The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) is determined to promote electronic commerce to maintain Hong Kong's status as a major business center in the digital world of the Information Age.

Speaking at a business forum on e-commerce Monday, Director of Information Technology Services of the HKSAR Lau Kam-hung said the government "is fully committed to encouraging the development of e-commerce to maintain Hong Kong's competitive edge and to drive our overall economic growth."

Hong Kong already has a world-class telecommunications infrastructure, with broadband network covering practically all business buildings and expected to be able to cover 85 percent of residential buildings this year.

To further enhance the telecommunications systems for the development of e-commerce in Hong Kong, the government will introduce more competitions and encourage innovations in the telecommunications market, said Lau.

The government will make efforts in building a high quality and high capacity telecommunications infrastructure in Hong Kong to provide bandwidth and services at affordable prices to ensure that electronic transactions can be performed effectively and efficiently over the Internet.

Meanwhile, the Information Technology Services Department is working with Hong Kong Post on the development of the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to provide a secure environment for electronic transactions in Hong Kong.

"The PKI covers the use of public key cryptography and digital certificates to enable us to authenticate the identity of the parties involved, to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of the messages exchanged, and to make sure that the transactions cannot be repudiated," Lau said.

Hong Kong Post will act as the public Certification Authority (CA), which is responsible for the issuance, renewal and revocationof digital certificates, from January 31.

To enable the large scale deployment of the PKI technology which in turn facilitates the development of e-commerce, the government does not impose any ceiling and mandatory licensing requirements for the private sector to set up its CAs to meet different demands from the community.

With the enactment of the Electronic Transactions Ordinance by the Legislative Council on January 5, a clear and supportive legal framework for the conduct of e-commerce in Hong Kong has been established.

Under the Ordinance, electronic records and digital signatures are given the same legal status as that of their paper-based counterparts and a legal backing is established to promote and facilitate the operation of CAs.

The government is also working to develop a common Chinese language interface that is open and common for users in the community who prefer to communicate electronically in Chinese so that e-commerce can reach out to all potential customers.

To solve the problem of multiple coding standards of Chinese characters in electronic communications, the government is taking an active part in the ongoing discussions with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on the development of the ISO 10646 standard.

The ISO 10646 standard is intended to encompass all written scripts, including the Chinese characters commonly used in Hong Kong.

In the long run, the government is going to adopt the ISO 10646standard as the open and common Chinese language interface in HongKong.

In November last year, the government signed a contract with Timbo Star Investment Limited on implementing the first phase of the Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) scheme, a major initiative under the "Digital 21" IT Strategy.

With the fulfillment of the contract, the public will be able to enjoy round-the-clock on-line services delivered by 10 government departments and public agencies in less than a year.

The services to be delivered under the first phase of the scheme include payment of government bills, submission of tax returns, purchase of tax reserve certificates, job searches, renewal of driving and vehicle licenses, voter registration, as well as information look-up for tourists.

Other initiatives undertaken by the government to promote e-commerce include the launching of the Interactive Government Services Directory, a website offering a directory of telephone numbers and website addresses for public services in a citizen-centric manner.

Lau said the government, in conjunction with non-government organizations, would continue to hold seminars and exhibitions on e-commerce for Hong Kong companies to enable them, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to embark on e-commerce to explore new markets and to strengthen their competitiveness.

The potential market that electronic commerce can tap in cyberspace is enormous.

Based on industry forecast, the total value of global electronic transactions will rise to over 400 billion US dollars annually by 2002. The projected growth is 40 times that of the global gross domestic product.

E-commerce is particularly significant for Hong Kong's economic development as it enables small and medium-sized enterprises, the vast majority of Hong Kong's business, to carry out transactions across geographical and time barriers.

The advantages of e-commerce for the small and medium-sized enterprises include the development of new markets, reduction in operating costs, improvement in management of business processes and provision of better quality customer service.