Thailand Launches Big Data Strategy to Reach Top 25 Global Digital Competition
Thailand's government approved its first comprehensive Big Data Strategy 2025–2027 to build a data-driven economy and achieve top-25 global digital competitiveness, targeting 35% economic growth from big data use by 2027.
On July 28, 2025, following a Cabinet meeting on July 27, the government approved the draft National Big Data Strategy 2025–2027, as proposed by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (DE). This is Thailand's first comprehensive framework for big data development, designed to establish a data-driven economy and society, improve policy decisions, boost competitiveness, and promote systematic AI use.
The strategy, developed by the Big Data Institute (BDI), addresses critical national challenges including fragmented data storage across agencies, a shortage of data and AI talent, incomplete data integration, cybersecurity risks, personal data protection concerns, and gaps in legal frameworks and technology infrastructure. The plan also aims to create an ecosystem that supports big data and AI innovation.
Director Prof. Dr. Therani Acharakul of the Big Data Institute outlined the strategy's vision of leveraging data to drive economic growth and improve quality of life. Key goals include increasing big data use for policy decisions, data-driven economic development, and promoting AI-powered services and innovations, with a target of at least 35 percent growth in economic value from big data by 2027 and ranking Thailand in the world's top 25 for digital competitiveness in big data.
To achieve these goals, the strategy identifies four key pillars: (1) developing national data infrastructure such as Government Cloud, Government Data Catalog, and a National Big Data Platform; (2) applying data to solve problems in health, tourism, environment, agriculture, and trade; (3) developing and deploying AI to improve public services, business, and industry, including creating Thai language AI models and datasets; and (4) building human capacity by training at least 160,000 people in big data and AI by 2027.
The strategy aims to provide a comprehensive roadmap for leveraging Thailand's data assets across all sectors and dimensions necessary to build a data-driven nation, enabling government, private sector, academia, and citizens to use data and AI effectively to enhance economic and social development.
