Global recognition:
Deputy Government Chief Information Officer (Consulting & Operations) Victor Lam says the endorsement reflects the Central Computer Centre’s high service quality, and commitment to adopting the best practices in service management to meet business and customer expectations.
Win-win situation:
Senior Systems Manager Anthony Chiu says his team benefits from the accreditation as human errors in daily operations are minimised through process standardisation.
Gov’t computer centre wins global recognition
June 26, 2011
Booking sports venues, applying for marriage registration, searching government job vacancies, filling in tax returns, or even scanning government news, Hong Kong residents are familiar with all kinds of Government e-services.
Even when keying in confidential data, they can rest assured: These convenient e-services are well-managed by a professional information technology unit - the Central Computer Centre of the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer.
It stores huge amounts of important, and personal, data and ensures it is secure against hackers and viruses. It provides the infrastructural services for news.gov.hk, the GovHK portal, and a majority of government websites, as well as Internet connectivity and communication between government staff and the public, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The centre’s efforts have not gone unnoticed. The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer has been awarded ISO/IEC 20000 certification for its data centre services, the first and only Hong Kong government organisation to achieve international recognition for its information technology service-management standards.
The ISO/IEC 20000 sets out a comprehensive framework for the management of information technology services including service continuity and availability, information security, configuration, and incident and problem management.
A total of 15 organisations in Hong Kong, including the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, have obtained ISO/IEC 20000 accreditation. Only 10 government agencies from the region, in Korea, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates, have also obtained such accreditation.
Speaking to
news.gov.hk, Deputy Government Chief Information Officer (Consulting & Operations) Victor Lam said this endorsement reflects the Central Computer Centre’s high service quality, and commitment to adopting the best practices in service management to meet business and customer expectations.
“It assures the information technology infrastructure hosted in the data centres is able to cope with the ever-increasing demand for public electronic services. This is very important in ensuring the public can continue to enjoy efficient, reliable and secure services,” he said.
“We also set a good example for other government departments and other organisations to follow. We are more than happy to share with them our experience in adopting the best practices on information technology service management.”
The Central Computer Centre’s data centre in Wan Chai has hundreds of pieces of computer equipment for data processing. Professional staff work around the clock to ensure smooth operation. There are also data centres in Tsuen Wan and Sai Kung.
ISO 20000 is a continuous process of quality assurance, Mr Lam said. The Central Computer Centre must continuously enhance service quality on all fronts to meet the accreditation requirements.
“There are two areas which are of particular relevance to our customers. The first is about security. We have adopted a systematic continuous improvement mechanism which helps ensure a high security level is maintained at all times to tackle the ever changing information security threats such as hackers and viruses,” he said.
“And of equal importance is service standard. We make continuous improvements to ensure our service level targets, such as system availability and turnaround time for customer enquiries, can always be met or even exceeded.”
Senior Systems Manager Anthony Chiu said his team benefits from the accreditation.
“We need to follow more stringent processes in daily work for meeting the ISO 20000 requirements. Human errors in daily operations are minimised through process standardisation,” he said.
“Facilities management is a bread-and-butter work of a data centre manager like me. That is why facilities management is included in the scope of the accreditation. Through ISO 20000 accreditation, we adopt a systematic framework for managing centre facilities. The eventual outcome is more reliable electronic services to the public.”
