9th December 2019, depa’s Lad Prao office, Bangkok – the Government Big Data Institute (GBDi), under the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa), reports its Q1 achievements in multiple areas: training over 200 government officers, launching Thailand’s Big Data website by 2019, collaborating with three government sectors, and is heavily recruiting to build the workforce of the future: a team highly skilled in big data analytics and embedded with thorough understanding of any target sectors.
Dr. Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin, President/CEO, Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa), mentioned GBDi’s impressive progress is underway of collaborating with over 40 government agencies, already taking on more than 30 active projects during merely 3 months after its official launch in June 2019. Furthermore, GBDi has already completed 16 projects, and ambitiously plan to complete 40 analytic projects by September 2020.
“At the moment, GBDi has recruited 25 data scientists and is planning to include up to 40 staffs in 2020 from Royal Thai Government scholarship students, private sectors and university researchers in order to be prime organization for analyzing and supporting the data for government policy making. In addition, GBDi will provide consultants on data analytics and managements to maximize data utilization including raising theskills and specialization of government officers along with supporting collaboration in research and education in Big Data field to drive Thailand towards the true digital age” said Dr. Nuttapon.
In addition, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tiranee Achalakul, the director of GBDi, said that during the last three months GBDi has launched a training program called “Innovation with Data Analytics and Visualization For Public Officer” or Business Intelligence to 150 data users and 50 executives. In 2020, GBDi will continue the training program as well as running two new programs, “Hand-on Data Science and Machine Learning”, a 15-day program for data analysts, and “Basic Data Engineering”, a 12-day program for system developers. Both programs will be held between March and September 2020 in four sessions.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tiranee Achalakul also mentioned that Mr. Puttipong Punnakan, the Digital Economy and Society minister, has outlined GBDi’s main duties to cooperate with other government agencies on big data projects. The first 3 flagship projects GBDi has currently been working on include: 1. Public Health Sector: To study and design IT architecture so that Thai citizens can access their own patient history records more conveniently and quickly, which GBDi has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with more than 30 public and private hospitals across the nation. 2. Tourism Sector: To pinpoint government tourist attractions through different applications and platforms, develop a recommender system for Thailand’s emerging destinations suitable for tourists’ budget and personal preferences, and study the relationship between hotel guests’ demographics and categorical data of their chosen hotels. 3. Agriculture Sector: To design the big data architecture and design comprehensive visualization dashboards so that agriculturists can efficiently maximize the utilization which will realistically enhance “Thailand’s Agriculture 4.0.”
“GBDi has currently been preparing to sign MOU with private sector and enterprises as to bring about the most effective big data analytics that will best benefit the country in all dimensions including Economic, social, and cultural aspects. GBDi is also launching www.bigdata.go.th by the end of 2019 as a channel to communicate the current state of government big data as well as build an awareness across the nation and become the ‘Central Intelligence Division,’ who can promptly support government agencies regarding data analytics. Additionally, GBDi will be hosting the ‘Big Data Conference’ towards the end of 2020, so please stay tuned.” stated Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tiranee.
