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The following is issued on behalf of the Provisional Urban Council:
QUESTION - by Mr Wu Chi-wai:
Regarding the storage of the Council's document, I have the following questions:
(i) The information material stored in this Council's
computers go back to April 1990. Do the Council's
history of meetings (including Committee papers and
minutes of meetings) still exist? If so, how are they
saved up? Where and how far back do they go?
(ii) Does the PUC have any plans to store information material
of over 100 years' history and facilitate perusal and
research by the public?
REPLY - by Mr Suen Kai-cheong, Chairman of the Administration Select Committee:
Mr Wu Chi-wai's question is in 2 parts. The first part concerns the storage of committee papers and minutes of meetings before April 1990.
The Urban Council has been established for over a century. During the years, it has undergone the following changes which affected the storage of its committee papers and minutes of meetings:
(a) Before 1 April 1973, the Urban Council was chaired by
the Director of the Urban Services Department. The Urban
Services Department and the Urban Council Secretariat
were both located in the Government Offices. Therefore,
the committee papers and the minutes of meetings of the
Urban Council were maintained by the Urban Services
Department;
(b) Since 1 April 1973 the Urban Council has become a statutory
body with the Chairman elected by and among the members.
The existing UC Chambers was commissioned in 1977. The
office of the Council Secretariat was also set up in the
UC Chambers in the same year. According to the records
of the Department and the Secretariat, both the
Department and the Secretariat have sent the committee
papers and minutes of meetings for the period from 1950
to 1973 to the Government Records Service Division for
authentication, compilation and storage of documents
with historic value.
(c) The Municipal Services Branch was set up in 1985. It is
believed that some of the UC committee papers and minutes
of meetings originally kept by the Department were
transferred to the Branch for storage. In 1989 the
Municipal Services Branch was replaced by the Recreation
and Culture Branch while the health issues were put under
the jurisdiction of the Department of Health. It is
believed that the Council's committee papers and minutes
of meetings were also transferred to the
Branch/Department concerned for storage as a result of
the reorganisation. Upon preliminary inquiry by the
Council Secretariat, it is found that the Council's
committee papers and minutes of meetings are being
maintained in the following manner:
(a) The record of proceedings of UC monthly meetings
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(i) Part of the minutes of the UC monthly meetings for the
period from April 1950 to October 1973 are presently kept
by the Public Records Office of the Government Records
Service Division. (Due to the lapse of time, we have yet
to check whether a complete set of these documents and
minutes for the period concerned has been maintained.)
(ii) The office of the Council Secretariat at the UC Chambers
also maintains the English version of minutes of
meetings and records of proceedings of the Council's
monthly meetings, the earliest copies can be dated back
to 1954 and 1957 respectively. These documents have
been bound into books. (Due to the lapse of time, we
have yet to check whether a complete set of these
documents and records for the period concerned has been
maintained.) Starting from 1983, the records of
proceedings are also available in the Chinese
version and they are also bound into books.
(iii) The records of proceedings are also available in the
UC libraries. The English version was available since
April 1958 and the Chinese version was also available
from April 1983 onwards.
(b) The committee papers and minutes of meetings of the Standing
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Committee of the Whole Council and the other select
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committees
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(i) The English version of minutes of meetings and committee
papers for the period from May 1952 to March 1982 are
kept by the Public Records Office of the Government
Records Service Division in printed form. (Due to the
lapse of time, we have yet to check whether a complete
set of these documents and records for the period
concerned has been maintained.)
(ii) The office of the Council Secretariat at the UC Chambers
also keeps the English version of minutes of meetings
and committee papers of the select committees in printed
form, the earliest copies can be dated back to 1964.
(Due to the lapse of time, we have yet to check whether
a complete set of these documents and records for the
period concerned has been maintained.)
(iii) To facilitate perusal of information materials of the
earlier years, the Department and the PUC secretariat
sought the endorsement of the Administration Select
Committee to reproduce the English version of the
committee papers and minutes of meetings for the period
from April 1973 to 1990 in microfilm. Since 1987, the
Chinese version of the committee papers and minutes of
meetings was also available and are kept in the office
of the Council Secretariat.
(c) The Secretariat's computerized Document Retrieval System
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This system is mainly for internal use by Councillors,
Secretariat staff and Departmental staff. All committee
papers and minutes of meetings of the Standing Committee of
the Whole Council, select committees, and sub-
committees/working groups for the period since 1990 can be
retrieved from this system.
(d) Committee Papers and Minutes of Meetings on the Internet
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Starting from January 1999, some of the Council's
information materials are put on the Internet to facilitate
perusal by the public. Due to resources constraint, it was
endorsed by the Administration Select Committee that only
information materials of the following dates onwards would
be put on the Internet:
(i) the minutes of meetings and records of proceedings of
the PUC monthly meetings from 1 April 1998 onwards; and
(ii) the minutes of meetings and committee papers of the
Standing Committee of the Whole Council from 1 April
1998 onwards.
Apart from the Internet, the public may also have access to the information materials of items (a) and (b) at the Government Records Service Division and the Council Secretariat.
It is not easy to trace the committee papers and minutes of meetings before the 50s. If Councillors deem that it is necessary to find out whether these information materials still exist and their mode and place of storage, it would need much time and considerable resources to do so.
The second part of the question asks whether the PUC has any plans to store information materials of over 100 years' history to facilitate perusal and research by the public.
The Department is now actively planning to compile the information materials on Hong Kong so that the Hong Kong Central Library would have a rich collection of such materials through systematic and thematic compilation. The key areas of collection and compilation included materials on the educational, social, economical and historical aspects of Hong Kong. As services provided by the Urban Council in Hong Kong in over a century are closely related to the Hong Kong society and the livelihood of its people, their historic value will certainly be of interest to the general public and will surely be included in our collection.
Thus the Department will actively compile the historical materials concerning the Urban Council and also has plans to store such materials in the data bank of the digital library of the Hong Kong Central Library by phases to facilitate perusal and search by the public. The planned digital library system not only will provide a proper storage for the materials but will also provide video-on-demand and audio-on-demand services which will enable the public to peruse and retrieve the relevant materials at the public libraries, at home or at their working places at anytime.
End/Tuesday, July 13, 1999
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