Enhancing Digital Opportunities in Thailand: The Role of ICT R

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• Enhancing Digital Opportunities in Thailand The
  Role of ICT RD
• Pansak Sirirutchatapong
• Executive Director, NECTEC
• _at_Expert Group Meeting on WSIS
• 20-22 July 2009
• Bangkok, Thailand

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Presentation Outline

• Recap WSIS Action Lines
• Who we are? NECTEC
• Examples of RD work to address the following
  issues
• Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic
  diversity and local content
• ICT Applications
• E-Agriculture
• E-Learning
• Capacity building
• Challenges Going forward

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11 WSIS Action Lines

• C1 - The role of public governance authorities
  and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs
  for development
• C2 - Information and communication infrastructure
• C3 - Access to information and knowledge
• C4 - Capacity building
• C5 - Building confidence and security in the use
  of ICTs
• C6 - Enabling environment
• C7 - ICT Applications (E-government, E-business,
  E-learning, E-health, E-employment,
  E-agriculture, E-science
• C8 Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic
  diversity and local content
• C9 - Media
• C10- Ethical dimensions of the Information
  Society
• C11- International and regional cooperation

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NECTECs Mission National Science and Technology
Agency Ministry of Science and Technology

Being a national RD Center, NECTEC contributes
to the development of Thailand's capability in
electronics and computer technologies through
I. Research, development, design and
engineering II. Technology transfer to
industries and communities III. Human resource
development IV. Policy research and industrial
intelligence and knowledge infrastructure
development
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C7 ICT ApplicationsE-Learning eDLTV

• DLTV (Distance Learning TV)
• Operate by the Distance Learning Foundation, with
  support from the MoE
• Provides distance education via satellite
  technology (Ku band and direct to home DTH
  system)
• 24 hr broadcasted of classroom teachings from
  Wang Klaikangwol School (under the patronage of
  His Majesty the King), in Hua Hin
• eDLTV
• Use digitized contents from DLTV and put on an
  e-Learning platform developed by NECTEC and
  partners. The platform (called LearnSquare is
  based on OSS)

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http//edltv.thai.net/

• eDLTV Contents include
• Learning objects 30,302 items, divided into
• Video 4,675 hrs. (15,827 clips)
• Slide presentation 4,738 files
• Teaching materials 8,000 items
• Tests Quizes 1,302 items
• Other learning resources 339 items

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• Using eDLTV Server
• Server
• CPU 2.0GHz, RAM 2GB,
• HD 500GB (M1-M3, or M4-M6)HD 1 TB (M1-M6)
• LAN, PC client
• Projector / TVout

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• Using external Harddisk
• external harddisk
• PC
• Projector / TVout

TVout ???? 1,000 2,000 ???
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C7 ICT ApplicationsE-Agriculture SHARE Cyber
Brain for Creative Agricultral Economy
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3 Reforms with 4 Technologies
System Architecture
Utilizing the land with high efficiency
Using IT as a tool for accessing the knowledge
and management both for production and quality
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Server ALRO Cyber Brain
Example of send-receive NPK through SMS
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Mobile , 1 2 2
LR 1 2 2
Mobile , Fertilizer Formula
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SMS Gateway (trio)4504333
Server 1-2-3
Send to 4504333
Fertilizer Formula
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Farmer
Quantity of suitable nutrient N 8 kg./Rai P 3
kg./Rai K 0 kg./Rai Fertilizer 1.To Use 8-6-0
Total 50 kg./Rai 2. To Use 46-0-0 Total
8.70 kg./Rai Expected Result 983.00 kg./Rai
Type LR NPK Number
1.Farmer send SMS LR-NPK-4504333 2.SMS Gateway
Send NPK value to Server 1-2-3 for
Evaluate. 3. Fertilizer Ordering to Farmer.
Farmer
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Disease Monitoring and Tracking
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C8 Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic
diversity and local contentAutomatic Language
Translation Technology

• PARSIT English-to-Thai Machine Translator
• Derived from NEC Corp. Rule-based MT (RBMT)
• Covering 70K lexical words and 900 grammar rules
• Approximately 60 accuracy
• Public service http//www.suparsit.com since
  2004
• 10M visitors in total, 20K transactions/day

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Speech Translation (2007) Multilingual automatic
speech translation

• Asian Speech Translation Advance Research
  (ASTAR)
• consortium http//www.slc.atr.jp/AStar
• Thai-English Statistical MT (SMT) for the travel
  domain
• Thai speech recognizer and synthesizer
• A multilingual trial service in 2009, supporting
  9 Asian plus English languages

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• Machine Translation for English Learning
• A web-based translation tool using PARSIT
• Enhance student's motivation while
• improving student's English readability skill
• Facilitating teacher's course preparation

Currently being field tested with approx. 500
high school students at Thammasat Klongluang High
School
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• BEST (2008)
• Benchmarks for Enhancing the Standard
• of Thai Language Processing
• Intensively improving Thai word segmentation
• A standard guideline of Thai word segmentation
• A large manually annotated text corpus (7M
  words) in 12 domains and genres used for
  system training
• A series of shared-task contests since 2008
• Below 90 in 2007 to over 97 currently

http//www.hlt.nectec.or.th/best
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• Language Grid (2009)
• Internet Infrastructure for
• Language Resource and Service Sharing
• NICT LanGrid project http//langrid.nict.go.jp/
• A multilingual service infrastructure that
  allows users to share various language
  resources such as dictionaries and machine
  translators
• PARSIT and GOOGLE translators involved in 2009
• NECTEC as another Asian LanGrid Operational
  Center

Operational Center Service management
Service Providers Providing language resources
and tools
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C4 Capacity Building and e-InclusionMae Hong
Sorn IT Valley

• 8th largest province
• 255,174 Population
• 20 people/km2
• Scenic / Mountainous
• Transportation hardship, especially in the
  rainy season.
• Natural Disasters (Flooding, Wild Fire,
  Land Slide)
• Very poor local residents.
• Unstable electricity supply. Frequent
  blackout.

Project Goal To create knowledge economy for Mae
Hong Son, the scope of which involves local
government, businesses, schools, community
colleges and communities.
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C4 Capacity Building and e-InclusionMae Hong
Sorn IT Valley

• Key Activities
• Development of infrastructure-using wireless
  broadband (WiMAX) (NECTECJICA)
• Development of IT curriculum and e-learning
  content suitable to local condition
• Incubation of software/web developers
• On-the-job training by leading software companies
• Outsourcing software/web development job to local
  incubatees/developers
• Implementation of landslide monitoring
  application developed by NECTEC

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Project Implementation Scheme
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Wireless Network Infrastructure
WiMAX Point-to-point backhaul
WiMAX Point-to-multipoint last mile
Internet
School
Base Station
Health Care Center
Local Communities
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IT Valley at Mae Hong Son
Land Slide Warning
Web and Software Development
WIMAX For School and Government Office
E-Commerce
Japan
Animation Producer
Social Network
Schools
IT Curriculum
IT-teaching (School-Univ-Colleges)
A B C
Talent Student program
Hotel Reservation Software Development
Local Government
Government Office
Universites
- Animation - e-Learning - English Teaching
Program
Tourists
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Challenges Going Forward

• Scalability and sustainability
• Continuous human resource development is needed,
  both the technology developers (RD personnel)
  and technology recipients
• Good cooperation and collaboration among
  agencies/departments/ministries
• Political will (and stable government..)

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THANK YOU
www.nectec.or.th