E-government to drive Hong Kong's IT development
26 - 02 - 2003

The Government will continue to drive forward Hong Kong's information technology (IT) development by building an effective and efficient E-government.

The above remarks were made by the Director of Information Technology Services, Mr Alan Wong Chi-kong, at the "From e-Government to e-Security Conference 2003" in Hong Kong today (February 26).

Jointly organised by the Hong Kong University School of Professional and Continuing Education and the Hong Kong Productivity Council, the two-day conference aims at benchmarking the up-to-date development of e-Government and e-Security in Asia.

Mr Wong was the keynote speaker for the event and exchanged views on these two topics with other senior government officials, academics and experts.

Mr Wong told the participants that Hong Kong had been an early IT adopter and was now at the forefront of IT development.

However, the Government will not stand still and will carry on its efforts in the building of an E-government to achieve the goal of its "Digital 21 Strategy", which is to position Hong Kong as a leading e-business community and digital city in the globally connected world.

The Government has been making substantial investment in its IT infrastructure and systems. In the current financial year, $1.75 billion has been earmarked to meet the necessary capital expenditure in IT projects.

"In a tight budget year, these figures reflect our strong commitment to sustain a continuous roll-out of government IT projects," Mr Wong pointed out.

To modernise government operations by using IT and promote the wider adoption of e-business in the community, the Government targets to increase the percentage of e-option of government services to 90 per cent by the end of this year.

At present, over 80 per cent of government services amenable to the electronic mode of delivery are already provided with an e-option.

"Our E-government services are characterised by customer-centred transactional processing capability. Our citizens and businesses can interact with the Government and the services they required are at their fingertips with a user-friendly interface," Mr Wong said.

The Government has adopted a pioneering public-private partnership approach in driving its E-government initiatives, thus enabling it to capture the best available services in the market and optimise cost- effective benefits.

Examples of this kind of partnership arrangements include the Electronic Service Delivery Scheme, the Electronic Tendering System and Tradelink.

Mr Wong also introduced to the participants other E-government flagship projects. To promote E-logistics, the Government has been actively exploring the feasibility of developing a Digital Trade and Transport Network System, which is an open and neutral e-platform for exchange of data among logistics players in the supply chain.

Meanwhile, the replacement of the Multi-Application Smart ID card will be rolled out in mid 2003. Besides value-added functions such as library card and digital certificate, the new Smart ID card will provide a platform for automatic passenger clearance at border points.

Turning to information infrastructure, Mr Wong said, "We are carrying out a number of enhancements to the Government's IT infrastructure."

These include improving the accessibility to computer facilities in the civil service, upgrading the Government Backbone Network for broadband connections and establishing a common transaction platform for electronic service delivery.

Leveraging on the strengths of the infrastructure, the Government will strive for exploitation and adoption of enabling technologies, such as Extensible Markup Language, wireless, smart card and the next generation of Internet technologies.

Mr Wong emphasised that as information security was an important pillar to establish reliable and secure environment for e-business to prosper, the Government had also launched various initiatives to enhance its e-security infrastructure and facilities.

They include a clear legal framework through the enactment of the Electronic Transactions Ordinance, an architectural framework for secure e-commerce and the operation of the Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Co-ordination Centre.

To raise public awareness in information security, the Government has collaborated with other agencies to organise promotional activities and also set up a one-stop portal to enhance public access to related resources and updates.

The Assistant Director of Information Technology Services, Mr John Wong Shak-chuen, will also speak at the conference tomorrow (February 27) and share with the participants the government policies on e- Security.

- END -