E-governance making progress in Thailand

Within the next five years, more than 80 percent of Thailand’s government offices will use e-documents for identification in the country.

The government will also set up a Big Data, Data Centre, and Analytics Centre to support the Thailand 4.0 vision.Sak Segkhoonthod, president of the Electronic Government Agency (EGA), said that the five-year Digital Government project started in 2016 and ends in 2021.

The Digital Government project or e-government project expects that within five years over 80 per cent of government agencies will not ask for a duplicate document from people who come to the government offices and contact government agencies to access e-government services. There are totally around 400 government agencies or government offices in the country.

He said the government also will provide one-stop services in order to create convenience for people as a whole such as business portal services in order to provide business registration from websites, e-tax services, and citizen portals to support digital identification or digital ID in the country. The Digital ID will be provided to the public next year. The digital ID will allow Thai people to do and make transactions with the government and private sectors with high security and safety.

The digital ID will first be used in the financial sector such as banks. People will able to open accounts without using duplication documents and also use their digital ID to open new bank accounts next year. Banks can thus check the status of Thai people from the government database.He said that there are now around 56 government agencies that do not ask for duplication or document copies from people who visit them for services.

“Digital ID will allow people identification in various areas such as finger printing through bio-technology and one-time password with international standards. The Digital IDs will also create convenience and increase efficiency for Thai people and make it easier to use and access e-government services, which will help reduce the cost for people and create transparency of government agency services as a whole,” said Sak.The project will also develop Government Big Data, Data Centre and Data Analytics Centre. The Data Analytics Centre will utilise government information from state agencies and data base from the Government Big Data for making decisions on formulating policy, planning, budget and management with efficiency and accuracy. It will provide open data pools for all sectors.

The agency is being studied to provide the new services to the public so that Thai people can utilise the open data platform for future development and provide new services such as water management and information on vehicle registrations. The agency will also provide analytics as a service (AaaS) so that government can utilise data for analysis. However, the agency is under study and research with block chain technology to manage big data. It will also develop data scientist specialists to support government agencies so that data specialists will be able to manage government data and utilise the data to support their organisation and provide new e-services to the public.

It also has plans to appoint 20 chief data officers in all ministries. Meanwhile, the government will also spend around Bt1 billion to set up the Government Data Centre next year. “I think that within the next five years, Thailand will become a less-paper and less-cash society, providing one-stop services to create business competitiveness. People will have easy access to data and can utilise open data to support new services and future development. The agency will create preparedness for utilising artificial intelligence (AI) technology to support an AI-based society in the next step,” said Sak.

He added that the country would also pass the Digital Government Act in the near future. The Act now is in the process of being drafted. The Act will make it easy to transfer data and manage data between government agencies, create transparency and good governance in the government data. It also developing a Data Governance Framework in order to manage government data with good governance, security and safety.

Next year, it will set up Government Secure Intranet (GSI), which will be an intra-secure network among government agencies in order to create security of the communication data and exchange data between government agencies with security.