The Government will provide a $1 million sponsorship to the Hong Kong Council of Social Service to organise an information technology training project to improve small and medium social enterprises' IT literacy and skills.

Announcing this at the NGO Day 2009 today, Government Chief Information Officer Jeremy Godfrey said it is the third sector-specific project under the IT training programme for SMEs, following two similar projects for the travel industry and Chinese medicine practitioners earlier this year.

He said these enterprises need support in areas such as operations, business strategies, branding, positioning, marketing and management. IT is a key important area to help them improve their daily operations and boost their  competitive advantages.

The project will run from October to May 2010 with a series of tailored training courses. Classes on commercial and general IT applications will be organised for frontline staff.

The project is expected to benefit about 340 practitioners in social enterprises and create job opportunities for the IT industry in the areas of project management, training materials development and classes.

The Government has also earmarked $63 million to conduct a one-year education programme from August to teach Internet users, especially primary and junior secondary school students, how to use the Internet properly and safely.

An expression of interest exercise will start soon to invite proposals from interested elderly-related services organisations to establish an elderly portal to provide one-stop information on elderly services.