January 1, 2008 is the "D" Day for all Force members, including regular and civilian, for matters concerning the training courses offered by the training units in the Force and by the Civil Service Training and Development Institute.

When the newly developed Training Management System (TMS) officially starts operating on that day, everything concerning training courses will go online, streamlining all the related procedures. And circulations, orders and memos concerning training courses will be things of the past.

Starting from January, everything that individual officers or supervisors wish to know about training courses will be available on the new web-based system, which is the culmination of a tremendous amount of joint efforts put into developing the system by the Police College's Police Operational Learning Division (POLD) and the project team of Information Technology Branch headed by Ms Ida Lee Doi-shuen, Systems Manager, Administration Systems Division 1. Ms Lee and her team have been working closely with the POLD to customise the system to suit the staff structure and training management requirements of the Force.

Nobody will be as keen as Superintendent Chan Wan-lung, officer-in-charge of the POLD, to see all Force members avail themselves of the many advantages offered by TMS. He also hopes that both individual officers and supervisors would cultivate the good habit of gaining access to the system.

"Gaining access is so simple; officers can do it through POINT or even POINT from Home!" he re-iterated. "What officers have to do is to log on to E-Services and then click 'Training Management System' to enter the system.

"If an officer enters TMS for the first time, he needs to select his Principal Supervisor who should be of the substantive rank of Station Sergeant or above. Thereafter, the officer may click 'My Supervisor' to view, delete or re-select his Principal Supervisor."

For individuals, Mr Chan said, TMS' "My Development Corner" contains the Course List, Learning Calendar, Training Profile and Training Directory. Officers may click "Course List" to view information on courses for which they meet the enrolment criteria.

Training units will send course information to eligible officers only. When an officer applies for a course, he should take note of the Application Deadline and Course Date. Officers may also view the status of their course applications as indicated at the "Application Status" column, e.g. "Applied" (application submitted to Principal Supervisor), "Endorsed" (application endorsed by Principal Supervisor), "Not Endorsed"(application not endorsed by Principal Supervisor), "In Progress" (application being processed by training unit) or "Rejected"(application rejected by training unit).

Mr Chan's Division has set up a hotline 2860-3891, and a TMS Helpdesk (tms-helpdesk@police.gov.hk) to answer enquiries on TMS-related matters.

Staff of the Police Operational Learning Division and members of the Information Technology Branch project team discussing the final touch to the TMS