Secretary calls for early action to tackle Y2K problem

July 20, 1998

The best way to solve the Year 2000 problem is to start early and to allow sufficient float for project slippage or delay due to foreseen and unforeseen factors.

And most important of all, enough time must be given to test the new systems before they are allowed to run through 1 January 2000.

This advice was given by the Secretary for Information Technology and Broadcasting, Mr Kwong Ki-chi, when addressing the luncheon meeting of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce today (Monday).

The Secretary noted that according to a survey conducted by the Hong Kong Productivity Council in the first quarter of 1997, about two-thirds of the businesses in Hong Kong would be affected by the Year 2000 problem. The survey also revealed that about 40 per cent of the respondents which were mainly small and medium-sized enterprises did not know or had never heard about the problem, 40 per cent did not know if their systems would be affected, and almost half of them did not have plans to solve the problem.

Mr Kwong said the Year 2000 problem was not just a technical problem as he heard from many IT professionals that the real difficulty they faced was the lack of management will and determination to face up to and tackle the problem.

"As I repeated on many different occasions, it is a management problem which affects the survival of businesses if not fixed in time," he said.

"That certainly deserves top priority support from senior management," he added.

In view of the immovable deadline, he suggested that management must first prioritise their rectification work on the basis of the criticality of the systems to their survival, and then draw up contingency plans just in case they could not complete their rectification work in time.

"Even if your own systems are compliant, you may still need contingency plans for dealing with those of your business partners who may be Year 2000 non-compliant for whatever reason," he said.

The Secretary also spoke of the Internet and its use in electronic commerce.

Noting that the Internet has developed in an exponential fashion in the past few years, he said that more than 100 million people were using the Internet at the end of 1997 and that traffic on the Internet had been doubling every 100 days. In Hong Kong, there are now over 400,000 Internet accounts compared with some 300,000 about a year ago.

The extensive reach of the Internet has also resulted in expanded opportunity for doing business across the globe, as shown by the fact that the global value of purchases over the Internet by consumers and businesses is predicted to grow from US$10 billion in 1997 to US$220 billion by 2001.

Mr Kwong believed that there was tremendous potential for the further development of electronic commerce in Hong Kong as "we have an excellent communications backbone on which business applications could be built".

To take the lead in using the Internet for the delivery of public services, he said, the Government was examining the feasibility of introducing an Electronic Service Delivery system whereby the public would be able to transact business with the Government on-line 24 hours a day, seven days a week through a wide range of electronic communication devices, such as the Internet, personal computers, interactive telephone or television, or information kiosks in public places.

The Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau has issued an open invitation to seek expressions of interest from the private sector to build and operate such a system for the Government.

In the process of the development and implementation of this system, the Government will seek to identify and remove any impediments which might hamper on-line service delivery, such as the questions of security, authentication and payments, as well as the legal backing for electronic transactions.

The Government will also aim to use an open common interface so that it may be used by the private sector for carrying out electronic commercial transactions at a later stage.

Mr Kwong stressed that if Hong Kong was to maintain its status as a leading international financial and business centre and to remain competitive in the global market, it had to keep itself in the forefront of IT development, and to make the best use of advances in IT to improve the quality and efficiency of the services that it could offer.

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