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Archive > Year 2005 > OGCIO > Speeches and Presentations in Year 2005

Welcome Speech by Mr. Howard C Dickson, Government Chief Information Officer, at Evolution of e-Government Conference
22 - 6 - 2005

Distinguished Guest Speakers, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good Afternoon!

2. I have great pleasure in welcoming you to the second part of the Evolution of e-Government Conference. This morning, we had very useful exchanges and benefited a lot from the experiences and perspectives shared by our guest speakers. I am sure this will continue to the afternoon.

Early impressions

3. Since I am given this opportunity to give a welcome speech, I would like to share some of my early impressions of Hong Kong. This is my fifth month here. I find Hong Kong a fascinating high-energy and high-density city, as characterized by the number and density of people, vehicles and taxi drivers who remind us of those "bats of hell". Apart from these, there are actually a lot of similarities between the Hong Kong Government and the government that I worked for before. Like all governments, there seems to have a little too much faith that the rules and regulations of the past will guide and empower us in the future. In both cultures as a senior manager, I have had the freedom to do most things except buy something or hire someone. In both places, there are extensive staff and complex practices aimed at ensuring value for money, absence of corruption and transparency over all staffing and procurement decisions.

4. As I joined this government, we already have a solid foundation of IT and e-government development as laid down by the Digital 21 Strategy. Some important technical and policy basics have been achieved. We have made some interesting strides with the Electronic Transactions Ordinance, provisioning of PKI and creation of an online equivalent for 90% of our services. They are remarkable achievements, though some of these directions need an update in the thinking based on experiences and market forces currently in play.

5. However, my sense is that the focus of action remains largely departmental versus, where the culture is still to implement e-government within departmental silos. The concepts of "whole of government" and "citizen-centric" are emerging but not prevalently adopted. The need for business transformation is recognized but transformation is not widely in practice. E-government through the Digital 21 Strategy creates an imagery few can argue with. However, without a sound, convincing business case it will be tough to expect the departments to move beyond their current stove-pipe views of their own jurisdictions of challenge. We need more joined up services to be in play.

Business Case for Transformation

6. Like many other governments, Hong Kong has invested a lot into e-government. What is the business case for it? What is the expected value/benefit? To what extent are our e-options utilized? Have we achieved the results intended? How do these results compare with those achieved by other governments? Is the case for transformation compelling or just optional?

7. E-government is far more of an issue of "how do our citizens want to be served" and "how do we want to provide those services". This is about bringing citizens closer to the government through greater transparency and more enlightened services, in order to earn a greater degree of trust. There are solid cost business cases for e-government, but for me the bottom line is one of citizen engagement and trust. This requires a lot of marketing savvy and a great deal of business process re-engineering. Information technology is an important enabler but the driving force is attitudinal change among ourselves.

Issues for Action

8. As the GCIO, I see that I will have to address a number of issues. Firstly, I will have to implement a series of challenging initiatives and projects already committed under the current Digital 21 Strategy programme. This includes promoting e-commerce development, putting in place and promoting an environment conducive to the development of the Digital Entertainment industry, raising the overall IT literacy in the SME community which accounts for 98% of our businesses and bridging the digital divide in the wider community. In terms of e-government, we will, in conjunction with departments, drive forward more joined-up and government-wide initiatives like the Property Information Hub and e-procurement.

9. Secondly, we need to develop a citizen positioning strategy under which we would put citizens at the center of our service provision. To do this, we need a clear picture of citizens' attitudes and values with respect to the elements of service delivery that already exist and their aspirations for future enhancements. Understanding our customers and meeting their preferences will be the key. With the help of consultants, OGCIO is now developing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Strategy and a Practical CRM Guide which will help departments in better understanding the customers' needs and preferences, reviewing their current service offerings, identifying enhancements in service offerings based on customers' needs and preferences and providing new service offering through adoption of CRM practices.

10. Thirdly, we are developing a clustering strategy for the provision of e-government services. The new strategy will be an improvement to the current ESD model where all services are put into the same generic platform. The new strategy seeks to organize e-government services into different service clusters, e.g. health, education, transport, citizen and household, etc, while at the same time addressing the needs of different customer segments, e.g. youth, elderly, etc. The customer-centric clusters will help increase the utilization of e-services. Working with a number of key service providing departments, we are formulating a roadmap for implementing this new strategy. We hope to be able to launch the first batch of clustered services in 2006.

11. Fourthly, it is essential that we build a cost-benefit business case for e-government. For any e-government initiative to produce value to citizens and to government, process re-engineering and business transformation are the key. In this respect, I will work with departments to align their e-government initiatives with their business objectives. While OGCIO will adopt a proactive and facilitating role in these e-government initiatives, it is my experience that transformation initiatives without the full business support and ownership are doomed to fail. So, your efforts to develop the business case for e-government initiatives and lead related transformation are of paramount importance. To enable the Government to better assess the cost-effectiveness of e-government initiatives, we will also commission a study later this year to review the IT project funding mechanism and recommend methodologies and tools to identify and measure the benefits attributable to e-government initiatives. As I said before, there should be a good business case for e-government and, in many cases, it lies with increased citizen engagement and satisfaction and bringing citizens closer to the government. We will ensure that our project funding mechanism properly recognizes these benefits of IT enabled transformation initiatives which are less tangible or intangible in nature and measurement is less amenable. Though intangible, these benefits are as important as the tangible benefits in meeting community expectations and in ensuring that Hong Kong remains competitive and a strong IT player in the international arena.

Concluding Remarks

12. So I am looking forward to the next couple of years as we step up to the challenge of offering leadership to the changes and challenges ahead of us. But more than ever, we are going to need your support.

13. Before I close, I have to thank the co-sponsors for organizing this successful event. I hope you would enjoy the rest of the progamme today.

14. Thank you.

- ENDS -

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