SURAPONG SUEBWONGLEE / FORMER ICT MINISTER
DON SAMBANDARAKSA
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| Surapong believes Thailand made a mistake to withdraw from the One Laptop Per Child project, with some hand-assembled models seen here. He says critics do not understand the new reality of learning. |
Back in 1987, Thailand's first and arguably most successful ICT Minister was still a lecturer in medicine at Ramathibodi Hospital, ironically enough under the leadership of Professor Dr Athasit Vejjajiva, father of Democrat Party Leader Abhisit.
"Some of my friends were real hardcore IT geeks, but I was just a user back then. Don't forget that Word Rama (one of the first Thai language word processors) started at the hospital. Chula Word and Rajwithi Word came later," said Surapong Suebwonglee, Thailand's first ICT Minister when it was set up in 2002.
But while not a geek, Surapong likes to consider himself a manager. In 1988 Surapong, M.D. started on his MBA at Sasin, where he came up with his belief in the "butterfly effect," whereby leaders have the power to act as a catalyst and set much larger things in motion.
This was the idea behind the Budget PC project, which brought Thailand a measure of fame.
Talk of a Budget PC started back in 2002, in the early days of the ICT Ministry, when Surapong saw an advertisement in the US for a $199 PC. Back then, the price of a typical Thai PC was around 24,000 baht, roughly triple the price.
"The ATCM (Association of Thai Computer Manufacturers) had come to me to ask for measures to help support local manufacturers. I asked them why a PC in the US was so much cheaper," he recalled.
A couple of years earlier, Nectec had run a programme for computers approved by Nectec, but that did not succeed and only a few thousand PCs were shifted at 17,000 baht apiece.
"I asked the ATCM why the Wal-Mart PC was so cheap. After a while they got back to me that it was because it did not have a monitor. But if they could sell 50,000, they can do it for 15,000 baht. I asked them how low can they go if I can generate 100,000 sales," he explained.
In the end the price was 10,900 baht with Linux, as Microsoft at that time were not interested in giving Thailand discounts. But the buzz that the project had generated caught the attention of Andrew McBean, Microsoft Thailand's current managing director.
"Andrew read about the Budget PC programme on his flight from Indonesia and he told me how the project, the concept of giving PCs to the poor, was making waves around the world on how Thailand was eyeing a million budget PCs. He came back to me with a proposal: 1,500 baht for Windows XP and Office XP."
More importantly, it was the beginning of a new attitude within Microsoft towards regional pricing which ultimately led to Windows XP Starter Edition, which came complete with Thai backgrounds as well as menus.
"I remember at the ITU summit in Switzerland, the ICT Minister from Kenya approached me saying they too wanted to do a budget PC programme to bridge their digital divide," Surapong said.
The ICT Ministry was a catalyst, bringing together industry players and putting up a visible goal for everyone to work towards. Indeed, this was the same principle that Surapong had earlier applied to the 30-Baht healthcare scheme during his time at the Ministry of Public Health, and later to bring affordable broadband to the masses, Thailand Animation and Multimedia and ICT Expo.
"A 2Mbps ADSL line used to cost 7,000 baht a month. In 2004 I talked to TOT and True and told them to do the figures of how cheap Broadband can go if we do the maths and have enough numbers. It was also clear that infrastructure could not sustain them in the long run and that money had to be earned from content. True acted right away. TOT and CAT were much slower to move," he said.
Asked what he felt was his greatest failure, Surapong was surprisingly candid when he said that it was e-government and the implementation of the Smart ID Card system.
Surapong explained that the idea was for a range of e-services, with the smart ID as a key - something that has not materialised. But the problem was each ministry, each department had its own empire, its own agenda and worked to protect its turf, while he simply did not have the power or influence to force others to comply.
"If we do not have clear leadership, e-government will not happen. The few countries that have succeeded in e-government all had their Prime Minister personally working on it. As it was, it was impossible to work with everyone keeping secrets," he said.
The former ICT Minister also acknowledged that the e-commerce committee was rather ineffective in drafting and passing laws.
"The red tape was so slow. Sending something for the Cabinet via the Council of State took much longer than I imagined. It's not true that I refused to work with Nectec on this. For instance, for the Data Privacy law, that was delayed as we had to argue with the Office of the Official Information Commission as to who would be the host agency," he said.
Asked what he would have done differently given a second chance, Surapong said he regrets not spending time on building an executive dream team.
More recently, Surapong says that Thailand made a mistake withdrawing from Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project.
"People question why we should buy computers when many schools don't even have libraries. But these people do not understand the new reality of learning," he said.
He recalled a school in Buriram in the Northeast that had received a number of old donated PCs. Parents were so excited that they had pooled their own money to build a building to be a computer classroom and the way the children were so enthusiastic in using the computers convinced him.
"The idea for the Budget PC started in Thailand. It would have been beautiful if we were the launch country for the OLPC," said. "We were already developing software for it. We were going to change the way children learned new things. But this chapter of Thailand's work in bridging the digital divide has come to a sad end," he lamented.
Many have criticised the Budget PC, TAM and ICT Expo as being popularist projects rather than for the true benefit of industry, but Surapong believes that a project can be both popularist and industry-focussed.
"In retrospect I was too soft when I allowed schoolchildren to enter ICT Expo on trade-only days. That gave the wrong impression," he said, adding that the IT industry needed to get a new generation of workers and thinkers excited and involved the way his own childhood was filled with memories of science fairs.
"I remember that we managed to invite the creator of Pokemon to speak at the first TAM. I always insisted we have world-class seminars. In the second year, TAM was joined by TAFF (Thailand Animation Film Festival) and we truly had world-class entries from France, Hong Kong and Korea."
Moving forward, Surapong suggests that the future government needs to focus on education reform, not so much the education bureaucracy, but of how Thai children are going to adapt to the Internet and life-long learning.
"Network infrastructure, especially WiMax, will be needed. We must start thinking today and by the time we come up with a plan, we will have ubiquitous networks to implement that plan," he suggested.
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