[CWHK] The cashed-up Hong Kong govt must fund smarter IT initiatives
John Tsang, our Financial Secretary, unrevealed his second budget in February and said that “preserving jobs” was his objective. The theme surely resonates with the public, but the content of this budget does not justify its stated goal.
Those who criticize the Hong Kong government for neglecting its citizens’ hardship during the current downturn have a point. Governments around the world are enacting aggressive economic stimulus measures. But our government seems to be sitting idle in spite of record fiscal reserves.
Hong Kong: cash-rich, initiative poor
At the end of January 2009, our fiscal reserves reached a record-breaking HK$543 billion, while accumulated surplus of the Exchange Fund was around HK$500 billion. According to a government press release, as at 31 January 2009, the financial position of the government stands at the enviable level of HK$49.8 billion surplus. Instead of the fiscal deficit of HK$4.9 billion that the government estimated in the budget, we may end up with a huge surplus at the end of this financial year.
Taking into account this possibility of a huge surplus, the meager initiatives proposed in the budget are even worse than when they first meet the eyes. On the ICT front, although the government has increased its ICT spending, the effect on alleviating the industry’s hardships is inadequate.
Perhaps more so than in other industries, our ICT sector faces dwindling demand, an professionals are under threat of layoff day and night. Yet prices—for products, services and manpower—are falling. This is the perfect opportunity for the government to improve our information infrastructure, in order to provide better public services, help sustain demand, and preserve jobs.
The government must recognize the irreparable damage that will be caused to the ICT industry in financial downturns, as ICT skills are harder to maintain than most other professional skills if a professional is out of action for a year or several months. Our industry and indeed the entire Hong Kong professional workforce will face a shortage of ICT talent when the economy recovers—similar to the post-SARS situation.
E-health scheme not enough
The only bright spot is the appropriation for the territory-wide e-health records (EHR), which will go a long way to establish Hong Kong as a center of health information system development. But the ICT industry must be further and better engaged in the setting up of the strategy and direction of EHR, so that the ICT industry will be able to participate, contribute and benefit from this sizable investment.
The “MyGovHK” project, which allows users to customize the government portal, is another idea I previously proposed in my “Ten Information Infrastructure Projects.” The government finally accepted the need for Hong Kong to have a clearer policy to support the development of data centers—also welcome news, after years of lobbying from the industry and myself along with former LegCo member Sin Chung-Kai urging the government to remove restrictive barriers in their land and innovation support policies.
Hiring for specific needs
But the government’s responses to our other recommendations in other policy areas, such as education, transport, food labeling and so on, have fallen short of the industry’s expectations. For instance, the budget earmarked HK$63 million for a one-year education program on online safety, which will create 500 jobs.
But the fund could be much better utilized if each school hires a single IT assistant: a trained tech to alleviate the heavy workload of teachers who must handle IT support chores in addition to teaching. Instead of the unclear motives and clearly one-off nature of the proposed program, what teachers and students really need is the government’s commitment to support them in a sustainable way.
The Financial Secretary has indicated that he may announce further mid-year initiatives, opening a door for further supportive measures. It’s high time for our sector to unite behind a common cause: urging government to recognize the ICT sector’s importance to our economy and financing more concrete measures to re-ignite our momentum, so that Hong Kong can realize our potential when we emerge from this crisis. This “worst of times” is indeed the best of times to make this investment on ourselves, and we must realize that this is a once-in-a-century opportunity we are facing, not a crisis.
從印度到中國 Chandni Chowk to China 今年HKIFF所看最後一部，最無厘頭的印度Bollywood中國功夫片，小人物變大英雄，是永遠不變的方程式，作為搞笑片，別要求太高，算係咁。導演也說是受了《少林三十六房》和星爺的《功夫》影响，香港電影可別自滿，未來十年，我看好Bollywood over中國或香港電影，就是因為其獨特風格加adaptability這個完美mix。
警方正在調查事件中，若這些少年人觸犯法例，按法定程序將他們交予法庭便可，但學校卻反而要小心處理。首先，他們很可能並非在校內犯事，教師校長們不能因學校「聲譽受損」而找理由懲罰他們，倘若他們真的找到 學生有犯校規，也必須弄清楚因何故懲罰學生，不應打擊他們對科學的好奇心。有時真令筆者想起英國搖滾樂隊 Pink Floyd 三十年前的名曲《Another Brick in the Wall》的歌詞：「Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone」。
「…今天很多的網民網齡也不足 20 年，只知道 Web 或 www 而連 World-Wide Web 也未聽過的，相信大有人在！」
萬維網二十歲了！屆指一算，Web 這東西在 1989 年被發明，至今已經出現了 20 年，今天很多的網民網齡也不足 20 年，只知道 Web 或 www 而連 World-Wide Web 也未聽過的，相信大有人在！
萬維網的發明者是 Tim Berners-Lee，他當時在瑞士日內瓦的 CERN物理學實驗室工作，1989 年 3 月他寫了最早的一個成為後來的萬維網概念的建議書，1990 年 11 月他與當年的拍擋 Paul Cailliau 再更詳細地把以「超連內容」（Hypertext）為核心的萬維網（當年還是稱之為“WorldWideWeb”一個字的），利用瀏覽器（Browser）的軟件，把互聯網與 DECnet（可見當年迪吉多 Digital Equipment Corp 的影響力還有多大）兩個制式世界的電腦裡的內容，連接起來。
1990 年，Berners-Lee 使用一台 NeXT 電腦（這是喬布斯 Steve Jobs 當年離開蘋果電腦後開設的公司的產品，後來他當然是回歸了蘋果）開發了第一個瀏覽器，真的叫作 WorldWideWeb，開通了第一個萬維網侍服器（Web server），第一個網頁的內容，就是形容這個計劃本身。1991 年，他把這項目的介紹放上了一個新開啟的 alt.hypertext 新聞組（Newsgroup），以後的就是大家從歷史所見證的了。
筆者首次接觸到萬維網是 1993 年，當時在美國工作和生活，剛到了太陽電腦（Sun Microsystem）當軟件系統工程師，在公司的內聯網看到 Mosaic 玩意，也就安裝來玩玩，結果一生結緣，在 Sun 工作使用的操作系統自然是 SunOS，當年的網頁還是純文字為主。有萬維網之前，筆者玩的是新聞組，有了萬維網，最早發現的比較有趣的網站是來自史丹福大學的《Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web 》，這網站後來就變了今天的雅虎（Yahoo!）。
