The hard copy loose-leaf edition of the Laws of Hong Kong has been phased out following completion, in the first quarter of this year, of a project to verify all the current consolidated legislation published on Hong Kong e-Legislation (HKeL), the Department of Justice announced today.
The department said the HKeL is now the only official source of Hong Kong’s current consolidated laws, and that the final issue of the loose-leaf edition was issued earlier this month.
Under the department’s verification project, all copies of the current consolidated legislation published on HKeL were subjected to a rigorous verification process. This included checking for accuracy against official copies of legislation in the loose-leaf edition and the Government Gazette.
With the project’s completion, all verified copies published on HKeL have legal status. Users can access and download the verified copies on HKeL free of charge on any device.
The department rolled out the Bilingual Laws Information System website in 1997. The website’s contents initially had no official status and were for information only. The department therefore established Hong Kong e-Legislation in 2017 and subsequently embarked on its verification project.
Besides its ongoing efforts to proceed with back-capturing past printed gazettes and create electronic versions of them for upload to HKeL, the department is gradually converting printed copies of the loose-leaf edition into electronic format for addition to the website.
