SINGAPORE - Digging deep into the data contained on commuters' bus fare cards helped the Land Transport Authority (LTA) improve bus services - and clinch an infocomm award.

By assembling a data analytics team to make sense of the 3.7 million bus rides that Singapore commuters take every day, the LTA collected useful information to add new bus routes and relieve crowding.

This innovation allowed it to reverse the decline in customer satisfaction with bus services since 2010 and made it one of four top winners at the biennial National Infocomm Awards on Monday.

It bagged the prize for Most Innovative Use of Infocomm Technology in the public sector category, a sign of recognition for its pioneering efforts in this area.

Another winner of the National Infocomm Awards, organised by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore and trade body Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation, was payment services firm Numoni.

The company took the award for Most Innovative Infocomm Product or Solution with its self-service terminal, which enables users who may not be able to get a bank account - such as migrant workers - to perform small banking transactions.

These include topping up the prepaid value on their mobile phones, making small remittances and repaying micro-loans.

DBS Bank won the award for Most Innovative Use of Infocomm Technology in the private sector category, for its use of analytics to reduce the instances of ATMs running out of cash. The bank managed to cut such out-of-cash occurrences by more than 90 per cent at its 1,100 ATMs across the island.

Singapore District Cooling, a Singapore Power subsidiary, emerged top in the small and medium-sized enterprises category for its electronic form generator app.

The app reduces mountains of paper forms - a headache for plant maintenance technicians - into user-friendly data.

The winners were picked from a total of 164 submissions and lauded at a prize ceremony held at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre on Monday.