The Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa) and Nakhon Si Thammarat City Municipality won the 'Best Partnership Award' at World Smart City Expo 2023 held in South Korea. The award is a testament to depa's commitment to utilizing its visionary leadership, public participation, integrated collaboration with partners in the public and private sectors to pioneer a smart city development solution that perfectly aligns with the specific contextual conditions of each designated smart city. It is in alignment with the award's criteria and concept to reward international organizations and agencies that have shown a synergetic partnership to leverage digital technologies and innovations to empower smart city development and improve the quality of life of people in designated smart cities.
Asst. Prof. Dr. Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin, President/CEO of depa said that depa has continuously promoted and supported development of smart cities through the use of advanced digital technologies and innovations over the years. Pushing smart city development requires collective collaboration with stakeholders and partners in the public and private sectors, including participation of local people. The depa itself will not come up with any digital solution, but it will provide full support and encourage all stakeholders to launch a solution to a problem. The depa will play a mentor role in providing guidance, advice, feedback and support to all stakeholders and digital service developers as well as raising awareness about the advantages and importance of adoption of digital technologies and innovations to enhance efficient development that is localized to suit contextual conditions of each smart city. It aims to level up public services to meet the needs and requirements of all people across segments in society.
The accomplishment was attributed to a comprehensive partnership between the depa and Nakhon Si Thammarat City Municipality in encouraging the public to embrace digital technologies and innovations in order to elevate smart city development and improve the quality of life of people in the municipality. The strategic collaboration resulted in Nakhon Si Thammarat City Municipality and the depa winning the Best Partnership Award at World Smart City Expo 2023 (WSCE 2023) hosted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Ministry of Science and ICT in Goyang, South Korea. Dr. Kanop Ketchart, Mayor of Nakhon Si Thammarat City Municipality and Dr. Supakorn Siddhichai, Executive Vice President of depa represented Thailand to receive the award.
Asst. Prof. Dr. Nuttapon added that the Best Partnership Award is the greatest award to honor the partnership commitment of Nakhon Si Thammarat City Municipality and the depa to utilizing advanced digital technologies and innovation to optimize smart city management efficiency for greater sustainability as well as improving the quality of life of local people in the municipality. The depa provided an advisory
service for a strategic smart city development in Nakhon Si Thammarat City Municipality. It launched workshops and training programs for urban development officials as well as procuring viable digital technologies and solutions developed by the private sector to improve the people-centric government e-services. Eventually, it successfully led to development of an integrated mobile application that innovatively features 23 government service categories with active users hitting more than 50,000. The mobile app is regarded as a national government e-service prototype to maximize efficient performance of public services. The app has key features created to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity of public services such as road maintenance, garbage collection and many more. Moreover, the app has always been improved and updated for greater performance to align with the evolutionary development in the digital world such as the launch of classrooms on the metaverse platform, automatic responses using conversational artificial intelligence (AI), and drone deliveries of medications and healthcare supplies for vulnerable groups of people, etc.
"The comprehensive partnership has resulted in Nakhon Si Thammarat City Municipality having the potential to develop a smart city to serve as an embodiment of sustainable urban development. Winning the 'Best Partnership Award' at World Smart City Expo 2023 underscores a breakthrough in integrated collaboration between the two organizations. The synergetic partnership highlights a perfect combination of visionary leadership, public participation and collective public-private collaboration in order to develop a smart city development solution that is localized to align with urban-specific contextual conditions of the designated smart city. The digital technologies and innovations were leveraged to generate greater benefits for society, reflecting the depa's people-oriented development principle. The depa also stands ready to support development of smart cities at designated areas across the country. The depa would like to thank all support and encouragement ever received and also thanked all the judges for awarding the collaboration on smart city development in Nakhon Si Thammarat City Municipality," said President/CEO of depa.
World Smart City Expo is one of the world's biggest and most influential expositions of smart city and urban innovation development. Every year, it selects the most outstanding partnerships between innovative companies, governments and organizations in leveraging digital technologies to optimize smart city development for presenting the Best Partnership Awards.