More funds needed for Thai govt's cloud-based operations, says commission
The National Digital Economy and Society Commission is seeking additional funding for the Government Data Centre and Cloud Service (GDCC), which aims to provide additional virtual machines (VMs) to state agencies.
The commission had asked for 2.5 billion baht per year to cover the cost of 25,000 additional VMs, but the Fiscal Policy Office had only approved half the amount.
“With just 1.1 billion baht being granted, the commission will seek another 700 million baht from the Digital Economy and Society Fund to ensure operations continue,” Putchapong Nodthaisong, the commission’s secretary-general, said on Saturday.
He added that government agencies have expressed interest in using up to 40,000 VMs for their cloud-based services, but the current budget will only accommodate 30,000 VMs, he said.
To prevent resource shortage, the commission will implement measures to ensure efficient utilisation of cloud resources, such as requiring agencies that have reserved VMs but have not used them for more than three months to return the machines.
“Moreover, data stored should be strictly vital to the agencies’ operations and can be linked or integrated with databases of other related agencies,” he said. “Unimportant data such as photos and CCTV footage shall be stored in agencies’ own servers instead.”
Separately, Putchapong said the commission has spoken with National Telecom (NT) about the option of establishing a platform called GDCC Marketplace to provide services aimed at increasing the efficiency of digital and online operations of government agencies.
Initially, the GDCC Marketplace will feature 10 services most needed by government agencies based on a recent survey. The services include optical character recognition, which can turn images or scanned documents into text that can be processed and archived in the database.
