Transcript of GCIO s Speaking Notes at the BSA Cloud Day 14 April 2011 Thank you. First of all, on behalf of the people and government of Hong Kong, I welcome our overseas delegates to this conference. I thank the organizer for giving the opportunity to address you. The Digital 21 Strategy The Five Key Action Areas Preparations for this presentation has been a challenge. The number of angles can be so varied and large. Sustainable Development is frankly not my area of expertise. But I ll try to tackle it from the notion of HK s Digital 21 Strategy for ICT development, which has both the government internal as well as community aspects. Here are the 5 Key Action Areas covered by the Strategy local members of the audience will raise their arms and say Oh not again?! Hope you will bear with me sometimes we look at things that are so familiar on the surface and when we really delve into them we may find interpretations and nuances that present wholly different perspectives, hopefully better perspectives. This Strategy has been serving us well. These 5 Action Areas have been driving the policy, regulatory, investment and facilitation measures in Government for the past few years and will continue. What Does Cloud Computing Mean For These?... But what does this Strategy have to do with today s agenda? ask. You might What, if anything, does Cloud Computing mean to Sustainable Development in the broadest sense of the term? In the next 10 15 mins, I shall try to overlay Cloud Computing onto the
2 underlings of this Strategy and share with you my thoughts on some of the opportunities and challenges it brings. I do not do this artificially and I m woefully mindful that there re so many ways to cut a piece of string. Many critics of Cloud Computing will have dismissed it as no more than the notion of Timesharing and Service Bureaus that was in vogue 40 years ago. To these critics I humbly quote the analogy Yes it is the same, only the unit of measure is different. Forty years ago we were talking about sharing in the same computer room. Today we are literally saying the unit of measure is the world, or at least the current and budding Internet world. The opportunities and challenges have therefore taken a much wider or different connotation. Let me explain why. By the way, they say you should never begin a talk with an apology. I am giving one right now because you may not be able to see many beautiful slides that impress upon you about what I am going to say, rather just a few cue cards on the main points. Facilitating a Digital Economy Cloud Computing has brought a good number of subtle changes to the way the policy and regulatory frameworks surrounding ICT development is segmented and managed. So much so that traditional boundaries of these frameworks, very much built upon the classic ISO 7 layer model, are either getting blurred or fast becoming irrelevant. I have used this analogy in another talk I gave last year on the policy and regulation on the ethical use of biometrics. By one measure, a leading analyst (IDC) has projected that by 2015, close to one quarter of all Cloud based services may be offered by non IT companies. The question in my mind, therefore, is whether Cloud Computing is or should be governed by the existing policies and regulatory frameworks for ICT? With Anything as a Service that transcend national and geographic boundaries, how to apply these frameworks? It is interesting to note that a number of years ago the notion of Spamming or Anti spamming has created a similar issue.
3 Next comes the notion of Sectoral Development of Services. E anything (E commerce, E government, E tourism etc) may have attempted to describe how to change the way certain things are done, but still they are very much restrained by the generic features of solutions and technologies that are non sector specific. Clouds provide a new way of grouping and developing sector specific services that are more easily understood by end users and intermediaries. Challenges in trans border data flow this in turn leads to data privacy, information security, compliance issues and the availability of suitable manpower to develop and manage the flow of data through various geographies with different Cloud service demarcations and readiness. On the other hand, it may create the stimulus for more focused discussions and agreements based on Services across regional and international cooperation platforms. There will be new requirements, though, for standards and infrastructure in different countries/economies that provide the bases for such cooperation. We know that some countries or economies are more than others. Promoting Advanced Technology and Innovation The notion of Service Oriented Architecture (or SOA) has often been associated with the technical implementation of Clouds. In theory, this can be applied to a global scale. This means that the processes and interfaces that make up a given service may be so standardized that products and solutions developed for a given economy can be easily adapted to use in other places. This opens up great opportunities for companies who otherwise would lament the thought that the local market for the products and solutions that they may not justify the effort or investment. In this respect HK is particularly obvious because of our relatively small market. High throughput, high density data centres the global connectivity nature inherent in Cloud Computing is such that cross country networks, be they Content Delivery Networks, or sector specific networks, may be more common or necessary. It provides the stimulus for developing or adopting advanced technology and innovative solutions/inventions to facilitate them.
4 The process of Cloud enabling software and applications will present opportunities for adopting new technologies and innovative ideas. The sourcing of components to re engineer these often opens new doors to the use of inventions if the user needs and interfaces are well understood. Redrawing the demarcations of the computing model I mentioned a number of reasons above already. The Cloud model has a number of attributes, e.g. scalability that traditionally may present challenges to service providers under the existing demarcation. There may be new ways of overcoming these challenges as [application] software developers may be spared the effort of scaling up their solutions within their offerings and leaving it to the Cloud infrastructure providers. Last but not least, Cloud Computing and the on demand nature of the use of resources and environmental mean new opportunities for managing our carbon footprint and industrial waste. Developing HK as a Hub for Technological Cooperation and Trade HK has a number of advantages, often quoted in attracting inward investments. These are real and relevant in ICT development to go with the Cloud, including HK being a premier location for high end data centres. The outline for China s National 12 th Five Year Plan recently announced has reaffirmed the importance of pillar industries like Finance and Service Industries to HK s development. Indeed Financial, Healthcare, and Educational platforms will over time develop into a Cloud environment, more conducive to global/regional development and use. On domain specific standards, e.g. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), [Chinese] language coding and translation, certification services, e health record sharing and health informatics, etc, HK stands ready to develop or contribute to the development of national and international standards. With infrastructures like Cyberport, Science Park, State Key Labs presence, Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) together with our tertiary research capability, HK can aspire to be a major and preferred platform for testing innovative solutions aimed at the global Cloud service markets.
5 Enabling the Next Generation of Public Services My colleague will be sharing a lot more about this topic tomorrow and I will just highlight some of the main points in relation to our digital strategy. We have taken a critical look at what we call a Pan government IT strategy to support the formulation and implementation of policy initiatives in government bureau/departments (B/Ds). It has become apparent that change is the order of the day and we need to make our IT strategies and programmes much more agile and engaging with the public. The Cloud Computing model has been identified as a key change enabler and we have set an initial strategy for it. We have also set targets for transitioning the central IT infrastructure to enable this change amongst all government B/Ds. We anticipate private, public and hybrid Clouds to be progressively built or adopted. We shall be issuing tenders for public Cloud services later this year. Towards the end of next year will be a major turning point in the development of Clouds in the Government. Before that, we need to engage with industry to make sure we have the right partners and sources of expertise and resources to help us get there. Engagement within the Government is of course equally important and we have started that process already. We do not see this Cloud journey as only internal to Government, and will use it as a lever to building community Clouds and sector specific Clouds. Our Interoperability Framework will be increasingly Cloud based. We will be adapting our IT procurement arrangements to make sure we continue to be open, transparent and inclusive in the move to the Cloud environment. The challenge is whether the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (of which HK is a signatory) presents any impediments. We hope not but we will not be complacent. We know the treatment of Products and Services could be rather different, especially
6 when we talk about public and trans national tenders. We will aim at achieving a balance and creating a triple win situation for the procuring department, the tenderers as well as the end users in the community. Building an Inclusive, Knowledge Based Economy I may be repeating something that you will have a full session on later in this conference tomorrow. We see the opportunity of riding on the Cloud model to open up more public sector information (PSI) for re use. When considering PSI, admittedly a number of issues and concerns still constrain the pace and scale with which it is done. That s why we are only starting a pilot. Through the notion of Cloud, with its promises on packaged Services that are scalable and yet more standardized, we hope to be able to overcome some of the issues about intellectual property, liabilities, currency of data, cost recovery and record/authenticity of end use etc. The Cloud model presents new angles of assessing and responding to community needs to bridging the digital divide, e.g. through the use of community Clouds and new ways of managing contributions by government, private sector and non government organizations in delivering and resourcing such initiatives. We are going to look at for example how the District Cyber Centre initiative (an initiative to provide access to IT by the needy) can ride on the Cloud model. Similarly, we have been delivering over a dozen sector specific programmes aimed at facilitating the adoption of ICT by SMEs. It is to be considered whether and how a Cloud based approach could be more effective in reaching out to the potential beneficiaries (e.g. by lowering their entry barriers, both physical and psychological). Potentially we can extend the concept to other initiatives to bring the digital divide, on people with disabilities, low income families etc. The Cloud model may bring new insights to how knowledge management, sharing, creative commons and intellectual capital generally develop in HK. On this we do not have fixations on the possibilities and this is something
7 that would benefit from more investigation and research. Finally, we see opportunities for addressing some of the traditional issues on Web and general Accessibility through the deployment of suitable Cloud services. Examples may include trans coding services for people with visual or hearing impairment, information and services to help people with chronic diseases or physical disabilities and their carers. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope I ve given you some ideas and angles that we see Cloud Computing may bring. As you have noticed, they are not earth shattering, but personally I see some great opportunities for breakthrough in a number of areas. Whether and how we turn it into practical plans and strategies for sustainable development has not been my objective, but no doubt there is more work to be done. I shall end my talk here. Thank you for your attention. * * *