The European eGovernment Awards is an initiative of the European Commission organised every two years, coinciding with regular high-level EU eGovernment conferences. The purpose of these Awards is to support the implementation of European eGovernment policy and strategies and facilitate good practice exchange. In this context, since their launch in 2003, the Awards have been promoting the best ICT-based solutions for public services in Europe.

For the category "eGovernment empowering citizens" ("public services to citizens"), the only educational project selected for the label "Good Practice” was SEI, the IT Based Educational System, the national program for computerisation of the Romanian schools – a project initiated by the Romanian Ministry of Education, Research and Innovation and implemented by SIVECO Romania in partnership with IBM and HP.

The complete list of projects considered as examples of good practice in this category assures the exactingness of the European Commission requirements and the alignment of the Romanian project at European values:

1. SEI - Romanian IT-Based Educational System (Romania)
2. A Clean City Linköping Sweden (Sweden)
3. Aston Pride - Computers in the Home (United Kingdom)
4. Citizen Forum (Portugal)
5. Customer Care System (Malta)
6. E-government in Communication disputes (Italy)
7. iDoc24-Anonymous Doctor's Advice on Medical worries (Sweden)
8. MyPersonalData (The Netherlands)
9. My Real Estate (swe. Low Fastighet) (Sweden)
10. One-stop-shop gov (The Netherlands)
11. On The Spot House (Portugal)
12. Osala: the Estonian eParticipation tool (Estonia)
13. Prime Ministry Communication Center (Turkey)
14. Regional Services towards Citizens in Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy)
15. Social Workers Online (Sweden)
16. Swedish national vaccination register (Sweden)
17. UK online centers and MyGuide - eGovernment courses (United Kingdom)
18. Voice - Giving European People a Voice in EU legislation (Germany).

SEI, the IT Based Educational System has been internationally awarded repeatedly in large-scale at prestigious competitions. A very brief overview includes:

• 2008 - European IT Excellence Award, Frankfurt - the eLearning solution AeL, from SEI programme
• 2007 - "Best Practice" in eGovernment - European Commission prize for BDNE (National Education Database), a component of SEI program
• 2006 - International Project Management Association Awards Gala, Krakow - the quality of project management SIVECO Romania
• 2005 - World Summit Award, Tunis - "Best e-Learning Content in the World" for AeL interactive lessons
• 2005 - "Honorable Mention" for eGovernment, Manchester
• 2004 - Nominated by the European Commission on ICT Euro-CASE Prize (Information and Communication Technology) - the eLearning solution AeL
• 2001 - "Best Practice" for eGovernment, Bruxells - Prize of the European Commission for application for admission in colleges ADLIC.

SEI, the IT Based Educational System Government Program was launched by the Ministry of Education, Research and Innovation in November 2001. The main objective of the SEI Program is to encourage innovative teaching and to stimulate the creativity of both pupils and teachers. It provides an environment that favours project-development and the participation of all of the system's beneficiaries for the further advancement of the information society and of eLearning. The IT-based Educational System contributes to the improvement of the curriculum by integrating modern teaching-learning methods with other components of the program.

Some figures gives the size of this project: 15,000 installed computer laboratories in all schools in the country, about 5 million users, 192,000 computers, 140,000 trained teachers, 3.700 AeL multimedia lessons, the distribution of over 1,800,000 applicants for schools (2001-2009), displaying the results of over 1,300,000 candidates for Baccalaureate (2003-2009), over 130,000 registered users and more than 2,600,000 visitors for the national education portal http://portal.edu.ro/.