Examining the Impacts of Institutional Framework on E-Government Infrastructures: A Study of Hong Kong Experiences

Since the Hong Kong SAR Government promulgated the first Digital 21 IT Strategy in November 1998, multiple major initiatives had been launched to establish the underlying infrastructure for facilitating future development of e-government in Hong Kong. For increasing effectiveness and efficiency, the Government of Hong Kong SAR adopted different institutional frameworks and management modes to implement and operate each e-government initiative. This paper studied two closely related and complementary major e-government infrastructure initiatives in Hong Kong - public key infrastructure (PKI) and electronic services delivery (ESD) - and examined the lessons learned from these cases. The cases were then put under the scrutiny of the four stage model proposed by Layne and Lee and the managed portfolio approach in e-government sourcing examined by Scholl. Key implications for future e-government projects were also discussed to consolidate the experience and generalize the findings to advance the planning and management of e-government infrastructure in the future