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Innovation and Technology
Re-industrialisation
The Productivity Council helps local industries adopt technologies relating to Industry 4.0 and Enterprise 4.0. The INC Invention Centre, set up jointly with Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology, fosters Industry 4.0 upgrade and smart manufacturing. The Productivity Council's Inno Space provides STEM education.
The HKSTPC constructed the Data Technology Hub at Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate this year, and the Advanced Manufacturing Centre will be completed in 2022. The HKSTPC is also developing the Microelectronics Centre at Yuen Long Industrial Estate and studying a 56-hectare site near the Liantang/Heung Yuen Wai Boundary Control Point for the development of an industrial estate.
In July, the government launched the $2 billion Re-industrialisation Funding Scheme, which subsidises manufacturers on a government-enterprise matching basis of 1:2 to set up new smart production lines in Hong Kong. The scheme funds one-third of the total project cost, or $15 million, whichever is lower.
Use of I&T in Government, Business and Community
Government bureaus and departments are releasing their data in machine-readable format on the data.gov.hk portal for free use as raw material for research and innovative applications. As at the end of 2020, there were about 4,250 open datasets on the portal. More than 20 new datasets on information relating to COVID-19 were opened in 2020, including details of probable/confirmed cases, buildings with COVID-19 connections and flights/trains taken by confirmed cases.
Application forms for government services are digitised for online submission. As at end-2020, around 2,020 government forms are electronically submittable.
Technology is also critical to the operation of the 1823 contact centre, a one-stop service for the public to lodge enquiries and complaints about government services. The contact centre deploys chatbots, speech recognition, voice analytics and robotic process automation, and provides data analytics to improve departments' services.
The Youth Portal is a citizen-centric, one-stop platform providing information on youth-related public services. Through social media and multimedia content, the government connects with young people on matters such as entrepreneurship, career pursuit, and cultural and creative activities.
Under the Smart Government Innovation Lab, the 'Catch the Innovation' campaign was conducted in mid-2020, featuring seminars, workshops, case sharing and a competition to increase government departments' awareness of robotics technologies and foster innovative ideas to enhance public services and city management.
The government maintains a secured cyber environment by training professionals and fostering international cooperation in combating cyber attacks and protecting government information systems. The Government Computer Emergency Response Team Hong Kong works with the
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