The Department's strategic plan sets out our objectives and describes how the objectives can be achieved. The strategic plan provides a rational basis upon which priorities are determined and is regularly updated to ensure that resources are well targeted and used effectively having regard to the changing needs of society.

The Department's strategic plan can also be viewed at the Department's website.

Implementation of Five-day week operation in Application and Processing Division

With effect from 3 January 2017, Application & Processing Division offices (Headquarters and Kowloon Branch Office) moved to five-day week operation in light of the closure of service of court registries on Saturdays under the full implementation of the five day week by the Judiciary.

Information System

With a view to enhancing the network infrastructure, following the completion of improvement for Kowloon Branch Office and Hong Kong Sub-office (HSO), the network infrastructure of the Headquarters had been revamped and the enhancement was completed in October 2017. Moreover, the Electronic Document Management System was upgraded to strengthen system security in data encryption. The implementation of the upgrading projects were accomplished and put into production in 2017.

For the Department to develop and formulate the strategic information technology (IT) plans for supporting our business objectives and effective delivery of legal aid services and to plan new IT projects, the Department proposed to conduct a consultancy study on the Departmental Information Technology Plan, which included a feasibility study on the way forward on revamping the computer system. A funding application for the consultancy study was submitted and the consultancy study was planned to commence in 2018.

Customer Services

In 2017, the Department planned to implement an electronic appointment system to facilitate intended legal aid applicants to book appointment online to obtain application-related forms and documents from the Department. This would greatly save their waiting time. The electronic booking system would be ready in early 2018.

With a view to providing members of the public an alternative means to obtain legal aid leaflets and distributing legal aid publications in an eco-friendly way, the Department designed a poster with the QR Codes of leaflets on “How to Apply” series in 2017. By scanning the QR Codes on the poster, members of the public may choose to download electronic copies of the leaflets to their mobile devices quickly and with ease.

Publicity

The Department continued to organise various activities to promote public awareness and understanding of legal aid services. In January 2017, the Director of Legal Aid, Mr Thomas Kwong, was interviewed by TVB on legal aid services provided by the Department and recent development. The interview was broadcast in the TV programme “A Closer Look” at TVB iNews and in TVB-Jade’s main newscast and late newscast and received positive response. In September 2017, the Department set up a booth in a “Free Legal Advice Programme” to promote legal aid services at the covered piazza of Times Square in Causeway Bay. 13 professional officers of the Department participated and answered public enquires on legal aid services.

In 2017, the Department delivered talks to frontline staff and social workers of Social Welfare Department and non-government organisations to introduce legal aid services and briefed them about legal aid application procedures. The Department also gave a seminar for legal practitioners to update them on the latest development of the legal aid schemes.

To educate students on legal aid services and provide information on legal career paths, the professional officers of the Department continued to give briefings to university students, non-Chinese speaking students and high school students from local schools in 2017.

Staff

The Department maintains a comprehensive collection of books available to our staff. As books on healthy eating and Chinese dietary therapy were most popular among colleagues, we further enriched the collection in 2017 by acquiring more books on these topics to promote staff wellbeing. Furthermore, a talk on “Eat Smart & Healthy” was organised for staff and received positive feedback.