By Dr. Kevin Lau
Whether a policy truly touches people's lives depends not only on the richness of its content, but also on whether citizens can find it, understand it, and use it. Every Policy Address contains hundreds of measures. Yet if ordinary people must leaf through an entire document to locate the one or two items relevant to them, even the best-designed policies risk falling short at the "last mile". Recently, I came across an interactive online guide themed "Hong Kong's First Five-Year Plan × 2026 Policy Address" (https://pa.kenchan1996852.workers.dev/paexplorer). Users simply select their identity—"parent/expectant parent", "driver", "elderly", "employee," and so on—and the site instantly lists the applicable programmes and specific arrangements. The design is thoughtful and genuinely citizen-centric, and it deserves full recognition.
Personal experience speaks louder than abstract argument. A friend's real-life encounter is the most persuasive testimony: "My friend is expecting a baby—one click and she saw the HK$30,000 newborn bonus and the tax allowance measures. I had just switched to an electric vehicle; I picked "driver" and it showed me the Northbound Travel for Hong Kong Vehicles scheme and EV charging measures. Spot on." In just a few sentences, my friend captured the core value of such tools: citizens at different life stages and in different circumstances enter through the same gateway, yet each walks away with answers tailored to their own needs. This is exactly what digital public services should look like.
Equally noteworthy is the substance behind the website. Take fertility support as an example. The latest Policy Address extends the existing HK$20,000 newborn baby bonus for three more years, until Oct 24, 2029, while raising the bonus for the second and subsequent children to HK$30,000. The child allowance for those children is increased from HK$140,000 to HK$160,000, with the additional allowance for the first two years after birth raised in tandem. These are complemented by a stamp duty concession of up to HK$20,000 for families buying homes around the time of childbirth, a higher maximum mortgage ceiling of 95 percent for white-form families with newborns purchasing Home Ownership Scheme flats, and a gradual increase in public in-vitro fertilization quotas to 1,900 per year. Together they form a complete policy chain running from "encouraging births" to "supporting child-rearing". My friend's remark about the "HK$30,000 baby bonus" is the most direct and relatable footnote to this package of measures.
Drivers, too, have been substantively addressed. The government has set a target of increasing the number of high-speed charging poles to 5,000 within five years, capable of supporting an additional 250,000 or so electric vehicles, with Hong Kong's first ChaoJi charging technology demonstration station to be completed in 2027. At the same time, more reservation-free days will be introduced under the Northbound Travel for Hong Kong Vehicles scheme, while southbound travel for Guangdong vehicles will be extended to all cities in Guangdong province. EV owners care about charging; cross-boundary motorists care about convenience. With a single "driver" tag, the website brings both sets of measures together. Presenting information by user group rather than by government department is a crucial step in breaking down the departmental silos that have long characterized official communication.
From a public administration perspective, the guide compiles 89 measures drawn from both the five-year plan and the 2026 Policy Address, presented through multi-select identity filters, keyword searches and expandable highlights. In essence, it "translates" policy text into the language of everyday citizens. There is an old saying in policy communication: a policy that is not understood is a policy that does not exist. If Hong Kong is to build an efficient and transparent digital government, it must not only keep refining the policies themselves, but also build more of these user-friendly bridges between policy and people—so that the elderly can find information on care vouchers, parents on after-school care services, and small businesses on funding schemes.
The highest standard of governance is not telling citizens how much the government has done; it is enabling every citizen to feel, firsthand, that "these measures matter to me". A small interactive website reflects a profound shift in governance philosophy—from "government announces" to "citizens obtain". I hope this people-centered, user-experience-first approach will become standard practice in future policy dissemination, so that good governance truly lies within everyone's reach.
The author is the Founding Convenor of the Hong Kong Global Youth Professional Advocacy Action, a specialist in radiology, Master of Public Administration, Master of Public Health of the University of Hong Kong, and an adviser of the Our Hong Kong Foundation.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Kevin Lau:
Opinion | Building a family-friendly HK: Child welfare at the heart of the five-year plan
Opinion | From a single hub to a connected system: HK's new mandate in Asian innovation
Opinion | HK retains crown as Asia's most international city: Policy, data, and widening lead
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