Thailand to set up Nationwide Citizen ID Data Center

The Thai government will be setting up a nationwide citizen information data center by 2013 to improve information sharing among government agencies.

An agreement has already been signed between the Provincial Administration Department and the Electronic Government Agency (EGA), which is under the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Ministry.

ICT Minister Anudith Nakornthap said this collaboration will greatly improve government’s database efficiency, reduce cost of connections and speed up processing.

According to EGA director Sak Segkhoonthod, as reported by Bangkok Post, the Thai government accorded 1 billion baht (US$31.3 million) to upgrade the connection efficiency of about 2,000 government agencies. It will likewise spend 30 million baht (US$940,557) to increase computer security. Under the agreement, the ICT Ministry will install a high-speed connection to the department’s connection system. Through the Government Information Network intranet, other agencies will be provided with connection services. In 2013, the government targets to link up 30 government agencies and up to 1,000 agencies within three years.

The new system will reduce the number of direct connections between agencies. It will eliminate duplicate and redundant connections in order to speed-up processing times, and simplify transfer of information. This streamlining effort is expected to generate savings for the government of about 500 million baht (US$15.6 million) annually.

Noted by Sukij Charoenrattanakul, director-general of the Provincial Administration Department, the Thai citizen database is constantly used by about 103 government agencies, with over 100 million database requests made yearly. Top users of the database are the Royal Thai Police (24 million transactions) followed by Land Transport Department (14 million transactions) and Revenue Department (13million).

Article Topics

biometrics  |  government  |  government purchasing  |  national ID