According to a press release, senior executives of the founding members of the Smart Open Data Advancement Consortium, and industry representatives attended the ceremony to launch the Consortium which will bring ground-breaking improvements to various public services and commercial sectors in Hong Kong through data-driven innovation.
First of its kind in Hong Kong, the Consortium is being founded by six major Hong Kong organisations.
As the membership base grows, the Consortium will strive to raise public awareness of the massive power of data, and promote cross-industry adoption of its platform to deliver maximised scale and impact. Targeting digital-savvy businesses and professionals, the Consortium will build a trusted data ecosystem where the consent-based design will ensure full information security and privacy.
In addition to saving time, effort and resources to deal with data, it will also mitigate fraud risk and adopt globally accepted best-case examples.
An ecosystem-driven initiative, the Consortium will enable public sector and commercial organisations in Hong Kong – and subsequently in the Greater Bay Area – to develop and implement data-driven smart applications and services to boost productivity and enhance user satisfaction. With its human and organisation-centric approach, it will provide a secure, user-friendly platform for various sectors to unleash the full power of data in their operations and businesses.
From government agencies to industry regulators, public service providers to financial institutions, academia to different business sectors – the platform will adopt a Triple Helix model. In this model of innovation, academia and R&D centres come up with technological solutions and platforms, the Government sets the regulatory and enabling framework, while the industry leverages the innovation to enhance productivity and improve customer experience.
This initiative can be extremely impactful through a robust ecosystem-wide adoption in Hong Kong. It comes at a time when the Government and the industry are actively striving for better utilisation of big data to foster economic growth and offer better services to the people.
In the future, the Smart Open Data Advancement Consortium will also be targeting the huge growth potential of business and innovation in the vibrant Greater Bay Area market.
This move (i.e., to establish the Consortium) is consistent with the HKSAR government’s Smart City Blueprint. The aim is to ultimately develop Hong Kong into a world-class smart city, through adopting the measures set out in this Smart City Blueprint for Hong Kong.
The policy objectives to pursue smart city development are to:
(a) make use of innovation and technology (I&T) to address urban challenges, enhance the effectiveness of city management and improve people’s quality of living as well as Hong Kong’s sustainability, efficiency and safety;
(b) enhance Hong Kong’s attractiveness to global businesses and talents; and
(c) inspire continuous city innovation and sustainable economic development.
A part of the objectives laid out by the Blueprint includes Smart Government opening up more public and private sector data in digital forms to facilitate research and innovation via the government one-stop Public Sector Information Portal which began with the health, transport and education sectors from this year; and promoting the use of open data for smart city innovations.
Upon implementation of the above, the HKSAR government hopes that its citizen people will be able to enjoy a much broader scope of user-friendly and more responsive public services delivered digitally and build more innovative applications and services using open data.
Over the next few years, the government plans to continue to explore and formulate initiatives to encourage open data in public and private sectors, improve public services through the adoption of technology under a data-driven approach and review legislation and regulations to support innovation.