Immigration Department, HKSAR

Imagine moving the equivalence of the entire population of Japan back and forth every year across a narrow strait orderly, efficiently, and without undue congestion. And for everyone that crosses the border, there has to be a host of clearance criteria that need to be administered and recorded to the satisfaction of multiple authorities. That is the magnitude of the challenge the Immigration Department at HKSAR is faced with. Rising up to this challenge is the vision of an Integration Border Management Platform, a multiplex of systems which collectively structure the traffic flows and management needs. IT is therefore at the heart of making this performance conceivable.

ICO is there. ICO’s presence has been crystallized into the EXPRESS system, for Entry/Exit Processing and Records System, the core around which other systems are built. Today, just one of the control points, Lo Wu, has been empowered to process 180 million passengers per year, in a way that is as smooth as silk.
For having developed such a robust and efficient system, the Immigration Department has gone on to solicit a host of commendations, including the Awards by the e-Gov Institute at the United States.