Opening Remarks by Mr. Stephen Mak, Deputy Government Chief Information Officer, at the Forum on Electronic Transaction Development - Opportunities for IT industry & Users
08 - 03 - 2006

Dr Cheung, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good afternoon! I am very pleased to be here to address you at this Forum on Electronic Transaction Development - Opportunities for IT Industry & Users, and to share some of my thoughts with you.

[Benefits of adopting a Common Data Model and UN/CEFACT Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS) related standards]

Imagine that an airline operator preparing cargo manifests in one format and both the exporting and the importing customs administrations can receive the same manifests in the formats that they demand (e.g. the airline operator prepares the document in UN/EDIFACT format, but the customs administrations can receive the document in both ANSI X.12 and XML formats). How much cost saving, efficiency gain and error reduction can this bring?

Imagine that an SME seller can prepare invoices in one format and big buyers can receive the invoices in the formats that they demand (e.g. to prepare in Microsoft EXCEL but receive in ANSI X.12, EDIFACT, XML). What new business opportunities are open to the SME seller?

The examples I just mentioned might have been fictitious in the past, but several important announcements made in the past nine months have brought them close to reality. More importantly, the point I would like to drive home is that sector-specific standards are providing the impetus for more innovative and function-rich electronic transactions.

[Recent announcement of World Customs Organizations Customs Data Model that enable customs administrations and trade/transport industries to work on the same superset of data elements]

In June last year, the World Customs Organization (WCO) Council endorsed the Customs Data Model version 2.0. The Customs Data Model covers customs border regulatory data for the import and export of cargo and conveyances. In other words, if an airline operator has on hand all the 264 data elements that are specified in the Customs Data Model, all 169 WCO members can pick out the data elements that they want. Currently, the US, Canada and Australian customs administrations have been mapping their data requirements to or harmonizing their data requirements with the Customs Data Model.

[Recent announcements of two important UN/CEFACT Core Components Technical Specification related standards that enable transformation of the same document from one format to another.]

Although customs administrations may in the future align their data requirements to the Customs Data Model, they may still demand them in different formats (e.g. ANSI X.12, EDIFACT, XML) for practical reasons. Therefore it is still necessary for the airline operators to present the same data in different formats, or to transform from one format to another, or to make the different formats interoperable. In fact, the UN/CEFACT Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS) related standards, together with other existing ones, make such a transformation feasible.

[The library of "Canonical Document Structures" open more business opportunities for IT Industries]

You may already be aware that the Digital Trade and Transportation Network (DTTN) pilot service was launched at the end of 2005. More than 40 organizations are participating in the pilot and a library of "Canonical Document Structures" for 88 B2B document types is available for adoption. This library is also based on similar standards and serves like a common data model for the supply chains.

It not only enables a logistics organization to reach more trading partners more readily by using just one document format but also enables the IT industries to develop solutions that are by default interoperable. Thus we should treasure even more the library of "Canonical Document Structures" available to us at no cost.

[Conclusion]

I can go on and on to cite more examples where electronic transactions enabling standards are bringing value to ICT and e-commerce development. But suffice to say that the HKSAR Government is fully committed to the adoption of open and interoperable standards, based the Interoperability Framework that we have established. In our next wave of E-government service delivery strategy, we will be progressively adopting a cluster approach, with more and more possibilities for government transactions interfacing with those of non-government sectors. No doubt the many emerging standards and solutions that we are going sample in the Forum today will provide a lot of insights for our reference. I congratulate the Center for E-commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID) for staging this event, and wish the Forum every success.

Thank you.

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