Closing Remarks by Mr Y C Cheng, Deputy Director of Information Technology Services at "Electronic Government in the New Millennium" Conference on 17 - 11 - 1999

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The ITSD is used to organising conferences, but this is the first time we have had a new millennium to look forward to in one of them.

We who work in the IT business are used to dealing with change. The technology changes every year. In our field, it is almost unheard of for the machinery to wear out. It is discarded as obsolescent first. This year's trail-blazing innovation is next year's old hat.

So we have to live with a constant stream of new things. The future is always with us.

This makes it all the more important that as well as detail, there should be the big picture; as well as history, there should be speculation about the future; as well as hard work, there should be lively talk.

The new millennium offers tremendous opportunities for the deployment of IT in the work of government. IT has changed the world in so many areas already, there is no reason to doubt that it is going to change the world of the civil service.

Indeed in some ways it has already done so. Nearly half of all Hong Kong civil servants already work with computers of one kind or another. Annual expenditure on IT has rocketed from $364million in 1989-90 to more than $2billion in the last financial year.

We are now completing a basic government-wide infrastructure which opens the door for the full use of IT in every aspect of the work of the civil service.

This is not, and cannot be, simply a matter of removing a typewriter from a government desk and replacing it with a PC. Making the most of IT requires that every function should be examined and if necessary redesigned to unlock the potential improvements which IT can bring.

In many ways the most difficult part of this is not the technical implementation but the original thought, working out how and where IT can help, how an existing problem or task can be reformulated in a way which allows us to bring IT to bear on it.

It has been wonderful to see so many people come together over the last two days to help each other in this important matter. I am sure this conference has been of immense value to the ITSD. I hope it has been of value to you too.

On behalf of the department I thank you all for coming, and I hope we shall meet again in similarly happy circumstances soon.

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