Expected to gradually re-provision the e-government services currently on the ESD portal, the OSP is a unified e-government portal. It aims to consolidate information from the Government Information Center (www.info.gov.hk) with services available on ESDlife into a single portal.
In the first release, a new branding and e-government portal with a look and feel is expected to launch. Building on the existing structure, the site is expected to co-exist with e-services mainly through hyperlinking to the existing websites.
Elevation for e-government
Established in 2001, ESDlife has been providing 200 e-government services online. Despite its achievement in providing e-government services and receiving various awards, there were comments of a low take-up rate for services. Many Hong Kongers were not satisfied with ESDlife's level of service, and some--including the editorial staff of Computerworld Hong Kong--said so publicly.
The executives of ESDlife were also suspected by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) of inflating the number of electronic transactions in 2004, but no charges were pressed.
'ESDlife allows the government to ride on the private sector to jump start our services online,' said Howard Dickson, Government Chief Information Officer (GCIO). 'There's no question that what they [ESDlife] have done was exactly what we asked for.'
According to an Office of the GCIO (OGCIO) publication, a 2003-2004 review of the ESD scheme on ESDlife concluded that both the citizens and departments are uncomfortable handling public transactions over a commercially driven site.
'Citizens say they want something that is not commercial, and they want to deal with someone more neutral,' said Dickson. 'If your driver's license got suspended, you will not want to deal with a commercial site, you might want to deal straight with the government.'
As the contract with ESDlife is expiring in two years, to ensure a smooth and continuous provisioning of services, 'the fastest way to do that is having the government operate [the portal] and provide a neutral platform for the citizens,' he added.
Moreover, as the technology and citizens' usage of the Internet mature, e-government services are ready to move toward the next level. But, to provide more citizen-centric joint-departmental services, a new strategy was needed.
A service cluster approach
Dickson noted that, through experience from other governments, a successful e-government delivery can be achieved by creating a government-branded portal based on a citizen-centric approach of service delivery.
The review also suggested Hong Kong needs to adopt a new strategy for delivering citizen-centric e-government services based on a service clustering approaching that is to group related e-government services into service clusters.
'Adopting a service clustering approach based on customer research findings, the OSP/service clusters will enable members of the public to access quality and citizen-centric online government information and services in a one-stop and user-friendly manner,' said an OGCIO statement presented at Hong Kong's Legislative Council in February 2006.
The OSP strategy allows the government to expand its services scope online by riding on the existing e-government infrastructure service (EGIS) platform to introduce new services, said the OGCIO in an earlier statement.
The EGIS is a technical platform, which act as middleware to allow departments to integrate applications. By expanding e-government services over EGIS, the government can enjoy a full-ownership of the infrastructure to ensure the level of security and scalability of the infrastructure.
'Currently when government departments want to integrate with ESDlife, they need to install an ESD agency server [in] their infrastructure,' said Jonson Yue, senior manager, solution and industry marketing at HP.
The OSP will be implemented in four major stages. The first stage involves making over 100 public services newly available online, including the Immigration Department, Transport Department and Inland Revenue Department. Stage two involves 30 existing ESD services progressively re-provisioned onto the OSP, with private-sector participation anticipated by 2007 and a mature public private partnership (PPP) expected in 2008.