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Software upgrades to boost Force systems
Force computers are to be standardised with Microsoft Office 2000 software to improve performance and document exchange, particularly between the Chinese and English editions.
The move funded through the Force's internal savings, has been endorsed by the Commissioner of Police who attended a special meeting on the matter in November.
MS Office v4.2 is the Force's current standard desktop Office Automation application installed on 7,800 networked and standalone PCs. However, availability of newer versions have seen more users installing other MS Office versions, not only in the Force but also other government departments. With more document exchanges being made in electronic form, problems have arisen with incompatibility.
To complicate this further, research and development on MS Office v4.2 has ceased and the problems will impair the efficiency of electronic document exchange and hinder the Force's work. MS Office 2000 solves incompatibility problems and the replacement programme is now underway. Full-scale migration covering all formations and Headquarters Units will start October 20 and last five months. Before that, a Production Pilot Run for formations such as the Communications and Police Public Relations Branches will be conducted September 29.
An advisory group made up of volunteers from various formations has been set up to give constructive advice on how to get the best from the software. More than 100 commonly-used Force templates, which are pre-formatted for fast production of office correspondence, have been collected. The group will be asked to advise on their final content and appearance.
Readers are welcome to make suggestions to the group by emailing cip-bd-r-is.