The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government said that with 81 percent of e-government targets reached at the end of 2002, as many as 1,656 civil service posts have been saved.
The number of posts saved through staff redeployment and cutting positions amounted to 1,345, and those saved through natural wastage and voluntary retirement and others amounted to 311. Up to 624 million Hong Kong dollars (US$80 million) has been saved, a document issued Monday by the HKSAR Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau said.
Stephen Mak, deputy director of the HKSAR Information Technology Service Department, said, "We have set an overall e-government target to provide e-option for 90 percent of public services amenable to the electronic mode of service delivery by the end of 2003."
Among such services, the e-options for the search of cases of bankruptcy and compulsory winding-up of companies, submission of application for civil service posts in government recruitment exercise and search for job by disabled job seekers were rolled out in the second half of 2002, said the document presented to the Legislative Council's Panel on Information Technology and Broadcasting by Michael Stone, e-government coordinator of the HKSAR government.
The HKSAR government also has a target on e-procurement to carry out 80 percent of government tenders through the electronic means by the end of 2003.
In view of the current personal computer penetration rate and internet penetration rate standing at 54.4 percent and 44.2 percent respectively in HKSAR's business sector, the HKSAR government will beef up efforts in promoting the use of IT, particularly in the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), according to another document released by the HKSAR Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau.
"The survey conducted in 2002 revealed that only 3 to 4 percent of the establishments not using PCs or the Internet had planned to install PC or connect to Internet, and the most commonly cited reasons for not planning to do so were no business benefits to do so (70 percent of those establishments) and lack of personnel familiar with PCs/Internet (30 percent)," it said.
W. H. Cheung, chief systems manager of the HKSAR Information Technology Services Department, said the government will rigorously pursue a series of funded projects, including setting up IT promotion and support teams, provision of hotline advisory services, and publishing an IT solutions directory for SMEs to popularize the use of computers amongst the SMEs.
(Xinhua News Agency February 11, 2003)
