The current global financial crisis has not deterred governments such as Hong Kong from investing in technology innovations that deliver results to its citizens. Questex publication Enterprise Innovation talks with Hong Kong government CIO Jeremy Godfrey to find out the key priorities within the next few months.
Enterprise Innovation: There has been talk of economies bottoming out. But if the worst is over does your focus or key priorities within government shift at all?
Jeremy Godfrey: I don't think that anything has happened in the last two months to significantly change the way we view things. It's great there are people who feel more optimistic and we hope the worst is over but it's certainly no time to be complacent. There is still very little hiring or real growth in the IT sector right now but it's reassuring that the spending [7] hasn't fallen off the cliff as some had predicted but we could have a double-dip and it's equally possible that things may get worse before getting better - we just don't know for sure.
What is important is we continue our efforts supporting government IT projects and that we progress them faster and move them through pipeline so that they get deployed and deliver benefits. We're not doing this just to create employment - we want the benefits and the value they bring.
While the economic situation is giving us additional stimulus to move faster, we still would have desired to move quicker regardless.
EI: Typically in a downturn the spotlight turns to the public sector to maintain and possible increase spending on infrastructure and IT - has this been the case in Hong Kong?
JG: I think it has been but not in the sense of deliberate additional spending. The way government budgets work is you are given your budget and you can't spend a dollar more than that. Therefore to err on the safe side people end up spending less.
One of the things we watch very closely in the last financial year and this year is to focus on getting closer to spending the whole of that budget. This year's budget under the Office of the GCIO is HK$600 million (US$80 million) - which does not include the IT budgets of specific departments.
So this year we are being very conscious of putting in extra effort to kick off programs quicker. For example we have pushed departments to replace aging PCs which has been requested for some time. So in light of this situation we secured the funds quicker and pushed through the procurement process. The result is PCs that are much closer to the performance standards typical in industry today.
EI: How has that process been improved?
JG: We are working hard on launching projects faster and creating a speedier tendering process which involves a more standard evaluation scheme during tenders and a clearer framework that does not require significant adjustments every time a project goes to tender.
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