Assistant Director (Information Systems),
Immigration Department,
The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region
| C | orrado Chow is currently the head of Information Systems Branch of Immigration Department responsible for the management and security of |
information systems, planning and implementation of new systems, and issues relating to data privacy, access to information and management of departmental records. Mr. Chow has served in various divisions of the Department for over 34 years and had extensive experience over a wide spectrum of immigration work, covering control, investigation, personal documentation, information systems and departmental management support. He was also responsible for managing the development of the Smart Identity Card System in the early 2000s.
The Hong Kong Smart ID Card, introduced in June 2003, is more than a proof of identity. It also laid a solid foundation for automatic immigration clearance and other non-immigration functions. During the past nine years, more than 10 million smart identity cards have been issued. The Immigration Department’s Smart Identity Card System (SMARTICS) supports the process of identity card production, from registration, personalization to issuance. When SMARTICS was being developed in the early 2000s, citizens and Legislators raised serious concerns about privacy and security over introducing a new chip card storing both traditional personal identifiers and biometrics ready for multiple applications. Attaching great importance to privacy protection, the Department adopted a comprehensive data privacy strategy involving privacy impact assessments, legislative amendments, policy commitments and specifications in design for SMARTICS. The Department’s efforts have proven to remove all privacy concerns upon the conclusion of a Privacy Compliance Assessment in 2009.
