Like many chief information officers (CIOs), Howard Dickson, Hong Kong's government CIO (GCIO) deals with these same challenges, but on a much larger scale. As Hong Kong's first government CIO reaches the first anniversary of his three-year term, Computerworld Hong Kong takes a look at his first year in office. How adept was the OGCIO (Office of the GCIO) at dealing with Hong Kong's most complicated organization: the HKSAR Government?
Under an established structure like the government, getting any IT projects approved and completed is naturally a complicated process. To fight with layers of red tape, the government began streamlining its own IT operation in July 2004, when OGCIO was formed.
Government structure streamlining
With the merger of the Information Technology Service Department (ITSD) and the IT-related divisions of the Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau (CITB), the OGCIO aims to provide a streamlined government structure to deliver IT (CITB still exists, while ITSD was scrapped).
Under the previous structure, CITB was a policy-establishment body. It developed the Digital 21 strategy and created the ESDlife model. Meanwhile, ITSD was an execution department that implemented these strategies.
'Although [these two organizations] were very closely related, they remained two separate departments working towards the same goals,' said Jonson Yue, senior manager, solution and industry marketing at HP. 'By bringing the two functions within OGCIO, we see a unification of policy and implementation body under a single platform and leadership.'
Yue, an active industry contributor to Hong Kong's e-government policy, said the merger also gives OGCIO a better position to promote and implement IT initiatives among the executives of government departments as well as their IT departments.
'For the working staff within OGCIO, having a single department also reduces the impression of a hierarchical difference between the two,' said Patricia Lau, consultant at PA Consulting. The company provides business and management consulting services for organizations in both the public and private sectors. 'For the service and technology suppliers, it also brings a centralized and single point of contact,' she said.
Changing roles
The new government department also marks a new role for the government's IT operation.
'[The establishment of] OGCIO indicates the government is placing its IT operation in a more strategic role,' said Lau at PA Consulting. 'This is in sync with what's happening at the private sector, where IT managers take up a more business strategic role to become CIOs.'
Dickson agreed that playing a more strategic role within the government is the OGCIO's direction.
'Hopefully, we are coming from an image of being 'purely technical' to becoming a partner,' said Dickson. 'It's not that we have 'silver bullets,' but just like [in] any large organization, somehow wishful thinking kicks in and some assumptions don't have a good foundation.'
'What we are doing,' explained the GCIO, 'is to help departments realize this sooner. When a project does not have a good base for its scheduling, the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can do something about it.'
He noted that either his team or himself personally are involved in many departments' IT projects, trying to understand the project scope and highlight any potential challenges. Although Dickson did not share specific examples of these projects, he said the OGCIO has built a closer relationship with various departments, including the Transportation Department, Immigration Department, the Treasure and the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau.
'I can't really give you specific examples...this is a little like a doctor-patient relationship,' he explained. 'I think that's part of having a more mature relationship with the departments. We seem to have departments more willing to cooperate and we are hearing less of the 'we need to run things our own way' type of conversations. I think that is a good change.'
Taking ownership
Riding on a stronger relationship with government departments, the OGCIO is also taking up ownership in the provisioning of public services online with the new One-Stop Portal (OSP) strategy.
Aimed at unifying content and transactions, the OSP will merge the transaction-slate currently available on the ESDlife site with content from the Government Information Center (www.info.gov.hk). The OSP, expected to debut 'around mid-2006' according to a January 2006 statement from the OGCIO, will re-provision public services from ESDlife and is expected to serve as a platform to attract more joint-departmental services.
Yet not everyone approves of the OGCIO's achievement in building a stronger relationship with the departments.
'Currently, the relationship between the OGCIO and government departments can be described as 'loosely coupled',' said a source familiar with government operations. 'Since the OGCIO does not have a strong enough influence and relationship with individual departments, the IT unit of most departments tend to follow their own business strategy rather than the overall e-government strategy.'
The source added that execution, particularly on enforcing technical standards and developing joint-department IT initiatives, is slow due to a lack of strong influence from OGCIO, as well as cooperation between departments.
'Although we have heard lots of good comments about how well our e-government projects are, I think it's more self-appraising,' said the source. 'Compared to governments in Canada and Australia, the [equivalent] office has more influence than ours. I think the reason is down to the relationship developed with other departments.'
Clear vision
The source also claimed the slow execution is a result of an unclear e-government strategy and direction.
'For example, even if we have a five-year plan, how exactly to achieve the goal is unclear,' said the source. 'Our goals are vague, so it seems like a never-ending journey. We do not know how much of the roadmap we have achieved or the milestones to achieve the ultimate goal.'The source suggested a dedicated team to map out a clear e-government vision with specific requirements. Departments can then work toward developing a roadmap and identifying milestones.
'I'm not satisfied with the volume of cross-departmental initiatives'we are not as big as we'd like,' responded Dickson to comments that the OGCIO's direction is shared client services is less-than-clear. 'But I think it [OGCIO] is getting more attention and we are starting to build some help.'
Dickson noted the government is setting up a dedicated team, the Service Transformation Sub-Committee (STC), to address the issue of cross-departmental initiatives. The STC aims to 'better engage departments in the process of proposing and prioritizing service transformation initiatives especially those requiring a cross-departmental and multi-skilled approach,' stated the OGCIO at a February 2006 Legco IT panel discussion on Digital 21.
Expected to start its first meeting in the first quarter of this year, the STC will be chaired by the GCIO and falls under the Financial Secretary-chaired E-government Steering Committee to draw up a government-wide service transformation.
'We will [identify] the big barriers to move ahead in e-government and sort them out,' said Dickson. 'We are trying to get various key players in the discussion, setting the agenda and deciding where do we like to be in a couple years time to get there and what things we need to do and pursue.'
The key players will include officials from the Financial, Services and Treasury Bureau, Civil Service Bureau and Efficiency Unit.
Ongoing challenges
Despite all these initiatives, many challenges still remain for the OGCIO. One of them is dealing with conflicting interests.
'Generally, I think the OGCIO scores on execution [of various e-government initiatives]. But [the initiatives] often slow down at the consultation and planning stage,' said Sunny Lee, head of technology business at Towngas. 'I share their frustrations and [understand that] things don't happen as easy as outsiders would think.'
Lee, also the president of the Hong Kong Computer Society, noted what makes the job of the government's IT more challenging is that their users are the public, who often have conflicting interests.
'Different from the private sector, the government's priority is public interest, which can often be very diverse,' he said. 'It is a given fact that you can never make everybody happy. There will be situations that some will be glad with your policy and some will be against it.'
One example is the establishment of the Information Technology Management Unit (ITMU). Formed in 2002, the ITMU is a technical support operation under ITSD. Different teams of ITMU were assigned to various departments and bureaus to facilitate their IT operations.
'It is now much easier for us to approach the government, particularly with the establishment of the ITMU,' noted a government supplier. 'However, it is only easier on the infrastructure level. We never know who to contact when it comes to issues on the application level or operation level.'
Meanwhile for some government departments, ITMU creates a problem in IT staff management. 'Since staff from ITMU is hired by OGCIO, they may not understand the department's operation and execute IT policy with the best interest of the department,' said the government's source. 'That's the set back with a centralized IT unit to set policy and execute IT initiatives.'
Another challenge is the tight governance structure within the government. 'Of course, it'd be nice if things could move faster, but that's almost impossible under a tightly governed organization like the Hong Kong government,' noted Lee from Towngas.
Despite there being a barrier to and new initiatives, a tight governance structure is important for a complicated organization like the government to enforce tight control and ensure a balance of interest across the board.
One of the biggest challenges is that most IT projects extend beyond the term of principal government officials. Dickson noted most IT projects'from planning, developing a business case to procurement, staffing, development, implementation and testing'would take over four years.
'You are probably looking at four and a quarter years [to complete an IT project],' he said, adding that this timeframe implies smooth running of all relevant processes. 'But you will find in most government bureaux and departments, many senior officials won't stay at the same position for that long. So, it is understandable for them to ask for a strong business case to justify such major investment.'
Dickson noted that's not only an issue within the Hong Kong government, but an overall problem in any large organization. It is also human nature for officials to try managing a project within their own scope.
'People like to see jobs start, get carried out and actually finish within their tenure,' he said.
However, the issue of a bureaucratic structure is something that the OGCIO cannot deal with by themselves, added Lee from Towngas. 'It takes all departments and department heads to stay in sync in order to create more cross-department services and change the culture and mindset of the staff,' he said.
But, according to Dickson, the key is understanding end users' needs.
'I think [the key is] visibility of what citizens want,' he said. 'Departments are there to serve citizens.'
'If the service makes sense to the citizen, then there are motivations for departments to support these initiatives,' concluded the GCIO.