SITB's speech on Innovation Award

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Following is the full text of a speech delivered by the Secretary for Information Technology and Broadcasting, Mr K C Kwong at the VTECH IT Innovation Award Launching Ceremony today (Thursday):

Mr. Wong, Ladies & Gentlemen,

I am delighted to be here today to officiate at the launching ceremony of the VTECH IT Innovation Award. To tie in with the Chief Executive's Policy Address announced last month, we have also published the Government Information Technology strategy. One of the key elements of the strategy is to strongly promote the understanding and application of IT in the community. Therefore the launching of the VTECH IT Innovation Award is particularly meaningful in the context of our strategy. The Award will take the form of an Inter-School Web Site Design Competition this year. The objective of establishing this Award is to enhance the knowledge and strengthen the experience of our students in IT application, and through web site design of participating students on the theme of the competition : "We are Hong Kong - City of Life", to promote tourism of Hong Kong.

The first year competition of the VTECH IT Innovation Award is organised by the VTECH Holdings Ltd, and is co-organised by the Information Technology & Broadcasting Bureau, Education Department and the Hong Kong Tourist Association, with the Hong Kong School Net as the technical adviser. It is a tripartite collaboration among the Government, the industry and the academia in promoting IT development in Hong Kong. The Award will help us develop our future IT expertise and human resources, and encourage a wider use of IT within the community.

The Chief Executive, in his second Policy Address last month, spelt out his vision for positioning Hong Kong to become a leading city in the world for the development and application of IT, especially in electronic commerce and software engineering. Activities like this Award help us in laying down a good foundation for implementing the vision of the Chief Executive. By taking part in the competition, students will have more opportunities to apply their software development knowledge and skills and to fully use their imagination and creativity in exploring Internet web site design, thereby promoting the use of the Internet and encouraging participation in electronic business.

We fully recognise that we need to invest in our human capital for meeting the challenge of tomorrow. We will continue to give education top priority in resource allocation. In 1999-2000, education will continue to be the single biggest item of recurrent expenditure in our Budget, at nearly $44 billion. To promote further the use of IT in education, Government has earmarked funds in the coming year, totalling $630 million, in order to :

* provide more IT training for teachers;

* enhance the accessibility of all students to computers and the Internet;

* supply technical back-up to help schools manage their IT facilities; and

* employ some 250 IT coordinators to help public sector schools develop and implement their IT-based initiatives.

Specifically, Government plans to equip our secondary schools with 82 computers each and primary schools with 40 computers each, and to connect all the schools to the Internet. Separately, the Cyber Campus project organised by the Chinese University of Hong Kong has commenced and it will initially link up 250 secondary and 100 primary schools, thereby allowing our universities, secondary and primary schools to interact and to share their resources through the Internet.

All these work and resource allocation aim to ensure that our next generation will be equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary to harness and apply IT to the advantage of Hong Kong, and to enhance our competitive position.

I am confident that our students will find this Inter-School Web Site Design Competition of the VTECH IT Innovation Award a very worthwhile learning experience and will also be able to have fun in the process. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the VTECH Holdings Ltd for the efforts it has made in promoting IT development in Hong Kong and wish that the Award would be held again next year. I also hope that more opportunities of such a nature would be made available so as to help train and develop the IT skills of our next generation in order to make Hong Kong a leading digital city in the globally connected world of the 21st century.

Thank you.

End/Thursday, November 12, 1998

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