(1) |
Electronic records in English shall be encoded
in American Standard Code for Information Interchange
(ASCII) or ISO 10646-1:2000.
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(2) |
Electronic records in Chinese shall be encoded
in Big-5 or ISO 10646-1:2000 standard,
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|
a. |
where electronic records are coded in the Big-5
standard, the set of characters is restricted
to that coded in the Big-5 standard or included
in the
Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS)
published by the Government in 1999;
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b. |
where electronic records
are coded in the ISO 10646-1:2000 standard,
the set of characters is restricted to Chinese
characters
within the Chinese-Japanese-Korean
(CJK) Unified Ideographs characters coded in the ISO 10646-1:2000 standard
or
characters in the HKSCS published by the Government in 1999.
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(3) |
Where electronic records are compressed, the following
compression standards shall be followed:
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|
a. |
Zip file (.zip); or
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b. |
GNU zip file (.gz)
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(4) |
Electronic records shall be sent as follows:
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|
a. |
through electronic mail conforming to the Simple
Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and either Multipurpose
Internet Mail Extension (MIME) or the Secure
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (S/MIME) standard
and with
size not exceeding 5 MB;
|
b. |
in the form of 1.44MB diskette
with size of 3.5 inches in MS-DOS format
for files not exceeding one diskette's storage
capacity;
or
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c. |
in the form of CD-ROM in ISO 9660 format.
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(5) |
Electronic records shall follow the following file
format standards:
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|
a. |
Plain text (TXT);
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b. |
Microsoft Rich Text Format
(RTF);
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c. |
Hypertext Mark Up Language (HTML) Format;
or
|
d. |
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) (compatible
to Acrobat version 3, 4 or 5).
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(6) |
Graphics in electronic records shall follow the
following graphic file formats:
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a. |
Encapsulated PostScript Files (EPSF);
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b. |
Tag Image
File Format (TIFF);
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c. |
Portable Network Graphics
(PNG);
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d. |
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF); or
|
e. |
Joint Photographic
Experts Group (JPEG).
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(7) |
Computer Aided Design (CAD) drawings in electronic
records shall follow the following CAD file format:
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|
a. |
Autodesk Drawing Exchange Format (DXF).
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(8) |
An electronic record given or presented under a
statutory provision must be signed with a digital
signature if:
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|
a. |
the provision expressly requires the signature
of a person; or
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b. |
the provision requires the submission
to be made in a specified form and the specified
form has a signature requirement.
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(9) |
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#7).
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(10) |
For an electronic record which comprises multiple
electronic files and which has to be signed, each
individual file shall be separately signed digitally.
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(11) |
Electronic records given or presented shall not
contain any computer instructions, including but
not limited to:
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|
a. |
computer viruses; and
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b. |
macros, scripts and fields
that depend on the execution environment
and the execution of which will cause changes to
the
electronic
record itself or the
information system displaying the electronic record.
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(12) |
For submission of Government forms to Government,
the Electronic Government Forms (in the form of a
software) should be used to generate electronic records
and, if required, to make digital signatures. The
format of individual supporting document, if any,
attached in an electronic record should comply with
all the relevant requirements specified in items
1 to 11 above. |