S for IT meets the media at Legislative Council Complex (with photo)

     Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Innovation and Technology, Mr Alfred Sit, at a media session at the Legislative Council Complex today (April 23):
      
Reporter: Mr Sit, can you tell us how specifically are you going to promote innovation and technology in Hong Kong during your term of office, given that, you know, the industry has been criticising being lagging behind many other places around the world? Secondly, how would you respond to the criticism that you are not familiar with the industry given that you have spent a long time at the EMSD? And also, thirdly, there are some critics who are concerned about the Government would be installing facial recognition technology across the territory. Does the Government have plans to do that in the future?

Secretary for Innovation and Technology: Well, in Hong Kong, we have many committed and talented people who are well committed to promoting innovation technology in Hong Kong. But the problem that we have now is that we have very good innovative people and innovative products. But we need to co-operate with different trades so that we can accredit the products and then have the products commercialised, so the whole process we need to have more input, to have more promotion, so that we have more co-operation among all the sectors in the trade. As regards the second question about my experience in innovation and technology. Well, I have to admit that in my 30-plus years of service in the Government, we have met a lot of people who are working on innovation and technology. So we worked with them in promoting the innovative products in the Government and we are going to continue to do so. My strength, I suppose, is to understand the system in the Government, so that we can give the opportunities to the people to make use of the good system in the Government to have the products put for trial. That's my strength. And I am going to listen to the views of our practitioners in the innovation sector, so that they can tell us more what we can do from the Government’s perspective. So that we can help them to promote their product, to facilitate them to enter into the other markets.
 
Reporter: For the facial recognition technology, does the Government have plans to install some of these technologies across the territory?
 
Secretary for Innovation and Technology: For innovative products, we need to have a good balance about the privacy and the advantage of application of new products. We need to have a good balance. It may be too premature to say which product we should use, which product we should not use. We need to have good balance to listen to the views of people. So that we can have a good balance.
 
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)