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Government invites private sector participation in the provision of e-Cert services (with photo)
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The Government will conduct a Request for Proposal (RFP) exercise to invite the private sector to collaborate with the Hongkong Post Certification Authority (HKPCA) in providing digital certificate (e-Cert) services or to provide them on its behalf.

Speaking at a press briefing today (December 6) on the outcome of the business review of the HKPCA conducted by the Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau earlier this year, the Deputy Government Chief Information Officer, Mrs Betty Fung, said the ultimate aim of the RFP exercise was to engender a self-financing operation of the e-Cert services through collaboration with the private sector.
 
"The Government has come to the view that the current mode of operation of and funding for the HKPCA, which requires substantial funding support through cross-subsidisation from Hongkong Post¡¦s (HKP) other trading fund operations or from the Government, is not sustainable in the longer term.

"We have decided to explore the feasibility of having the private sector operating the e-Cert services and the possible synergy that can be unleashed. We hope the RFP exercise will help identify a suitable business partner or contractor for HKPCA, who will be better placed to develop new value-added services and e-commerce applications that can drive the utilisation of e-Certs and engender a self-financing operation.

"To attract private sector participation in providing the e-Cert services, we will consider ways to enhance the business case of the RFP exercise.  For example, bidders may propose their preferred collaboration and business models for consideration by HKP, and provide value-added services and applications under separate commercial brands to generate other income sources, in addition to running the e-Cert scheme," Mrs Fung said.

To facilitate the development of e-commerce by instilling trust in the security and integrity of electronic transactions, the HKPCA was set up in January, 2000, to issue recognised digital certificates under the trading fund operation of the HKP.

HKPCA currently issues seven types of recognised digital certificates to individuals and organisations in Hong Kong. Its e-Certs are accepted for close to 70 types of e-government services and more than 20 types of e-commerce services.

As at mid-November 2005, HKPCA has issued about 1.47 million personal and organisational e-Certs, including over 1.2 million free personal e-Certs embedded in smart ID cards.

"The HKPCA has supported the Digital 21 Strategy by spearheading the development of the public key infrastructure (PKI) to facilitate the development of e-government and e-commerce in Hong Kong, and helped ensure that a recognised CA is in place to serve the community upon the enactment of the Electronic Transaction Ordinance in 2000.

"Through the provision of the e-Cert service, the HKPCA has also successfully raised the awareness of the community of the importance of conducting e-business transactions in a secure manner," Mrs Fung said.

She pointed out that the HKPCA had implemented various measures to promote the adoption of the e-cert and to enhance its user-friendliness. The usage rate, however, remained unsatisfactory.

According to a survey conducted by HKP in November, 2004, among the citizens who obtained their e-Certs embedded in smart ID cards during the period from June to August, 2004, only about 10% had used the e-Cert.

"Experience shows that the e-Cert is more readily used for those government to government (G2G), government to business (G2B) and business to business (B2B) transactions that have high security, integrity and authentication requirements.  However, for the majority of business to consumer (B2C) and government to citizen (G2C) electronic transactions, there is no absolute need to use e-Cert to meet the security or authentication requirements.  It is thus understandable that the general public and the businesses would prefer using simpler authentication methods such as one-time password or PIN.

"While the PKI is still recognised as the most mature technology available to address the full range of authentication, confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation issues of electronic transactions, and the e-Cert can be used in a broad range of e-government and e-commerce transactions, most of the applications are used only by a small segment of the population and its use at the individual level is mostly optional," Mrs Fung explained.

Hongkong Post will issue the RFP in the first half of 2006. If a successful bidder is identified, HKP will award the contract before end of 2006 to enable the selected bidder to take over its CA operation in early 2007.

In the event there is no successful bidder, the Government will support the HKPCA¡¦s operation until end March, 2008, to allow sufficient time for the existing subscribers of e-Certs and business partners of HKPCA to complete the necessary transitional arrangements and switch to the service of other recognised CAs or other authentication solutions.

"The proposed approach strikes a balance between the objectives of reducing the longer term public funding support for the HKPCA through private sector participation, and allowing a suitable transitional period to cater for the operational needs of the existing e-Cert users and business partners of HKPCA," Mrs Fung said.

Ends/Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Issued at HKT 16:30

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