This analysis of the development of Thailand's information economy places particular emphasis on its ICT and social infrastructure development. Drawing upon lessons learned from similar development trajectories in Ireland, China, and India we develop a set of guidelines for Thailand to consider as it continues its information economy development. From the policy perspective, Thailand, similar to other countries, plans to use ICT as an enabler to develop a knowledge-based society. From the infrastructure perspective, some challenges that Thailand faces are unequal infrastructure development across regions, a small skilled workforce, and low R&D expenditures in the ICT sector. Case studies of ICT sector development in Ireland, India, and China suggest several important strategies and actions that Thailand could emphasize. These include facilitating ICT sector work, ensuring a supply of qualified workforce, exploiting the country's distinctive capacities, and reconfiguring and adapting its information policy to changes in the global ICT market.
The development of a sustainable information economy has become a worldwide goal. Developed countries have established national policies regarding strong investment in information and communications technology (ICT) to maintain their leadership positions and to increase their competitiveness in the global information economy. Similarly, developing countries recognize this opportunity to enhance their economic capability by developing a workforce more attuned to the needs of the information economy.
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[...] China and India: The Road to Growth. The McKinsey Quarterly, Special Edition: China Today: 110-119. Farrell, D., Laboissière, M. A., and Rosenfeld, J. (2005). Sizing the Emerging Global Labor Market. The McKinsey Quarterly, 92-103. Friedman, T. L. (2005). The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Gray, H. and Sanzogni, L. (2004). Technology Leapfrogging in Thailand: Issues for the Support of eCommerce Infrastruture. The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries, 1-26. [...]
[...] The Cultural of an Information Economy: Influences and Impacts in the Republic of Ireland. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Trauth, E. M. (2001). Mapping Information-Sector Work to the Work Force. Communication of the ACM, 74-75. Trauth, E. M., Derksen, F. E., and Mevissen, H. M. (1993). The Influence of Societal Factors on the Diffusion of Electronic Data Interchange in the Netherlands. In D. Avison, J. Kendall, and J.I. DeGross (Eds.), Information Systems Development: Human, Social and Organizational Aspects, pp. 323-337. Amsterdam: North-Holland. [...]
[...] In this section, we draw on four themes highlighted in Trauth's study (2000) of the Irish information economy to compare and contrast the developmental trajectory of ICT sector in Thailand with that of Ireland, India and China. These four themes are: facilitating ICT sector work, ensuring a supply of qualified workers, exploiting distinctive characteristics, and reconfiguring industrial and information policy. We summarize the key discussion points in Table 7. Table The Comparison of Developmental Trajectories between Thailand, China, India and Ireland Themes Ireland India China Thailand A. [...]
[...] In this section, we discuss Thailand's policies that are intended to foster an active and productive ICT sector and harness information technology for development ICT and National Policy The historical perspective In the late 20th century, the economic structure of Thailand gradually shifted from the agrarian based economy to an information based economy (Intarakumnerd and Panthawi, 2003; Kojima, 2004). For centuries Thailand had been an agricultural economy dependent upon the domestic production and trading of agricultural commodities. In the early 1800s, Thailand developed diplomatic relations with Western countries for trading and began to adopt some Western ideas about commercialization and technology. [...]
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