On February 12, at the Pestana Palace Lisbon Hotel, the first edition of the MWE Awards 2015 took place. This initiative by the technology company Masterlink was designed to recognize professionals who, in the words of Guilherme Machado, partner at Masterlink, “throughout 2014, were trained on our Masterlink platform and best represented Masterlink’s values and technology in their internal projects.”
Three public entities and one private entity saw their work rewarded, showing that, contrary to common perception, there is dynamism and initiative in the state sector. It demonstrates that, when equipped with the right tools and empowered to act, employees without a background in IT can make a significant contribution to improving the quality of processes associated with the services provided.
The winners of the MWE Awards 2015
Thus, the “Vision” award was presented to Prof. Rui Santos Ivo, president of the Central Administration of the Health System, for the vision and trust shown in Masterlink technology, which has the capacity to introduce innovation with immediate impacts on the national health sector.
The “User of the Year” award was won by Dr. Miguel Rodrigues from the Directorate-General of Health. The “Creativity” award was emotionally received by Joaquim Azeitona from the Inspectorate-General of Finance and, last but not least, the “Partnership of the Year” award went to the directors of Mindalizer Consulting, represented by Rui Pereira.
Round table and conclusions
The event also featured a round table discussion, which included Miguel Castro Neto, Secretary of State for Spatial Planning and Nature Conservation, Miguel Mira da Silva, professor at IST and senior researcher in Information and Decision Support Systems (IDSS), and Carlos Marçalo, director of Semana Informática.
With the awards presented and the debate concluded, the consensus reached among the more than 70 participants was expressed in the closing remarks of Daniel Gomes, partner at Masterlink, who stated that “this type of technological platform, based on simplicity of use and enormous versatility of application, can be ‘the’ major boost in combating the shortage of IT resources identified generally across Europe and in the national market in particular, where there is already a human resources deficit of over 8,000 IT technicians.”
