Sapient and MIT win Computerworld 21st century achievement award

Mumbai: Sapient (NASDAQ: SAPE), a leading business consulting and technology services firm, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were jointly honoured as the world wide winners of the 'Computerworld 21st century achievement award in education and academia' during a ceremony in Washington DC on June 8, 2004. Sapient and MIT were selected by the Computerworld Honours Foundation from a group of five finalists for their work in developing MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW), which was named as the best application of IT in the field of education.

MIT OCW currently offers free and open online access to the educational materials from 701 MIT courses, spanning MIT's five schools and all 33 of its academic disciplines.
Sapient provided technology strategy, design and implementation services to help MIT deliver its entire library of educational material and resources in a way that is easy for educators, students and self-learners around the world to navigate and adapt, based on their unique needs.

According to Daniel Morrow, executive director of the Computerworld honours programme, "Recipients of the 'Computerworld honours 21^st century achievement awards represent those organisations whose use of information technology has been especially noteworthy for the originality of its conception, the breadth of its vision, and the significance of its benefit to society."

"We are extremely honoured to be recognised with Sapient for our role in promoting education through technology," said Anne H. Margulies, executive director of MIT OCW. "Since the launch of our proof-of-concept pilot in Fall 2003, the MIT OCW Web site has received traffic from users in more than 215 countries, city-states and territories, making it a truly global initiative. With 701 courses available - representing just a third of MIT's entire curriculum - users already tell us that OCW is making a difference in their lives, so it is a wonderful honor to be jointly recognised with Sapient by the prestigious Computerworld honours programme."

The achievement award winners represent the most visionary applications of information technology. A panel of distinguished judges selected the applications based on originality of conception, breadth of vision, and significance to society. A case study on MIT OCW has already been archived in the 2004 Computerworld honours collection, which includes innovative IT applications from 33 states and 26 countries. The entire collection can be accessed at www.cwheroes.org, where it is available to scholars, researchers and the general public worldwide.

Says Mike Detjen, vice president, Sapient "The computerworld achievement awards recognise and help raise awareness of the potential technology has to benefit society. We are extremely proud of the work we did with MIT, and the positive impact it is having on educators, students, and self-learners around the world.

MIT OCW makes the educational materials that are used in the teaching of almost all MIT undergraduate and graduate courses available on the web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. This venture continues the tradition at MIT, and in American higher education, of open dissemination of educational materials, philosophy, and modes of thought. See MIT OCW on the Web at http://ocw.mit.edu/.

Sapient Corporation, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts is a leading business consulting and technology services firm that plans, designs, implements, and manages information technology to improve business performance for Global 2000 clients.