The GOAL of comprehensive delivery of government services by digital means can be realised much faster than the 20 years targeted, according to Takorn Tantasith, secretary general of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC).
Almost 75,000 villages across the country will be able to access high-speed Internet via fibre-optic lines by the end of next year, pushing the country further on the road towards so-called digital government, Takorn said.
He made the bullish comments yesterday at conference on implementation of the 12th National Economic and Social Development Plan (2017-2021).
About 30,000 villages in upcountry areas can now access high-speed Internet as a result of investment by private firms, Takorn said. The remaining villages – deemed commercially unviable - would be covered by government investment. The first of about of 500 villages in the most remote areas could be connected to high-speed services by the end of this year, he said.
He was optimistic that infrastructure investment in information technology, combined with a new round of auctions for frequencies would proceed as planned. That would enable the country to achieve the Thailand 4.0 vision of technological development within five years, rather than 20 years as envisaged, Takorn said.
However, Anant Kaewruamvongs, chief executive officer of CS Loxinfo, offered a more pessimistic view on the progress of the digital government project. He said citizens had not yet been able to access most of the basic information that would be required from the government for this goal State agencies still treated basic information, such as images from closed-circuit television, as classified information, Anant said.
The government should adopt open data principles that allowed people to use public data for business or other purposes, he said.
Areepan Charoensuk, senior advisor at the Office of Public Sector Development Commission, also raised her concerns over the slower pace of the digital government project.
She said a key problem stemmed from state officials not fully understanding what digital government is. It is more than just changing paper documents into electronic formats as many state agencies do that now, citing the fact that each government agency operates it own website.
“E-government is open and connected government,” she said. To provide better services, state officials must be people-centric, she said.
Areepan said that the goal of making it easier to do business was enhanced by e-government, but while many governments had made rapid progress in the development of digital government, Thailand remained a laggard.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Wichit Chaitron
Quelle/Source: The Nation, 04.07.2017
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