Knowledge Management
KM experience shared

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Ms Lau spoke about the challenges that had to be overcome when introducing KM to an organisation as big as the Hong Kong Police Force. "Fortunately,"said Ms Lau, "the KM Project Team had the full support of senior management and this was clearly demonstrated by including KM as a 'key project' under the Force's Three-Year Strategic Action Plan."

She then explained the increasing complexity of policing in a rapidly changing social and commercial environment. "We are responsible," she said, "for the provision of a wide range of services including traffic and crowd management, the investigation of increasingly complex and sophisticated crime and international terrorism.

"Our officers are under constant pressure to meet the ever-increasing demands of society. Job-rotation is one of the means by which our officers can become multi-skilled. Traditionally this meant that our officers had to learn from their own mistakes and constantly had to 'reinvent the wheel.' The introduction of KM aims to overcome this by allowing officers to learn from the experience and wisdom of their predecessors through an easily accessible and searchable data bank of knowledge," she added.

Ms Lau explained that the Force was still at the infancy stage in introducing KM but emphasised that solid and tangible gains had been made already. "The Force is a learning organisation that is seeking to inculcate a culture whereby knowledge is captured and shared throughout the organisation.

"KM should be people-centred with information technology employed as a delivery tool and feedback from officers using the various KM databases confirmed that the Force was on the right track," she said.

Ms Lau closed by urging supervisors at all levels to reject the traditional concept of 'management always knows best' and replace it with a philosophy of 'how we can best learn together' through sound KM.

If you have any good idea on KM or would like to know more about this management tool, please contact Ms Lau at 2866-6958 or by e-mail at cip-es-sq@police.gov.hk.