Issara Shoatburakarn, director-general of the Department of Industrial Works, said the single-window concept is an idea to facilitate manufacturers with easier access to the department's services at a single point of contact. Because the department provides a wide range of services, manufacturers normally need to spend a lot of time dealing with separate service agents.

The single window allows manufacturers to contact the department at the single-window centre at department headquarters and via the department's www.diw.go.th website.

Issara said that instead of spending about 15 days to deal with each service, the single window helps users spend only two days to complete the processes necessary for each service.

"We provide both offline and online single windows. It depends on which kind of channel they prefer. Both offline and online single-window centres are linked to the same service database at the department," said Issara.

The department launched the service early this month with a small number of services such as the waste manifest, administrator registration, hazardous-substance control, and payments of annual fees. It will provide all 67 services under the single window by next month.

"We hope that we can help our customers reduce time when dealing with our services, whether by coming here or using the services from their factories. I hope we can convert the number of people coming here - normally around 500 per day - into users of the same services over our online system," said Issara.

He said the department provided security for every online transaction over the Internet as well as security in the database and backup site.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation