Lead Investigators: Prof. Alistair Cole, Dr. Emilie Tran

Work package 2 involves a specific case study of the Hong Kong Smart ID card. The main participants, Prof. Alistair Cole and Dr. Emilie Tran determined early on to broaden the scope of their inquiry, in order better to capture the smart city dynamics involving data and digital trust. Through drilling down into this specific Smart application, it facilitates the raising of more general questions about public-private partnerships in Hong Kong and about the reception of French and European influence.

Introduced in 2003, the current Hong Kong ID card is a smart card with an embedded microchip that stores information including the bearer’s photo image and thumbprints. As the microchip has a lifespan of about 10 years, the HKSAR government has announced the territory-wide identity card replacement exercise with a more modern, durable and safer system, called SMARTICS-2. The announcement of this replacement program, rolling out between 2018 to 2022 and costing HK$ 3 billion, raised many concerns. While citizens fear a greater intrusion into their private lives, legislators expressed doubts about the use of the radio-frequency identification that could allow hackers to hack remotely the personal data of millions of users (Legislative Council, 2018a). Some Legislative Council members have further expressed concern about the security of the new smart ID card and enquired whether the Administration has conducted any independent information technology security risk assessment of SMARTICS-2. The Administration responded that “the smart ID card contractor for SMARTICS-2 is a French-based company” (Legislative Council, 2018b) — as if the French origin was some sort of warranty for better technology and security.

This response highlights the importance of French ICT companies in HK. Most of the largest French ICT companies are present in Hong Kong, as well as many French Tech SMEs and middle-market companies and an increasing number of startups founded by French entrepreneurs. Since the 1950s, French companies have largely contributed to major infrastructure works such as dams, reservoirs, tunnels (including the Lion Rock tunnel) and the MTR network (Drémeaux, 2012), all of which have contributed to instill among the government officials a certain level of trust in the French business sector. From the perspective of the French government, which was at the origin of the French Tech branding exercise in 2016, Hong Kong’s technology hub provides a strategic hub for French Tech companies planning to enter the Chinese market and Asia (French Tech, 2019).

The case involves mixed methods research: questions on the PORI mass survey, convening a focus group, and conducting 25 contextual interviews. The researchers extended the investigative process to include survey questions on Smart Apps (especially the Leave Home Safe app), and controversial public equipment such as the Smart Lampposts. More generally, the researchers in work package two focused on collecting data (via interviews and the survey) on the questions of trust, data trust and confidentiality, in a manner that is of value for the whole project, especially work package 4 on the ethics of Big Data.

Investigation centers on three clusters of inquiry that each link Smart city dynamics to the broader questions of trust and transparency:

The first cluster concerns trust-transparency dynamics: Do residents feel that the amount of information available to them (transparency) has reassured them about the privacy of their data (trust)? Do residents express any concerns about the new generation of ID cards?

The second cluster concerns the private management of public goods. The Smart ID was developed as a result of a public-private partnership (PPP, the preferred delivery mode) with a French company (Thalès), demonstrating not only a degree of internationalisation but also implicit HSKAR trust in both provider and process: Is such trust warranted? Do HongKongers care about the private provision of public goods?

The third cluster concerns transfer dynamics: To what extent do Hongkongers pay attention to the provenance of the technology? Is a French microchip more trustworthy that one developed by a local/Chinese company?