• Society

Cambodia Awarded for CamDX Initiative

• By Sam Sopich
• December 6, 2022 8:27 PM

PHNOM PENH – Cambodia has won the ‘open source adaptation of the year’ award, one of the three prizes of the “Future of Government” contest, which aims to recognize actors of change and technological innovation in the public sector.

On Nov. 22, Cambodia Data eXchange (CamDX) was announced as the winner of the ‘open source adaptation of the year’ award in a competition co-sponsored by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Amazon Web Service Institute, and the Global Network for Apolitical Government. 

CamDX is a decentralized data exchange layer between information systems that offers a standardized and secure way to provide and consume services. In short, it aims to provide effortless access to data in government databases without compromising the security and ownership of the data, with minimal technical changes in the existing information systems.

The award was disputed by ten projects from nine different countries: Cambodia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Guinea-Bissau, Argentina, the Philippines, Benin and South Africa.

Prime Minister Hun Sen appreciated CamDX being rewarded and said that this award is another new pride of Cambodia on the international stage and a recognition that Cambodia has seized the opportunity and successfully used digital technology to assist in the reform and modernization of its administration.

“I urge all ministries and agencies to encourage the private sector to participate and use to maximize the benefits of CamDX's nurseries and related technologies,” Hun Sen said. 

CamDX Nursery is a digital technology service that allows ministries and institutions’ IT systems to share data with each other to create various online public services.

As of Nov. 29, CamDX Nursery has helped 19,823 companies and institutions to share data. CamDX's current members include the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Commerce, the General Department of Taxation, the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training, the Council for the Development of Cambodia, the Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology and Innovation, the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, and Regulator of real estate and mortgage business of non-bank financial services authority.

It also has clients in the banking and microfinance sectors, such as the National Bank of Cambodia, AMK Microfinance, Royal Microfinance, FWD Insurance Company, HKM Bank, ACLEDA Bank, Foreign Trade Bank of Cambodia (FTB), Wing Bank, PRASAC Microfinance Institution, SATHAPANA Bank, or MGA Asia Insuren Broker.

During the COVID-19 outbreak, CamDX Nursery also helped the government launch the Validation Application on Guarantee and Invitation (VAGI) system to facilitate the travel of businessmen and investors.

The “Future of Government” contest had three categories: The digital innovator of the year, the open source creation of the year and the open source adaptation of the year.

While Cambodia won the latest, Ukraine and Italy were rewarded for the first two categories.

The digital innovator of the year award went to Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation since 2019, whose priority has been to implement the “State in the smartphone” project so that Ukrainian citizens could communicate directly with the state via their smartphones. 

The open source creation of the year was given to IO, the app for Italian public services. While Italy's bureaucracy often requires people to navigate through dozens of platforms to access public services or manage their obligations to the State, the IO app aims to simplify all public procedures by allowing citizens to interact with the Italian State from their smartphones.