Applying some insights about Sufficiency to our IT sector

OPEN THOUGHT

Applying some insights about Sufficiency to our IT sector

DON SAMBANDARAKSA

Sufficiency, so we, the people of Thailand have learned, works both ways. Those who have little but spend much are not Sufficient, nor are those who have much but choose to spend little.

Listening to the speech on December 4 on the whys and wherefores of Sufficiency, submarines, tanks and how E10 is only 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent petrol led to some insights as to how someone in the IT industry could translate these concepts into practice.

We do not need the best and fastest if we can have something which suits our needs which can be produced locally. While this part was mainly aimed at the argument between biofuels which Thailand can create and fossil fuels which have to be imported from the Arab states, the same logic could easily apply to many of the large IT projects such as the ID card project. We do not need the best and most capable imported one if we can make do with a local variant which is good enough.

Rather than spending almost a billion baht importing quasi-Java cards which come with duplicate serial numbers and are not used anyway, we could have created locally made ones which are not used. Or better still, we could create locally made ones which are usable. As HP demonstrated with its 2D digitally PKI signed barcode on the back of a plastic card, a lot can be done without having to use a chip. Granted, it may not be as good as a smartcard-based system, but it is something we can make locally, both in the physical and systems side, rather than depend on costly imports.

If hoarding money (having much, but refusing to spend it) is not Sufficiency, that line of thought can be applied to two major issues we have in our public sector IT troubles.

Years ago, the ICT and Interior ministries clashed as to whether the citizen database, in fact the entire Bureau of Registration Adminstration, should be transferred to the MICT or whether it should stay with the MoI. In the end it stayed with Interior.

However, by leaving the citizen database with Interior, the subsequent development of the database and access to it will be for the benefit of its keepers rather than to maximise the value of the data for the greater good.

By transferring to the MICT, which back then had no citizen-facing activities, the reasoning was that MICT would thus work towards maximising the value of that database across multiple agencies.

In other words, it was to break down silos and enable citizen-centric government. Sufficiency may not be the final word here, but it does give an added reason to open up and share information rather than greedily act on one's own interests. This is true for citizen information that needs to be de-siloed and shared across government as well as for stock market information that needs to be managed, not for the best interests of the Stock Exchange of Thailand, but for the country.

The logic makes so much more sense when looking at the mess in the telecom industry. Combatants on both sides are trying to maximise their profits rather than maximise the greater good. The private sector today is taking advantage of the status quo and lining their pockets so much that one company was recently sold to the Singaporeans for 7.3 billion baht. But the public sector now wants to reverse that and be the ones squeezing billions out of the public. Is that Sufficiency? It depends on one's view of Turtlephone and Cattlecom. If one believes that Turtlephone's interests and the public's are one and the same, then perhaps it is good. But does Turtlephone work for Turtlephone's interests or the public's interests? Are they one and the same? Taking that logic a step further begs the question, is Turtlephone Sufficient?

While on the subject of telephony, our former ICT Minister (infamously) said in November 2006 that it would make sense for Thailand to skip 3G and go straight to 4G. He even suggested that the current microwave technology that the world was developing would fail as 4G could not be done with a carrier frequency under 10GHz. He went on to note that the university he founded was doing research into data on this frequency band and that history would say that WiMAX would be the first attempt at 4G which had failed.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, in many ways the network hardware of a telco has long become a commodity. Operators are more interested in business agility in creating new offerings (i.e. price plans) and even non-voice revenue is falling rapidly. They know that soon after Nokia-Siemens manages to slice a percentage of operating costs off one solution, Alcatel-Lucent will soon come round with 1.1 percent off theirs.

Instead, the telcos are investing in developing new applications that take advantage of location-based services and contextual information. In other words, the future of telecommunications is software over some medium that does not matter much to the consumer nor industry as it will be sold at a razor thin margin. In that light, Thailand has an opportunity to be Sufficient. When it comes to ringtones, wallpapers and minor games, we are up there with some of the best. When it comes to next generation applications, it is a bit hard for Thai developers to imagine up the next big thing when they do not even have yesterday's big thing to base it upon.

The first wave of globalisation left only the best and strongest to survive. Tailors, shoemakers, supermarkets all had to move upmarket or die. The current wave of globalisation we are witnessing, some call it the long tail or the way the world is flat, goes the opposite way. Rather than selling a Prada bag for half the annual wage of a typical civil servant, the idea is to tap into the poor and sell a billion bags at a tiny profit each. This seemed to make sense up until now the world is creaking under all the carbon emissions that such an approach brings.

One could argue that neither extreme is sustainable in the long run; that neither is Sufficient. Perhaps there is life in the middle path of medium-sized markets and ideas after all.