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Hong Kong has won the Outstanding e-Government Prize (Open City) at the World e-Governments Organization of Cities and Local Governments (WeGO) Awards 2014 for Hong Kong's achievements in opening up public sector information (PSI) in machine-readable formats through its one-stop Data.One portal (data.one.gov.hk).
The Deputy Government Chief Information Officer (Policy and Community), Miss Joey Lam, represented the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government in receiving the award at the presentation ceremony in Chengdu today (November 5).
The biennial WeGO Awards was established in 2012 to recognise and promote outstanding e-Government practices adopted by cities and governments around the world to improve administrative efficiency and citizens' access to public services.
The Awards comprises five categories, namely Services, Efficiency, Open City, Urban Management and Digital Divide. This year, 68 projects from all over the world competed for the Awards, of which 13 submissions were under the category of Open City.
"We are delighted and encouraged that Hong Kong has been awarded the Outstanding e-Government Prize in the category of Open City," Miss Lam said. "It recognises the Government's efforts in pursuing the PSI initiative. The opening up of PSI in machine-readable formats helps spur innovation and leverage community wisdom to deliver services to meet different needs."
The Government launched the Data.One portal in 2011 to provide PSI data for free download and value-added re-use. All datasets on the portal are machine-readable and can be used and meshed together to develop useful products and services.
"Opening up of PSI has enabled the use of raw data for the development of applications to bring benefits and convenience to the public. We are heartened to see that quite a number of mobile applications using PSI data - such as the traffic and weather-related data available on our portal - are very well received," Miss Lam said.
"The WeGO award further entrenches Hong Kong's credentials as an open city. We will continue to drive the PSI initiative at full steam to open up useful data in machine-readable formats in order to unleash the full potential of PSI and maximise its benefits to the community."
To date, 16 categories comprising about 3 000 PSI datasets are available on the Data.One portal, including real-time road traffic information, air pollution indices, weather data, geo-referenced public facility data, population census statistics, and public transport routes and fares.
Ends/Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Issued at HKT 16:51
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