ENG-1999 — Page 404

COMMUNICATIONS, THE MEDIA AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

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set of Hong Kong-unique characters known as the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS) has been prepared by the Government in consultation with academia, industry and end-users. This character set contains more than 4 500 supplementary characters used in Hong Kong, in addition to the standard character sets normally available for computer uses. In addition, Hong Kong officials have been working closely with their counterparts in the Mainland and other economies of the region under the aegis of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) on the development of the ISO 10646 standard for ideographic character coding. They have promulgated the implementation plan for establishing the common interface to tie in with the progressive adoption of the standard by ISO starting in the year 2000.

Year 2000 problem for computer and embedded systems

In 1999, the Government and the community at large continued to devote much effort to tackling the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem. All organisations which provide essential services, including government departments, banks, electricity companies, telecommunications services providers, hospitals and public transport operators, rectified their mission-critical systems and developed contingency plans to minimise the possible impact of the problem. These efforts were widely recognised by the international community. In addition, a series of publicity activities was launched to promote public awareness of the possible impact of the problem and to prepare the general public for a smooth transition to the new millennium.

To closely monitor the Hong Kong-wide situation and to co-ordinate emergency response, where necessary, among different essential service sectors during the rollover to Y2K critical dates, the Government put in place a three-tier monitoring and co-ordinating mechanism. With thorough preparation made by the Government and the essential service providers, Hong Kong had a smooth rollover to the new year with no major Y2K-related incidents encountered.

Cyberport

On March 3, the Financial Secretary announced in his budget speech plans to proceed with the development of a Cyberport at Telegraph Bay, on the western side of Hong Kong Island. This is an important information infrastructure project which aims to create a strategic cluster of leading information technology (IT) and information services (IS) companies all staffed by professionally talented people in the shortest possible time. The Cyberport will provide a high-quality working and living environment which will not only attract multinational companies, but also promising local companies. There will be about 130 companies of different sizes which specialise in the application of advanced IT to the development of services and media content to support Hong Kong's businesses and industries. Together they will form a cluster of like-minded companies and talented people, and generate creative synergy.

The project is proceeding quickly and will be completed in three phases by the end of 2003. Infrastructural works already in progress are scheduled for completion by the end of 2001 or early 2002 to coincide with the completion of Phase I of the Cyberport superstructure. Fourteen multinational IT/IS companies have signed letters of intent to become anchor tenants: Cisco Systems, CMGI, Hewlett-Packard, Hua Wei, IBM, Legend, Microsoft, Oracle, Pacific Convergence Corporation, Portal,