There has been a lot of overtime recently at Thailand’s Revenue Department. The agency has just concluded personal tax filings for the year, and it has been busier than ever: the total number of taxpayers has risen to around 7.4 million, up on the previous year’s total of 6.6 million. Partially as a result of this increase in the number of taxpayers, Jantima Siriseangtaksin’s 250-strong IT team have been putting in three shifts a day to provide 24-hour support to the work of the Revenue Department’s 25,000 staff.
Read more: Lightening the load: online tax filing in Thailand
Previously various government departments had their own GIS systems that were largely incompatible.
The national project was initiated by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra as part of plans for e-government and for better management of natural resources.
The Consular Affairs Department will today begin pilot testing electronic passports (e-passports) with the general public after commencing a similar test project with government officers on May 26.
The department expects to issue 500 e-passports to government officers and another 500 to general citizens before the launch of the e-passports in August.
Nobody has publicly declared that the emperor is not wearing any clothes just yet. That means that somebody somewhere will have to tell the prime minister that he has grossly underestimated the capacity for manipulation of the corrupt officials who surround him and who heap compliments on him at every step.
Read more: Thailand: Should we expect e-corruption from e-auctions?
The Software Industry Promotion Agency (Sipa) plans to introduce 25 Windows-based, open-source, free computer software programs to the public in July, a move that is expected to save the country more than a billion baht annually.
Chairwoman Kruawan Samana said Sipa, which is a public organisation under the Information and Communications Technology Ministry, has initially developed 25 free software programs. They feature office, internet, graphics, multimedia, utility, web development and entertainment applications and will be ready for the public to download in July.