Archive - Year 2002

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Archive > Year 2002 > ITSD > Speeches and Presentations in Year 2002

Speech by Mr. Alan Wong, Director of Information Technology Services at the "ITSD Networking Hour" on
27 - 02 - 2002

Friends from the Industry, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am pleased to welcome you all to the "ITSD Networking Hour" at the beginning of the Chinese New Year - the Year of the Horse.

Over the years, the main thrust of the work of ITSD has been to provide central IT advice and support to our user bureaux/departments. With the development of the Digital 21 Strategy and the E-government initiative, ITSD will be re-engineered to refocus our work and assume an enhanced role. We will place greater emphasis on developing Hong Kong's information infrastructure, tackling new subject areas of IT in the community, exploiting new technologies and strengthening the liaison with the local IT industry. We will assist our user bureaux/departments to assume more responsibilities on the planning, development, implementation and administration of IT facilities.

At the bureau/department level, fundamental e-business transformation is required to enable bureaux and departments to develop an e-government. Specifically they will need to set up their IT Management Units (ITMUs) to step up the pace of infusing IT and e-business best practices in their normal business planning and operations. We believe there is room for bureaux/departments to assume much greater ownership of IT and to reduce the dependency on ITSD. With the integration of the ITMUs in the senior management team of bureaux/departments, they will function as Chief Information Officers (CIO) advising their bureau/department on the employment of IT in their core business processes.

ITSD will provide or help bureaux/departments source the professional IT staff resources in setting up their ITMUs and establishing the necessary standards and governance systems for management of IT. We suggest that a core team of ITSD's staff should staff the ITMU. Apart from, or in addition to the core team, bureaux/departments can contract-in private sector IT professionals either as non-civil servants or from ITSD's "body shops". In addition, from mid-2002 we shall have in place an Information Technology Professional Services Arrangement, to facilitate bureaux/departments to outsource their projects to the IT industry. ITMUs will have direct access to both these avenues.

So far 14 bureaux/departments have established their ITMUs. In the next 1-2 years, ITSD will work with many more bureaux/departments to establish ITMUs and take ownership on IT. Our target is to set up more ITMUs for as many as 20 bureaux/departments this year.

Besides institutional changes, we are also going to streamline our IT project delivery process. Traditionally, our typical IT projects are comprised of five phases - Project Request, Feasibility Study, System Analysis & Design, Implementation and Review. In order to speed up the project delivery timeframe, bureaux/departments will be encouraged to exercise flexibility and to combine phases whenever appropriate. Equally important is the flexibility in adopting the system development methodologies. It will be up to the head of the bureau/department to decide whether and to what extent these methodologies should be adopted when developing specific IT systems.

I am personally steering the above changes. As the changes are being materialised, new working procedures and relationships will have to be established but inevitably the new business model of e-Government will take time to fall into place and operate smoothly. I therefore appeal to you all for your support, understanding and tolerance during this transitional period as you may be affected in one way or another. And if you encounter any problem, please kindly let us know as your feed back is indispensable for us to achieve our change objectives.

A recent survey has revealed that e-commerce is still not very popular in Hong Kong. This can be attributed to the community's security and privacy concerns. To a certain extent, the lack of e-options provided by businesses, SMEs in particular, is one of the reasons. It is the Government's policy to support the development of our SMEs. To help our SMEs, the Government has recently set up four funding schemes. I am very pleased that Mr. Eugene Fung, my colleague from the Trade & Industry Department, is going to speak to you on these schemes which should help SMEs to upgrade their IT systems and to move into the digital age readily.

Now, may I call upon my Deputy Director and Assistant Directors to come on stage to join me in a toast.

To the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong; and

To the health of all our friends.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Cheers!

- ENDS -

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