United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

The Ministry of Science and Technology of Thailand (MOST) consists of 13 organi-zations: four government agencies, four autonomous agencies, two state enterprises and three public organizations. Their offices are located mostly in Bangkok and its surrounding metropolitan areas. MOST has three main responsibilities: science, technology and innovation. MOST's roles and objectives are to formulate national policies on these three responsibilities, and to implement such policies efficiently and in coordination with other governmental agencies in order to bring about the most socio-economic benefits and national stability. The majority of MOST services re-quire scientific labs and specialists for analysis, testing, calibration or consulting. It is important to note that Thailand has 76 provinces and the longest distance from any given MOST office to any given province is about 1,000 kilometers. Therefore, cus-tomers in the most remote areas around the country cannot easily access our services. Since we lack the sufficient resources and manpower to set up new offices to service them, we are seeking not only for new technologies in order to increase efficiency and reduce time and cost, but also for the cooperation of other governmental agencies that are located in the remote areas throughout the country that can act as providers of our service to our clients.

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
Therefore, the Ministry has set up MOST Counter Service (MCS) as a portal unit to provide various types of services and technology support to both private and pub-lic sectors across the country. There are three groups of service, namely Delivery Information Service, Response and Forwarding Service and One Stop Service. One example of One Stop Service is Clinic Technology. Currently, there are 118 nodes in clinic technology that are located in research laboratories and academic institutes around the country. MCS has joined Clinic Technology Community as a one-service node where customers can walk in to consult our experts in regards their technology problems. Furthermore, they can access solutions from the Clinic Technology knowledge base. In case of more complex problems, they can consult specialists via Tele Clinic System. With our services, we can ameliorate the barriers of physical distance. Moreover, we have set up Mobile MCS to reach our customers in remote areas, and this has successfully provided great opportunities to them. Recently, there have been over 15,000 customers who visited MCS Counter Service and over 40,000 customers who visited the MCS Website. The MCS register system is our database that we use to collect customer data and follow up on their case. Clinic Technology Service is the most impact. For example, officer gave advice to solve problem about how to eradicate garbage and then to be use in customer community. The key bene-fits for those clients and MOST are save time, environment and budget. Another case is about Mobile MCS join to regional caravan and brings technology knowledge to community. How to make manure, how to reserve raw vegetables and fruits is exam-ple of the knowledge.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The High ranking officers in MOST ‘s meeting has proposed this solution and as-signed to set up MOST Counter Service Working Group (MCSWG) under the of-fice of the permanent secretary of Ministry of Science and Technology. The team members are chief information officer of 13 organizations under MOST Ministry and advisory team. The main objectives are following. 1. To provide Information to public and lead them to MOST Service with con-venience and efficiency. 2. To cooperate related service to single window service and strength service quality and capacity. 3. To collect information knowledge in publication for distribution 4. To encourage collaboration among public government and researcher on S&T awareness. 5. Service for private public and student. Our stakeholders are government agencies under MOST and other Ministries, aca-demics and students, private and industrial sectors, NGO and interesting people.

Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
a. What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
MCS was established in 2006 by MOST Counter Service Working Group (MCSWG) whose team members, as stated above, comprise of the Chief Informa-tion Officer (CIO) of 13 organizations under the MOST Ministry and Advisory team. The project began with supply and demand surveys: MCSWG sent question-naires to the private sector, government sector, and academic sector in order to iden-tify precisely which services they were in need of. Other questionnaires were sent to MOST Service Providers to evaluate and assess the readiness of MCS services. After compiling and analyzing the results of all these surveys, we inaugurated the Later Strategy Plan (2006-2008) and Action Plan (2006), which officially launched the MCS initiative on July 28th, 2006. While the first year was spent setting up the program, in the second (2007) we set up an electronic informa-tion system, and in the third (2008) we enhanced all the services and started procur-ing other advancement options.

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
Quality Service is a key development. We envision it to be a four-step process Step 1: Plan - Precisely define both the long-term and short-term plan. Step 2: Do - Design systems that are flexible and easily-adjustable throughout the implementation process. Step 3: Check - There should be significant periods of technical and managerial monitoring. Step 4: Act - Apart from technological expertise, officers should be trained in cus-tomer service skills as well; Their services will be supplemented by MCS support operations such as a knowledge database, registration system, customer-counting system, and a fully-functioning website with links to related pages

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Building trust and collaboration among public sector scientists and specialists is the single biggest obstacle. Initiatives need to be interdisciplinary in order to be in-tegratable into multiple discipline labs for efficient cooperation across the board. This way, solutions can be made in a more timely manner. An alternative is to build a more streamlined system altogether, such as the Mobile MCS, Tele Clinic Technology (which comprises of knowledge base), or Tele Clinic Via Internet (which offers forums to post relevant questions and exchange information).

d. What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The MCS project is promoted by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and MCSWG is the working group formed to steer this taskforce. MCS' daily operations are run by three officers, whose efforts are financially-supported by the government (each of their salaries is about 10,000 baht (285 US$) per month). Technical knowl-edge, tools and service providers are provided by NECTEC, the foremost expert or-ganization in Computer and Information Technology in Thailand. There is no extra cost for their services.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
In terms of economic, socio-cultural, environmental, institutional and regulatory sus-tainability, MCS is one of the greatest success stories among MOST's projects. Sta-tistics from our registration system show about 15,000 walk-in customers and 40,000 customers who have accessed our website from around the country. These numbers speak to the sustainability of this initiative, as well as its potential for replication on both a national and international scale. Many prestigious academic and institutional groups, such as the National Center for Scientific and Technological Information of Vietnam (NACESTI), have visited our site to discuss and share their experiences with MCS as the best practice of public service in good governance. Perhaps most notably, in the past three consequence years MCS has received three highly-coveted national awards from the Office of the Public Sector Development Commission: Award in Best Facilitation and Accommodation of Public Need (2006) and Award in Best Management (2007 and 2008).

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
Thailand has accepted science and technology to be key factors in the overall im-provement of the economic, environmental, and socio-cultural climate of our coun-try. Therefore, one of the most important MOST mandates is to disseminate the knowledge and research of MOST to the public. Our 13 organizations can and will continue to extend their services primarily through the success of Clinic Technology Services, it is still only one of over 80 total services that the MCS Project has to offer to the public. The 13 organizations can extend their services. Research laboratories bring their knowledge and technologies to public are mainly impact of MCS. Project. There are greatly result from Clinic Technology Service. Solution that save environ-mental, save time, save cost are valuable to public both private government and stu-dent. By the way, Clinic Technology is only one of example services that show inte-gration of new approach to solve problem. MCS project composes of 82 Services that useful and valuables. This is the great impact and lesson learned of MCS.


Institution Name:		Ministry of Science and Technology of Thailand
Institution Type:		Government Agency
Contact Person:		Chaivat Toskulkao
Title:		Dr.
Telephone/ Fax:
Institution's / Project's Website:
E-mail:		kris-da@most.go.th
Address:		Ministry of Science and Technology Rama VI, Ratchathewi
Postal Code:		10400
City:
State/Province:		Bangkok
Country:		Thailand

The Problem

Solution and Key Benefits

Actors and Stakeholders

(a) Strategies

(b) Implementation

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

(d) Use of Resources

Sustainability and Transferability

Lessons Learned

Contact Information