Directories of Thailand: Commercial Organizations

GETTING READY FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM
What are the Thai Government's actions toward the year 2000?

This article provides up to date information about the progress of many IT projects which are carried out to support IT-2000 plan and economic recovery of the nation with long-term sustainability.

The year 1999 in Thailand is likely to be the year of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), liberalisation of telecommunication and Electronic commerce (E-Commerce). These are the buzzwords for the recovery of real economic sector. The actual key activities to rebuild our economy is believed to be the industrial restructuring through the increase of local values in all exported goods.

Having gone through over twenty months of economic crisis, Thailand has learned many lessons. Thailand can no longer be competitive through low cost labour or profit through the consumption of unrenewable natural resources. We need to be less dependent on foreign parties in marketing, and financing; we will have to use more local contents (including more local intellectual properties), efficient management systems and lower financing cost. Thailand must prepare its human resources to be ready when the economic has come back in order to be competitive in the long run.

Information Technology is definitely one fundamental factor for better management, concurrent engineering for product development, just-in-time supply chains, automated quality-controlled production, and human resource development.

In addition, software has been clearly emphasized as a possible local industry and good potential as export, provided that the intellectual property rights (IPR) are better recognised in Thailand. Better use of software and information systems, and electronic government are also taking shape through many initiatives of the National Information Technology Committee (NITC)

The current needs are in line with the "three pillars" of the IT-2000, IT master plan of Thailand, which calls for the better telecommunication and networking infrastructure, the need to improve intellectual skills of workers and good governance.

IT-2000 is Thailand's national IT plan for sustainable economy. It consists of three "pillars" which are the foundations for the development. The plan has been implemented in several related activities and project by many organizations.

The first pillar of IT-2000: Better telecommunication infrastructure. Deregulation of telecommunication and privitazation of Telephone Organization of Thailand (TOT) and Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT) are the most highlighted issues. The process has been under domestic pressure of the new constitution (Section 40) and the international pressure of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In addition, the constitution (Section 78) also requires that a universal access to information infrastructure must be provided by the state to all areas of the country.

In the second pillar, human resource development and education iare to be improved. Even under the economic crisis, Thailand's letter of intent to the IMF (August 1997) stated that "Education expenditure, together with health and essential infrastructure projects, is to be intact". There are
several IT projects which address human resource development: SchoolNet project, IT-for-Education field trials in Mae Hongsorn and Phuket provinces, Secondary School Resource Center Project and the Lighthouse project. The software industry of Thailand is also being developed through a series of measures which will enhance the capability levels software human resources

The third pillar is on good governance, the most crucial factor necessary for the sustainable development of Thailand through less corruption and better services to the citizen. There are several on-going IT and non-IT activities relevant to this issue: the Government Information Technology Service (GITS) and government Chief Information Officer (CIO) programs. The CIOs were appointed with two initial main tasks: completion of IT Master Plan of their agencies and fixing the agency's Y2K (year 2000) problems.

Measures to make government more transparent and less corrupted are also strengthened through the Official Information Act (to enhance government transparency) and the establishment of the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC).

The National Information Technology Committee (NITC) was established in 1992 to oversee the policy aspects of information technology development and deployment in Thailand. At present, it has 18 subcommittees steering various IT developments, including three that directly affect the
electronic commerce development: the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) subcommittee, six IT-law subcommittees, Y2K-law subcommittee and the Electronic Commerce Task Force which is now part the national e-commerce policy committee.

NITC is currently chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science, Technology and Environment, Mr.Suvit Khunkitti. The NITC Secretariat office (ITS) is operated as part of the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC).

NECTEC was established in 1987 to provide research funding and to carry out research and development in the electronics and computer-related areas. NECTEC operates 12 laboratories, two service units and two subsidiary companies.

NECTEC's labs are specialised in various technologies such as telecommunications, networking, software, linguistics and knowledge science, automatic systems, electro-optics and microelectronics. Service units are set up to strengthen SMEs in designing and testing new products using printed-circuit board (PCB) design/production service as well as product testing for electromagnetic interference/compatibility (EMI/EMC).

In 1992, NECTEC was assigned by the government to perform the role of NITC secretariat, in addition to its main role of R&D promotion and implementation. R&D programs of NECTEC are now geared to serve the local electronic and computer industries. The 1999 flagship projects of NECTEC are on wireless local-loop development with application on personal cordless phone, spatial database and geographical information systems and computer numerical control machine tools. These projects are closely related to high-value import replacement.

Through the operating units within NECTEC, many NITC-originated projects can be implemented smoothly through internal collaboration.

Liberalisation of telecommunication is required under Thailand's commitment to the World Trade Organization. The liberalisation plans were made and modified through the past three governments using various models. "National Communication Commission": was originally expected to be the
regulatory body.

After the introduction of the new constitution in October, 1997, a regulatory body is required to take care of radio frequency spectrum management. It was proposed that "National Broadcasting Commission" would be appointed to handle frequency spectrum management. This was to be separated from the National Communication Commission.

On April 7, 1999, the House of Representatives unanimously approved the frequency management bill in its first reading. It is likely that there will be a single regulatory body to look after both the telecommunication services and the radio frequency spectrum management. The bill proposed a
committee of 15 persons from non-political knowledgable individuals.

Under the new bill, both TOT and CAT will be transformed into a non-monopolistic telecommunication operators just like many of their "concessioned companies" which currently must operate under TOT and CAT.

Through a separate "Telecommunication Bill" drafted by the Prime Minister's advisory group, all telecommunication services will be liberalised in progressive steps. Services are classified into five
lclassess: (i) passive construction type infrastructure, (ii) backbone multimedia transmission service (iii) value-added services such as Internet or audiotex, (iv) information service such as web sites or
database service, and (v) other services. The bill emphasises consumer protection, fair competition and fair pricing, service licensing and stipulation of penalty.

The telecom bill draft proposed that the regulatory body may issue an unlimited licenses for Internet and Audiotex services as from January 1, 2000. Foreign ownership of ISPs shall not exceed 40% initially, but increased to 75% or less as from January 1, 2006. Opening a web site or online information services requires only official registration, no license is required.

Transformation of telecommunication operators is taking place at government owned enterprises like TOT and CAT. There has been a substantial restructuring in many private telecommunication companies through foreign investment.

The millennium bug is viewed by the government as being "a lot more than just a technical problem". Through NITC initiatives, the Thai government has escalated its responsibilities in steps. In 1997, NECTEC started several awareness creation programs. Around February 1998, the cabinet was given full awareness of the impacts of Y2K on virtually every computer, on every business system and to the country's economy if our critical systems could not guarantee business continuity into the year 2000.

In April 1998, the first cabinet resolution on Y2k was announced to every government ministry . In this resolution, every ministry was to set up its own Y2K taskforce to manage ministerial and departmental level Y2K programs in their agencies. The resolution also guided all government
agencies for the source of government budget to do so.

In June 1998, an additional executive order took place. The cabinet appointed a Y2K National Coordination Committee to handle all coordination for Y2K actions in Thailand. NECTEC was appointed as the secretariat office. NECTEC subsequently set up the Y2K Center (https://y2k.nectec.or.th) to assist the committee to coordinate the planning, reporting and coordination of government Y2K remedy process. The agencies are also expected to track the progress of the Y2K work in the private sector under their jurisdiction.

In July 1998, the National Coordination Committee set up a special subcommittee called "the Super-critical Organization Subcommittee" (SOS) to take special care of the most important systems which may affect the whole country (ie.being "super-critical"). The members of this
subcommittee consist of 31 organizations in four major groups: (i) power/energy organizations, (ii) telecommunications/transport organizations, (iii) financial/insurance and securities organizations and
(iv) other organizations which deal with public safety, social order, defense, health.

This SOS subcommittee is responsible of successful implementation of its own member organization's Y2K program by the end of March 1999, with full testing and implementation to be completed by end of June 1999. So far, the progress of these organizations has been very satisfactory. The chairman of Y2K National Coordination Committee has also made many formal
inspection of these organizations. As of April 1999, ten organizations have been inspected.

Y2K has been one of the most publicised issue in Thailand, especially on the regular awareness programs. However, the government has set up four large-turnout Y2K seminars for actions toward: assessment and planning strategy (August 20,1998), A Workshop on Legal risks from Y2K: How to prepare yourself? (January 26, 1999), Project Management, budgeting and contingency plan (February 18, 1999), Training on Contingency Planning (March 18, 1999). Y2K Center also coordinated with the Ministry of University Affairs to host five Y2K regional Centers outside Bangkok in every region of Thailand.

The total budget for fixing the Y2K problem in Thailand up to 1999 is estimated by the author to be around 20 billion baht. The government agencies spend about 1.6 billion baht and government enterprises spend more than 4 billion baht. The remaining amount is in the private sector. The figure of about 500 million baht for a large private sector company is quite common.

Just like any other country, further spending on Y2K in Thailand is expected to continue even after January 2000 since many systems have been fixed with limited usable windows of only a few years beyond year 2000. This may be long enough for the natural retirement age of the system. Many less critical systems are "patched" with some manual support, so they require future replacement.

It is expected that during the remaing time of the year 1999, press coverage will be shifted towards more contingency planning, provision of citizen's guide to Y2K-personal readiness and the announcement of confidence by super-critical organizations to assure absolute public trust and avoidance stockpiling panic or cash withdrawal panic from banks.

The results of recent inspection trips by the DPM and more availability of publications of Thailand's Y2K program in English raised Thailand's readiness's level from a four to level three by Gartner Group of USA. It is expected that more English language reports on Y2K will be made more available on the web.

After the cabinet approval in May 1997, NECTEC Software Park Office is now in service with three thousand square meters to be in operation at the Software Park Building in May 1999. The rental space of 5,000 square meters has been made available. As of April 1999, there are 22 companies intending to join Software Park.

Software Park will be (i) the incubation center for small and medium entrepreneurs in software business, (ii) the center for locally made software, (iii) the place where technical support and transfer of technology are provided for professionals in the field, and (iv) the marketplace for software vendors and buyers to explore new business relationships and to make deals.

In 1998, Software Park has been operating in its temporary location within NECTEC and has already made the following achievements:

The estimated world market in software is huge, and with the current level of competency of some software companies in Thailand, there is always a big opportunities for export as well as for local use. By strengthening Thai software developers through appropriate means, it is possible for Thailand to tap for some share in this market. The success of Software Park calls for a timely expansion to maintain the momentum of the impact. It is expected that the total space managed by Software Park will be increased four time to above 30,000 square meters within two years.

The Internet was introduced to Thailand in 1991 through academic and research applications. The first Internet in Thailand was the Thai Social/Scientific, Academic and Research Network (ThaiSarn). Starting from only 9600 bps international link in 1992, ThaiSarn was matured within about three years of its introduction with the first 2Mbps international link in September 1995. As of 1999, ThaiSarn has about 100 connections to all state-own university sites.

In 1996 and 1997, an information superhighwayt testbed project was carried out at NECTEC to develop local researchers on the use of ATM network as well as many wideband applications. ThaiSarn became the main academic and research network of Thailand with a number of information servers providing document archives, freeware/shareware mirrored archives and major local information such as the Golden Jubilee Network which hosts a wealth of information about Thailand in Thai language. The collection of servers is called "PubNet".

Starting November 1997, ThaiSarn launched the Public Internet Exchange (PIE) to supplement the PubNet project. PIE allows local commercial Internet Service Providers (throuth their own investment and connection license) to exchange domestic traffic without leaving Thailand. The project was so successful that after one year of experiment, the participants of PIE decided to provide some funding to NECTEC's operation and let the operation continue.

As of February 1999, PIE circulating traffic was at 6.2 Mbps average. This means that in each month, 1.93 Terabytes (1,930,000 megabytes) of data was circulating inside PIE instead of traversing abroad and come back. In real money, this is a saving of no less than 60 million baht per year.

In 1998, the most exciting milestones for the Internet development was the SchoolNet project as schools all over Thailand are granted access to the Internet with an equal opportunity of nothing more than the cost of the local call ith their location..

Starting in 1995 as an extended service of ThaiSarn to secondary schools, SchoolNet received unprecedented attention from NITC, the private sector and participating schools. In 1996/1997, NECTEC started the project "Golden Jubilee Network" as a tribute to His Majesty the King on the 50th anniversary of the accession to the throne. The project aimed at providing massive educational contents in Thai language on the web, together with a unique public access network for the public throughout Thailand. Golden Jubilee Network was an initiative of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn.

In 1998, the public-access network for the Golden Jubilee was extended to allow schools to access the Internet without requiring a long distance (ie. expensive) phone call to Bangkok. This became a great opportunity for schools to begin utilising the Internet in the library, classroom and laboratories. As of April 1999, there are more than 850 schools using SchoolNet services, with more than 200 schools running their websites.

To complement SchoolNet the successful connectivity, NECTEC ITS provided a contract to Kasetsart University to develop educational contents to be used in SchoolNet project. At present, Kasetsart University are runnign some test run of the developed contents in schools.

There are several activities for using IT in schools taking place. Some of them took place as a camping program, web-page competition, and teachers' training.

Chief Information Officer program is a recommendation of the study "Utilization of IT in the Public Sector, Revision 2". The program was proposed to the cabinet by NITC chairman, Mr.Suvit Khunkitti, and was approved in June 1998. According to the cabinet resolution, every ministry and department and every state enterprise is to appoint one chief information officer to over see the unified IT development plans at both the departmental level and the ministerial level.

As the CIO program is new to most ministries and departments, NITC supplements all CIOs with a special 30-hour compulsory training program. Six training courses for 15 minsterial CIOs and about 180 departmental CIOs are managed jointly by NECTEC and the Office of the Civil Servant Commission. The course is delivered by leading experts in the field of management, planning and information systems. The training program includes site visits to leading IT organizations and brainstorming workshop on Thailand's unified IT planning.

By April 1999, four CIO intensive training courses have been carried out. Almost 100 CIOs have completed their courses, with the remaining ones to complete within three months. All CIOs are part of the "CIO Forum" which is a regular gathering of government CIOs to meet for technology update and free exchange of ideas and cooperation among the CIOs.

The government CIOs are working together to draft out the IT Action Plan for Thailand. The plan is expected to guarantee the smoother information flow across ministries, more efficient information sharing and improved decision-support system for the country through the use of Government
Information Network and a common set of specifications to allow the private sector to carry out IT projects for the government more efficiently.

There are a number of actions being carried out by NECTEC NITC secretariat to support improved utilization of IT in the public sector. These operations are handled by the Government Information Technology Service Program (GITS) to be elaborated below.

There are two major aspects in the provision of core IT services to the government: (i) Government Information Network (GINet) and (ii) common information services to all ministries. Both functions are managed by the Government Information Technology Service Program at NECTEC.

GITS program was approved by the government in May 1997, with the formal budget started in October 1998. However, there was a near-total failure for the government to secure the necessary budget to start up the project in the fiscal year 1998. NECTEC was then able to carry out only the necessary preparation for the network design, planning and request for information from vendors using minimum budget and staff. However, the project concept and design was clearly specified in GITS's request for information (RFI) document. GINet concept was also widely presented to relevant government agencies which would be the stake-holders of GINet.

GInet is the government networking backbone which links every province in Thailand with high-speed communication lines at the speed of 155 million bits per seconds. High speed access networks are to be made available in all 1,000 districts through leased circuits, ISDN or ADSL technologies. GINet consists of a nationwide ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) network running on TOT's existing and new optical fiber network.

GITS funding in fiscal year 1999 is sufficient to start the high-speed networking in Bangkok and links to few strategic provinces to test the planned applications which are under development. A special program called "IT Model Office" has been set up with four government agencies to ensure practicality of all information services and groupware applications.

The roll-out plan for common information services to all ministries (through test programs in IT Model Office) includes the following:

Common specifications for these applications are to be tested in the selected IT Model Offices so that the private sector can take part in GITS projects in the future. Specifications are to be based on open standards to ensure transparency and fair competition among multiple vendors.

To assist GITS's mission to support government CIO program, NECTEC Information System Development and Support Division (ISD) is taking part in IT Master Plan committees of many ministries and departments. ISD is also providing consultancy services on IT projects of several government agencies.

Through ISD's support, it is expected that by the year 2000, many government applications requiring common entities such as citizen's ID, location codes for a particular district or sub-district, enterprise-ID code, geographical coordinates can be linked across many ministries via GINet directory service.

IT Master plan for local governments (provincial level) is also under development. At present, NECTEC-ITS supports one pilot project in Phuket. This provincial IT master plan integrates all aspects of IT utilization within the province. It covers the local economic planning, information infrastructure, education planning, industry planning and maintenance of good environment. Some pilot implementation is now under way. Other provinces may follow the pattern once the model province plan has been reviewed and actions have taken off.

The importance of electronic commerce has been recognised by NECTEC and NITC since 1992, when NITC set up a subcommittee on EDI for International Trade. Since then, NECTEC has been developing EDI service organization with the Customs Department, Thai Airways International, CAT, TOT, the Federation of Thai Industry, the Chamber of Commerce, Association of Freight Forwarders, etc. In 1998, a joint venture company called TradeSiam was set up with the private sector as a majority shareholders and the government as the minority.

The EDI subcommittee was subsequently renamed "Thailand EDI Council".

Presently, the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC) is working on issues relating to electronic commerce in four main areas: developing the electronic commerce framework for Thailand; drafting six IT laws; drafting technical specifications and recommendations and becoming a resource center to run awareness, information center and human resource development programs on e-commerce.

The NITC assigned NECTEC to develop an electronic commerce framework to develop recommendations on the roles and responsibilities of government agencies. One of the objectives of the plan is to facilitate private sector involvement in evolving domestic and international electronic commerce arenas.

In January 1999, the cabinet approved a proposal by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment to set up the Electronic Commerce Resource Center to ensure the smooth development of E-commerce in Thailand through awareness, training program and information center. This activity will be part of APEC Virtual E-Commerce Resource Network which was originally a proposal from Thailand.

Early awareness of e-commerce applications for small and medium enterprises is crucial for Thailand's future economy. With proper guidelines to SMEs in using e-commerce for export, huge savings can be made on the cost of marketing and sales-related expenses. Also, in retrospect, Thailand-based traders may lose out marketing battle right in its own turf if they are not properly prepare for the direct assaults of Internet commerce into Thailand.

In March 1999, NECTEC's Smart Card working group released the first official draft proposal for smart card application standard for Thailand. The working group consists of more than fifty members from over 40 government and private organizations. The draft has been circulated for public comments to 200 organizations as well as submitted to Thai Industrial Standards Institute for further processing to become the national standard.

Smart card is expected to be a solution for electronic purse and royalty program applications. The technology is also suitable for use ad intelligent ID cards with good capability to contain an encryption processor to support asymmetric-key technooogy for digital signature and secured messaging.

The Thailand EDI Council (TEDIC), one of the subcommittees under the NITC, proposed the creation of TradeSiam as a joint venture company between Thai government agencies and the private sector mainly to facilitate international trade. It started a limited pilot service in December 1998. It starts full operation in May 1999.

TradeSiam serves as a center to provide EDI services between government agencies and the private sector. In order to operate efficiently, TradeSiam is managed as a private company where it positions itself as a national EDI service provider with the following objectives:

As a one-stop service, trading partners will be able to successfully proceed with trading procedures such as customs declaration, import certification, export license, or electronic funds transfer using the EDI-standard format UN/EDIFACT. TradeSiam will also provide a facility to convert other EDI standards such CARGO*IMP to UN/EDIFACT and vice versa.

In addition, it will keep a transaction-log (audit trial) and provide data security and reliable functionality for all trading transactions on a 24-hour basis.

In late 1998, the NITC has empowered six subcommittees to study and draft six IT-related laws. The IT-Law Development project is carried out by NECTEC, which is the secretariat office for the six drafting committees. Each subcommittee is chaired by a prominent legal expert and is comprised of representatives from concerned agencies.

The IT laws will serve as an infrastructure for doing electronic commerce and enhance confidence among the members of the electronic transaction playground while providing rules and etiquette for fair play. It will enhance Thailand's competitiveness. Through the universal access mandate demanded by the new constitution (Section 78), a law is required to diminish the gaps between the information Haves and the Have Nots.

The six laws are:

Many public seminars have been held by NECTEC and other organizations to promote the awareness of the social effects of e-commerce and call for public opinions. It is expected the drafts of the first three laws will be publicly available in June 1999 and the remaining three coming up a few months later.

In addition to these laws, both NECTEC and ministry of Justice are taking part in UN's activities on UNCITRAL Model Law on electronic commerce.

The recognition of intellectual property rights has been stressed by NITC. The government is now giving a guideline to all agencies to purchase legal software license. NECTEC has been assisting the NITC and the budget bureau to meet the desired objective through government-wide licensing programs with major software vendors.

As recognising software as IPR is a crucial step towards local software industry development, NECTEC Software Park will also be another force of change to support intellectual property.

Thai Government has been implementing several projects to support the economic recovery as well as to meet the forces of changes towards e-commerce, telecommunication deregulation, and intellectual property rights. Thailand's own agenda regarding to the development of software
industry, IT-laws, Internet for Education (SchoolNet), and the government information network are kept alive even during the hardest economic crisis.

High hopes were given to the development of software industry in Thailand through the Software Park project and IPR recognition. NECTEC has been a key instrument in making this happen according to the request of the private sectors. Electronic commerce is the second issue of interest,
where several key actions have already been started and some of the results are being delivered.

The major threat of Y2K bug is considered a highly significant burden to the hard time we are all bearing. However, through the strong leadership and support of the present chairman of NITC, the best efforts have been made and several "super critical" organisations have been very responsible
in fixing the millennium problem well ahead of the new year, 2000.

We still have to continue to work hard in infrastructure development throuth the IT-2000's three pillar scheme. I am confident that they are still the keys to our long-term sustainability.

CAT	Communications Authority of Thailand
CIO	Chief Information Officer
ECRC	Electronic Commerce Resource Center
EDI	Electronic Data Interchange
EFT	Electronic Funds Transfer
GINet	Government Information Network
GITS	Government Information Technology Service Program
IMF	International Monetary Fund
IPR	Intellectual Property Rights
ISD	NECTEC Information System Development and Support Division
IT	Information Technology
ITS	NECTEC NITC Secretariat Office
NCCC	National Counter Corruption Committee
NECTEC	National Electronics and Computer Technology Center
NII	National InformationInfrastructure
NITC	National Information Technology Committee
NSTDA	National Science and Technology Development Agency
SME	Small and Medium Enterprise
SMI	Small and Medium Industry
TEDIC	Thailand EDI Council
ThaiSarn	Thai Social/Scientific, Academic and Research Network
TOT	Telephone Organization of Thailand
UNCITRAL	United Nations Commission on International Trade Law
UN/EDIFACT	United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport
WTO	World Trade Organization
Y2K	Year 2000

Consititution of the Kingdom of Thailand

Section 40

Transmission frequencies forlevision broadcasting and radio telecommunication are nationalsources for public interest.

There shall be an independent regulatory body having the duty to distribute the frequencies under paragraph one and supervise radio or television broadcasting and telecommunication businesses as provided by law.

In carrying out the act under paragraph two, regard shall be had to utmost public benefit at national and local levels in education, culture, State security, and other public interests including fair and free competition.