Development and Implementation of NSDI in Thailand

GIS: one technology, many stakeholders
GIS plays an important role in decision making and planning of a multidisciplinary nature. Most Thai government agencies dealing with natural resources and environmental management have been using GIS for their work. At present, more than 100 government agencies apply GIS to support their daily operations. A sizable budgets have been invested annually in producing geospatial data. Many of these data collection activities are redundant–data already exist but are hard to find, frequently undocumented, and in incompatible formats.

In terms of “Institutional Framework”, the following problems have been encountered : many actors work by their own only to meet with their own specific needs; duplication of data production and poor data sharing, unnecessary expenditure for the same products, overlapping activities with low degree of coordination, and, most important of all, unclear policy at all levels.

Regarding “Technical Standards”, comprehensive national standards for GIS have not yet been established and implemented. This could be due to the lack of awareness on the importance of standards. Like other countries, in developing a national GIS, “Fundamental Geographic Data Set: FGDS” is one of the major components. It is true to say that there is no complete set of up-to-date FGDS available in Thailand. It is still unclear what FGDS layers should be for Thailand and who should be the data producer and custodian for what layer. Geo-information does exist but it is scattered here and there in various agencies. Most of them are not easily accessible. More often it is not known who has what and how to access? This leads to the concept of “Spatial Data Clearinghouse” which is an important tool for data discovery and usage.

3. Towards e-Government: ICT for a Better Governance

Thailand ICT Vision
The government of Thailand realizes the importance of IT as a key element to support administration and public services in view of sustainable socio-economic development to ensure the quality of life of Thai citizens. With the government administrative restructuring taking place in October 2002, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology or MICT was established with a mandate to develop IT and communication of the country. MICT is responsible for formulating implementation strategies and action plan on ICT in accordance with IT policy (IT 2010) and ICT Master Plan (2002 – 2006). The vision of Thai ICT is to use ICT for economic and social development and to improve quality of life of Thai people under the concept “Knowledge-Based Society”. In doing this, ICT will be key to the development of “e-Thailand” which comprises e-Government, e-Industry, e-Commerce, e-Education, and e-Society. The focus will be on e-Government which is the core mechanism to mobilize the rest of the e-Thailand components.

E-Government Milestones
The goal of e-Government is to utilize ICT for serving government administration and providing public services with an ultimate goal of achieving a healthy nation. Several initiatives on e-Government implementation have been launched. A web portal, for instance, has been established to accelerate the development of e-Government, and used as a tool for information exchange and service transaction amongst government agencies as a “Government One Stop Service Gateway”. To fulfill the services of this web portal, all government agencies, at ministerial and departmental levels, need to develop the so called MOC: Ministerial Operation Center and DOC: Departmental Operation Center respectively, on the web to provide data and information both spatial and non-spatial to the national web portal (National Operation Center: NOC). The data/ information can then be integrated to provide information for decision making and public services accordingly. This initiative is targeted to be completed by 2004.

4. Development and Implementation of NSDI: a Key to Restructure GIS and to Support e-Government
GIS is being considered as one of the major components of e-Government in providing geo-spatial data and information for decision making. It can be integrated with MIS to enhance effectiveness of the overall information system. An important element to effectively integrate GIS with e-Government is to establish National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).

Major Driving Forces: government programs on GIS applications
At present, the Government is keen in applying GIS to support decision making process. Programs such as Disaster Mitigation and Management Program, Crop Monitoring and Yield Prediction Program, Conversion of Assets to Capital Program have been initiated. These programs can not be solely conducted by a single agency. They require cooperation among agencies in the integration of various data sets at different scales. Hence, development and establishment of NSDI is really an urgent task for Thailand.