Policy Analysis: IT Policy Thailand

Policy Analysis: IT Policy Thailand

Advancement in science and technology in articulation in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) has a very important role all through the world. Currently science and technology are being applied in every sector that include education, health, industry, politics, society and military etc. (Petrides, 2000) Some important and significant developments in ICT were deeply observed in the past decades that ICT has an increasing effect on economic and social activities in the world. ICT has had a significant role in the economic growth for developed and developing countries in the recent years. Many development strategies have mostly focused on pursuing economic strategies and policies that seek to promote a more attractive environment for the ICT industry. Development strategies are needed for developing countries to adapt ICT as a potential force not only for creating new economic growth opportunities but also for enhancing political participation of citizens and strengthening of social processes by using the convergence effect of ICT (Ramilo C., 2002).

No approach on ICT has any doubt that it has had a significant impact on most countries in the world, especially in the ways of communications, working, and learning (Vu K., 2004a). Current essay is exploration and analysis of IT policy of Thailand. The author has discussed the why policy was formulated, the goals of the policy and implementation. In particular its implications for public sector and suggestions to improve the condition of IT in the country have been described.

2. IT Policy Development in Thailand

Currently Thailand is progressing in IT because previously the significance of IT was not realized by government and that's why it did not shore up the use of IT in the country in particular funding information infrastructure. In particular the private sector in Thailand suffered due to this behavior to the IT at government level. The private sector was in need of IT infrastructure for contacting clients as well as supplies both in and out of the country. This was situation which called for an IT policy in the country.

The Internet has revolutionized everything, from communication and entertainment to business. By one estimate, the Internet contains approximately 487 billion gigabytes (i.e., 487 exabytes) of data, and by the end of 2010, there will be more than two billion Internet users (J. Lynn, 2010). Nearly one-quarter of these users are members of social networking sites such as Facebook (F. Statistics, 2010). There are many reasons for the Internet's extraordinary growth, including its vast applications, anonymity, and global outreach.

The government of Thailand was forced to formulate and implement an IT policy in the country for two main reasons (Guntasopatr, 1999). One is the business sector of the country and second is international organizations and corporations. Guntasopatr (1999) concludes that Private sector played main role in the formulation of Thailand IT policy because it was in need of a competitive tool for running business at national and international level. Thus the private sector in Thailand insisted on the requirement of computer and Information Technology in the country through the development of IT policies so as to reduce the investment risk for businesses in the country. For this purpose the private sector conducted a seminar and formulated a draft IT policy to be presented to the Government.

3. First National Policy (IT 2000)

As mentioned above, in Thailand, the importance of Information technology and telecommunications for the development of economy and society has been realized at Government level since 1992. This was the time when the National Information Committee (NIC) was founded. The main task given to this committee was to convert policies into practice. This committee was reorganized in 2003 and it became National Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunications (NCTC) by additionally giving it a representation of ICT Ministry in Thailand which was also a newly formed ministry in Thailand. To help this committee to formulate and implement national IT policies and implement there have been founded other government institutions like National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (NECTEC) and Software Park which facilitate the NCITC in completing its task. The committee has completed many task including drafting electronic transaction and laws related to computer crimes; issues on digital divide; use of ICT in the Public sector; human resource development and internal policy.

The first national IT policy in Thailand was formed for a period of 1996-2000 and its main focus was on three agendas: investing in the information infrastructure; investing in people to obtain an adequate trained human resource foundation in technology; and investing in good governance to make sure that implementation and facilitation of IT will ultimately bring a decrease in economic and social gaps.

The first IT policy considered IT as a tool for achieving broader national goals both at both economic and social sector. Information technology was an efficient tool for the economic and social development as it increased the income opportunities. Additionally it helped to strengthen the sectors of business, industry and international trade. If used in a proper way, IT can help the country in following ways; a) extend employment opportunities for both rural and urban Thais and thus make them prosper: (b) it will improve democracy and culture in the country: (c) it will help to decrease traffic jams in the capital and other big cities: (d) it will provide equal educational and health care opportunities for all citizens and (e). It will protect the natural resources. In brief, the information technology was helpful in improving the quality and equality in the country. Although this technology can have both positive and negative impacts, a good policy can be helpful in reaching the objectives of the country (National Information Technology Committee Secretariat, 1996).

Agendas in IT 2000

The IT policy 2000 set three main agendas (National Information Technology Committee Secretariat, 1996)

The first agenda was to make investment in a fair information infrastructure for the empowerment of human capabilities as well as to improve their quality of life. To invest in infomaiton infrastructure will help the Thailand in benefiting the common man. It was also helpful to boost the Thailand economy as people all through the country could use information technology for their interests. The national information infrastructure comprises of telephones, pages, fax machines, switches, copper wire and coaxial, fibre optic cable, microwave transmission, computers, printers, compact discs, scanners, bar-code readers, cameras, televisions, monitors, and an ever-expanding range of new equipment and technologies in particular in the fields of applications and systems. The most basic infrastructure is obviously the telephone service along with a high speed telecommunication network to connect all the parts of Thailand. At that time though both these services were present in Thailand but the quality of these services was not according to the international standards. In particular the telephone service which was not available in every village. Another issue was service costs so as the rural Thais may afford it.

The second agenda of IT policy 2000 was to invest in people including spreading IT education and preparing a skilful workforce in the field of IT. As there was shortage of skilled workers in almost all the sectors and in particular in IT the country needed to conduct fundamental assignments for the preparation of future workforce to ensure a sufficient IT human resource base. For this purpose this agenda focused on IT education and e-learning.

Another focus was to ensure that information accessible through interne is useful for the people and could enhance the eagerness of people to learn new technologies. For this purpose it was necessary that information should be created by Thai experts instead of depending on imported information.

The third agenda of the IT policy 2000 was to make investment in the good governance. According to this agenda the government must offer its duty to encourage, promote, support and coordinate to establish an institutional infrastructure, industry and human resource. It is the duty of the state to remove critical hindrances. First the government must itself believe in IT and use it so as to become a role model for the society at large. This mean that every government institution must have information technology and the skilled workforce to use this technology.

Comments on IT policy 2000

The IT policy 2000 received criticism from many experts. For instance Seymour, professor of business and public administration, University of Arizona, USA, analyzed that the IT plan of Thailand: "is unusual and refreshing in that it does more than provide minimal lip service to the most important social and economic realities of the country. It tries to address them head-on. The "prosperity" portion of the title is not given the same attention, but it is more or less assumed…that this will follow directly from the program to provide more socially equitable access to IT (Thaichayapong, 1997, p. 280).

Although the rationals and aims of IT policy 2000 were very impressive yet practically it was not strong because it required government support to an organizational context and funding. Goodman was uncertain about the government to follow the plan. Furthermore it was a challenge for the government to provide computers and other equipments at large level (Thaichayapong, 1997)

Similarly Russell Pipe who was the Deputy Director of Global Informaiton Infrastructure Commission also criticized the policy saying that there were many risks involved in spreading IT facility and also that the expectations are high. He also stated that IT policy 2000 aims to provide TI facilities all through the country but practically it will need ten years to offer these services to every part of the country particularly to the rural areas. This problem was due to the inability of two government institutions CAT and TOT which were not capable of providing information infrastructure to fulfil the requirements of NIL. Pipe also commented that the dream of Thailand to be an information society in the next decades is not realistic because of the strong influence of buddism on Thai society which believes that Thai people are not enough enthusiastic to enhance themselves. In addition he pointed out that the political system in Thailand is not strong and thus the government does not hold strong leadership to implement the IT policy 2000. (Thaichayapong, 1997)

4. IT Policy 2010

The second IT policy was aimed at covering a period of ten years i.e., 2001-2010 and it extended its scope by including five more application domains where IT will be necessary to use; e-government, e-commerce, e-industry, e-education and e-society. The final goal of IT policy 2010 is focused at utilization of IT for the purpose of sustainable economic and social development of Thailand.

Objectives of the Policy

The IT policy 2010 has three main objectives;

1. Investing in knowledge-based human resources

2. Promotion of development of new technologies in the country's social and economic systems

3. Investment in information industry for information infrastructure.

Goals of the Policy

The IT policy 2010 has three main goals:

1. The first goal of this policy is based on the Technology Achievement Index of United Nations Development Program (UNDP). United Nations has divided countries into four groups according to their capacity of using IT for the development of their country: (a) Leaders comprise developed countries that are able to make new innovation in information technology and distribute their technologies to the developing countries. In addition these countries have skilled people in the IT; (b) potential leaders comprise the countries that are capable of becoming leaders in future. These countries have made investment to develop human resources in IT and are self-sufficient in the filed of IT. Though they do not have made innovations in the field of IT yet their people are as expert as the leaders. (c) Dynamic adopter comprises the countries that have actively adopted new technologies. They posses technology industries but don't have widespread technologies; and (d) marginalized countries are those countries that have not sufficient human resource in the field of IT and need to develop and train people in this sector. In these countries people are not benefiting from new technologies. Through this IT policy Thailand aims to be in the second category through the development in IT.

2. Second goal was to develop its workforce into a knowledgeable workforce.

3. Third goal of the IT policy 2010 was to develop Thailand into a knowledge-based economy. Thailand set a goal to hold a knowledge-based industry which will represent almost 550% of its GDP.

Strategies of the Policy

The main focus of current policy is to increase the use of information technology and this goal is clear from the vision of the policy. The policy had aimed to adopt following strategies to meet its goals and objectives; a) use of information technology for the development of government; (b) use of IT for business development (c) use of information technology for industrial development (d) use of IT in the education sector development and (e) use of IT for social development.

The IT policy 2010 has divided the strategies for development of information technology into five categories; e-Commerce, e-Government, e-Industry, e-Society and e-Education. Each category has been divided into sub-categories and thus has become more concrete to follow for the persons responsible for implementing strategies.

The first step towards implementation of IT policy 2010 was that NITC Secretariat organized a seminar on August 16, 2001 which was aimed at getting opinions from people interested to work or were working in the IT sector like government officials, businessmen as well as personnel from NGOs. In this seminar people from e-government, e-industry, e-education, and e-society participated and expressed their views and suggestions on the policy strategy. It was not surprising that the smallest group of all the participants talked about e-society and majority of this group belonged to nonprofit organizations.

This is the aspect which needs to be considered in the IT policy of Thailand. It is obvious that the national policy desires that massive benefit be derived from IT. Though it has been mentioned in the section of 'information technology for society development' of IT policy 2010 that local culture, local people and their intelligence is important. One significant objective of e-society is to endorse the incorporation amongst local knowledge and intelligence as well as latest knowledge to develop a society based on wisdom. Yet this objective is too ideal and there is no proper strategy to execute this aim. Unluckily the public policy on IT in Thailand does not the aspect of culture as how to prevent the Thailand culture from the negative effect of information technology.

5. The Thailand IT Policy and International Organizations and Corporations

As mentioned in the beginning, the IT policy was formulated due to the pressure of private and business sector and not on the suggestions of international organizations for the purpose of providing a competitive tool for the business to operate in and out of the country. This situation is consistent with Berthoud's concept (1999) who described the market system as man-made institute for the purpose of controlling society. Thus the IT market can be considered as a predictable pressure which was difficult to stop from expansion.

Yet, it was necessary to adjust the IT policy with the agreements Thailand had with WTO. Being a part of The General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS), Thailand had to agree to the principle of free trade by not imposing any legislation that are unarguable, impersonal and unbiased and create hurdles to trade (National Electronics and Computers Technology Center, 2001). This was the reason that Thailand liberalized its telecommunication services for foreign companies by the year 2006 (Pisitkasem, 1998). Thailand made another agreement with WTO and that was Information Technology Agreement (ITA). This agreement obligates its member to completely eradicate duties on IT products. Hence, Thailand got extension on this for at least some products by the year 2005 (National Electronics and Computers Technology Center, 2001).

Similarly there was a need to promote IT industry as well as foreign direct investment in this sector to improve its IT competencies. For this purpose Thailand had introduce policies for the foreign investors and thus had to liberalize and privatize its telecommunication services (Guntasopatr, 1999).

6. Public Policy Model

Public models help to explains how policy is forms, implemented, modified and also the methods through which its implementation can be influences. There are many models through which a policy can be explained. These include; Circular Model, Linear/Black Box theory, Model of a policy sector, Rational comprehensive model, Public Choice Theory, Advocacy Coalition frameworks and many other process models.

As is evident from the above discussion the IT policy of Thailand was formulated on the pressure from business sector. So the model involved in this policy is the model of a policy sector. According to this model public policy is formulated to accomplish the interests of a particular group of people. The group influences the government to establish a particular policy. In this model there are two players the business sector which raise requests and pressurizes the government to formulate a policy to preserve their interests and the second player is government which considering the benefits involved in spreading IT education and implementation creates the policy and implements it in the country.

IT policy 2000 was in particular formulated on the pressure and demand from business sector of Thailand. In 1992, business sector conducted a seminar and presented a draft IT policy to the government. The policy was further influenced by international organizations and corporations. Thailand had to liberalize its IT industry because of its agreement with WTO.

The policy analysis and further modification can also be explained under this model. Now there are discussion that policy needs to be changed as there are influence on the culture of the Thailand.

Developments till to date

Though government has made efforts to meet the targets set in the IT policy 2010 in particular information infrastructure yet it has not covered the whole country as regards the internet access, bandwidth speed or stability of the system (Pumipuntu, 2006). Statistics show that in 2007, internet was accessible to the 20% people of Thailand (Koanantakoo, 2007). Out of these there are only 4.5% who are subscribed to broadband internet. (Laohajaratsand, 2009)

Second issue Thailand is facing is human resources. There is not properly trained workforce in the IT sector. There is also lack of trained workforce in the programming and designing sector. (Muangkeow, 2007). To promote online education and e-learning government has put many efforts including reserving research funds to augment the potential of current technical staff in the country.

One of the goals of the policy was e-educaiton which has not been met fully. There is lack of technical staff in e-education. Teachers are not trained and thus not willing to use online education. They prefer a classroom setting to teach the students (Miller, 2004). The educational institutions of Thailand also lack of standards to follow. Mostly the developments are at experimental level with no research on the imported model. This duplication and overlapping resulted in waste of funds and shortage of manpower. The legislation in this field are not indistinct. There is shortage of a quality assurance system as well as clear guidelines for development (Pumipuntu, 2006).