The digital Thailand strategy and the ASEAN community

Abstract

The progress of Thailand's development needs to be monitored especially in the environment of the ASEAN Economic Community which started formally at the end of the year 2015. Furthermore, Thailand has also established the Thailand 4.0 strategy in alignment with the Thailand 12th Social and Economic Development Plan (2017–2021) and the ASEAN ICT Master Plan in order to drive the Thailand economy into a high-income country and to be an ASEAN regional center. Because of the efficiency and effectiveness of ICT that can stimulate and support in most work areas, ICT aims to be the foundation of the country's development in other aspects. Thus, Thailand's Ministry of ICT has launched various ICT policies and programs for ICT administrators of different economic sectors because ICT has been considered as an engine of country development, and this causes Thailand to rely more on the adoption of ICT in various sectors. This study focuses on the progression of ICT development and investments, country infrastructures, the quality of the higher education system, business sophistication, and innovation, which are considered as the principal components of Thailand 4.0 strategy. The findings may assist the responsible authorities in both public and private organizations in monitoring, understanding, and expediting strategies and operations in order to achieve the objectives of Thailand 4.0 and to obtain competitive advantages across the ASEAN Economic Community. Furthermore, the findings also help to detect improvement of the Thailand's performance with respect to the 5 components development relative to the other ASEAN economies.