Format, Manner and Procedure for Submission of Electronic Information by virtue of the Electronic Transactions Ordinance

Highways Department will accept electronic submissions by virtue of the Electronic Transactions Ordinance provided that the electronic submissions are made in accordance with the form, manner and procedure stipulated as follows:

(A) Language

1. Electronic records in English shall be encoded in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII);
2. Electronic records in Chinese shall be encoded in Big5 or ISO10646 standards;
3. When electronic records are encoded in Big-5 standard, the set of characters are restricted to those coded in the Big-5 standard or in the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS) published by the HKSAR Government. HKSCS is available for downloading at the Digital 21 web site of the HKSAR Government at http://www.digital21.gov.hk/ ; and
4. When electronic records are encoded in ISO10646 standard, the set of characters are restricted to those Chinese-Japanese-Korean (CJK) Unified Ideographs characters coded in ISO 10646 standard.
   

(B) Manner of delivery of Electronic Records

1. Electronic records can be submitted in the following methods-
   1. Through electronic mail conforming to Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and the Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (S/MIME) standards promulgated by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and with file size not exceeding 5MB; or
   2. In physical media conforming to either of the following standards:

      Format	Applicability	Remarks
      1.44 MB diskette with size of 3.5 inches in MS-DOS format	Files not exceeding one diskette's storage capacity	Compression method, e.g. ZIP format, will not be accepted
      CD-ROM in ISO 9660 format	-	Compression method, e.g. ZIP format, will not be accepted

2. For submitting electronic records through electronic mail, both the mail message and attached files should be digitally signed and submitted to hqs@hyd.gov.hk
3. For submitting electronic records by 3.5 inch diskette or CD-ROM, all files should be digitally signed and submitted by hand or by mail to

   Highways Department Headquarters
   5/F Homantin Government Offices
   88 Chung Hau Street
   Homantin
   Hong Kong.
   (Attn.: ADS/A)

(C) Acceptable File Formats

File Type	Acceptable Format
Textual Files	Plain text (TXT); Microsoft Rich Text Format (RTF); Hypertext Mark Up Language (HTML, version 3.2 or 4) ; or Adobe Portable Document (Acrobat version 3 or 4)
Graphics Files	Encapsulated PostScript Files (EPSF); Tag Image File Format (TIFF); MS Windows Bit Maps (BMP); Graphic Interchange File Format (GIF); or Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)
CAD Drawing Files	Microstation (DGN); Intergraph Digital Print Room (DPR); Autodesk Drawing Exchange Format (DXF); or Initial Graphic Exchange Specification (IGES)

Remarks: Only Files of the above formats will be accepted.

(D) Digital Signature

An electronic record submitted under a statutory provision must be digitally signed if -

1. the provision expressly requires the signature of a person; or
2. the provision requires the submission to be made in a specified form and the specified form has a signature requirement.

However, to ease authentication and facilitate prompt processing of your submitted information, you are kindly requested to digitally sign your electronic submission irrespective of condition (a) or (b) above.

Only a digital signature supported by a recognized certificate issued by a certification authority recognized by the Director of Information Technology Services under the Electronic Transactions Ordinance is acceptable. A digital signature shall be attached to an electronic record in accordance with the Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (S/MIME) standard and the Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS).Most upgraded versions of existing browsers in the market can support the use of public key cryptography.

For an electronic record which comprises multiple electronic files and which has to be signed, each individual file shall be separately signed digitally.

(E) Others

Electronic records submitted shall not contain computer instructions. This is a precautionary measure to avoid the submission of electronic records containing computer instructions, such as computer viruses, macros and scripts (which generate different values every time when the electronic file is opened) or fields (the value of which may change depending on the time when the electronic files are opened).

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