A regional broadband consortium's open source project has been nominated for a prestigious national IT award after impressing the eGovernment National Awards panel.

Government-accredited open source provider Sirius Corporation and the North West Learning Grid partnered with UK's education network JANET to make the National Digital Resource Bank (NDRB) a reality.

It is hoped the NDRB will become the most important resource for teachers and pulls together all resources created by schools and public funding and teachers themselves into one central location, meaning contributors get back "so many times what they put in".

An estimated £150 million worth of resources currently not shared by schools may be added to it, as will major contributions from industries, charities and national archives.

Mark Taylor, the chief executive officer of Sirius Corporation, said: "We're thrilled that the NDRB is a finalist for such a prestigious award but we're equally excited that it has shown open source software is ready for large public sector projects and the only way to deliver real, sustained value at low cost."

The NDRB will be joined by other small businesses in IT at the eGovernment National Awards 2009 on January 20th at a black-tie ministerial dinner at the City of London's Guildhall.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.