Thailand accelerates march to e-government with growing army of service apps
Thailand is speeding up development of apps that serve the public in a bid to raise the Kingdom’s global e-government ranking.
Last year, Thailand ranked 57th out of 193 countries in the E-Government Development Index, coming third in Asean behind Singapore and Malaysia.
To boost that ranking, the Digital Government Development Agency (DGA) will this year accelerate collaboration with 20 ministries to provide services in six fields, DGA director Supot Tiarawut said.
The new apps will give access to education, health and medicine, agriculture, SME support, transparency, public participation and good governance, and public services.
The DGA will also push for a five-year digital government development plan (2023-2027) aimed at raising Thailand’s e-government ranking to second in Asean, Supot added.
The development plan has targeted a satisfaction level of 80 per cent public among users of digital government services. The plan will also expand e-government services to cover labour, environment, the justice system and tourism.
The DGA has already developed the Thang Rat (Government Ways) app, through which the public can access 49 services under 29 government agencies. These include social security payments, government subsidies, and support payments for newborn children.
Thang Rat also provides 31 services related to schools, labour and other sectors.
The app has been downloaded 169,332 times and used 1.17 million times.
It will soon give access for monthly elderly and disabled allowances, traffic fines payment, driving licence information, and vehicle registration tax.
The DGA also developed the ThailandPlus to boost Covid-19 safety for travellers.
So far, 268,656 foreigners have registered for the app.
Mor Chana and the Thailand Pass app for tourists were also developed by the DGA.
Last year, the DGA also collaborated with the Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation Ministry to develop a digital platform to prevent diploma forgery.
He said 39 universities will this year provide digital diplomas to 160,000 graduates.
The DGA is also developing a platform for government agencies to exchange information, a central government cloud system, a platform for storing people’s welfare information, and online databases of farmers and agricultural information.
The DGA is also collaborating with the Public Sector Development Commission to provide a one-stop digital service to certify 78 different licences for 25 types of businesses. A total of 597 businesses have filed 1,119 applications via the new service, Supot said.
Meanwhile the DGA has developed a digital ID and e-signature system to speed up business transactions, he added.
