HKSAR Government Department

"GS1’s Global Individual Asset Identifier (GIAI) can uniquely identify and manage a particular asset, while its scalability and interoperability matches the requirements of OGCIO."

-- Mr. John Wong, CEO, SP Infinite Technology Ltd.

Background

A HKSAR Government department commissioned SP Infinite Technology Ltd. (SPIT) (A subsidiary of SecurePro Group), which is one of the leading IoT and RFID solution providers in Hong Kong, to develop a RFID application system that can be integrated to the inventory system. The RFID application system helps to perform the asset stock-taking by RFID technology. The system allows multiple users working for verification at multiple locations in order to improve the verification accuracy and effectiveness. However, challenges came up when the department requested the RFID tags number (EPC) must be unique worldwide, which could enhance scalability, management efficiency, data integrity and data interoperability. GS1 Hong Kong thus plays a big part in the whole solution.

GS1 standards used or solution(s) / service(s) applied

• Global Individual Asset Identifier (GIAI)
• EPCIS (Electronic Product Code Information Services)

Solutions

The department adopted GS1’s Global Individual Asset Identifier (GIAI) keys to identify its electronic assets in various divisions, where the keys are encoded into EPC RFID tags and affixed to the assets, which enables its staff to easily and quickly verify the inventory appointed location.

The GIAI enables assets to be individually recorded and harmonizes the various inventory coding system used by different departments. It is also highly scalable to incorporate systems from other government departments as needed in future.

GIAI is carried in the unique EPC Class 1 Gen 2 security features that pertains to GS1 RFID standard, where no change can be made once encoding is completed. This ensures no tampering of the coding by anyone, enhancing the security level for the department’s annual inventory verification system.

GIAI standard is a global GS1 standard and also ISO-compliant: ISO/IEC 15459-4 & ISO/IEC 15459-5. Using global identifier to encode asset record in the system simplifies the department inventory management process. It allows the department to conduct computer inventory taking in a faster and more accurate manner.

Benefits

Deploying GIAI identifier in RFID tags that forms part of the Government department’s inventory system helps the organisation in the following ways:

1. Its IT team is able to increase its operation efficiency by completing inventory verification process more rapidly and accurately;
2. The team can increase the frequency of inventory verification to ensure sufficient asset for maintaining daily operation;
3. GIAI is scalable to enable the department to harmonies the various asset numbering scheme by other government departments.