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# A shout out to the Hong Kong Government's digital transformation
- URL: https://larrysalibra.com/a-shout-out-to-the-hong-kong-governments-digital-transformation/
- Published: 2026-11-12T13:37:52.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-12T13:37:52.000Z
- Author: Larry Salibra
- Tags: hong kong, day-126, daily

Almost 20 years ago, when I first set up a company in Hong Kong, it was a running joke among fellow entrepreneurs how backwards things were. Everything required paper printouts, company chops, postal mail response and fax machines. At some point, the Hong Kong Government started making what appeared to us outsiders a half-hearted effort to digitize some services. The initial attempts were often harder to use than the offline, in-person paper methods. For some services, you need to get a digital certificate from the post office and use the certificate to sign whatever form you were uploading. Other services required registering online and then waiting for your password to be mailed in an envelope by Hong Kong Post.

At some point, I'd point to roughly around Covid, their half-hearted efforts turned into real, serious efforts to digitize government services and reduce the amount of paper, faxes and in-person visit Hongkongers have to make to get things done. Their efforts started to bear fruit slowly, but surely. They launched a digital identity app that lets you prove your identity to any government service by scanning a QR code on your phone. And slowly, but surely new and updated government service portals rolled out, all tied together with seamless sign-on via the digital identity app.

Just today, I was told by my company secretary services firm that some records were out of date, and they offered to update them for me for HK$800\. By chance, I thought I'd see if there was a way to do it online without the old trip to the Queensway Government Offices in Admiralty. Much to my surprise, I found a new and very user-friendly Companies Registry website that let me update my information for all of my companies in a couple of minutes.

It's so easy to find problems and criticize what's wrong with the world, but, in this post, I wanted to say thank you to the civil servants and other people that clearly worked hard to make Hong Kong's Government services so much easier to navigate. The Hong Kong Government's service has always been fast, courteous and helpful in-person - this was a major reason I chose to stay here - and now we finally have a digital version that is fast and easy to use. Thank you!