Research Methodology: Nomination and Awards Criteria.
DIAA adopts a multi-phase methodology for researching and assessing digital services, products, innovations, web, mobile and social media applications for their ingenuity and adherence to best practice.
Nominations – Public and Research Panel
1.1 Public Nominations Submission
The first phase of the Digital Impact Awards Africa (DIAA) nomination process is the publication of an online form to solicit public suggestions. The form is online for two months. We publish criteria to guide the public selection phase. Our main requirement is that organisations proposed must offer innovative, useful or engaging digital content, applications, services or utilities in Africa. The nominees could be private sector enterprises (large/SMEs), government agencies and non-profit organisations.
1.2 Research Panel Submission
Our Research Panel creates a list of organisations using or delivering digital products, services, web, mobile and social media. The Panel develops award categories based on:
- Platform types i.e. web, mobile and social;
- Applications with potential to deliver benefits e.g. Digital finance services; and
- Challenges in digital infrastructure that need best practice e.g. cybersecurity, financial inclusion
Some of categories are restricted to either public or private sector while others were open to all.
Some of categories are restricted to Fintechs and Innovations that are neither Non Bank and/or Non Telecom based .
Nomination to some of the DIAA Categories are restricted to organizations that must have submitted entries directly online while some categories are open to all entry methods that include direct submission by public or private organizations or selected from our Research Panel Process.
The Panel compare final list with the submissions of the public leading to a shortlist of nominees submitted to the Awards Jury and published to the public.
1.3 Awards Jury
We assemble a truly exceptional Awards Jury. Our jurors have expertise and practice experience in various domains of digital infrastructure across the globe.
1.4 Additional Research
The Jury and Research Panel use defined criteria and its own expertise to assess each nominee. The jurors award marks depending on the features of the applications in place with information that is publicly available or submitted by the nominee. The jurors could also allocate negative scores for features that undermined the service. For technical categories such as “Cybersecurity Practice,” the Research Panel utilises additional non-intrusive techniques and observation to evaluate the nominees
1.5 Public Voting
The nominees once published are also subject to public votes whose result is combined with research and jury panel scores to determine the ultimate winner.