PICS II, DS3 development projects reach
milestone
A tea reception, with Assistant Commissioner (Personnel) Chau Kwok-leung and Assistant Commissioner (Information Systems) Peter Else as officiating guests, was held on April 27 to mark the milestone of the development of new systems to replace the existing Personnel Information Communal System (PICS) and Duty Scheduler 2 (DS2). The event also celebrated the contract-signing with Azeus Systems Limited for development of the two projects.
The existing PICS supporting the human resources management in the Force has been in use since 1997 and is near the end of its useful life. To ensure that the Force has sufficient manpower with appropriate skills to discharge their duties professionally, it is a strategic goal to effectively match officers' skills with different job requirements, thus making the best use of their talents. PICS II will provide tools to facilitate analysis of officers' job-related competencies, professional skills and training needs. Frontline supervisors can use the new functions to identify and deploy officers with the right skills to handle police duties, thereby raising the professional standard of policing services.
Human Resources Management enhanced
To better meet the rising expectations of the community, as well as the needs of internal clients, it is necessary for the Force to sustain its capability as a professional and world-class police force with strategic and pragmatic human resources management. The new system will provide decision-support functions for strategic workforce forecasting as well as manpower and succession planning. PICS II will be user-friendly. Also, the system workflows will be streamlined to further improve efficiency. Force members will be provided with a one-stop portal of e-HR self-service, which will be accessible both at the workplace and at home, for applying leave, transfer, quarters or holiday homes.
The Duty Scheduler 3 (DS3) will be a total revamp of the DS2, which has been supporting daily duty scheduling, maintenance of deployment information and management of overtime since 2004. DS3 will adopt a centralised server approach and be built on a web-based infrastructure that will also allow access via e-Services. A concept of "self-service" will be introduced to provide functions like viewing of duty list, details of overtime balance and application for time-off. Moreover, DS3 will enable supervisory officers to have a better managerial view and control of resource planning, which is supported by standardised management reports, new interface with PICS II and Training Management System (TMS) on leave records and training schedule respectively. DS3 will be strengthened by a set of enhanced data security features.
Development of these Force-wide systems will last for two and a half years with PICS II and DS3 scheduled to be launched in May and September 2013 respectively. It is expected that by then the Force's overall human resources management capability will be further enhanced.
A
major milestone for PICS II and DS3 Development Projects