Use of IT in HR development to enhance civil service competency
07 - 03 - 2000

The Government makes use of information technology (IT) in the development of its human resources (HR) to ensure the competency of the civil service in meeting with the new challenges in the digital world of the 21st century.

To promote the benefits and opportunities brought by IT to HR development, an IT in Human Resources Development Symposium was jointly held by the Information Technology Services Department (ITSD) and the Civil Service Training and Development Institute (CSTDI) today (Tuesday).

Participating in the symposium were senior departmental managers, HR development managers, training managers and IT managers of government bureaux and departments.

Speaking at the symposium today, the Director of Information Technology Services, Mr Lau Kam-hung, encouraged the participants to take advantage of the latest technologies, infrastructure and IT systems available in leveraging IT in HR development.

"Hong Kong is turning into a knowledge-based economy. Electronic government and electronic commerce have become part of our life. The Government will be using electronic means to provide services to the public by the end of this year," said Mr Lau.

"This calls for an enormous amount of resilience, dedication and skill from all of us, not only in our professional competence but also IT competence," he said.

Mr Lau pointed out that leveraging IT in HR development in the civil service involved four factors: the physical IT infrastructure; use of IT in the delivery of education and training resources; the enhancement of IT literacy and capability of government officers in general; and the facilitation of HR managers, training managers and trainers.

The physical IT infrastructure includes three requisite elements: the network, the support systems and the user facilities.

"A service-wide network is needed to support the dissemination and interactive exchange of high-volume multimedia in an education and training environment," said Mr Lau.

"Effective IT-based training and development support systems can help departments to manage the competency of staff and plan staff training and development programmes.

"Adequate IT facilities are required to realise the delivery of training and development resources to staff," he said.

By the end of this year, all bureaux and departments will be connected with the Government Network (GNET) which supports the electronic mail exchange within the Government. By 2001, GNET will be enhanced to support a service-wide intranet.

The number of workstations for every 1,000 civil servants in 1999 was 424.

"Secondly, the delivery mechanism can no longer be constrained by the physical limitations and training materials," Mr Lau said.

"Network and web technologies permit the online delivery of timely multimedia training to a large number of people in dispersed locations," he added, noting that the development of a continuous learning culture can be fostered.

The Learning Resources Centre set up by ITSD provides its users with more than 140 training packages of self-learning materials.

Users can access books as well as computer-based training packages in text and multimedia formats on diskettes and CD-ROM, covering a wide variety of IT subjects.

"Thirdly, the IT capability of the civil service has to be enhanced so as to bring it on par with the business community in the proficient use and management of IT as part of its day-to-day business," said Mr Lau.

"IT training and development programmes will enhance the IT literacy of government officers to the competency levels required by their jobs," he added.

ITSD has been working closely with CSTDI to provide a variety of IT seminars and training courses to all levels of civil servants, for examples, IT awareness seminars for directorate officers, Chinese computing courses and PC training courses for general grades.

The Information Technology Solution Centre of ITSD also organises various activities for civil servants such as showroom display, seminars, exhibitions, and publications to promote the wider use of IT in the Government.

Lastly, HR managers, grade managers, training managers and trainers can take advantage and make full use of the latest teaching and learning technologies for the planning, organising and delivery of training and development programmes.

"Now, the prevalence of the web, high-bandwidth network communication and multimedia technologies make it possible to build the infrastructure required for a continuous learning environment in the civil service," Mr Lau said.

"When all these enabling factors are properly strengthened, we are already there," he said.

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