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Following is a question by the Hon Frederick Fung and a written reply by the Secretary for Economic Development and Labour, Mr Stephen Ip, (in the absence of Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology) in the Legislative Council today (May 9):
Question:
The Government has set up a number of Internet portals, namely "Hong Kong SAR Government Information Centre", "news.gov.hk", "GovHK" and "ESDlife". In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) of the respective dates on which the above web sites were set up, the purposes of setting up these web sites and the expenses incurred, their functions and characteristics, their respective daily average hit rates and numbers of visitors, the contents of the web pages which have the highest and lowest page view rates, the government departments/contractors managing these web sites, as well as the annual expenditure involved in maintaining these web sites and the manpower requirements in this respect;
(b) whether it has conducted a survey on the public awareness of these web sites, including whether the public can distinguish the different functions and characteristics of these web sites, as well as the backgrounds of the visitors and their needs; if so, of the results;
(c) whether it has assessed if the functions of these web sites overlap and meet the needs of the visitors; if so, of the assessment results; and
(d) whether, for the purposes of saving resources and facilitating visitors, it will consider consolidating the above web sites and the information they contain, with a view to providing a one-stop web site which is diverse in content and user-friendly?
Reply:
Madam President,
(a) & (b) The detailed information requested in these two parts of the question is set out in the Annex.
(c) The over-lapping of roles amongst GovHK (www.gov.hk), the Government Information Centre (GIC) (www.info.gov.hk) and ESDlife (www.esdlife.com) only exist in the interim period to ensure a healthy transition. The overlap will cease once the transition is over.
The new one-stop portal, GovHK (www.gov.hk), which was soft launched in September 2006, will soon replace the GIC (www.info.gov.hk) when the latter is decommissioned in May 2007. Online Government services now hosted on ESDlife will be migrated to GovHK before the expiry of the contract between the Government and ESD Services Limited, the operator of ESDlife, in January 2008.
The news.gov.hk website (www.news.gov.hk) is maintained by the Information Services Department (ISD) to disseminate government news to the general public. GovHK highlights on its homepage the latest headlines on news.gov.hk and directs users to news.gov.hk for full details on the new stories released by the ISD. There is no duplication in the primary functions of the two sites.
(d) It is exactly the purpose of GovHK to provide a one-stop portal with comprehensive content and user-friendly interface. GovHK brings together useful Government information and services from different bureaux/departments, and delivers them in clusters centred around the needs and interests of customers in particular subject areas (e.g. Education & Training, Employment, Environment, Health & Medical Services and Transport & Motoring) and user groups (e.g. residents and visitors). We will continue to collect customers' feedback and use them to enrich and enhance the portal to better serve citizens.
Ends/Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Issued at HKT 15:03
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