Hong Kong government has launched a ‘personalised and integrated’ e-government service delivery platform – the latest move of Office of the Government Chief Information Officer to provide more citizen-centric services to residents and visitors.

Kenneth Cheng, Assistant Government Chief Information Officer (E-government Service Delivery), reveals to FutureGov that users of MyGovHK (www.gov.hk/mygovhk) can link their existing personal accounts for government services with their MyGovHK account to gain access to all those services with a single user name and password.

For example, users will be able to register for outbound travel information provided by the Immigration Department, receive electronic demands for rates and government rent and link up their existing eTAX accounts on MyGovHK.

Due to issues including privacy and legacy, users of Hong Kong Government’s services traditionally had to access web sites of individual departments for e-government services.

MyGovHK users are also able to customise their web page, adding shortcuts to access their most frequently used services. In addition, they are allowed o choose colour and logo, as well as set preferences for public information retrieval. Functions such as “My Messages”, “My Calendar”, and “My To-do List” allow more integrated and intuitive interactions with the government.

Cheng says information from different departments are synchronised onto the MyGovHK web site. Integrated government services portal with single sign-on is not in the region: e-government service users have been using “SingPass” for all government services for a long time. However, integrating services from different departments has not been an easy endeavour for many governments.

Joey Lam, Deputy Government Chief Information Officer (Policy and Customer Service), says the launch of MyGovHK marked another significant step in the development of citizen-centric e-government services.

The government revamped its one-stop portal, GovHK, in March, to make it more goal-oriented for users. (http://www.futuregov.asia/articles/2010/mar/26/hong-kong-revamps-government-web-portal/). Plans for the autumn launch of MyGovHK were announced then.

GovHK was made available in 2007 after an outsourced government portal had been terminated (http://www.futuregov.asia/articles/2007/aug/13/hong-kong-launches-new-e-govt-portal/). Currently, GovHK receives 64,000 visits on a daily basis.

According to Lam, more online services, including online library, e-water bills and clinical service applications, will be integrated into MyGovHK in phases over the next two years. They government also plans to introduce more personalised functions in 2011, including ‘My Road’, ‘My RSS Feed’, and form pre-filling.

The Government will launch a new account-based service delivery platform – MyGovHK (www.gov.hk/mygovhk) – next Monday (December 6) to provide the public with personalised and integrated online access to government information and services.

As his peers across the region, Cheng believes the next step will be to enhance e-engagement. “The government will not issue an e-engagement policy, because otherwise people will start asking for guidelines and turn it into a compliance issue, which defeats the purpose of e-engagement,” he says. “Nevertheless, we will continue to promote e-engagement through different channels and set a good example with our portal for other departments to follow.”