After spending billions of dollars on IT projects in the last few years, the Hong Kong government is planning to adopt stringent new guidelines to try to control the effectiveness of future projects and focus the minds of officials on 'return on investment' and other such market-driven ideas.
The Finance Committee of the Legislative Council is the approving authority for e-government projects that cost more than HK$10 million; for smaller projects, authority is delegated to the GCIO's (Government Chief Information Officer's) Department.
The new policy will be drawn up by an e-government steering committee to be headed by Financial Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen and supported by the Office of the GCIO. "We would like all the government bureaus and departments to be aware of the government's new expectations of their performance. We don't want to adopt IT for the sake of adopting. We want IT to be a cost-saving device. We want IT to enhance our productivity. There is certainly room for us to do better," said GCIO Alan Wong Chi-kong.
Mr Wong said the next wave of e-government initiatives - as outlined in the 2004 Digital 21 Strategy - must set "utilisation targets". The government has created many electronic services, which it says are used by about 70% of internet users, of whom more than 60% rate the electronic options as "very good" or "quite good". Some of the most popular electronic options are payment of government bills, marriage appointment booking and submission of trade-related documents.
Still, Mr Wong said the ratio of transactions to the number of government services put online - more than 1,200 to date - remained "less than we desired". The government is planning a phased substitution of manned counters in departments with electronic services, such as 24-hour call centres. As part of a business process re-engineering, Mr Wong said the government would like to see more departments working together to streamline processes.
.
Network Tweets
Network BlogsContent
provided by
|
Archive | Resources | Partners | Site Map | Links | Newsletter Archive | Contact | RSS Feeds | About | Syndication | Advertising & Marketing | Recruitment | Terms & Conditions | Privacy & Cookies
Copyright © 2012 - All Rights Reserved - Tax-News.com
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Tax-News.com has taken reasonable care in sourcing and presenting the information contained on this site, but accepts no responsibility for any financial or other loss or damage that may result from its use. In particular, users of the site are advised to take appropriate professional advice before committing themselves to involvement in offshore jurisdictions, offshore trusts or offshore investments.
Write a comment