ENG-2007 — Page 58

22 Constitution and Administration

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 civil servants 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 seminars on national affairs and the Basic Law for staff at different levels. In addition to local academics, officials and scholars from the Mainland have spoken in such 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, have been continuously enriched and updated. The number of registered users of the CLC Plus reached about 71 000 in 2007.

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 Secretary for the Civil Service's Commendation Award Scheme commends civil servants for their consistently outstanding performance. 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 citizen-centric 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.

As part of its ongoing efforts to embed a culture of probity in the civil service, the Civil Service Bureau and the Independent Commission Against Corruption jointly launched an ethical leadership programme in December 2006 to further entrench a culture of probity in the civil service. Under the programme, bureaux and departments are asked to nominate a senior directorate officer to serve as 'Ethics Officer'. These officers head the development of integrity management plans in their bureaux/departments, and serve as the focal point of integrity-related activities in their organisations. The Civil Service Bureau has also continued to enrich the reference materials available on the Resource Centre on Integrity Management accessible online to officers responsible for integrity management in bureaux and departments.

Official Languages

Chinese and English are the official languages of Hong Kong. It is the Government's policy to develop and maintain a civil service that is proficient in both