Department for International Development

The Department for International Development (DFID) leads the government’s fight against global poverty.

Sharing knowledge and data effectively among its 3,000 global staff is essential if the department is to play its part in reaching international targets, such as halving the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015.

DFID has invested heavily in its programme for IT-enabled change, Catalyst.

This includes the £12m Quest project to implement an electronic document and records management system and create a knowledge-sharing organisation, which required significant changes to both DFID’s IT infrastructure and its working culture.

Honda Racing F1 Team

From its high-tech operations centre in Brackley to the trackside at Grand Prix events, Honda F1 Racing Team’s innovative use of IT is helping to drive it up the World Championship rankings.

As well as implementing specialist systems on campus to help design, build and optimise the racing car, the team has to transport more equipment to race meetings than most large organisations have in their regional or branch offices.

At every Formula 1 event, Honda Racing F1 Team establishes a wide area network connection from the trackside infrastructure back to the Brackley head office and uses voice over IP technology to speed up communications between members of the team.

Northumbria University

Northumbria University has built a highly functional, secure and resilient IT infrastructure that underpins all aspects of university life.

It has one of the largest Citrix installations in the higher education sector, giving students and staff access to systems and applications via thin clients, classroom PCs, casual access points and internet cafes.

A flexible, campus-wide wireless network means users can connect their own devices to any of the university’s 130 hotspots, while Northumbria’s Desktop Anywhere project provides web access to email, files and software from any location.

The university also employs innovative educational IT, including virtual collaboration and e-learning systems.

See www.computing.co.uk/awards for more.