New initiatives to keep HK in forefront of world IT development

October 19, 2000

The HKSAR Government will continue to embark on further initiatives to build itself into an advanced electronic government and an IT hub in the region, Secretary for Information Technology and Broadcasting, Mrs Carrie Yau, said.

Mrs Yau was addressing the first anniversary luncheon of the Strategic Information Technology Summit organized by the Hongkong-SV.com today (October 19). The Hongkong-SV.com, a non-profit-making organization, was founded in October last year to promote awareness, stimulate collaboration and facilitate networking between the high-tech communities of Hong Kong and the Silicon Valley.

"I agree with the Chairman and President of the Hongkong-SV.com, Mrs Pauline Lo Alker, that it is important that we maintain close link between the two high-tech communities - Silicon Valley and Hong Kong. This will help foster collaboration and networking between the two places," Mrs Yau said.

She also joined Mrs Alker to encourage Hong Kong companies and entrepreneurs to sign up as members of Hongkong-SV.com. At present, Hongkong-SV.com has 65 corporate members and 150 individual members, most of them are from the Silicon Valley. This can be done by a simple click visiting the website www.HKSV.com.

She told the gathering that since the establishment of the Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau in 1998, it had concentrated on building physical, telecommunications and legal infrastructure for IT and e-commerce to flourish. And in the years to come, the bureau will continue to strengthen this infrastructure, while at the same time focusing on several other key issues, i.e. e-government, IT manpower, Internet2 and the development of the wireless multimedia sector.

On e-government, Mrs Yau noted that the Hong Kong Government was one of the most advanced users of IT in the Asia Pacific region. It has spent nearly US$700 million (about HK$5.46 billion) on IT in the past four years and another US$260 million (about HK$2.028 billion)will be spent this financial year to further equip itself as the leading e-government in the region.

"We aim to have a paperless Government. Our major initiatives in the coming year is to provide Government services on-line. This will include converting common Government forms into the electronic format so that the public can complete them electronically, sign them digitally and submit them to the Government via the Internet. The Electronic Service Delivery scheme under the new brandname, equivalent to "Easy Life", is due to be launched before the end of the year," she said.

Turning to IT manpower, Mrs Yau said the Government launched a five-year strategy called "Information Technology for Learning in a New Era" in 1998 which was designed to turn the local primary and secondary schools into dynamic and innovative learning institutions and to nurture the talents of the students to process information effectively and efficiently.

The Government is spending a capital expenditure of over US$400 million (about HK$3.12 billion) and an annual recurrent expenditure of over US$70 million (about HK$546 million) on this project. Mrs Yau said she had set up a Task Force comprising representatives from both the supply and demand side, including the academia, training institutions, trade organisations and Government departments to examine measures to address the question of shortage of IT manpower.

The Secretary also revealed that the Joint Universities Computer Centre, which represents the eight universities in Hong Kong, had just signed an MOU with the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development - the consortium of American research universities currently engaged in the development of the Internet2 project - to jointly collaborate on the development of the next-generation Internet technologies and application. She said the Government would help the universities to establish the Internet2 linkage shortly so that Hong Kong could participate in the research and development activities of the next generation Internet as early as possible.

Mrs Yau also spoke on the Cyberport which is Hong Kong's flagship information infrastructure project and a symbol of the Government's determination to build up Hong Kong as a leading digital city in the 21st century. She told the audience that apart from visiting the Silicon Valley in May this year, she had visited the world's cyberparks of high-tech capitals, including Innapoli of Helsinki, Finland; Citywest of Dublin, Ireland; and Kanata of Ottawa, Canada.

She noted that similar to the Silicon Valley, Hong Kong's Cyberport would provide a high quality living and working environment to create a strategic cluster of IT companies. "The companies we are targeting at are those specializing in leading edge IT applications, in information services and in multimedia content creation. To date, we have more than 160 companies expressing interest in becoming tenants. They include IBM, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Yahoo!, Sybase, etc.

"We are putting in place the institutional arrangements for the selection of tenants in time for the occupation of the Phase I by early 2002. We are also lining up other services which will help the Cyberport tenants to succeed, such as setting up interfaces with universities and high-tech centres all over the world," Mrs Yau said.

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