The Democrat Party dissects the Digital Economy Ministry’s 13 billion baht budget, pressing to scrutinize the Cloud First policy which inflates costs when consolidated, resulting in redundant payments and warning the government will end up with no owned assets.
On 8 September 2026, at the Parliament building during the House of Representatives meeting to consider the 2027 fiscal year budget bill, in the second agenda on amending Section 16 concerning the Digital Economy and Society Ministry’s budget, Ms. Kardee Liaopiroj, a party-list MP from the Democrat Party, fiercely debated the ministry’s budget allocation. She pointed out that the overall budget was set at 13,625 million baht but the special committee reviewing the budget bill only reduced it by 25.8 million baht, or just 0.19%, a cut far smaller than the average reductions made to other ministries’ budgets.
Ms. Kardee highlighted anomalies in the government’s Cloud First policy, describing it as “the more consolidation, the more it swells.” Although individual agencies’ cloud rental budgets decreased by 10%, from 1,523 million baht to 1,359 million baht, when combined with the government cloud system (GDCC) budget of 4,980 million baht, total cloud expenses rose by more than 50%. Particularly, the GDCC budget alone surged by 120%, doubling in size. Furthermore, budget duplication persists as 45 agencies continue to rent separate cloud services valued over 1,000 million baht, and more than 40 agencies propose establishing their own data centers costing nearly 1,000 million baht.
The main reason government agencies avoid using the central GDCC cloud is the complexity of data transfer processes and concerns over security and confidentiality. Although the Digital Economy Ministry should act as the country’s chief technology officer (CTO) to instill maximum confidence, the current investment is unbalanced—most funds go to infrastructure and rentals, while investments in data platforms and applications remain very low.
Ms. Kardee emphasized that renting cloud services without owning assets results in the state bearing excessive future costs. With cloud rental budgets exceeding 1,000 million baht over just two years, future expenses could soar to 50,000 million baht if the government continues focusing on rentals without building a strong technology foundation. This would impose massive ongoing costs for modern technology without acquiring digital assets.
Additionally, Ms. Kardee cited duplicated budgeting within the ministry’s agencies, such as the Meteorological Department’s 492 million baht high-resolution weather forecasting project and a 58 million baht upgrade for the weather operations center and communication systems. She viewed this as unnecessary budget waste since Thailand already has agencies with comprehensive satellite and weather data like GISTDA and the National Astronomical Research Institute (NARIT), as well as entities under the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI). She proposed integrating and sharing data across agencies instead of starting from scratch, urging the House of Representatives to reduce these budgets to optimize public fund use.