Province leads the way in mapping out the future

       Suphan Burihas won an award for its effective implementation of GIS, writes Sasiwimon Boonruang
       Many public organisations have adopted the geographical information system (GIS)as a tool for city planning and administration, with Suphan Buri being particularly successful.
       This is due to its complete database system and network integration through every agency, according to Somsak Pureesrisak, the governor of Suphan Buri, Thailand's most successful province in terms of utilising GIS and MIS (management information system).
       The principle is that the data must be updated by the data owners, said Somsak, adding that GIS has been implemented in every agency in the province.
       Somsak suggested public agencies adopt the data carried out by the Public Health Ministry because village health volunteers have to collect both household and personal data. With a population of some 800,000, Suphan Buri has 174 health stations, where some 15,000 village health volunteers work.
       "The village health volunteers' primary job is to visit the people, and they are close to the public. The data research carried out by these staff is extremely relevant because they really work in the field," he said.
       Prior to 2005, Suphan Buri used the Health Centre Information System (HCIS) as the population database survey. Ten hospitals in the province have used five different hospital systems: Hos XP, Hospital OS, Khon Kaen , Mit Net and Stat Dispence. The big problem is the database systems cannot interoperate between hospitals and the health centres.
       The system then changed to E-Care in 2006, with the focus on developing the database system of the health centres and covering information on patients and medicine. The GIS database of people and households has now been added to E-Care and the system has been used in the provincial health centres and district health centres.
       "In the rural area, all data can be collected and the treatment and village visiting schedule can be checked over the web service," Somsak said, noting that the administrator can also view medicines are available, in what quantities, at each health centre.
       However, another problem is that each health centre uses a different code for the same medicines. The computer programs of hospitals and health centres also are not integrated, which presents problems in data sharing between them.E-Care, which was used until 2008, has now been replaced by E-Health.
       The governor, who has a background in engineering, has ordered the government agencies to consolidate all databases to solve the problem of data integration. The Hos XP has been chosen,allowing data integration among the agencies to become workable, whereby the health centres are the primary care units.
       Besides checking the data via the web service, E-Health also allows the government to verify personal records through the data centre. Provincial health centres take care of he data of public health service reports, while the provincial hospitals collect medical records of patients.
       Over the next year, the province plans to implement a patient fingerprint system. This will be useful for many bureaux such as the police as it can double up as a source to aid criminal investigations.
       The governor pointed out that Thai people hold several multi-purpose cards:ID card, driving license, tax card, ATM card, social security card, and so on.
       "Wouldn't it be smarter to have one person with one record, rather than one person with too many records," he suggested, noting that in the future,the data integration of those organisations - Provincial Administration department, Revenue department, Transport department, Social Security Office,Public Health Ministry, and so on will enable officials to work more efficiently, through the approach of "one person, one record".
       The governor pointed out that the Land department has the data of landowners and deeds, and the province has further developed the data by applying GIS. The system enables officials to view details of houses, the data of family members and their occupations,because the residents in that home some case may be not the land owners.
       MIS has been working with GIS through the matching-up of databases and pictures of household locations and the members of the families. Here, they apply GIS to link with the farmer database.
       "We can connect further between the data of locations and the MIS and make use of them in many aspects,"said the governor.
       However, he admitted that the GIS here is not yet perfect. There is the farming land data of the entire province and all the farming land locations, but it is not yet thoroughly understood what kinds of crops are grown at each.
       Making use of the technology in Suphan Buri can answer many problems that the government today is dealing with. One example is to keep records of foreign workers; who they are and where they live. The global positioning system (GPS), aerial photographs,3D technology, and photos of the land location have been used to help verify alien workers, both legal and illegal.
       The Labour Ministry needs measures to manage alien labour, by registering them and their family members. Somsak pointed out that Suphan Buri has some 8,000 registered alien workers. Including their family members, this means a total of around 20,000 foreigners legally living in the province. The health centres have records of these people and their data is stored on web application, which the immigration office has access to. Police can check alien records via mobile phone or computer, and the system can report to them via SMS, MMS or web service.
       Suphan Buri is now working with Samut Sakhon province to implement the alien labourers' examination system with smart cards and fingerprint technology. The system is expected to be in place by next year."We are now studying if both technologies can be combined,"said Somsak.
       To prove the persons' right to the land, Suphan Buri has applied aerial photography and then set the GPS. The system can therefore match house locations with owners, and how many households are in each location.
       The province has already covered more than 500,000 plots of land.
       This will help Suphan Buri to prove whether or not government policies such as rice pricing insurance and crop insurance are working.
       Suphan Buri is now working with the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry to add to the database of public land of different types, such as national parks, mangrove forests and wildlife sanctuaries.
       So far, the province's GIS system and aerial photographs have served the ministry in coping with the problem of water shade areas, forest areas and national reservation areas.
       These will be used to prove the right of land occupation and examine incidences of public land invasion.
       The governor pointed out the government's policy of land and property tax and community title deeds can be performed with less effort and greater accuracy once the public agencies have a good database to refer to and have use of GIS and MIS.
       Suphan Buri province was recently honoured with the Special Achievement Award in GIS (SAG)2009, at the ESRI International User Conference, as it has made extraordinary contributions to the global society and set new precedents throughout the GIS community.
       Several organisations have implemented GIS, but not as effectively as Suphan Buri, where the system has been integrated into day-to-day operations.
       The GIS utilisation here leads to benefits for the public and the overall local administration, said ESRI (Thailand)general manager Krairop Luanguthai.