Govt cloud service to ease agencies' access to citizens' personal data
Play
The Electronic Government Agency yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bureau of Registration Administration (Bora) on access to citizens' personal information through the government's cloud-computing service.
This collaboration is aimed at facilitating access by government agencies to personal information including 13-digit national identity numbers, full names and addresses via eGovernment Cloud.
The eGovernment Agency is an arm of the Information and Communications Technology Ministry, while Bora is under the Interior Ministry’s Department of Provincial Administration (Dopa).
The ability to access people’s national IDs electronically will allow the government to offer new services to Thais living overseas, such as ID-card issuance and participation in elections, ICT Minister Anudith Nakornthap said.
Under the scheme, citizens’ data held by Bora will be connected to the eGovernment Agency’s cloud-computing system, which can be accessed by any Thai government organisations anywhere, in or out of the country, if permitted to do so by Dopa.
Investment-free
“The beauty of this model is that government organisations that want to access personal information will not need to invest in IT infrastructure to connect to Dopa’s server. Just get authorisation from Dopa and then access the information through the government information network,” Anudith said.
Interior Minister Yongyuth Wichaidit said the government aimed to provide e-services to people as well as making the process of identifying themselves as Thai citizens easier and more convenient.
“Today, we have collaborated to make connections seamlessly between government organisations and Dopa’s server,” said Yongyuth, who is also a deputy prime minister.
He added that his ministry focused on providing Thai citizens who live overseas with easy access to government programmes through the eGovernment Agency’s cloud services. This year, citizens will be able to renew and acquire national ID cards at Thai embassies in six countries. In the next stage, they will be able to participate in elections as well.
Vichian Chidchanognarth, ICT specialist at Dopa, said 103 government agencies were currently connected with Dopa for access to citizens’ information. Each year, there are more than 100 million transactions, mostly from just three organisations: the Royal Thai Police, the
Land Transport Department and the Department of Revenue.
“This service is available for government organisations. It is not yet available to the private sector because of the law,” Vichian said.
