentation followed by 10 minutes of Q&A session. If there is any overrun of the setup, time will be deducted from the entry’s allocated presentation time.
  • Please contact the respective Leading Organiser for the arrangement of the presenting the solution/product for judges’ assessment or playing videos of the solution/product during presentation.