Speech by Mr. Howard C Dickson, Government Chief Information Officer, at the Joint Luncheon Meeting with Industry Bodies
11 - 3 - 2005

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for the opportunity of addressing you today. Over the past few weeks, your community has been most generous in inviting and welcoming me to Hong Kong.

The flow of business cards has been overwhelming. I would estimate exchanging more business cards in the past 5 weeks that in my career to this point.

I learn some messages

• You have a tradition of welcome
• You like to exchange cards
• There is plethora of IT related organizations
• News of my dimensions has preceded me
• You believe I can provide business from the Government
• You want me to influence some aspect of the IT arena
• You love to party
• You have high expectations
• You are extremely well qualified

Obviously and very legitimately, one of your markets will continue to be related to the activity of IT investment within the HK SAR government's purview.

Many of you would also like to advise and participate in whatever standards and policy setting we pursue on behalf of the Hong Kong community.

Some of you will have advice on how to conduct procurement so that we maximize transparency, openness, competitiveness etc.

Let me offer a reality check. The budgets I oversee and influence are not enough to grow all of your businesses.

There is hope. But according to the popular book on the US Army, Hope is not a method.

Let me digress. When I took a degree in Computer Science, it was one of the first programs offered at the time. Being part of the early programming force implied you came from another discipline and were determined to help organizations apply computing to some of their life-blood activities such as payroll and invoicing.

We continuously wrestled with the status quo established professions from accounting to engineering and I always had my challenges with the organization and methods gnomes. We had a green field, we witnessed enormous take up growth as we built the early applications creating success and devastation along the way. The successes clearly outweighed the failures given the enormous change accepted by society around the globe.

We now have a very large but also very crowded and competitive marketplace. Most universities have several programs focusing on various aspects of computing and communications. Like accounting, engineering, law and medicine we have become established with appropriate professional organizations and standards that come with mature professions. Some of us are even middle aged.

For those of you who watch soccer and hockey these games are well established and highly competitive. The various talking heads seem to agree on one thing and that is that using the open space effectively is what makes the difference.

I come from a country that does a phenomenal amount of its business with its neighbour to the south. Differences aside, there is strong economic interdependence and ties. Business growth in Canada invariably includes finding a way to be effective in the States.

Hong Kong is also positioned with a large neighbour to the north that happens to reflect not only the world's largest marketplace but, according to the growth of Gross National Product, is growing at a rate which is a multiple of that of other large economically advanced nations. We also happen to be part of that country. But being part of China, does not guarantee Hong Kong a substantial market share.

So where should we spend our efforts

1. Market analysis
   • What does the largest market growing faster than anywhere else need ?
   • Apparently the need lies in hugely scalable infrastructure, but the more we can define and quantify the need into specific opportunities, the more successful we can be.
2. Sustainable Competitive Advantages
   • We are close, share language, culture as one of 2 systems within the same country.
   • We have a strong reputation for computing and communications competence.
   • We think issues through and have strength in Architecture I was told yesterday.
3. Competitive Barriers
   • We are not likely to be the low cost producer.
   • We are unlikely to be competitive large-scale manufacturers with our infrastructure costs.
   • Attitudinally, there are remnants of an earlier era. We have a healthy dose of bureaucracy. It is too early for me to point fingers but sometimes I sense we believe rules can replace common sense.
   • We are fragmented, overly competing locally and turning ourselves into least cost, utility suppliers.
   • Many of us lack critical mass.

So what do we do.

Three things I suggest, there may be more.

1. Look north to understand the market and learn where the open space opportunities are.
2. Look east, south, west to understand what they are trying to sell to whom in Mainland China.
3. Become the world's most effective, well-positioned and integrated consulting firm, specializing on Mainland China.

Since time began, big outperforms small. Only the larger entities have the depth, reach and staying power. Whether it is directed tenders without competition or highly open transparent procurement exercises, only the big can survive the siege. I am talking about the credible volume, not the Robin Hood exceptions.

We are here to help in understanding and penetrating the Mainland market, becoming part of the global technology sale and implementation and in enabling the Hong Kong computing industry to become a more integrated virtual force.

How do we do this? Where can we help? Come and tell us!

Thank you.

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