Common interface: Assistant Director of Information Technology Services John Wong speaks at the press conference on the Chinese common interface.

To help people communicate electronically in Chinese, the Government is committed to promoting a common interface in the language.

The major problems in conducting Chinese electronic communication are the use of different coding standards and lack of characters in some Chinese character sets. These hinder the use of Chinese characters in electronic communication and data exchange.

Under the Digital 21 Strategy, the Government has established an open and common Chinese language interface and has been adopting it in providing e-options under the e-Government programme, Assistant Director of Information Technology Services John Wong said.

The Information Technology Services Department has actively participated in the development of the ISO 10646 international coding standard, a unified standard developed by the International Organisation for Standardisation for coding characters in all major languages, including traditional and simplified Chinese characters.

The Government has published the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set which contains Chinese characters specific to Hong Kong that are commonly used by the Government and the public in electronic communication.

It has also submitted the set to the ISO for inclusion in the ISO 10646 international coding standard. Of the 4,818 characters in the latest version, 4,783 are now included in the standard.