Digital Thailand

Abstract

In December 2016, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha had led the government for more than two years. Driving the new government’s vision was the fact of an economy primarily based on agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism, but with inefficient government services and poor infrastructure, and a competitiveness ranking that placed Thailand behind other developing countries in many factors that determined a nation’s overall ranking. Nevertheless, all officials were confident that the planned digital economy policy would contribute immensely to national development, to people’s quality of life, and to the country’s competitiveness in preparation for the advent of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). However, the problems attendant to development of digital economy were numerous, including government tardiness in adopting ICT technologies, limited population access to broadband internet, increasing cybercrime, inefficient payments and logistics infrastructure, controversial issues related to the Computer Crime Act of 2016 (as amended), digital divide, poor education, lack of research and innovation, and lack of public trust in transactions on the Internet – to name a few.  Also, the military government’s recent announcement of its intention to control the access and flow of information on the Internet through introduction of a revised computer crime act had generated widespread criticism. Although the military government would vanish after promised elections, the Prime Minister had made it clear that his government was willing to do anything to ensure the success of the digital economy policy, which was to be his government’s major legacy.  Thus, he had to determine what steps to take to implement the digital economy policy and devise strategies to deal with obstacles.

In early 2017, the results of the Global Competitiveness Ranking, Global IT Report, and Network Readiness Index report that had just come out were not looking good for Thailand – which, to make the situation worse, had recently been sanctioned by the international community because of the May 2014 military coup. Out of 144 countries, Thailand was ranked 70th in availability of latest technologies, 94th in individuals using Internet, 71th in broadband internet subscription, 70^th in capacity for innovation, 70th in patents per million population, 121th in intellectual property protection, 118th in public trust in politicians, 72th in quality of overall infrastructure, and 68th in quality of the education system [1]. Consequently, Thai people had high expectations for Prime Minister Chan-o-Cha’s government. He had to prove to both his supporters and opponents that his government was not like former democratically elected governments that, in the final analysis, had done little to bolster the country’s standing amidst the nations of the world.  The prime minister needed to demonstrate to people that his military government had the resolve to improve Thailand and elevate the country to the next level through the use of digital technologies.