Technology mishaps serve to undermine reputation of city

I recently tried to book a tennis court through the Leisure and Cultural Services Department’s system. I was surprised to keep getting a “time conflict” error and then a “booking limits” message although I had not booked anything yet.

After experiencing the first two issues, I called the hotline. I would expect the hotline to offer the simplest means of solving problems. However, after I selected English, it instructed me to either leave a voice message or press “*” to talk to an operator. I chose “*”, which led to an infinite loop of errors as the system repeated the same message to leave a voice message or press “*”. The next morning, I tried the hotline again, selected Chinese and someone answered, suggesting different working hours for English-speaking and Cantonese-speaking operators.

Earlier this month, during the Diploma of Secondary Education exam, the i-Invigilation app crashed during two papers and the examination authority suspended its use.

Recurring technology mishaps paint a worrying picture of our infrastructure’s readiness to support our city’s claim of being world-class.

While using taxpayers’ money, each department of the Hong Kong government seems to embark on a process of trial and error. Errors are acceptable, but on the road to recovery – both in terms of business confidence and the ability to attract expats or foreign direct investment to Hong Kong – the room for trial and error is not as vast as mine in booking a tennis court or the exam authority’s in its roll-call system.