Government Cloud Project Not Wasteful Duplication, Saves 3 Billion Baht

On September 8, Peeraphan Ratchakitprakarn, a Satun MP from the Bhumjaithai Party and majority committee member, clarified the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society budget at parliament, responding to criticism of the Government Data Center and Cloud Service project. He explained that a central government cloud does not require all agency data to be consolidated in a single system, as government data operates at multiple levels. General information can share infrastructure to reduce duplicate investment, achieve economies of scale, and standardize security protocols, while sensitive, specialized, or classified data may remain in agency-specific systems for security and legal reasons.

Regarding concerns that Cloud First policy could bloat budgets, Peeraphan noted that demand for government cloud services is genuinely increasing. In fiscal year 2570, cloud service demand is projected at 9.4 billion baht, while the GDCC project budget increased to 4.98 billion baht and individual agencies spending 1.425 billion baht—totaling 6.4 billion baht and saving approximately 3 billion baht compared to uncoordinated purchases.

The cloud budget falls under the Digital Government Integration Plan, establishing a unified framework rather than allowing each agency to procure independently. While agencies can obtain services separately with exemption approval if the central cloud lacks required services, they must still link to the Digital Ministry's central management system to prevent the return of duplicate investment problems.

Peeraphan stressed that AI sovereignty is critical, as Thailand's sensitive data should not be entirely processed by foreign AI models. Thailand has developed Thai Language Models specifically to support this requirement. He emphasized that cloud and AI budgets represent not just technology spending, but long-term data security and sovereignty foundations for the Thai state.