Preface

also a substantial stakeholder, and owns over 60 horses worldwide in places including Hong Kong, South Africa, New Zealand, UK, and Ireland, an active and long time race follower here attending almost every race meeting for the past 35 years, a pioneer of Chinese language horse racing information development and supply of information. In terms of IT, having been in the industry for over 34 years and the elected Chairman of Hong Kong Information Technology Industry Council, I strongly feel I owe something to our society, as part of my commitment to do something. Hence this is a personal initiative to organize this research, funded by A Better Tomorrow, a community service organisation which I set up in 1990, aimed at gathering the collective wisdom of the intellectuals how best to meet the challenges and embrace this opportunity in this very unique fast changing world, brought about by today's and tomorrow's information technology, bearing in mind our need to balance the aspiration of various interest groups of our society.

Our world is fast changing, with the Internet speeding up the pace of globalisation, so it is difficult for all of us to keep up with such changes around us. Betting tax was abolished in Britain on Oct 6, 2001, and was replaced with a gross-profits tax. Bookmakers reported 40% turnover rise in the tax-free era, and with the fast growing person-to-person betting exchange on the web, it has all added confusion to the world gambling scene. Hence this document was prepared to serve as a background Work Book for the proposed research, targeted at a specific group of participants who represent a specific sector of the Hong Kong population, and having a specific passion for horse racing.