Building of an E-government in good progress
09 - 12 - 2002

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (HKSARG) is dedicated to developing Hong Kong into a leading digital city and has made encouraging progress in building up an efficient E-government.

The above remarks were given when the Director of Information Technology Services, Mr Alan Wong Chi-kong, was speaking as a keynote speaker at the China Information Technology Forum 2002 held in Macau today (December 9).

Co-organised by various computer associations in Hong Kong, the Mainland, Macau and Taiwan, the forum is a rendezvous for government officials, academia and information technology (IT) practitioners from these places to share views and explore opportunities for mutual co-operation.

The theme of the forum this year is "Leveraging IT to develop the new economy" and Mr Wong told the participants that the HKSARG had promulgated the "Digital 21 Strategy" to fulfil this vision.

Building an E-government is a key initiative under the strategy and substantial resources have been devoted for its implementation. In 2002/03, some HK$1.75 billion would be spent on developing IT within the HKSARG.

"We aim to increase the percentage of government services with e-option to 90 per cent by the end of 2003 and at present, over 80 per cent of government services have already been provided with e-option.

"By building an E-government, we hope to encourage different sectors in the community to fully utilise IT and subsequently help boost Hong Kong's overall competitiveness," Mr Wong added.

He told his audience that Hong Kong citizens were now enjoying the benefits brought by an E-government and government web sites were gaining popularity among them.

The overall page view of all government web sites is about three million per day and some popular web sites, such as those of the Hong Kong Observatory and the Government Information Centre, record hundreds of thousands of page views daily.

Mr Wong said he was proud that a distinctive feature of the HKSARG's E-government was its ability to process electronic transactions. Via the Internet, the public can now obtain easy and interactive access to a wide range of government services.

"We will also actively consider developing our E-government projects with private enterprises. Such practice not only allows us to make the most of the resources available in the private sector, but also enables us to effectively control related government expenditure," he added.

The Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) Scheme, the Electronic Tendering System and the Government Electronic Trading Services (GETS) are excellent examples of the HKSARG's co-operation with private businesses.

"Other important E-government projects include the development of a Digital Trade and Transportation Network and the Multi-application Smart Identity Card," Mr Wong said.

Mr Wong pointed out that E-government was an ongoing process of government transformation and the HKSARG had adopted a "3R" approach - "Re-prioritisation, Re-organisation and Re-engineering" - to review and improve its service quality and operational efficiency.

Outsourcing is one of the strategies employed to speed up the momentum of the E-government and over 80 per cent of our new projects have already been contracted out.

With a view to facilitating seamless integration of government applications, ITSD has set up an Interoperability Framework that contains technical standards and specifications for bureaux and departments to adopt when developing joined-up government systems.

Such framework will also serve as a useful reference for the private sector in developing information systems that interact with the Government.

"We are glad that this forum provides us with an excellent opportunity to get a glimpse of the latest IT developments and exchange views and experiences with our counterparts," Mr Wong concluded.

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