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Published on March 10, 2008

The scheme is a part of the National Science and Technology Development Agency 's IT services.

Under the plan, GITS and CCP will act as the project managers, who will receive software development contracts from government agencies which will be subcontracted to small and medium-sized local software companies who are part of the IT cluster.

Software Park will play a role as the centre of the software house clusters. The park will lay out the qualification criteria for local software companies.

GITS director Sak Segkhoonthod said the organisation expected five to 10 projects to be outsourced to small and medium-sized local software companies through the "IT Cluster Service" project this year.

"We will select local software companies from Software Park's list, which now has about 10 to 15 companies in the cluster. We believe this collaboration will help us provide outsourcing jobs to local software companies. Software Park will play the role of mentor providing guidelines and standards process improvement," Sak said.

At an average, about 70 per cent of a system-integration project from one government organisation is likely to be software development. The present trend is that government organisations prefer to spend on system integration projects as opposed to just buying hardware. This translates into more opportunities for the local software industry. From the government's annual IT budget of Bt20 billion to Bt25  billion, about 30 per cent is spent on software development.

"Software development in the government market is still full of opportunities for the local software industry. There is a lot of demand. However, the problem is ensuring both quantity and quality for that kind of demand. This collaboration is an attempt of us to take care of that," Sak said.

Usually, GITS implements 15 to 30 projects worth about Bt100 million to Bt150 million a year for the government sector.

All of them are turnkey projects lasting between two months and two years. However, the average lifespan of a project is about six to nine months.

The Nation