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Central Government, Policy

OGCIO reveals 2010 priorities at FutureGov Forum HK

By Robin Hicks | 9 March 2010

Hong Kong’s Government Chief Information Officer Jeremy Godfrey laid out his department’s plans for this year and beyond at the FutureGov Forum Hong Kong this week (Tuesday, March 9th 2010). Joined-up government, driving greater efficiencies, exploiting opportunities of cloud and social computing, and using IT to tackle climate change will be the “big five policy drivers” for Godfrey’s team in 2010.

“We need to be more strategic in how we use IT in government as a whole,” Godfrey told delegates at the Grand Hyatt hotel. “We need to look more carefully at governance; which projects we should be doing and how resources should be allocated. We also need to look at common data standards and our interoperability framework which may not be broad enough for what we want to achieve.”

On the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer’s (OGCIO) “ambitious agenda” was the development of a government-wide human resource management (HRM) platform, potentially with a “cloud-like” online component for creating HRM applications. “It will be quicker, more efficient and cheaper than individual departments developing their own [HRM] systems,” he said.

Mobile government services will also be a focus. “There’s a lot of be said for a single government widget that would provide access all services,” Godfrey said. However, he pointed out that different operating systems, phone models, and screen sizes present difficulties. “It’s not practical for all departments to tackle these concerns themselves. We need the right architecture for the front-end interface to work with our back-end systems.”

Information management and collaboration will figure heavily too. “We need to see how we can share common IT structures across government, how knowledge workers can collaborate on the creation of documents. OGCIO is running a “paperless meeting” pilot project that Godfrey declared has “gone a bit viral”. What started as a pilot for one government committee to test the user interface has “taken off on its own,” he said.

OGCIO is looking at how citizen queries and complaints are answered quicker. “We’re getting much better at this. Through the use of social platforms we can now get agreed answers to questions within 24 hours. That’s a huge improvement on the old system that relied on meetings and emails.”

“E-Engagement” is another key focus, although Godfrey insisted that web 2.0 platforms should be embraced with caution. “E-engagement is not an end in itself. You need to understand what your engagement strategy is before you think e-engagement. It’s too early to set prescriptive top-down rules on how to use social media. We need to find success stories and learn from them.”

Godfrey proposed the possibility of creating a “central enabling platform” for social media. “How about a government YouTube channel, or using some form of webcasting live video chat facility?” he mused. “The central procurement of web chat services could make sense.”

Data sharing will be a strategic priority too. However, Godfrey conceded that were challenges to be overcome concerning data ownership. “Historically, government has charged for its data. But should we? No one should have a monopoly on data. We think there will need to be a change in policy because when we should, and when we should not, charge for information is becoming increasingly complicated,” he said.

OGCIO will be running pilot projects in the coming months using “uncontroversial data” to determine policy on open government data. “We are heading towards a more liberal policy approach,” he said.

Climate change was the final part of OGCIO’s agenda. “We have come under considerable lobbying pressure from the IT industry to look at green IT, which is not mentioned at all in the current version of the Hong Kong government’s Digital 21 Strategy. Data centre consolidation and automation will shrink IT’s carbon footprint, but more important is how IT is used to green other sectors.”

Godfrey gave as an example how the Hong Kong Immigration Department could share live real-time data with the MTR subway network to optimise train scheduling and cut down on power use.

However, Godfrey’s prime objective was common for all governments in Asia. “We need to work harder to satisfy our customers. What people want is to see joined up government. They don’t want different departments to do effectively the same thing.”

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