Prof. Allan Chiang
Adjunct Professor
BSc, DipEd, LLB, PCLL, MBA, MSocSc (Public Admin)
Barrister-at-Law Adjunct Professor, Department of Law
Biography
Allan was an “expert generalist” in the public service with a wealth of business and management knowledge and experience covering operations, administrative services, finance, planning, project management, organizational development, marketing, business development, LegCo engagement and media relations;
He served the Post Office for 30 years where he masterminded the organization’s transformation from a traditional government department to a business-oriented and customer-focused service organization that enjoyed sustained profitability, public recognition as well as high levels of customer and staff satisfaction. He retired as Postmaster General in 2006. In that capacity he engineered a financial turnaround for the Post Office after a 5-year operating deficit, and achieved operating surpluses which exceeded the Government’s target return.
From 2007 to 2009 Allan was the Chief Executive Officer of the Hong Kong Design Centre: a government-funded organization dedicated to promoting design as a strategic tool to drive innovation and value creation in Hong Kong. In this role he achieved breakthrough successes in the promotion of design application in the service sector and among government departments.
Allan also served as the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data from 2010 to 2015 and had earned the reputation of being an activist regulator. He has successfully tackled a number of high profile privacy cases. Importantly he adopted an explicit policy of naming organizations for breaches of data privacy, thus enhancing enforcement effectiveness by invoking the sanction and discipline of public scrutiny. Moreover he succeeded in convincing the Government and a number of major business sectors not to treat privacy and data protection merely as a compliance issue, but to embrace them as part of corporate governance to win the trust of citizens or customers. The accountability practices he recommended have been implemented by many reputable organizations.
Further, Allan assisted the Government in a major overhaul of the data protection legislation, which culminated in the enactment of the Personal Data (Privacy)(Amendment) Ordinance in 2012.
Allan was the Founding Chairman (2000-2006) of the Hong Kong Association for Customer Service Excellence and is presently an Honorary Adviser of the association. He is a member of the Asian Privacy Scholars Network and has contributed articles to local and international law journals and business magazines on privacy and data protection.