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Problem of Using FICS
Please could someone tell me why I have to live in constant fear as the officer-in-charge of a Divisional Investigation Team just because a programming fault exists in the Force Information Communal System (FICS)? For as long as I can remember and certainly for the last 18 months it is a well known fact that when charge sheets are printed out using the FICS terminal they emerge complete with the Defendant's CRO number printed on the top right hand corner.
Should this be seen by the Magistrate it results in adverse criticism and almost certainly in an immediate MOR for 'neglect of duty' on the part of the officer in charge of the case, whose responsibility is to ensure that these details are removed from the charge sheets prior to them being sent to court. At present this is accomplished using Tipp-ex. This practice, apart from reflecting upon the Force as being unprofessional, is useless unless we are to assume that Magistrates are so stupid as to remain ignorant as to the significance of liberal amounts of Tipp-ex on the top right hand corner of the charge sheets.
As a result, we have to resort to photocopying charge sheets with the CRO number blanked out, a practice which is hardly consistent with the Force's supposed efforts to reduce the use of papers.
The above situation is well known throughout the Force to my knowledge and the fact that it persists after such a long period of time suggests one of two things. Either the Force doesn't have anyone competent enough to address this fault in the programming (or alternatively doesn't have sufficient funds to pay for the work involved).
Or, the Force is more than capable of addressing this issue (which I believe to be the case) and simply has not done anything about it yet.
As an Inspector, I accept my 'accountability' in respect of the above, but I also unfortunately accept that because I and my fellow officers are human beings and not computers, whilst this situation persists charge sheets will end up on occasion (for whatever reason) being sent to court by mistake without the CRO numbers removed. If however the program fault was addressed it would never, ever happen again.
I accept 'my' accountability. All that I ask is whoever is responsible for the fault to accept theirs. Because if they cannot, then who is really guilty of being in neglect of their duty?
An Inspector
Reply......
The problem raised by the reader is well known to the Communal Information System Division (CISDIV). It is not, as suggested by the reader, due to a programming fault in the system software but rather because officers incorrectly input information into the system.
Nevertheless, it is appreciated that the system has a shortcoming in that it does not provide a specific field for entering 'CRO Descriptions' which are required for crime messages. Consequently, officers attached to crime investigation teams enter 'CRO Descriptions' into fields such as the 'CHARACTERISTICS' field or the 'OTHER ADDRESS' field, so that the 'CRO Descriptions' appear in Crime Messages. Because some of the fields used in the generation of the Crime Message are also used to generate charge sheets and other court related documents, 'CRO Descriptions' sometimes appear in these documents when they should not resulting in adverse criticism from the courts.
CIS DIV has placed a high priority on improving the Crime Message preparation function in CIS and to this end, there has been a great deal of consultation with officers from crime teams and from Crime Wing Headquarters. The result is a proposed new design which is currently at the 'prototype' stage.
The prototype includes a new 'CRO DESCRIPTION' field in the 'PERSON' Screen which will enable this information to appear in the Crime Message. This and other enhancements related to the preparation of Crime Messages were originally scheduled to be released in mid-1999 but because the programming work involved has turned out to be more complicated than first envisaged, the scheduled release has now been delayed until the end of this year.
Meanwhile, officers are asked to bear with this shortcoming and take two simple steps to avoid the problem - the first is not to enter prejudicial information (such as CRO Descriptions) into fields which are used to compile the charge sheet. The second step is that officers in charge of investigation teams must check any paper submitted by them to the courts. This is just as true in the case of computer generated documents as it was of hand typed documents.
Anyone interested in details of the new Crime Message enhancements may call myself at 2860-2187 or Senior Inspector/Regional Information Communal System/Support, Mr John Yuen Wing-chiu at 2860-2138. We will be only too happy to answer any queries or discuss any ideas readers may have on the subject.
M.E. Medwecki
Superintendent CIS
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