The Information Technology Services Department (ITSD) of Hong Kong will continue to be committed to promoting the wider use of information technology (IT) in government and community in the new millennium.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the "Electronic Government in the New Millennium" conference marking the 10th anniversary of ITSD Tuesday, Director of Information Technology Services Lau Kam- hung said the importance of IT to government and society has increased enormously in the last decade.

"It is very encouraging for us as a department to look back on a number of cases in which other departments, with our help, have achieved the targets which they had set for themselves," Lau said.

Lau said ITSD aimed at developing an integrated government-wide infrastructure to cope with department needs on a united and integrated platform.

The key to this has been the building of a network infrastructure, connecting all bureaus and departments, onto which has been added an electronic messaging facility for both internal communication and communication with the public.

Lau said that from the public's point of view, what would certainly be the most dramatic development in the department's work in the next decade would be the use of IT to allow electronic service delivery or ESD.

The ESD scheme, to be implemented next year, will streamline many transactions by allowing members of the public to transact business with government departments and public agencies through electronic means at places and time convenient to them.

In the coming decade, ITSD will gain a whole new set of clients because the department has been charged with promoting the use of IT in the community.

ITSD was re-organized from the Government Data Processing Agency in 1989. It has been ITSD's tasks to help government departments to survey and analyze their activities, identify areas where IT can bring significant improvements and formulate plans which allow its clients to keep up their service standards while introducing new ways to carry out their work. (Xinhua)