ENG-2006 — Page 49

Constitution and Administration 1 21

The Management-initiated Retirement Scheme is now in place to allow the Government, for the purpose of organisational improvement, to initiate the early retirement of individual directorate officers.

4. Providing Diversified Training

The Civil Service Training and Development Institute, under the Civil Service Bureau, formulates training policies and gives support to bureaux/departments in training and development matters. The institute focuses on four core service areas: senior executive development, national studies programmes, human resource management consultancy service and promotion of a continuous learning culture.

For senior executive development, a variety of leadership programmes led by world-class professionals and academics are offered to directorate and potential directorate officers. Advisory services for human resources development and directorate succession planning are provided to departments. Attachment and exchange programmes with the private sector and the Mainland's municipal and provincial governments, including Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangdong Province, have been arranged for senior officers to gain wider exposure.

National studies programmes include courses at Mainland institutes such as the National School of Administration, Foreign Affairs University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Sun Yat-sen University. There are also local programmes on national affairs and the Basic Law for staff at different levels. In addition to local academics, the institute invites officials and scholars from the Mainland to speak at national affairs seminars. Through the provision of advisory services to departments, the institute disseminates best practices in human resources development covering subjects including training needs analysis, learning strategies, development of competency profiles and performance management systems.

To promote a continuous learning culture among civil servants, the training resources available on the e-learning portal, Cyber Learning Centre (CLC) Plus, were enriched and upgraded in 2006. The number of registered users of the CLC Plus has increased from 55 000 in 2005 to about 65 000 in 2006.

5. Reinforcing Performance and Good Conduct

Staff are given awards, commendation letters and other commendations for their commitment and contributions to the work they do. The Outstanding Service Award Scheme recognises the efforts and achievements of bureaux and departments in their pursuit of service excellence and is an integral part of the government effort to provide a customer-oriented service to the public. Since the establishment of the Secretariat on Civil Service Discipline to centrally process disciplinary cases, the Government has introduced further measures to shorten the time taken in processing cases. It has also delegated further authority on discipline matters to heads of departments, in the interest of empowering bureaux and departments to assume greater ownership in human resource management. The mechanism for handling staff whose work is persistently substandard was reviewed and further streamlined in 2005 to expedite their compulsory retirement.