The National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) has unveiled a new platform tool that will support the public sector's move to share necessary data for further use by businesses and citizens.
"Nectec continues to support open technology platforms which are useful for the public. We are now ready to launch the Open-D platform for government agencies to use it to build their own open data faster," Chai Wutiwiwatchai, executive director of Nectec, said in a recent online seminar about open data.
Before this project, Nectec earlier rolled out several digital platforms for public use, including AI For Thai, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based data analytic platform, and HandySense, a smart farming solution.
He said open data is now vital for use to develop innovations and become a crucial part of digital transformation.
Thailand has a website -- data.go.th -- developed by the Digital Government Agency, as a platform for open government data.
"Open government data is part of the government's key policies that support transparency. State agencies can share quality data for public use. This open data can be leveraged by businesses and individuals for analysis and innovation creation," said Mr Chai.
Marut Buranarach, senior researcher at Nectec, said open data is a global trend that would support marketing, employment and cost saving.
In Europe, the open data market is projected to be valued at around €199-335 billion (7.8-13.1 trillion baht) by 2025, up from €184 billion in 2019.
Citing a survey, Mr Marut said some 46% of organisations say open data had an implication for their revenue and 73% believe the impact is expected to increase in the future.
Mr Marut said many state agencies in Thailand still do not have sufficient quality for open data. Their data is fragmented and not shared with data.go.th so it is difficult for users to access or use it.
That is why Nectec has to develop the Open-D platform to support these agencies.
The Open-D platform was designed by adhering to the international standard for open data and powered by CKAN software, which is a data management system that supports data catalogue through websites.
Open-D is also linked with data.go.th.
"By using this tool, open data creation will be made faster by 3-4 months," said Mr Marut.
This tool can also support the Thai language and enhance the data management by organisations, he noted.
According to Mr Marut, the majority of state departments have supplied open data through data.go.th.
The open data trend is prevailing around the world, he said, so more data could be unfolded by organisations under state departments along with city levels in the future.
"Now open data in organisations and provincial levels are still less than 10% and there is still a challenge to increase open data from them," he said.