The newly announced 18-month pilot scheme will enable people to download the relevant data free of charge via www.gov.hk/Data.One.
Hong Kongers will now be able to access useful information including names and addresses of public facilities such as government offices, hospitals, schools, and sports venues.
All this information is already on the web but this scheme significantly simplifies the downloading of the data for value-added re-use.
"Geo-referenced public facilities data and real-time traffic data of main roads have been chosen for the pilot scheme because they are closely related to people's daily lives, and thus have a higher re-use value," said a spokesman for the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer. "The Government will review the effectiveness of the pilot scheme, and consider the overall policy for disseminating public sector information for value-added re-use."
"Facilitating value-added re-use of public sector information will be conducive to the development of Hong Kong as a knowledge-based economy," the spokesman said.
Users will benefit from accessing real-time traffic data of the main roads such as the average traffic speeds of the main roads in Hong Kong, up-to-date traffic news and images of real-time traffic situation in the fast track city.
"We believe that public sector information is not only a valuable source of reference, but may also generate valuable applications.
"The data provided on Data.One are all downloadable and some are even in the XML format for convenient data transfer and processing by computers. Users will also be assisted by the portal's guidance on downloading. The downloaded data can be used for academic researches or developing various innovative services or applications, such as mobile applications showing the road traffic situation."