What to expect from the various political parties after December 23 when it comes to ICT

Database News - Wednesday December 12, 2007

ICT POLICY ON THE TABLE

What to expect from the various political parties after December 23 when it comes to ICT

Story by SASIWIMON BOONRUANG

Five political parties have outlined their ICT policies if voted into office on December 23. Of the two main candidates, the People Power Party says it will continue with an ICT Ministry and boost the economy by promoting broadband technology, while the Democrat Party says it does not take the ICT Ministry seriously - it wants another body to take care of ICT policy and promote truly free competition in the telecom sector.

Here are the policies associated with ICT proposed by the five government candidates from a briefing recently staged by the IT Press Club.

Democrat Party

The Democrat Party will focus on ICT infrastructure investment and development of human resource competitiveness. Leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said the party pays attention to ICT because technology advance is a driver of global change in every respect - social, economic and political.

"We want to give students a chance to use computers and the Internet with the goal to increase the proportion of computers per students from one per 40 students now to one computer for every 10 students within four years," he said.

ICT was a tool to enhance learning and the party believed that to be able to benefit in future, people must be in a learning environment. As a result, the party would underline its policies in education and learning, the leader said, adding that ICT must also provide network access for the people.

Telecommunications services in Thailand have been dominated by a few large players and this has caused unfair competition and a loss to the economy. "We will push to have number portability within the first year," the leader said.

Mr Abhisit stated that he saw no need for an ICT Ministry, but rather there should be a national body to take care of policy. The important thing is that the body must have a set policy and be involved in reforms for fairer business competition. "New technology has changed rapidly and the private sector is more flexible to carry out developments than the government," he said, noting that while the government was responsible for core infrastructure and networks, the retail network should be handled by the private sector and opened to competition.

There were lot of duplicated as well as monopoly telecom services, Abhisit noted, therefore there was a need to accelerate the introduction of a regulator, the National Broadcast and Telecommunication Commission, as soon as possible. Telecom concession conversion was also unavoidable and work must be kept up to resolve the problems.

Dr Buranaj Smutharaks, a member of the strategy and policy committee of the Democrat Party, remarked that the former government did not build a foundation for a knowledge-based economy and ICT infrastructure. He said that it had meant Thailand was being left behind, pointing to things such as the lack of licensing for WiMax technology.

There were lots of mega projects with huge investments, but these had caused problems, such as the e-passport and smart card projects. He pointed out that even in the mobile phone sector, the government had issued many licences but there were few entrepreneurs.

The Democrats would propose to open telecoms to fair competition and promote the role of entrepreneurs. The party supports independent bodies, such as the National Telecommunication Commission and National Broadcasting Commission, to issue regulations and allocate the necessary resources for telecom service as fast as the private sector and general public demand it.

The party would also implement a mechanism to monitor service providers in order to protect consumers. "We would like to overlook the mega projects and focus on fundamental ICT development as well as ICT related services such as call centres, outsourcing and particularly education," Dr Buranaj said.

People Power Party

In contrast to the Democrats, the People Power Party is not averse to mega projects, putting forward a plan to spend 130 billion baht on a broadband "superhighway" for knowledge. The party has proposed a "people, public, private partnership," or PPPP, as a general framework, pointing out that the development of ICT requires every party to work in partnership.

Kanawat Wasinsungworn, a member of the economic team for People Power Party, said two major projects would drive its ICT policy: a Government Broadband Information Network and a series of ICT Service and Learning Centres. It would raise the 130 billion baht needed for the project from various parties, with 30 billion baht to be spent on the government broadband information network project and 100 billion baht to revamp the current telecom network using new technologies such as fixed line broadband and wireless technology including HSDPA and WiMax.

To encourage private sector investment, Kanawat said the new government should provide incentives such as tax deductions for imported broadband equipment of between 5-30%.

"We have been studying this project to modernise Thailand since 2006, and unfortunately the coup took place in September that year, so the project was terminated," he claimed, adding that the private sector today was still ready to invest.

In line with the Government Broadband Information Network, the People Power Party would propose ICT service and learning centres in rural areas in 76 provinces as a way to bridge the digital divide. Currently, there are 20 ICT service and learning centres, and it will roll out to complete 8,000 tambons through collaboration with provincial administrative organisations and tambon administrative organisations within five years.

All those the projects will transform into a strategy by e-transformation of which includes e-government, e-commerce, e-industry, e-education, and e-society.

The centres will provide the public services such as smart card, e-commerce community, agricultural community, and people in the communities can access the Internet by these centres.

The result, in a short term, will happen in one to two years because the party is proposing a tax deduction for broadband equipment for 5-30 per cent in order to stimulate the economy.

Broadband infrastructure would also help the country to reduce costs, as more business-to-business e-commerce could take place and people could reduce travel and thus fuel consumption .

While the ICT Ministry might be out of favour with the Democrats, Kanawat claimed that it represented "a paradigm shift" in public sector administration and would be retained by the PPP. The government had studied the core mission of each ministry and the ICT Ministry had a structure that was "nimble."

Puea Pandin Party

The Puea Pandin Party has urged the future government to have an ICT master plan. Dr Wuttipong Pongsuwan, a member of the ICT team of Puea Pandin Party, said the party would propose applying ICT for the creation of jobs, to boost income and for industry development. He said Thailand should become a hub of online content and animation development and other services.

The government should support local hardware and software to increase competitiveness. It should also serve other sectors by having high speed Internet accessibility at lower cost and using IT as an enabler for e-commerce.

Every government agency must have an e-government and ICT master plan, he said, adding that red tape must be reduced. "We will promote e-procurement and information integration among government agencies by using XML," he said.

Dr Wuttipong said that the new goverment should promote "good" computer games and a system of online game rating. By 2010, there should be an ICT learning centre in every district, with the Internet available at ICT centres in villages.

He nominated eight projects that needed to be addressed urgently: an ICT master plan; public Wi-Fi and WiMax services; open content development; Open Source software development; broadband infrastructure integration; software industry promotion; improvement of the privacy and computer crime laws; and promotion of the I-school project to increase the use of computers by students.

He added that the party would promote the local software industry to help support significant sectors such as gems and jewelry and fashion because these were growing sectors that still lacked relevant software. He also proposed the use of Linux as a national operating system and the promotion of Open Source software.

Chartthai Party

The biggest ICT proposal from the Chartthai Party would be a broadband network for people nationwide. Varawut Silpa-archa, Chartthai IT project manager, noted that the party did not care whether there was an ICT Ministry or not - having policy was more important.

To foster ICT development, Varawut said the network must reach the people. As a result, Chartthai proposes that broadband should be accessible nationwide for every household.

Once the infrastructure was in place, many sectors could make use of it, including education so that every school had broadband Internet access, he said.

"Chartthai will not be the party to set up the government as we are small and a provincial party. However, while the 14 million people living in cities enjoy ICT services, we want to have broadband for those living in the rest of the country," he said.

Matchimathipataya

The goal of Matchimathipataya Party is that students get to use the Internet free of charge, while Asst Prof Veerasak Jinarat, a Matchimathipataya representative candidate, said that the ICT Ministry must be the one to carry out ICT policy.

He said that the success of ICT utilisation would be judged by people having better incomes and lower production costs.

"If we are the government, students will be able to use the Internet free, and we will focus on good content and high speed Internet," he said, adding that rather than concentrating on Internet use in every tambon, the government should promote content producers.

Bangkok Post