Opening Remarks by Mr. Stephen Mak, Deputy Government Chief Information Officer, at the Conference on Exploring the Use of Modern ICT with the Academia
25 - 10 - 2006

Professor (David) Cheung, Professor Wong (Kam-fai), Professor (Keith) Chan, Professor (KT) Chan, Distinguished Guests, Colleagues,

Good morning! Welcome to the Conference on Exploring the Use of Modern Information and Communications Technology (ICT) with the Academia. It is our great honour to bring together distinguished speakers from the five local universities to share with us their insights in adopting leading-edge technologies that are highly relevant to public service delivery and also in our daily lives.

The advancement of ICT is progressing at a stunning speed. This allows us to embrace the technologies in enhancing our services as well as providing a platform and infrastructure favourable to the development of our economy and a knowledge-based society.

Rapid economic developments in the Mainland have also boosted both the demand and supply of certain technologies such as ICT. The emphasis placed on technological advancement in China's 11th Five-Year Plan is expected to catalyze this process. With our established position as an international trading and financial centre and the unique advantage of having the Mainland as our hinterland, Hong Kong is well placed to serve as a hub for technological cooperation and trade in high-tech products and services. To unleash the full potential, we should play a proactive role in further developing our human capital and encouraging innovation and technology applications.

Hong Kong's success lies in the convergence of talent, capital, logistical support and information. While academia is the cradle of talents, our local universities have been placing heavy emphasis on their research and development (R&D) of ICT which are valuable assets in maintaining the technological competitiveness of Hong Kong.

The Government is always very supportive to the academia and research institutes in advancing the frontiers of knowledge and technology, and is ready to invest in research infrastructure and encourage collaboration between business and research institutes. Over the past six years, the Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) has funded more than 800 projects carried out by universities, research institutes and enterprises. To support applied R&D, over $2 billion has been earmarked to set up five strategic R&D centres. All these centres exploit applications of ICT, and forge partnerships among the industry, academia, and overseas/Mainland enterprises, in the development, application, and commercialization of new technology.

I also see great potential in adopting the universities' R&D results in e-government services delivery. In fact, for improving work efficiency and service quality, some Government projects have already benefited from consultancy provided by our universities.

While we are strengthening collaboration with the Mainland, particularly the Pan-PRD region and Guangdong Province, through different mechanisms, local universities and research institutes are also actively building up closer partnerships with related institutions in the Mainland for technology development and transfer as well as marketing of technological achievements in various aspects. This facilitates a mix of technological talents of the two areas and brings synergetic effects in the R&D and application deployments beneficial to the community as well as the Government. The establishment of the "Shenzhen - Hong Kong Innovation Circle" (深港創新圈) is one such example.

Besides economic development, there is always a growing expectation from the public, demanding for greater transparency, easier accessibility, and quicker response from government services. We have to review from time to time for the betterment of our services with the aid of ICT. Exploring and delivering our services over different e-channels: going online, wireless or mobile will soon become mandatory.

Since 1998, Government has published three releases of the Digital 21 Strategy, which set out the IT blueprint for Hong Kong with regular updates to keep pace with the changing environments and technology evolvement. The theme of our coming 2007 Digital 21 Strategy is "Continuing to build on our strengths through technology across the community". Public consultation of the new Strategy started last Wednesday (October 18). We have recently appointed non-official members of the Digital 21 Strategy Advisory Committee comprising talents from the industry, academia, business community and the social welfare sector. We look forward to the invaluable inputs from the committee members as well as your feedback for sustaining Hong Kong as a leading digital city.

The Government will continue to set a good example by promoting the application of ICT. As part of the e-Government programme, our new one-stop portal, GovHK, was introduced in September this year. This portal was developed with inputs from over 70 bureaux, departments, public sector organizations and statutory bodies to provide user-friendly, integrated and most importantly, citizen-centric services. The portal is undergoing its Stage 2 development where existing and new online services will be progressively incorporated into GovHK. Your feedback and continued support is vital to the success to its future development. Indeed, during Stage 3 development of the e-Government programme, we look forward to PPP (public-private-partnerships) in which the academia will no doubt play a pivotal role.

Today, we have lined up a galaxy of distinguished speakers from five local universities who will share with you their insights and research results on a range of topics in e-business infrastructure, secure workplace, digital living and working, and wireless technology. I am sure the talks delivered today will inspire you to identify adoption opportunities of modern ICT in your business areas.

Before I close, I would like to thank all our distinguished speakers for their staunch support to this conference and I hope you will find it fruitful and inspiring for your ICT planning. Last but not least I should like to thank WH Cheung and his team, including colleagues in the IT Solution Centre, for staging this innovative and hopefully sustainable event.

Thank you.

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