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Following is the full text of the speech by the Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, Mr Henry Tang, at the Opening Ceremony of Hong Kong International Computer Conference 2002 today (September 19): (English only)
Daniel, Thomas, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning. I am very pleased to attend the opening ceremony of the Hong Kong International Computer Conference 2002. On the 25th anniversary of the Conference, I must congratulate the organiser, the Hong Kong Computer Society, for its vision to have started, quite ahead of its time, the conference a quarter of a century ago, and for its unfailing, and indeed successful, efforts over the years to establish the conference as a major, prestigious, annual IT event in Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific region.
The last two years have witnessed a very difficult period for the IT industry in the world. The bursting of the dotcom bubble, its fallout on the capital market, the collapse of investor confidence, the downturn of the telecommunications industry and corporate issues in America have brought with them a fundamental skepticism about the promises of IT. This pessimistic sentiment affects not only the public at large, but is impacting adversely on corporate investment and spending. The shrinkage in corporate IT spending is in turn directly reducing business opportunities for the IT and communications industries.
However, characteristic of its vision, the organiser has chosen "Leveraging on IT to compete in the New Economy" as the theme for this year's conference. I cannot agree with you more. IT will be with us in the years to come. It will, as it has proven to be in the last decade, continue to provide much of the impetus for productivity enhancement and innovation. Manifesting itself as infrastructure, processes, products and services, IT will continue to provide us with enormous business opportunities as we have seen them in the last decade.
Let's go back to the basics, instead of being conditioned excessively by our unpleasant experience in the last two years. We will see the promises, potentials and prospects in the years to come, benefiting not only global business development, but also the IT industry and the professionals in this dynamic and exciting field.
The Government is fully committed to driving forward IT development in Hong Kong.
We have clearly set out our own blueprint on how to take IT forward in a 21st Century knowledge-based economy, and have been implementing the various programmes in this blueprint, which we name "Digital 21", with much vigour and commitment. We have also been investing heavily in IT education, and applied research and development in IT and related technologies in our universities and industry support organisations.
We are actively supporting our IT industry to compete in this very challenging time that we know very well. We do this through Government investment in IT at a time when the private sector budgeting is being trimmed. We will press on with our e-government strategy that costs $1.7 billion with an aggressive outsourcing arrangement covering 80 per cent of our IT projects. We are also helping the local IT industry in their pursuit for quality of service, things such as ISO certification and promotion of Capability Maturity Model (CMM), in order to be able to compete internationally. And in this connection, we are also helping our IT industry to explore new markets inside and outside China, in view of the very limited local domestic market in Hong Kong.
So much for what we are doing in Hong Kong. I am only too mindful that our prosperity depends on our ability to interconnect with the rest of the world and maintain our international and cosmopolitan characters.
Thanks to the organisers, the conference today has brought together business leaders, IT professionals and academics from different parts of the world and will enable us to address a wide range of crucial issues, ranging from mobile computing and other emerging technologies, strategic use of IT in marketing, banking and other domains, and information security management.
I wish the Conference every success this year and all the overseas delegates a very happy and fruitful stay in Hong Kong.
Thank you.
End/Thursday, September 19, 2002
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