The move is to adopt what is called the Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems, initiated by the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School, with the aim of urging countries to adopt open ICT standards to accelerate economic efficiency and growth. Adoption would represent a comprehensive guide for government and industry sectors to evaluate and design open technology environments for the country.

Thaweesak Koanantakool, a director of Nectec, said the working group has been formed to work on the roadmap.

Dubbed the Cost (Campaigning for Open Standard in Thailand) subcommittee, the group oversees the development of public awareness on open ICT ecosystems and their benefits.

The beneficiaries of the open environment to accelerate ICT ecosystems include people who create, buy, sell, regulate, manage and use technology, which encompass policies, strategies, processes, information, technologies, applications and stakeholders. All of them together make up a technology environment for a country, government or an enterprise.

He said that two seminars would be set up to create awareness in the country. The first round at the end of March is targeted at chief information officers in both government and private sectors and the second in May will be an international conference hosted in Thailand to call for the sharing of countries' open ICT ecosystem roadmaps.

The outcome is expected to be an outline of the issues involved in moving towards open ICT ecosystems in Thailand, and ultimately a national roadmap for open ICT ecosystems. The roadmap defines an ICT ecosystem as open when it is capable of incorporating and sustaining interoperability, collaborative development and transparency. Increasing these capacities helps create flexible, service-oriented ICT applications that can be taken apart and recombined to meet changing needs more efficiently and effectively.

Thaweesak said the Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems consists of five core principles of openness.

Those principles are interoperability that allows, through open standards, the exchange, reuse, interchangeability and interpretation of data across diverse architectures. This includes collaborative aspects that permit governments, industry, and other stakeholders to create, build and reform communities of interested parties to take advantage of strengths, solve common problems, innovate and build upon existing efforts.

Flexibility is also vital in adapting seamlessly and quickly to new information, technologies, protocols and relationships, as well as integrating them as warranted into market-making and government processes.

He said, however, that closed technology will not vanish, but open ecosystems are heterogeneous, combining open and closed, and proprietary and non-proprietary technologies.

In this environment, the government plays multiple roles, both of being an enterprise with its own ICT ecosystem, and as a facilitator, manager and early adopter in a national ICT ecosystem.

asina@nationgroup.com

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation