Indigenous Digital Excellence Awards

A call for nominations has gone out for Australia’s first national Indigenous Digital Excellence (IDX) Awards with a prize pool of $100,000.

With categories including Digital Elder of the Year and Entrepreneurship, the awards aim to uncover inspiring innovators and celebrate the achievements of Indigenous people working in the digital and technology landscape.

National Centre for Indigenous Excellence (NCIE) CEO Kirstie Parker said the awards were part of the NCIE and Telstra Foundation’s wider IDX initiative.

“The IDX awards facilitate the creative use of technology to maintain, revitalise and share Indigenous culture. They are a centrepiece of the IDX initiative and I’d encourage all digital innovators, from young Indigenous people to elders in communities across Australia, to consider nominating,” Parker said.

“Indigenous people have been innovating since time immemorial, creating diverse technologies borne from Country and sparked by innate ingenuity. We want to capture that and put it on a national stage.”

General manager of program and partnerships April Long told Pro Bono News the NCIE had been working with the Telstra Foundation and Indigenous communities to build up local capacity through a program called Flint in remote and regional communities and to develop capacity making around 3D printing, robotics etc.

“What we discovered was there is already amazing work happening in these Indigenous communities. A summit in Redfern in 2016 showed a real need to celebrate nationally the great work that is happening and bring all those people together to promote participation in the digital economy,” Long said.

“To date we have received 35 applications from amazing organisations that are working at the grassroots level to develop all kinds of different things from apps to educational programs to websites to virtual reality and really we want to showcase those individuals in these awards.

“We also want to bring together all the tech companies and universities to demonstrate that it takes a whole of community approach to really harness these Indigenous communities.”

  Award categories include:

• Learnings and Education
• Culture and Country
• Pathways and Employment
• Wellbeing
• Entrepreneurship
• Digital Elder of the Year
• Young Digital Innovator of the Year.

Long said the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet had come on board as a sponsor of the education category.

“We are wanting corporates to sponsor an award category and come on board.”

The Telstra Foundation has committed $5 million over five years to the IDX initiative, which supports Indigenous participation in the digital landscape and assist young Indigenous people to build careers in STEM – science, technology, engineering, maths – and arts.

Long said there would be $100,000 in the prize pool for the awards as part of the Telstra Foundation initiative.

General manager of the Telstra Foundation Jackie Coates said that the awards were part of a national initiative to inspire, build and connect Indigenous digital innovators.

“Through the IDX initiative we meet some incredible Indigenous innovators working across a number of sectors – what these awards are all about is recognising this talent and inspiring other to harness the power of technology,” Coates said.

“We encourage individuals, organisations and businesses from remote, rural and urban communities innovating in the digital space to enter the IDX Awards and celebrate Indigenous digital excellence from across Australia.”

Anyone can nominate themselves or another person or an organisation here. Nominations close 29 April 2017 and the winners will be announced at a gala event at the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence in Sydney on 29 September 2017.