OSD Senior Systems Manager Choi Pak-cheung (also known to his colleagues as PC) is on secondment from the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO).

In December 2006, PC joined the Force's IT Bureau and took over supervision and management of the project teams in OSD. His responsibilities include overseeing the production and maintenance of systems in support of services related to incident reporting and case handling, crime investigation and intelligence, traffic management and licensing.

Ms Barbara Chiang Lai-chun is the Systems Manager of OSD Team 1. She joined the Force in June 2004 and is responsible for administering the maintenance of information systems that are related to the operations application platform, incident reporting and case handling.

PC and Barbara's current major project is to upgrade the Communal Information System (CIS) ad hoc server, the Formation Information Communal System (FICS) archive server, the Regional Information Computer System (RICS)/Traffic Operations and Management System (TOMS) server, and to enhance the replication server. The project started in October last year for completion by the end of March.

Upon completion of the project, users will be provided with enhanced services for CIS ad hoc queries and archiving functions. CIS users will get faster response on conducting CIS searches because the processing power of the new servers will be increased by five times. Additionally, data synchronisation between formation and central servers will be improved as a result of enhancement of the replication servers.

As the CIS is a mission critical system and with its capacity for updating the daily production data already stretched, upgrading it to cater for current needs and future expansion of data is extremely important. The archive servers have a probable capacity to accommodate archive records till 2010. To facilitate future processing for FICS, RICS and TOMS archiving, there is a pressing need to upgrade the servers well before hitting the usage threshold. After the upgrading, the servers will be able to hold records until 2016.

Barbara and PC