Back to previous Page Software Park After the Cabinet approval in May 1997, Nectec's Software Park Office is now in service with three thousand square metres to be in operation at the Software Park Building in May 1999. The rental space of 5,000 square metres has been made available. As of April 1999, there are 22 companies intending to join Software Park. Software Park will be : the incubation center for small and medium entrepreneurs in software business, the center for locally made software, the place where technical support and transfer of technology are provided for professionals in the field, and the marketplace for software vendors and buyers to explore new business relationships and to make deals. In 1998, Software Park has been operating in its temporary location within Nectec and has already made the following achievements: 1. Virtual Software Park at http://www.swpark.or.th, a market place for software developers, producers, marketers and customers to communicate freely. 2. Strategic partners to strengthen the Thai Software Industry. So far, the leading companies have committed to support the project consist of Intel Microelectronics (Thailand), Informix Software (Thailand), Oracle Systems (Thailand), IBM Thailand, Sun Educational Services and Novell Inc. 3. Transfer of Technology: this is the special seminar or training programmes which are set up in collaboration with strategic partners which are world-class organisations Recently, a training course on Java has been held with more than 300 persons attended. Two upcoming seminars are "Introduction to the Capability Maturity Model (CMM)for Software" in collaboration with SEI of Carnegie-Mellon University, and "Software Testing" training to be held in August 1999. 4. Market Promotion: through Thailand Software booths at various international trade shows such as COMDEX in USA, CeBIT in Germany and SoftWorld in Canada. Software Park also promotes Thai developers in local trade shows. The "Software Fair '98" last November was a great success. The estimated world market in software is huge, and with the current level of competency of some software companies in Thailand, there is always a big opportunities for export as well as for local use. By strengthening Thai software developers through appropriate means, it is possible for Thailand to tap for some share in this market. The success of Software Park calls for a timely expansion to maintain the momentum of the impact. It is expected that the total space managed by Software Park will be increased four times to above 30,000 square metres within two years. Internet for education programmes: SchoolNet and ThaiSarn The Internet was introduced to Thailand in 1991 through academic and research applications. The first Internet in Thailand was the Thai Social/Scientific, Academic and Research Network (ThaiSarn). Starting from only 9600 bps international link in 1992, ThaiSarn was matured within about three years of its introduction with the first 2Mbps international link in September 1995. As of 1999, ThaiSarn has about 100 connections to all state-own university sites. In 1996 and 1997, an information superhighway testbed project was carried out at Nectec to develop local researchers on the use of ATM network as well as many wideband applications. ThaiSarn became the main academic and research network of Thailand with a number of information servers providing document archives, freeware/shareware mirrored archives and major local information such as the Golden Jubilee Network which hosts a wealth of information about Thailand in the Thai language. The collection of servers is called "PubNet". Starting November 1997, ThaiSarn launched the Public Internet Exchange (PIE) to supplement the PubNet project. PIE allows local commercial Internet Service Providers (through their own investment and connection license) to exchange domestic traffic without leaving Thailand. The project was so successful that after one year of experiment, the participants of PIE decided to provide some funding to Nectec's operation and let the operation continue. As of February 1999, PIE circulating traffic was at 6.2 Mbps average. This means that in each month, 1.93 Terabytes (1,930,000 megabytes) of data was circulating inside PIE instead of traversing abroad and come back. In real money, this is a saving of no less than 60 million baht per year. In 1998, the most exciting milestones for the Internet development was the SchoolNet project as schools all over Thailand are granted access to the Internet with an equal opportunity of nothing more than the cost of the local call ith their location. Starting in 1995 as an extended service of ThaiSarn to secondary schools, SchoolNet received unprecedented attention from NITC, the private sector and participating schools. In 1996/1997, Nectec started the project "Golden Jubilee Network" as a tribute to His Majesty the King on the 50th anniversary of the accession to the throne. The project aimed at providing massive educational contents in Thai language on the web, together with a unique public access network for the public throughout Thailand. The Golden Jubilee Network was an initiative of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. In 1998, the public-access network for the Golden Jubilee was extended to allow schools to access the Internet without requiring a long distance (i.e. expensive) phone call to Bangkok. This became a great opportunity for schools to begin utilising the Internet in the library, classroom and laboratories. As of April 1999, there are more than 850 schools using SchoolNet services, with more than 200 schools running their websites. To complement SchoolNet the successful connectivity, Nectec ITS provided a contract to Kasetsart University to develop educational contents to be used in SchoolNet project. At present, Kasetsart University are running some test run of the developed contents in schools. There are several activities for using IT in schools taking place. Some of them took place as a camping programme, web-page competition, and teachers' training. The Government CIO Programme The Chief Information Officer programme is a recommendation of the study "Utilisation of IT in the Public Sector, Revision 2". The programme was proposed to the cabinet by NITC chairman, Mr Suvit Khunkitti, and was approved in June 1998. According to the Cabinet resolution, every ministry and department and every state enterprise is to appoint one chief information officer to over see the unified IT development plans at both the departmental level and the ministerial level. As the CIO programme is new to most ministries and departments, NITC supplements all CIOs with a special 30-hour compulsory training programme. Six training courses for 15 minsterial CIOs and about 180 departmental CIOs are managed jointly by Nectec and the Office of the Civil Servant Commission. By April 1999, four CIO intensive training courses have been carried out. Almost 100 CIOs have completed their courses, with the remaining ones to complete theirs within three months. All CIOs are part of the "CIO Forum" which is a regular gathering of government CIOs to meet for technology update and free exchange of ideas and cooperation among the CIOs. The government CIOs are working together to draft out the IT Action Plan for Thailand. The plan is expected to guarantee the smoother information flow across ministries, more efficient information sharing and improved decision-support system for the country through the use of Government Information Network and a common set of specifications to allow the private sector to carry out IT projects for the government more efficiently. There are a number of actions being carried out by Nectec NITC secretariat to support improved use of IT in the public sector. These operations are handled by the Government Information Technology Service Program (GITS). Government IT Services (GITS) and GINet There are two major aspects in the provision of core IT services to the government: Government Information Network (GINet) and common information services to all ministrie. Both functions are managed by the Government Information Technology Service Program at Nectec. The GITS program was approved by the government in May 1997, with the formal budget started in October 1998. However, there was a near-total failure for the government to secure the necessary budget to start up the project in the fiscal year 1998. Nectec was then able to carry out only the necessary preparation for the network design, planning and request for information from vendors using minimum budget and staff. However, the project concept and design was clearly specified in GITS's request for information (RFI) document. The GINet concept was also widely presented to relevant government agencies which would be the stake-holders of GINet. GINet is the government networking backbone which links every province in Thailand with high-speed communication lines at the speed of 155 million bits per seconds. High speed access networks are to be made available in all 1,000 districts through leased circuits, ISDN or ADSL technologies. GINet consists of a nationwide ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) network running on TOT's existing and new optical fibre network. GITS funding in fiscal year 1999 is sufficient to start the high-speed networking in Bangkok and links to few strategic provinces to test the planned applications which are under development. A special programme called "IT Model Office" has been set up with four government agencies to ensure practicality of all information services and groupware applications. (Continued) Next page Back to top