National Computer Systems Pte Ltd (NCS), a leading IT and engineering services provider in the region, announces that it is the systems integrator supporting the electronic submission and processing of cargo manifests (EMAN) for the Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau (CITB) of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). With NCS' twenty years of domain knowledge in trade and customs operations and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) technology, it has been chosen by the HKSAR Government to develop, implement and maintain the system as well as to provide helpdesk support for Government users.

The EMAN system supports the electronic submission of cargo manifests for air, ocean, river and rail mode carriers to three key departments - Customs and Excise Department, Census and Statistics Department, and Trade and Industry Department - all in one go. Users of the EMAN service will enjoy higher efficiency, shorter turnaround time, greater convenience, lower costs and less paperwork when compared with the traditional means of submitting one manifest at a time on paper to the three Government departments.

"Electronic processing of cargo manifests will help save time and costs, and enhance the efficiency and accuracy of submitting these documents. This is also a step towards the wider application of electronic commerce, which is essential for the local trading community and for Hong Kong to remain competitive," a CITB spokesman said.

NCS, the primary developer of the Government's system for the EMAN service, provided experience and know-how, tapped both locally and overseas, in the implementation and management of the multimodal, inter-departmental EDI infrastructure for this mission-critical system. NCS' proven processes and methodologies were used in the project implementation.

With more than 20 years of IT and communications engineering experience and over 1,000 large-scale solutions deployed worldwide, NCS brings to this project the relevant technical expertise and domain experience. Amongst NCS' pool of 3,000 experienced and dedicated IT professionals is a team of 500 IT professionals in Greater China.

"NCS is honoured to be chosen by the HKSAR Government as the IT partner in taking forward this e-government initiative," says Mr Lee Kwok Cheong, Chief Executive Officer of NCS. "We remain committed to leveraging our IT and communications engineering capabilities to bring business value to our customers in both the public and private sectors in this region."