"E-government Benefits Us All" booklet

February 17, 2002

To enhance the community and businesses' understanding of Hong Kong's developments in E-government, the Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau (ITBB) has published a booklet - "E-government Benefits Us All".

Apart from describing ITBB's vision for taking forward E-government, the booklet outlines how our E-government initiatives will provide many benefits and make life easier for the public. It also provides a handy and useful reference of major electronic government services.

Within ITBB, the E-government Coordination Office has been setup to drive forward E-government policies and initiatives. The E-government Coordinator, Mr Michael Stone, said today (February 17), "Our objective is a Government which provides seamless electronic services in an efficient and citizen-centric way, so that we can realise our vision for E-government - E-government benefits us all."

"Joining-up government is a priority of the Office, so that citizens and businesses do not need to worry about which department does what. We also need to explain clearly to the public what the Government is doing in E-government and why," he said.

Mr Stone added that the Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) Scheme demonstrates how public services can be provided in a one-stop manner and a citizen-centric way. The ESD website (www.esd.gov.hk) provides, for instance, both public and commercial marriage-related services. Not only the public can make appointment booking for giving of marriage notice online - no more queuing - they can also access the various commercial services related to planning a wedding through a one-stop portal. The website's strong focus on customer-orientation is in fact the major motivation for being awarded the Stockholm Challenge Award in September 2001.

The ESD Scheme will soon launch another convenient service of online booking of the highly popular public leisure and sports facilities. It will allow all registered Sportix and Leisure Link users to book facilities at various time slots from about 200 Leisure and Cultural Services Department's venues and pay for the booking in one go, through its website (www.esd.gov.hk) or at any of the ESD kiosks located at MTR, KCR stations, shopping centres, supermarkets, government offices and exhibition/cultural centres.

Copies of the E-government booklet can be obtained at District Offices. You can also view or download the electronic copy at http://www.info.gov.hk/itbb/english/it/e-gov_n.htm or http://www.digital21.gov.hk/eng/e-gov.

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