Working Report of

Legislative Councilor Samson Tam Wai Ho

(Information Technology)

(December 2009)

I. Focus Updates

1.    Successfully fought for the resumption of recruitment of Government IT posts
       成功爭取政府恢復招聘IT職位  

In order to fight for the resumption of recruitment of Government IT posts, I met several times with the relevant labor union representatives and officers of OGCIO in the past year. I also wrote to Ms Denise Yue, Secretary for the Civil Service and asked the Government to address the problem of shortage of IT personnel in the Government departments and to expeditiously implement the full resumption of recruitment of IT jobs. With concerted effort, I am glad that the Government finally turned on the green light and resumed the recruitment of Analyst/Programmer II in mid-December after freezing the recruitment for 11 years. I hope that the Government would speed up the resumption of open recruitment of the remaining two IT posts and also increase the number of vacancies, so that there would be enough manpower within the Government to implement Government IT projects.

2.  Promoted the establishment of “Shenzhen-Hong Kong Association Alliance for Science and Technology” 
     推動成立「深港科技社團聯盟」

It has been my conviction that strengthening Hong Kong-Shenzhen co-operation on technology is definitely the pragmatic way for Hong Kong to advance in technology. As we all know, the development of science and technology in Shenzhen has been strongly promoted in recent years and there are many large technology companies there. In the past, the Hong Kong and Shenzhen IT sector has maintained some contact, yet there is no concrete platform for communication. Now with the effort from all parties, the “Shenzhen-Hong Kong Association Alliance for Science and Technology” has been established. Together with friends from many IT associations in Hong Kong, I attended the “Hong Kong-Shenzhen IT sector Annual Meeting” on 18 December. I also witnessed the establishment of the Alliance in the capacity as the Honorary Chairman. I do hope that through regular exchanges and co-operation activities organized by the Alliance on this open interactive platform, and making use of the respective strengths of the two cities, the development of creative and technology industries in this region would be further promoted.

3.  IT sector and Welfare sector are concerned about cyber-bullying
     IT界和社福界關注網上欺凌

In recent years, there have been more and more cyber-bullying incidents which have aroused wide attention in the society. For this reason, I held a roundtable forum: “Concerning Cyber-bullying”. Apart from the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Mr. Roderick Woo, there were representatives from youth groups, welfare sector, parents and academics in the forum. The participants discussed the definition of “cyber-bullying” and how to stop bullying incidents happen again. They considered that there should be clear distinction between cyber-bullying and cyber-harassment, and tackled the problem by various sectors, such as students, parents, schools and social workers. The Government should allocate more resources and actively promote online social work, so as to achieve a good cyber culture and build a healthy cyber world. 

4.  IT sector and Environmental Industry proposed to develop Kai Tak into energy-saving demonstration zone
     IT界和環保業界建議將啟德發展成節能示範區

Our office organized an “IT and Environmental Protection” roundtable to discuss how to make good use of IT to promote environmental protection. We invited the Permanent Secretary for the Environment Bureau, Ms Anissa Wong to join the discussion with our industry friends. The suggestion from the IT industry was to develop Kai Tak Area into the first energy-saving demonstration zone in Hong Kong. In addition to the cooling system, various energy-saving facilities should be installed in the demonstration zone. The electricity and water supply should be controlled by an intelligent system to reduce wastage. I hope that the relevant authorities would seriously study and implement the proposal as soon as possible. Besides, the industry generally supported the development of the EcoPark in Tuen Mun and the Government should provide financial incentives to attract more high-tech overseas companies to come to Hong Kong, thus helping to promote environmental industry development. 

5.   Expert Group meeting to discuss opportunities brought by the change of internationalized domain names
     專家顧問小組開會討論國際化域名變革給業界帶來的機遇

The Panel on Information Technology and Broadcasting of LegCo has included the “Progress update of the review of the Administration of Internet domain names in Hong Kong” in this month’s meeting agenda. On the other hand, ICANN which is responsible for global Internet domain names administration also announced earlier that they had started to accept non-Latin scripts for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) application. Hence, I invited representatives from HKIRC and DotAsia to join an Expert Group meeting to discuss this matter.

Some participants suggested that Hong Kong could make reference to practices in other countries, and make “registry” (domain name registration management) and “registrar “ (domain name registration service) separately, so as to allow more local SMEs to participate in registrar service. At the same time, our IT industry should seriously consider how to enhance competitiveness and efficiency of local registrar service.

II. Articles Sharing (Chinese Only)

1. 為香港旅遊業增值
   《星島日報》 2009年12月31日

2. 工作與生活平衡的新職業文化
   《文匯報》 2009年12月24日

3. 小鹿殺入荷里活
   《星島日報》2009年12月24日

4. 快樂小王子
   《星島日報》2009年12月17日

5. 只換慳電膽遠遠不夠
   《星島日報》2009年12月10日

6. 香港電視產業的明天
   《星島日報》2009年12月3日