Speech by Mr. Stephen Mak, Acting Director of Information Technology Services at the International Conference on the Digital Divide: Technology and Politics in the Information Age
22 - 08 - 2002

Building a Digitally Inclusive Society

Professor Tsang¹, Doctor Meredyth, Doctor Thomas², Professor Chan³, Doctor Luk⁴, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning. It is my great honour to be invited to speak at this International Conference on Digital Divide among such a distinguished group of elite researchers and energetic professionals. The notion of Digital Divide has indeed evolved well beyond a simple dichotomy of the have's and the have-nots, as a brief look at the conference programme will tell. Today, I would like to share with you our experience and efforts in building a digitally inclusive society in Hong Kong and what we see as some of the issues requiring our attention.

2. As you will agree, advancements in IT are leading us to an unprecedented era where our daily activities like education, government services, business transactions, personal correspondence, research and information gathering are more and more interleaved with the ubiquitous Internet. It becomes imperative to raise the competency and awareness of our society at large to embrace a digital life as soon as possible such that we can reap the full benefits brought about by IT: to lower the cost of doing business by going on-line, to enjoy a more enriched and informed life; and more importantly, to stay competitive on the global market. From a different perspective, we want to ensure a level playing field for all walks of life to obtain information as needed and to express views on government services more effectively by going on-line. Simply put, we should not deprive the rights of those under-privileged groups due to their lack of knowledge or access to advanced technology.

Where Hong Kong Stands

3. Despite the global economic downturn, Hong Kong has still got a vibrant economy and is equipped with an advanced information infrastructure. Our broadband network reaches all commercial buildings and over 95% of households. Two-thirds of our Internet users are using broadband connections. According to last year's statistics, over 60% of our households have personal computers, and 49% of them are Internet-connected. There are over 2.6 million Internet accounts for a population of around 7 million people. We have an 85% mobile penetration rate. These figures put us high up in the world league tables for information and communications technology.

4. But are sheer numbers and league tables enough? Although a substantial proportion of the population in Hong Kong use PCs and the Internet on a regular basis, there remain certain groups who lack IT skills or have little or no access to IT facilities, namely, the low-income households, the less educated persons and senior citizens. To ensure that individuals and businesses enjoy greater convenience and better services brought about by IT advancement, we have invested some $2.2 billion (US$280 million) on various initiatives to strengthen the IT capabilities of the community. Building a digitally inclusive society is one of the key result areas under our Digital 21 Strategy for IT development that was promulgated last May. The initiatives can be broadly classified into four areas, namely, education and training, technology diffusion, knowledge and awareness, and access to online services. I should like to talk briefly about them.

Education and Training Initiatives

5. In the education and training arena, we want to expose our future generation to the world of IT at an early stage of their learning life and to master the general use of IT. We also aim to have our education institutions to use IT competently in delivering their curricula. We have been actively pursuing a 5-year strategy since 1998 in pursuit of employing IT to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning in primary and secondary schools. This involves a capital investment of $3.2 billion (US$410 million) and annual recurrent investment of over $550 million (US$70 million). Today, all our schools are Internet-connected and IT training has been enhanced at all educational levels.

6. For the working community, we recognize the need to help them sustain their employment in a knowledge-based economy. Both the low-skill and non-IT employees are offered training courses at different levels to equip themselves for the forthcoming digital transformation.

Technology Diffusion in the Community

7. In order to provide a favourable environment for information and communication technologies to be widely used by the general public, the services have to be convenient, affordable and with options for the consumers. One of the aims of our liberalisation of the telecommunications market is to accomplish this goal. Today, there is healthy competition among service providers and service charges have been driven down to a very affordable level, with some broadband service providers offering unlimited Internet usage at less than $200 (US$25) a month.

8. Developing IT skills throughout the society also calls for readily available IT facilities for the general public. To address this, we have set up a Super Cyber Centre with 100 PCs and installed about 5 000 public PCs with Internet-connection at convenient locations throughout the territory for free use by the public. Users can access Government information on the web, obtain public services online, send and receive e-mail, or browse the Internet.

9. We subsidize schools to open up the IT facilities to students after school hours. We also set up a grant ($4 million or US$0.51 million) to provide financial assistance to people with disabilities to purchase their PC, thereby increasing the flexibility for them to work independently at home. Starting 2002, some 280 PCs with Internet-access are installed in social service centres for the elders and another 530 PCs are installed in rehabilitation centres for people with disabilities.

10. We are also contributing to a PC recycling programme by donating surplus PCs to charitable and social service organizations. These organisations will re-condition the computers for use by disadvantaged persons who may otherwise be unable to reap the benefits of a digital society.

Knowledge and Awareness

11. The third strand of our efforts is targeted at enhancing citizens' IT knowledge and awareness, a key indicator of the successful transformation to a knowledge-based society. Since 2000, we have embarked on a comprehensive "IT Hong Kong" campaign to promote IT awareness in the community. The overall IT awareness is rapidly increasing. Around 50 000 people have already attended IT awareness programmes organized by the Government. These programmes range from basic IT training to programmes where volunteers serve as IT ambassadors and receive training to train others. Also, there are various IT promotional activities such as the "Digital Day" and "IT Appreciation Course for Parents" held at the district level.

12. This summer, as part of the campaign we have also teamed up with the Hong Kong Computer Society to launch the "IT Easy Link" project which provides help-desk service to answer the public's inquiries on the use of IT and general desktop applications.

Access to Online Services

13. With Government's continual efforts to deliver, enhance and promote electronic options of its services, the public is becoming more and more at ease in accessing Government services on-line. All government web-sites are designed in conformity with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium. We have also teamed up with the Internet Profesionals Association to launch the Web Care Campaign in promoting web accessibility to private companies and NGOs. Our Electronic Services Delivery (ESD) scheme, a winner of the Stockholm Challenge Award last year, was the first of its kind to provide one-stop government and commercial services on the Internet, through dedicated kiosks and PCs. By the middle of 2003, when we plan to roll out the new generation of ID cards based on smart card technology, citizens can opt to have a free digital certificate embedded into the new smart ID card. This will enable them to sign and encrypt their electronic records and messages securely on the open network.

Future Plans

14. We are committed to a digital future and we are gearing ourselves to realising this goal. In this financial year, we have budgeted some $677 million (US$86 million) to support existing programmes and launch new initiatives. These include the setting up of more regional cyber centres, exploring the feasibility of text-to-speech translation services for government web sites and collaborating with IT professional bodies to encourage the private sector to adopt to barrier-free web design methods.

Conclusion

15. While we can be proud of our achievements, we know that the problem of digital divide is an evolving one, and there is more to be done. The theme of this conference - "Technology and Politics in the Information Age" has aptly alluded to some of the issues and I'm sure participants and speakers alike will have a lot of insights and ideas to share. I congratulate the organisers for pulling together such a rich and informed programme and wish your experience in the conference a highly rewarding one.

Thank you.




¹ Professor Herbert H Tsang, Academic Vice-President, HKBU
² Doctor Denise Meredyth and Doctor Julian Thomas, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
³ Professor CHAN Kwok Bun, Director of the David C Lam Institute for East-West Studies, HKBU
⁴ Doctor Vivienne Luk, Director of the Wing Lung Bank International Institute for Business Development, HKBU

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