The Deputy Director of Hong Kong Police College, Ms Shirley Chu Ming-po (left), represented the Force to receive the “2013 Asian MAKE Award”.

The Hong Kong Police Force (the Force) shoulders heavy responsibilities. Police officers are not merely patrol officers walking the beat. They engage with communities to prevent crimes, connect with the stakeholders to fight crimes and mount anti-crime operations. They formulate and execute preventive policing plans, prevent emerging crimes through predictive policing, and collaborate nationally and internationally to fight transnational crimes and terrorism, all with the benefits of information, intelligence and knowledge created and shared within the Knowledge Management (KM) framework. To a great extent, the Force comprises knowledge workers in action.

Established in 1844, the Force has developed from a humble police service to a modern police force manned by around 37,000 police and civilian staff serving 7 million people in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is not only one of the most densely populated cities in the world, but also a cosmopolitan city and Asia’s international financial and trade centre attracting around 50 million tourists annually. Amongst the developed countries and areas, Hong Kong boasts one of the lowest crime rates, all thanks to an effective and efficient police force renowned as “Asia’s Finest”.

In today’s fast-paced digital era, the Force has to face more and more new challenges. With the continual progress of society, public expectations of and demand for even better and more efficient police services are ever increasing. Threats from transnational crimes and terrorism are also mounting. The Force has to employ a lot of resources to deal with these changes. However, a retirement boom is expected in the next few years. Faced with these new challenges, the Force enhances its effectiveness and efficiency by implementing KM. For the Force, while its officers are the primary assets, access to the knowledge that each individual officer possesses is what actually makes the Force work. KM enables the Force to draw on a rich body of well-maintained and systematically captured explicit and tacit knowledge*, so that the Force can make better informed and rational decisions, whether on the beat or in relation to strategic issues, to ensure the safety of local people and visitors.

To the vast majority of police organisations worldwide, KM is a relatively new concept. However, the Force has been a forerunner and has been utilising it since 2001 by implementing a full-scale codification of professional knowledge in digitised forms and subsequently progressing to tacit-knowledge sharing in 2006. With a vision of “KM for All” across all ranks and units, the Force uses KM locally in its daily business and also internationally in its fight against global crimes and terrorism.

The Force has launched a variety of Knowledge Management activities.

From being recruits at the Hong Kong Police College to becoming professional officers at various stages of their careers, the Force stresses a culture of continuous learning and knowledge sharing. Throughout the years, the Force has been building a knowledge-driven organisational culture by implementing a great variety of KM activities. The results have been encouraging and are widely known across Asia.

With the guidance of a steering committee comprising senior officers, the Force’s KM activities permeate at both headquarters and frontline operational levels through both top-down and bottom-up approaches. Four “KM Champions” and 115 “KM Ambassadors” were appointed by the Force to conduct KM activities which included the following:

The implementation of KM in the Force greatly enhances organisational capacity and performance, which is one of the keys to its success in keeping Hong Kong as one of the safest and most stable societies in the world. Underpinning this vision is its willingness and enthusiasm to: