In a bid to encourage rapid development of "electronic government" in Thailand, the Government Information Technology Service (GITS) plans to launch an e-government cloud platform next year, allowing implementation and development of e-government services.
The move aims to help small- and medium-sized government organisations with limited budgets and resources to move to quickly to electronic systems.
The concept of the e-government cloud is the provision of applications for government agencies without the need to access software-as-a-service via the Internet. through software-as-a-service via the Internet. Government organisations will be able to directly access the e-government cloud servers, located at GIST, from their offices.
GITS's role will be the development, deployment, operation, maintenance and provision of e-government applications over the cloud platform, said the GITS's director, Sak Segkhoonthod.
The beauty of the e-government cloud platform is that it will save the cost, time, and resources involved in government organisations developing the applications independently. Instead, both their back office and front office applications will be developed by GITS and hosted on its cloud servers. Eventually, government organisations will simply pay for the services as they use them.
"We are now in the process of developing the e-government cloud. It is expected to be live sometime next year. The first three applications will be government e-mail - @mail.go.th - There are currently about 30,000 e-mail accounts and we aim to reach 100,000 accounts next year; calendar; and a booking service for governmental facilities. These applications are now digitised, but are deployed separately in each of more than 200 government departments. We will move these duplicated similar applications from the different servers into one server, to be shared and used by a group of government departments. It will considerably reduce costs and resources," Sak said.
The move is part of GITS's 2010 mission, to transform itself into an IT service provider based on service-level agreements, to enable government departments to achieve the goals of the e-government master plan by the end of 2014. By that time, Thailand is expected to have an intelligent e-government.
"GITS has been certified ISO/IEC 27001:2005, and that specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, operating, monitoring, reviewing, maintaining and improving a documented information-security management system within the context of the organisation's overall business risks," Sak said.
Having achieved the globally-recognised certification, GITS is ready to expand its provision of IT services to all government organisations wishing to outsource their IT systems, he said.
Its network services include a secure Internet gateway, bandwidth management and network and information security management; the provision of application services including a total mail solution, one-stop hosting and IDC centre; information security services including a government certification authority service and public key infrastructure (PKI) consulting; system integration, business intelligence and management information system services; and training services covering information security, advanced PKI and bandwidth optimisation.
Sak said Thailand's e-government development was currently in its third stage, called integrated e-government. In this stage, several government departments are collaborating in the development and provision of e-services for the public.
"Development has already passed the first stage, called information e-government. That was about providing information. The second stage was called transaction e-government, and it involved the provision of a single e-service. We are now in the third stage, and that involves more government departments together developing and providing e-services. It is expected that the fourth stage, called intelligent e-government, will take the next five years. In this, the government's e-services will become more intelligent," he said.
In the decade since it was established, GITS has provided IT services to more than 100 government departments, including design, development, implementation and maintenance of applications, systems, networks and servers. It generates between Bt200 million and Bt250 million in revenue per year.
GITS has also played a crucial role in the development of Thailand's government data exchange standard. As well as being an IT service provider for the government, GITS is also the national root certification authority, appointed by the Cabinet.
"Our mission is to help to drive the development of e-government in Thailand so that it is implemented with minimum cost, time and resources, Sak said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Asina Pornwasin
Quelle/Source: The Nation, 26.05.2009
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