Government moves ahead on the road to E-government
07 - 11 - 2002

The Government will continue to lead by example in the use of information technology (IT) in order to achieve its vision of building an efficient and effective E-government despite challenges ahead.

The implementation of E-government will enable the Government to improve the quality and efficiency of its services and optimise the use of limited resources, and also help drive the adoption of e-business in the Hong Kong community.

The above remarks were made by the Director of Information Technology Services, Mr Alan Wong Chi-kong, who spoke at the 8th Joint International Computer Conference held in Ningbo in the Mainland of China today (November 7).

Sharing with the conference participants the experiences in building an E-government, Mr Wong said, "We have set our strategy to transform the Government's internal operations and public service delivery via electronic means in a customer-centric way and in a one-stop-shop approach as far as practicable."

"Our target is to increase the percentage of e-option of government services to 90 per cent by end 2003.

"At present, about 78 per cent of government services amenable to the electronic mode of delivery are already provided with e-option," he said.

Mr Wong told conference participants that the quality and efficiency of government services had been greatly enhanced following the formal launch of the Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) Scheme in January 2001.

Under the ESD Scheme, citizens are able to obtain more than 130 types of government services through the Internet around the clock.

The Government has also planned to issue smart identity cards to the Hong Kong citizens from mid-2003. The new Multi-application Smart Identity Card has the capacity of supporting multiple functions such as library card, digital certificate and driving licence.

However, Mr Wong pointed out that, while moving ahead on the road to E-government, the Government faced a number of challenges in facilitating government transformation, driving e-business adoption, building a digitally inclusive society and exploiting enabling technologies.

He said that, to overcome these challenges, the Government would adopt more innovative methods in service delivery and government transformation.

"We will adopt re-organisation, re-engineering and re-prioritisation to review and improve the quality of our service delivery and operational efficiency," said Mr Wong.

"We will continue to encourage the adoption of e-business by the business community. Through partnering with industry support bodies and trade associations, we will conduct promotional programmes and provide support and advisory services to the business economy.

"Moreover, we will continue to promote IT awareness and adoption in the community, encouraging citizens to develop the right attitudes and skills for the use of IT in their work and daily life," he added.

Mr Wong also said that the Government would leverage on the strengths of its infrastructure for the exploitation and adoption of enabling technologies such as Extensible Markup Language and web services.

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