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The Digital Trade Transport Network (DTTN) must offer a neutral e-platform to facilitate information flow and service integration both in the region (especially within the Pearl River Delta) and globally, making Hong Kong the e-logistics hub of choice.

Accenture's 2002 Study for the  Development of a DTTN System

Below Deck always finds a trip to Legco an enlightening experience. Where else can you view the political process warts and all and watch the answers to so many questions go begging?

Where else can you see grand aspirations diluted by private agendas on such a consistent basis?

Despite the largely unproductive nature of the question and answer periods, however, one usually leaves that venerable old building in Central with the feeling of having learned something.

On Monday, for example, Below Deck got to see what our new port secretary looks like for the first time.

Janice Tse Siu-wa has kept a very low profile since taking up the bureaucratic reins at the port in April. Below Deck has been known to pop by a maritime-related event or two during his daily regime and Ms Tse has been conspicuous by her absence.

Who can blame her. A legacy of being at the helm as the good ship Hong Kong slowly slips down the carriers' radar screens is not one you want on your CV, even if the mess is an inherited one.

Ms Tse made all the right noises on Monday as she tried to convince a sparsely represented legislative assembly to approve a $31.5 million outlay for 21 per cent of  DTTN Co, the company chosen to shepherd our disparate logistics community into the new era of electronic trade management.

She stressed the importance of neutrality, security, non-exclusivity and affordability for the platform - language straight from Accenture's $5 million DTTN report - and she held out hope the DTTN could yet be the port's saviour.

'We are ahead of the mainland in terms of information technology. But if we don't keep up a rapid pace of development, we will be overtaken very fast,' Ms Tse said.

'If we do not launch the DTTN, our competitiveness will be further eroded.'

Moreover, Ms Tse said the logistics industry had indicated it would have a lack of confidence in the DTTN unless the government got involved to assure its operational neutrality and the security of sensitive trade-related data.

Hong Kong's a funny place, isn't it? One day the business sector berates the government for playing favourites by awarding no-bid contracts to firms owned by its favourite citizens and the next day the same mob pleads for its involvement to assure the neutrality of a project.

Given the parsimony of altruism displayed by some of our blue-chip corporate citizens, the phrase 'the lesser of two evils' comes to mind. Question  time on Monday was not exactly robust. In fact, nine of the 10 people who took the floor did so to praise  DTTN Co and the government's involvement in it.

Maverick lawmaker Ronny Tong Ka-wah was almost  the lone voice of dissent, asking whether it was appropriate to use the public purse to fund and encourage what appears to be an obvious monopoly.

Ms Tse countered that any firm could set up in competition to the DTTN Co, which is technically true if there is one foolhardy enough to spend billions on infrastructure to rival a company partially owned by the government with all its political and financial resources.

One question that was not asked that perhaps should have been was what prompted the architects of  DTTN Co to fall so short of the vision set out in Accenture's 2002 report on the network,  purportedly used as the new company's basic framework.

As we know,  Accenture envisioned an electronic trade management platform with regional and international applications.

What we are on the verge of delivering - the funding request will be taken to the Finance Committee on February 17 - is a platform to manage and process what many expect to be the waning trade volumes that move exclusively through Hong Kong.

However,  that may be for the best, given that governments and traders in other jurisdictions would have been very unlikely to view the Hong Kong government as a neutral stakeholder.

russell.barling@scmp.com



Trade network's foreshortened vision may yet encompass only HK