The Service Quality Award 2007-08 is now open to submissions from formations, divisions or units until November 30.

Introduced in 2003, the Service Quality Award Scheme aims at promoting and reinforcing a customer-focused culture of quality service in all police formations; recognising commitment to the promotion of good practices at workplaces, and further motivating formations to seek continuous improvement in the pursuit of service excellence.

Announcing the launch of the 2007-08 award scheme, Assistant Commissioner (Service Quality) Ma Wai-luk pointed out that no theme had been set for entries to allow more flexibility and wider scope of innovation. Participating teams may focus on one of the following areas for their entries:

* Technology Application;

* Innovation;

* Specialised Service;

* Internal Service, or

* General Public Service.

However, entries covering other areas are also welcome.

Appealing for active participation in the award scheme, Mr Ma stressed that no particular area would be favoured, and each submission would be judged on its own merits.

High entry standard

Confident of seeing more high quality entries this year, Mr Ma noted that the standard of entries to the award scheme had been consistently high, demonstrating Force members' innovation, creativity, collective wisdom and teamwork.

"I'm sure all the teams that took part in previous years had learned a great deal while preparing for their entries, and experienced a great sense of achievement and job satisfaction. I hope that Force members would pull their strengths together and come up with more high quality entries this year," he added.

Similar to those in the past, the adjudicating process this year will be conducted at three stages. At stage I, participating teams should submit a description of not more than 2,000 words in either English or Chinese, providing information on their projects and initiatives in accordance with the assessment criteria, along with examples of the results achieved.

At stage II, the teams that have passed the preliminary assessment at stage I will be invited to nominate three officers, including at least one Junior Police Officer (JPO), to give a verbal presentation in either English or Chinese of not more than 15 minutes. After this, the adjudicating panel may ask the teams to elaborate on their presentation for up to 10 minutes.

The prize presentation ceremony will form stage III, where three short-listed finalists will give a final presentation to compete for the championship. The results will be decided by the votes of senior management officers and the Formation representatives.

The champion, 1st runner-up, 2nd runner-up and five merit award winners will each receive a trophy and a certificate signed by the Commissioner. In addition, the champion, 1st runner-up and 2nd runner-up will also be presented with cash-in-kind awards of $5,000, $4,000 and $3,000 respectively.

Appeal by winning team member

Last year, Yuen Long District Crime Headquarters clinched the second place of the Service Quality Award with a DNA Evidence Training Project. The project has also won the Champion title of the Internal Service Category of the 2007 Civil Service Outstanding Service Award Scheme.

The honour for this training package has given the project team so much satisfaction that its Assistant Project Officer, Woman Senior Inspector Yu Hoi-kwan, echoed Mr Ma's appeal to Force members.

"Besides being a very pleasant surprise for members of the project team, the honour for the training package also serves as recognition by the management of the efforts they had put into the package. It was quite an experience when I introduced the package at the final adjudication and answered the adjudicators' queries, along with two JPOs," said WSIP Yu, who is now working at the Recruitment Division of the Personnel Wing.

"The award for the training package has also made it known to more Force members, and many colleagues have requested for access to the package. Many also wonder what was intended as an internal project has gained such a high level honour. What is more important is the fact that the Service Quality Award serves as an encouragement to Force members to tap their potentials and come up with initiatives to provide more quality services to both the Force and the community," WSIP Yu added.

Assistant Commissioner (Service Quality) Ma Wai-luk says: "I hope that Force members would pull their strengths together and come up with more high quality entries this year."