Welcome Speech by Mr. Stephen Mak, Deputy Government Chief Information Officer at the IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering 2007
24 October 2007

Dr. Tan, Distinguished Speakers, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good Morning! It's my great pleasure to welcome you all to this IEEE International Conference on E-Business Engineering (ICEBE) 2007. I understand that in 2005, this Conference was held in Beijing and last year, it was held in Shanghai. This year, Hong Kong has the honour to host the event here. The parallel International Workshops on Service-Oriented System Engineering (SOSE), Service-Oriented Architecture, Integration and Collaboration (SOAIC) and Knowledge Management (SOKM) make this event ever so rich in content and for that I sincerely congratulate the organizers for their success and efforts and your participation.

Today, leading economies are fast developing into information societies, in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, use and manipulation of information is a significant economic, cultural and socio-political activity. By the same token, 'informatisation' or the effects of it has often been compared with 'industrialisation' that had made significant changes to social and economic development. Technological innovation has been a major force in facilitating these changes, often for the better. I'm pleased to note that the programme for this year's conference covers such a wide spectrum of topics including e-Business service models and service management, mobile and wireless technologies, workflow and document exchange, RFID and sensor technology, security and data privacy, and knowledge management. The continuous development of an advanced digital economy relies on the joint efforts of all stakeholders in the timely and innovative adoption of these technologies and industry best practices. I'm sure the collective wisdom and efforts of such an elite group of experts we have gathered for this Conference will lead to outcomes that are so well encapsulated in the themes.

I should like to take a few minutes to share with you some information pertaining to ICT development in Hong Kong that will resonate with the various themes of this Conference.

In order to move Hong Kong towards a knowledge-based, information society, we have set out five strategic areas of focus under our Digital 21 Strategy. They are: promoting advanced technology and innovation, developing HK into a hub for technological co-operation and trade, enabling the next generation of public services and building an inclusive knowledge based society. This Strategy was first conceived in 1998 and has undergone successive enhancements every few years to reflect changes in user needs, technological advances and of course e-business engineering principles and practices.

Through the concerted efforts of the government, businesses, industries, academia and citizens, Hong Kong has achieved high rates of mobile phone penetration, personal computers and broadband connectivity, e-business and e-government adoption and ICT investment in the private and public sectors. To enhance the delivery of electronic government services, we have re-engineered our e-government platform to a service-oriented architecture, and with the launch of the "GovHK" portal, we provide one-stop access to clusters of government information and services to our citizens.

We will build on our existing strengths and harness the opportunities opened up by new technologies and the rapid technological development in the Mainland. Our reliable information technology and telecommunications infrastructure will continue to provide us with the springboard to move fast forward towards an advanced digital economy. We can aspire to become a hub for technological cooperation and trade by developing into a premier location for regional transaction hubs and data centres, serving businesses in Hong Kong, and the Pan-Pearl River Delta region. In doing so, opportunities abound for us to review and adopt "green" practices in the use of information and communications technology.

We also believe that Hong Kong has the infrastructural support and user need to develop into a "wireless city". Government has therefore been leading by example in the adoption of wireless and mobile applications for delivering public services, while at the same time facilitating the private sector in rolling out such applications and services through streamlining licensing and other administrative regimes. One other important development in this area relates to the use of RFID in applications ranging from logistics, food safety, workflow and document tracing, healthcare and transportation, to name a few.

We are also keenly aware of the implications of new usage models of the Internet. The advent of Web 2.0 (and no doubt its successors) represents major shifts in the user community's propensity to share information, adopt light-weight business models, engage in collaborative working and social networking, etc that will call for new engineering concepts and implementation for e-business planners and providers.

All these make conferences like this so necessary and useful.

Finally, I would like to thank the organizers again for choosing Hong Kong to stage this Conference and congratulate them for arranging such a rich programme. I wish you will all find it rewarding. For our overseas participants in particular, I wish you a most enjoyable stay here and encourage you to take some time out at the margins of the Conference for some shopping and sightseeing.

Thank you.

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