The digital Thailand strategy and the ASEAN community

Abstract

The progress of Thailand's development needs to be monitored especially in the environment of the ASEAN Economic Community which started formally at the end of the year 2015. Furthermore, Thailand has also established the Thailand 4.0 strategy in alignment with the Thailand 12th Social and Economic Development Plan (2017–2021) and the ASEAN ICT Master Plan in order to drive the Thailand economy into a high‐income country and to be an ASEAN regional center. Because of the efficiency and effectiveness of ICT that can stimulate and support in most work areas, ICT aims to be the foundation of the country's development in other aspects. Thus, Thailand's Ministry of ICT has launched various ICT policies and programs for ICT administrators of different economic sectors because ICT has been considered as an engine of country development, and this causes Thailand to rely more on the adoption of ICT in various sectors. This study focuses on the progression of ICT development and investments, country infrastructures, the quality of the higher education system, business sophistication, and innovation, which are considered as the principal components of Thailand 4.0 strategy. The findings may assist the responsible authorities in both public and private organizations in monitoring, understanding, and expediting strategies and operations in order to achieve the objectives of Thailand 4.0 and to obtain competitive advantages across the ASEAN Economic Community. Furthermore, the findings also help to detect improvement of the Thailand's performance with respect to the 5 components development relative to the other ASEAN economies.

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“…To support the Thailand 4.0 future, the Thai government must encourage entrepreneurialism, as well as focusing on ICT (including the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, and artificial intelligence (AI)). The education sector will be essential in providing the physical and digital infrastructure and human capital needed to support the transformation [106][107][108]. It is the goal of the Thai government to build social security through the equitable distribution of income, opportunity, and wealth, operating under a principle of "moving forward together without leaving anyone behind", and creating sustainability through environmentally friendly development (i.e., the so-called Green Growth Engine).…”

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“…For instance, Cambodia often experiences difficulty with incorporating ICTs into their education system and have only started to develop and implement ICT in education policies (Richardson et al, 2014). This is particularly true also of Laos and Myanmar which are attempting to overcome challenges such as the huge digital gap and urban-rural gap in higher education (Tongkaw, 2013;Wongwuttiwat & Lawanna, 2018;You, 2017). Developing countries that are currently more successful in infusing e-readiness into higher education, such as Thailand and the Philippines, are still grappling with inadequate digital infrastructure (Wongwuttiwat & Lawanna, 2018).…”

“…This is particularly true also of Laos and Myanmar which are attempting to overcome challenges such as the huge digital gap and urban-rural gap in higher education (Tongkaw, 2013;Wongwuttiwat & Lawanna, 2018;You, 2017). Developing countries that are currently more successful in infusing e-readiness into higher education, such as Thailand and the Philippines, are still grappling with inadequate digital infrastructure (Wongwuttiwat & Lawanna, 2018). For institutions that are in the early stages of the ICT adoption, it would appear that there is still a scarcity of easy to use assessment that can be used to assess their state of readiness to use ICTs in education, benchmark to gauge their success and progress, and applied to serve their own country's needs.…”