We wanted a Ministry of IT, but instead we followed Europe's lead and set up a Ministry of ICT, says Nectec director
DON SAMBANDARAKSA
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| Sujarit Patchimnan, director-general of the Provincial Administration Department, takes part in a demonstration of the new smart ID cards at the Registration Administration Bureau in Pathum Thani in February, 2004. Pansak says the idea for a smart ID card is a good one, but they should cost five baht or less (instead of 74 baht for the current batch). — BOONNARONG BHUDHIPANYA |
For much of recent history, Nectec, the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre, has been the guiding light of Thailand's ICT industry. Yet back in 1987, the focus was very much on the electronics part of the equation, according to the latest director, Dr Pansak Sirichutapong.
Twenty years ago, Pansak had just graduated and was teaching electronic engineering at Kasetsart University. "Back, then, there was no IT industry to speak of, only electronics manufacturing, no Internet, no communications as we know it today and the biggest challenge was to get IT parts and data to turn Thailand from a mere assembler of electronic components to a manufacturer in our own right," he said.
Back in the late 80s, Dr Pansak recalls that Nectec's director was Professor Pairash Thajchayapong, who had invited him to join Nectec to work with Thavorn Computer to help kick-start a home-grown PC industry.
"I joined as director of one of our labs. Back then, infrastructure was being able to source parts and IC chips to make a computer, not really IT like today," he explained.
The age of IT started much later when the first whispers of the Internet reached Thailand and his predecessor, Dr Thaweesak Koanantakool, worked with the King Mongkut Institute of Technology (Lat Krabang) to develop an X.25 network.
Like many before him, Pansak praised the Anand Panyarachun government for establishing the National IT Committee and the drafting of the IT2000 master plan.
"Before IT2000 (in 1995), each ministry went their own way, but the plan made the country's IT much more systematic," he said. The plan also called for every C6 civil servant in government to have basic IT training and it called for every agency to have a chief information officer.
However, Pansak wonders if the idea to have the number two in each organisation (deputy permanent secretary or deputy director general) as CIO was the right way to go. "I think it has to be number one. I still remember the day someone rushed up to me to tell me that Dr Pairash (then Nectec director) had issued his first email order. From then on, everyone in Nectec had to use email," he said.
He also pointed out that it is a known fact that deputy permanent secretaries (a C-10 level official) spend most of their time trying to be transferred out to become a more autonomous director general (also a C-10 official) rather than concentrating on their job at hand.
Of course, the flip side is that too much email means a blurring of traditional roles in work. He pointed out that many of the email messages he receives from Dr Thaweesak are timestamped at 3 in the morning, while some have complained of people answering their emails in meetings, and not concentrating on the meeting.
"[Science and Technology] Minister Yongyuth [Yuthavong] uses email to communicate with us. Email breaks down hierarchy, and over the years, Nectec has become much flatter," he said.
While Pansak has no regrets about the winds of change that email bought to his organisation, he questions recent government projects such as the e-Passport and national smart ID card projects. Pansak was famously one of the committee members that voted the first batch of 12 million cards as failing the Terms of Reference, a decision that was overturned by a majority vote.
"I think the idea for a smart ID card is a good one, but it should cost five baht, or less (that batch cost 74 baht). A good rule of thumb for government projects is that you should get a return on investment of at least double the amount you invested in that project, but even today, we have not made any reliable study. We don't know if we need the card; if we can do 80 percent of our transactions online or if the figure is just 10 percent. Nor do we have a plan on how to extend the system to remote areas. All we have today is something that looks trendy to have in your pocket," he said.
Another point which the committee never discussed was the phasing in of the card, as it would take around 10 years for everyone to have cards, by which time the first cards would already be up for replacement.
Pansak said things took a turn for the worse with the departure of MICT Permanent Secretary Khunying Dhipavadee Meksawan to the Ministry of Culture in 2004. "She was our anchor," he said. Like many, he said the establishment of the MICT slowed things down in Thailand's IT industry.
However, philosophically, the head of Nectec said that perhaps it was naive for people to think that the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology would be focussed on IT and that it was only natural for successive ministers to focus on the 300 billion telecommunications market rather than just a 40 billion IT and software sector.
"We wanted a Ministry of IT, but instead we followed Europe's lead and set up a Ministry of ICT," he said.
Another project that did not succeed was Schoolnet. Originally a Nectec project, the idea was to create a network, and through it a community of self-reliant, self-supporting teachers. "The project failed once it was transferred to the Ministry of Education where they essentially said, 'Here's your network. The end'," he said.
More successful projects include the establishment of Thailand's first Internet Exchange (IX). Previously, a packet between two different Thai ISPs had to go via the US. Today, CAT Telecom has said that Thailand needs only one Internet Exchange, but Nectec still has an agreement to access raw bandwidth data for it statistical work.
As for the future, Pansak feels that Thailand's best opportunity lies in embedded systems. He disagrees with the Indian model of software and business outsourcing and believes that Thailand should build on its existing strengths from decades of experience in being a manufacturing base for Japanese companies.
The role of Tmec, the Thailand Microelectronics Centre, needs to be clarified. During the smart ID card row two years ago, many accused Tmec, a part of Nectec, of trying to abuse its government policy role and divert funds away from the private sector and into Tmec's own facilities.
Pansak said the truth was that Tmec never had the capacity to do more than a small fraction of the 60 million cards needed, and besides IT2010 did say that government procurement projects should be focused towards building the domestic market and encouraging technology transfer.
But today, he said that rather than compete with the latest sub-micron technology and upgrade Tmec's wafer fabs to 0.35 or 0.18 micron, Tmec will stick with 0.5 micron technology and focus on the creation of silicon bio-chips and bio-sensors, which cannot be miniaturised because of the fixed size of biological molecules. Other research in Tmec today includes the development of nanotechnology silicon microphones and silicon loudspeakers.
"It is this trend that will be the future of Nectec - integrating biotechnology and nanotechnology and coming up with new niches, rather than chasing after the latest CMOS technology. We are going to anticipate the next big thing and will be waiting for them (the rest of the world)," he said.
Another focus will be agricultural technology and becoming a leader in applying agricultural knowledge management in Suvarnabhumi - not the airport, but the name of the golden land that once encompassed Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.
Does that mean that the baton has well and truly passed from Nectec to the ICT Ministry? Pansak said Nectec is still ready to help and advise, where advice is sought. But as hard as it is for him to let go, he explained that if there is anything that exemplifies Nectec, it is to be on the cutting edge of technology, and to be experts at what they do, rather than experts in what someone else is doing.
He admits he still dreams that someone in government will give Nectec a new mandate for public sector IT.
"Come back and talk to me on the 30th anniversary of Database. I will be retiring that year and it would be fun to see what we have achieved in the next 10 years," he joked.
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