Under the Digital 21 Strategy for IT Development, the Government has developed an open and common Chinese language interface for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to facilitate more effective electronic communication using Chinese by the public. To facilitate the establishment of the common Chinese language interface, the Chinese Language Interface Advisory Committee (CLIAC) was set up in May 1999 by the then Information Technology Services Department. Members of the CLIAC come from various sectors including the academia, language and linguistics associations, the publishing industry and the information technology industry. The CLIAC provides professional advice to the Government on the establishment and promotion of the common Chinese language interface in Hong Kong.

There are two working groups under the CLIAC, namely the Working Group on Characters for Chinese Computer Systems and the Working Group on Chinese Information Processing.

The Chinese Language Interface Advisory Committee (CLIAC) provides professional advice for the Government on the various aspects regarding the development and promotion of a common Chinese language interface in Hong Kong. Since its establishment for more than two years, the major achievements of the CLIAC include:

• development and publication of the strategic plan for the promotion of a common Chinese language interface in Hong Kong;
• development and publication of the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS);
• submission of the HKSCS to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for inclusion in the ISO 10646 standard;
• development and publication of the procedure and criteria for inclusion of characters in the HKSCS;
• processing of the applications to include new Chinese characters in the HKSCS;
• development and publication of the Reference Guide on Kai Style Character Glyphs for Chinese Computer Systems in Hong Kong and the Reference Guide on Song Style (Print Style) Character Glyphs for Chinese Computer Systems in Hong Kong;
• development and publication of the Cantonese Pronunciation List of the Characters for Computers; and
• submission of the list of Hong Kong commonly used characters to the ISO for inclusion in the International Ideographs Core (IICORE).
  

  (Note: The latest version of the HKSCS is Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set - 2004 published in May 2005.)