(a)
 |
Electronic
records in English shall be encoded in the American Standard
Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) promulgated by
the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the
International Organization for Standardisation (ISO),
which is the prevalent coding standard in most English
operating system environments such as Macintosh, Microsoft
Windows 95/98, or Unix. For the avoidance of doubt, electronic
records coded in Extended Binary-Coded Decimal Interchange
Code (EBCDIC), which is a character encoding standard
commonly used in IBM mainframe machines, will not be accepted;
|
| (b) |
Electronic records in Chinese shall be encoded in Big-5
or ISO10646 standards. Big-5, the coding standard used
in traditional Chinese version of Microsoft Windows 95/98,
is the commonly used Chinese character encoding standard
in Hong Kong, while ISO10646 (more commonly known as Unicode),
which is used by Windows NT, is the international standard
of character coding in multi-language environment. For
the avoidance of doubt, GB (Guo Biao) standard , which
is the prevalent Chinese character encoding standard used
for simplified Chinese characters, will not be accepted;
|
| (c) |
When
electronic records are encoded in Big-5 standard, the
set of characters to be used is restricted to those coded
in the Big-5 standard or included 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
|
| (d) |
When electronic records are encoded in ISO10646 standard,
the set of characters to be used is restricted to those
Chinese-Japanese-Korean (CJK) Unified Ideographs characters
coded in ISO10646 standard. While the ISO10646 standard
encompasses characters in many other languages (for instance,
Greek, Russian or Arabic characters), the set of characters
to be used in electronic records shall be restricted to
the CJK Unified Ideographs character set.
|
Manner of Delivery of Electronic Records
Electronic records can be submitted in the following manner:
|
| (a) |
through electronic mail conforming to the 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 size not exceeding
5 MB. Electronic mail with size exceeding 5MB will not
be accepted.
SMTP is the de facto standard for electronic mail exchange
in the Internet. Most of the common software packages
for handling electronic mail, such as Netscape Communicator,
Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, Eudora
or other Unix electronic mail, etc. comply with the SMTP
standard.
If digital signature is not applied, compliance with SMTP
standard will suffice. If digital signature is required,
compliance with S/MIME standard is necessary;
|
| (b) |
in physical form of 1.44MB diskette with size of 3.5 inches
in MS-DOS format for files not exceeding one diskette's
storage capacity. In simple terms, floppy diskettes used
in the Microsoft Windows operating system environment
will be accepted. For the avoidance of doubt, when floppy
diskettes are produced using Macintosh operating systems,
they should be produced in a format that allows reading
in Microsoft Windows environment; or
|
| (c) |
in physical form as CD-ROM in ISO 9660 format. In simple
terms, the prevalent version of CD-ROM (including read-only,
write-once-read-many, and write-many-read-many CD-ROMs)
can be accepted.
|
For the avoidance of doubt, electronic records in the
following physical forms will not be accepted:
|
| (a) |
Floppy diskettes of size 5.25 inches or 8 inches;
|
| (b) |
DVD;
|
| (c) |
Iomega
Zip Disk;
|
| (d) |
Iomega
Jaz Disk;
|
| (e) |
Programmable
Diskette (PD);
|
| (f) |
Magneto-Optical
Diskette (MO);
|
| (g) |
4mm
DLT Tape;
|
| (h) |
8mm
Data Tape;
|
| (i) |
Data
Cartridges and Tape Cartridges;
|
| (j) |
RAM
cards in any form; or
|
| (k) |
any
other physical storage media.
|
File format
Textual information can be submitted in the form of an
electronic record. However, there exists many word processing
software, shareware and freeware in the market for different
operating systems. While textual documents can be prepared
using different types of word processing software, the
document shall be saved for submission in one of the following
formats:
| (a) |
Plain
text (TXT), which is a document format in which
a sequence of characters and the words they form
are encoded into computer-readable format using
various types of language coding schemes. Most of
the word processing software in the market allow
users to save their document as plain text. Please
note that when a document is saved as plain text,
special effects such as font size, boldface, italics,
underline, etc. will be lost. |
| (b) |
Microsoft
Rich Text Format, which is promulgated by Microsoft
Corporation. It is supported by the majority of
word processing software in the market and can be
used to submit files with formatting retained. |
| To
do so, choose "Save As" function and choose "Rich
Text Format (RTF)" as the document type. Many word
processing software not developed by the Microsoft
Corporation also allow the saving of documents in
RTF format. For the avoidance of doubt, documents
in Microsoft Word format (with extension .doc) are
not acceptable. |
| (c) |
Hypertext
Mark Up Language Format (HTML, version 3.2 or 4).
HTML is a document format promulgated by the World
Wide Web Consortium for the content on web pages.
Many word processing software in the market allow
users to save their documents in HTML format. For
the avoidance of doubt, documents with embedded
Visual Basic code, Flash, Java scripts, or other
embedded programming codes are not acceptable; or
|
| (d) |
Adobe
Portable Document Format (Acrobat version 3 or 4)
promulgated by the Adobe Systems Incorporated. Tools
can be used to convert textual documents into PDF
format. |
|
Graphic File format
Graphics in electronic records shall follow the following
graphic file formats:
|
| (a) |
Encapsulated
PostScript Files (EPSF) promulgated by Adobe Systems Incorporated;
|
| (b) |
Tag
Image File Format (TIFF) promulgated by Adobe Systems
Incorporated;
|
| (c) |
Windows
BitMaps (BMP) promulgated by Microsoft Corporation;
|
| (d) |
Graphic
Interchange File Format (GIF) promulgated by CompuServe
Incorporated; or
|
| (e) |
Joint
Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) promulgated by the International
Organization for Standardisation (ISO) and the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU).
|
For EPSF, a document can be printed to a PostScript File
for submission.
For TIFF, BMP, GIF and JPEG, they are supported by the
majority of image processing, graphics design, photo processing
and scanner accessory software in the market. When these
formats are used, the adoption of the following guideline
is suggested:
|
| (a) |
for textual document, scan the document into TIFF format;
|
| (b) |
for
photos and drawings where lower resolution is acceptable,
submit the image in JPEG format. JPEG has a relatively
higher image compression ratio but the compression is
lossy (original image cannot be perfectly reproduced).
JPEG files are generally of smaller size and are suitable
for transmission in the form of electronic mail and for
long term storage;
|
| (c) |
for
photos and drawings where higher resolution is required,
submit the image in GIF format. GIF has a medium compression
ratio and can retain more information than JPEG. GIF files
are generally of larger size; and
|
| (d) |
for
special types of drawings where resolution and quality
are of major concern, submit the image in BMP format.
BMP files represent the image bit by bit without any compression.
However, BMP files can be of very large size and may be
difficult to transmit or store.
|
In respect of Computer Aided Design (CAD) drawings, an
open standard - Autodesk Drawing Exchange Format (DXF)
promulgated by Autodesk, Inc. is acceptable in most cases.
However, some of the planning, lands and works departments
in the HKSAR Government have installed special internal
software systems for the related work, and therefore may
also accept under specified circumstances other file formats
for the submission of engineering graphics or spatial
data, such as:
|
| (a) |
Arc/Info
Export Format (E00) developed by the Environmental Systems
Research Institute, Inc.;
|
| (b) |
Arc/Info
Native Format (COV) developed by the Environmental Systems
Research Institute, Inc.;
|
| (c) |
AutoCAD
Format developed by Autodesk, Inc.;
|
| (d) |
Digital
Print Room (DPR) developed by Intergraph Corporation;
|
| (e) |
MicroStation
Drawing (DGN) developed by Bentley Systems; and
|
| (f) |
Initial
Graphic Exchange Specification (IGES) promulgated by the
American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
|
Digital signature
An electronic record submitted under a statutory provision
must be digitally signed if:
|
| (a) |
the
provision expressly requires the signature of a person;
or
|
| (b) |
the
provision requires the submission to be made in a specified
form and the specified form has a signature requirement.
|
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.
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).
E-MAIL ADDRESS
Submission of information under the Legal Aid Ordinance
in form of electronic records by virtue of the ETO can
be made to ladinfo@lad.gov.hk.
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