"311 international projects are vying for the 18 prestigious WSIS Prizes: a worldwide recognition of the best practices available at the global level. Join us in this exciting countdown by taking part in the voting process by 10 March 2016.

 
The contest of WSIS Prizes 2016 is organized into five phases and began on 13 October 2015. The 18 winners of WSIS Prizes will be honoured, recognized and presented with an award during WSIS Prizes 2016 Prize Ceremony at the WSIS Forum 2016, to be held from 2 to 6 May 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland.

 
As interest in the WSIS Prizes contest continues grow, we would like to thank all stakeholders who submitted projects to this year's contest for contributing to another record year - with more than 400 submitted projects, 311 of which were nominated for the contest.

Of the 311 nominated projects, 179 projects are from the government sector, 41 from business sector, 31 from civil society, 14 from international organizations, and 46 from other entities (mostly academia). As for the regional distribution, 86 projects are from the Arab region, 73 projects from the Asia and Pacific region, 53 projects from the Americas region, 36 projects from the Europe region, 31 projects from the CIS region, and 27 projects are from the Africa region. Five of the nominated projects cover multiple regions.

 
While continuing to highlight the progress made towards achieving the WSIS goals, the WSIS Prizes 2016 contest started reflecting how the WSIS Action Lines link to the SDGs – a new feature to be highlighted in the WSIS Stocktaking publications: WSIS Stocktaking Report (7th Edition) and WSIS Stocktaking: Success Stories 2016 (publication on the winning projects); both to be launched during the WSIS Forum 2016."