ITSD shares E-government experience with Guangzhou counterparts
11 - 08 - 2002

The Acting Director of Information Technology Services, Mr Stephen Mak Hung-sung, led a team of Information Technology Services Department (ITSD) members to take part in the 2nd China (Guangzhou) International IT Industry Week which was officially opened on August 9.

The event, organised by the State Information Centre (SIC) and the China Information Industry Association (CIIA), is an annual event to promote the development of information technology (IT) in Guangzhou in response to the country's development in informatisation.

The ITSD delegation shared their experience in the building of an E-government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) with their counterparts in the Guangzhou Information Centre.

Mr Mak told the participants of the experience sharing session that, in response to the rising expectations on E-government business transformation, knowledge management, inter-connectivity of various government departments and interoperability of their disparate systems, ITSD was undergoing a change management programme.

ITSD was re-organised in April 2002 to achieve delayering and to better align and integrate its core businesses. It will progressively focus its efforts on the core functions for developing Hong Kong's information infrastructure and its security, tackling new subject areas of IT in the community to help bridging the digital divide, exploiting new IT communications technologies and assisting in IT-related business process re-engineering.

It is now taking active steps to assist departments in establishing their own IT Management Units to assume greater ownership of IT and blend IT with their core support services.

The ITSD delegation also made topical presentations on the Hong Kong experience in a two-day seminar held yesterday (August 10) and today (August 11) on E-government strategies and their effects on social and economic development.

Government representatives and IT industry players from various Mainland cities took part in the seminar which covered a wide range of topics on policies, strategies, and IT infrastructure.

At the seminar, the Assistant Directors of Information Technology Services, Mr Dennis Pang Chi-tat and Mr John Wong Shak-chuen, gave presentations on the development of E-government and the information infrastructure of the HKSAR respectively.

Mr Pang said that the Government had built a wide range of central infrastructure and support services to facilitate government departments in implementing their E-government initiatives.

Currently, all departments have been linked up electronically and are provided with applications and facilities for making access to the Internet, the government intranet and other networking facilities. About one in two civil servants in Hong Kong are equipped with a personal computer or workstation.

Mr Pang noted that the Central Cyber Government Office, a web-based portal which provides electronic services and information needed by government users in support of their daily duties, was gaining popularity among the civil servants and had recorded a hit rate of around 1.5 million per quarter.

"We are also taking a proactive approach to transform the Government's internal operation and public service delivery via electronic means. We will adopt the '3R' approach, i.e., Re-organisation, Re-engineering and Re-priorisation, to review and improve the quality of government service delivery and operational efficiency," he said.

Also speaking at the seminar, Mr Wong introduced the latest development in the information infrastructure and the related legislation of the HKSAR Government.

Mr Wong said, "To support the implementation of the E-government initiatives, we are carrying out a number of enhancements to the HKSAR Government's IT infrastructure."

"Such enhancements include improving the accessibility to computer facilities in the civil service; upgrading to broadband connections to the Government backbone network; and the establishment of a common transaction platform for electronic service delivery and Government-to-Employee/Government-to-Government transactions," he said.

With a view to facilitating seamless integration of government applications, ITSD is setting up an Interoperability Framework which contains the technical standards and specifications for system interfaces, infrastructural architectures, data exchange, etc. for bureaux and departments to adopt when developing joined-up e-government systems.

Mr Wong told the seminar participants that the HKSAR Government enacted the Electronic Transactions Ordinance (ETO) in January 2000 to provide a clear legal framework for electronic transactions in Hong Kong.

The Government had reviewed the ETO, formulated preliminary proposals to update and improve the ETO and conducted public consultation on the preliminary proposals in March and April this year.

To facilitate further exchange of ideas and experience on E-government between the HKSAR and the Mainland, a Mainland delegation led by the SIC and the CIIA will visit Hong Kong next week.

The delegation will visit the Information Technology and Broadcasting Branch of the Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau, the Cyberport and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, and meet representatives of the IT industry and some large organisations with major e-business initiatives.

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