IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

Residents and businesses in Bangkok and two neighbouring provinces will be able to pay their bills via their mobile phones by the end of this year, the Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA) told FutureGov today.

MEA launched a mobile app, MEA Smart Life, last August. Currently, its 3 million customers can scan a barcode or QR code from this app at a counter to make their payments. From the end of this year, “they will not even need to go to a counter, instead, they can pay their electricity bills [directly] via the mobile app,” said Chingchai, Director of Application System Development Department, MEA.

Read more: TH: Bangkok residents to pay electricity bills via mobile by end of 2014

Thailand’s Smart Country project is making headway as Phuket Province (population, 600,000) launched its THB 95 million (US$2.9 million) Smart Province project, shared Permanent Secretary of Thailand’s Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT), Surachai Srisarakham.

The Smart Province project in Phuket, scheduled to be completed in 2015, will bring one-stop service centres where residents can access information and use digital services with a swipe of an ID card. The Smart Country project will link local government offices, police stations and private enterprises with a single network which will be used to share and access information in a secured manner, explained Srisarakham.

Read more: Thailand Smart Country project brings efficient e-services to citizens and civil servants

Thailand’s slow push to raze the mountains of paperwork that have long defined government bureaucracy rolled into Chonburi as the Electronic Government Agency brought it’s “e-government road show” to the province.

Deputy Gov. Pongsak Preechawit presided over the May 21 seminar at the Chol Inter Hotel where the EGA outlined its services and potential.

Read more: TH: E-government agency shows off online projects in Chonburi

Since its launch in 2012, the Legislative Institutional Repository of Thailand (LIRT), the online library of the Thai Parliament, has stood out as an example of the open government trends spreading across Asia. Behind buzzwords like “e-government” and “open data,” though, is the complex task of implementing digital access to state-held information. The LIRT is a product of this dynamic back-and-forth among user demands, software capabilities, and the ever-changing technological landscape.

After nearly 100 years of operating a brick-and-mortar library, the Thai National Assembly started experimenting with digital resources in the early 2000s. Its original goals were to reduce the storage space needed for print resources, and to ensure long-term digital preservation of documents.

Read more: Thailand’s Parliamentary Digital Library Leads in Open Government