Thailand citizen centric e-government service: Maturity and challenges

Abstract

Thailand started its race for e-government with the consecutive IT 2000, IT 2001, and followed by the first ICT Master Plan during 2002-2008, a key policy framework planning to incorporate 5 key "e" strategy flagships: e-government, e-commerce, e-industry, e-education, and e-society, in order to lead the country toward knowledge economy by 2010. E-government development has been reflected through various projects and initiatives, especially some prominent online initiatives. These public service showcases for certain extent and appropriate condition have proved that "citizen centric" approach has been a critical factor for their achievements. The country's current ICT master plan aims at the end of the plan in 2013 for being "Smart Thailand" where sustainable ICT implementation will be based on IT-literate-human capacity in all levels of society and on the good governance foundation in all development sectors as well as the accessible-to-all infrastructure. Key government bodies to drive implementation of the country master plan range from policy level of Ministry of ICT (MICT) to implementation level, including every single ministry and department under its supervision. Results of an e-government maturity survey in 2004 revealed that the overall e-services development in early years lacked attention on integration among government agencies, whereas the e-government maturity model used in the survey placed the "integration" level among the 5 stages in an order of advancement. These are: information, interaction, interchange transaction, integration, and intelligence. A later survey in 2008 showed maturity improvement, which contributed, for a certain extent, to citizen centric activities and projects. Challenges are among how to cater such leverages which could secure them from the burden of big investment and of falling into the pitfall of fast-moving ICT. The current ICT master plan has put more attention on the governance factor since there have been lessons learnt during the first master plan implementation: a lack of properly conducted governance caused most project misconducts and less citizen engagement. Therefore e-governance has been underlined both in terms of front and back-end services. Likewise, challenges toward success for the next phase of e-government are to define clearly the governance elements in both vertical and horizontal dimensions. Most importantly, "citizen centricity" is crucial in all those angles to keep the online activities in high record of citizen community attention. Above all, the e-government development efforts must lead the country toward a smarter and more sustainable condition and environment. © 2012, IGI Global.