News

17 Jun 2005
Am Baile wins top award
The Highland Council Am Baile team were delighted to receive the Scottish Executive Delivering Excellence Award at the COSLA Awards 2005.

Public Service Reform Minister Tom McCabe presented the award at the Executive sponsored COSLA Excellence Awards ceremony in Bishopbriggs. He said:

"I am happy the Executive is again associated with the COSLA Excellence Awards and congratulate all the winning projects. These awards allow us to celebrate particular achievements and overall delivery of high-quality public services to the people of Scotland.

"The winner of the Scottish Executive-sponsored Excellence Award, the website Am Baile, has opened up the history and culture of the Highlands and Islands to a worldwide audience. Much of the material on the website was hitherto unavailable due to the fragility of the historical documents and artefacts.

"More than 40,000 items were digitised with accompanying details translated into Gaelic by a team of dedicated staff. It has proven to be a huge success, and now receives over 19,000 visitors a month from users worldwide.

"It is the first project to use the Gaelic language in this way and represent the Highlands and Islands in such a way. It is delivering a successful, high quality public service to the benefit of Scotland and beyond.

"This is exactly the type of innovative public service that COSLA's Excellence Awards were created to honour. The Executive is committed to improving the delivery of public services in Scotland and these awards help celebrate the kind of standards we want to see in councils across the whole of Scotland."

Councillor Andy Anderson, Chairman of The Highland Council's Education Culture and Sport Committee, said: "It is worthy recognition of the skill enthusiasm and commitment of the team and reflects the high quality of services we are providing in Highland."

Am Baile was established with initial funding from the New Opportunities Fund and is now funded by The Highland Council and managed as part of Highland Libraries.

The Council also won the COSLA's Securing a Workforce for the Future award for its pioneering in-house social worker training programme, Growing our Own, and the Convention's Health Improvement Award with its imaginative Ross-shire based Healthways exercise and healthy eating programme for people of all ages.

COSLA Excellence Awards are in their ninth year and it is the fourth year that the Executive has sponsored an award.

Am Baile was established with initial funding from the New Opportunities Fund and is now funded by The Highland Council and managed as part of Highland Libraries.

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