XN000022-1996-07-20+21 — Page 6

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Hong Kong Annual Report on Internet

The best selling Hong Kong Annual Report is now available in the government homepage on the Internet in both English and Chinese.

This marks the Government's commitment to disseminating information to Hong Kong people and users world-wide through the modern information superhighway.

The latest issue of the year book - Hong Kong 1996 is the 50th edition in a series of annual reports prepared by the Government after World War II.

A spokesman for the Government Information Services said today (Sunday) that reading the report in the Hong Kong Government Information Centre (GIC) - the homepage of the government on the Internet - was an interesting and efficient way to browse through major events and activities of the Government taking place last year.

"The home page provides shortcuts for viewing prescribed contents of the report. The whole year book is systematically divided and sub-divided into various topics to help Internet users to go straight to the desired content," he said.

The 140 photographs of the year book can be found in the Photo Gallery. Neatly grouped under seven topics, Internet users may grasp the momentum of development of Hong Kong by browsing through the collection of photographs.

The year book in GIC can be accessed at http://www.info.gov.hk/isd/hk96.

The spokesman said the number of visitors to GIC had been increasing steadily since its launch in December 1995. The number of visits to the homepage has grown from 14,467 in December to 26,083 last month. So far, more than 1.2 million visits have been made to all the pages.

He said new homepages of various government departments, policy branches and related organisations were continually being added to the Hong Kong Government homepage.

At present, 37 policy branches, government departments and related organisations have set up their own homepages and can be accessed in GIC.

"We are making every effort to enrich the contents to meet the increasing demand and expectation from Internet users on the GIC which certainly will become one of the major communication channels between the Government and the general public in the near future," said the spokesman.

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