Technology case study – Smart cities
Annie Ong, Head of Business Development and Product Management at OneConnect Financial Technology gave an insight at Thailand OpenGov Leadership Forum into the various initiatives by Ping An for creating liveable and sustainable technology solutions.
Ping An started off as the first foreign-invested local insurer in China and now has a 10-year plan for strengthening its FinTech capabilities and to explore into “finance + ecosystem” by growing five ecosystems globally.
Annie shared that while Ping An provides “Pan Financial Assets” and “Pan Healthcare” services under it. The services include insurance and banking under the former and an auto services ecosystem under the latter. These services are supported by AI, blockchain and cloud technologies.
She gave an example of the AI-related Ping An innovations– a smart risk management platform. This system uses micro-expression polygraph and anti-fraud technologies to conduct all-online credit approval. The result of this technology is efficiency:
- Approval turnaround time reduced from 5 days to 2 hours
- 67% reduced credit losses
Annie provided insights into Ping An’s smart city solutions which span across city management, business development and citizen services. These include providing solutions and services for government management, city service infrastructure, sector productivity and lifestyle service.
It also provides technologies for smart traffic management. Using AI, Ping An has created systems that allow for smart accident processing and intelligent violation processing.
This has allowed for the automatic reviewing and processing of traffic violations.
Gamification Session IV
Digital Transformation innovation and the future of digital economies was the topic of discussion at a table.
With the healthcare sector having a massive amount of data, it is crucial that technologies are used to manage the large volumes of data and to apply them in the most efficient ways. Delegates, however, agreed that empathy is still needed when using technology and machines.
Deciding on who should have access to such information and for who to manage it, using technologies should be set by the government. It is always important to keep patient privacy in mind.
Polling
At Thailand OpenGov Leadership Forum 35% of delegates said that they are in the middle of their cloud journey where they are in the process of implementing a cloud strategy.
Security is seen as the biggest challenge in using cloud for 42% of delegates.
Interestingly, a majority of votes, 29%, went to “planning to and have set a plan” when asked if their agency uses AI.
Lack of knowledge and internal skills set is however seen as a major challenge in adopting AI- 45%.
43% of delegates said that their organisations have plans to deploy AI infrastructure but have no specific schedule defined.
On which AI technology they are planning to adopt, business intelligence was voted the top- 63%.
Power Talk- Future of Digital Government
What is innovation? When do you do something new? What is happening in terms of innovation in Thailand and what are the challenges?
These questions were the focus of discussion for this panel session. Klaus Felshce, Senior Advisor as OpenGov moderated the session.
The session saw the following distinguished speakers:
- Dr Ratthasart Korrasud, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer (Digital Economy Promotion Agency)
- Dr Sak Segkhoonthod, Executive Advisor (Electronic Transactions Development Agency)
- Theresa Mathawaphan, Chief Strategy Officer (National Innovation Agency)
- Polawat Witoolkollachit, Deputy Director General-Office of the National Committee of Digital Economy and Society (Ministry of Digital Economy and Society)
- Paul Haines, Head- Enterprise Account Sales (Intel Thailand)
“Important to do a data catalogue. Implant data in the right time.” Paul said that with establishing a digital government, new skills are required to help achieve innovation. Those skills need to be percolated across industries.
Theresa laid out the three key factors for digitalisation:All Posts
- Something new
- Having new knowledge
- Value (economical or social)
She said that culture is a big challenge for innovating amongst governments. Fear of failure is another obstacle. Building a culture to be innovative is important for governments to achieve their goals.
Ratthasart looked in the perspective of the Thai government and listed critical thinking, creativity, collaborations and communications as the key aspects. He said that attempts are currently being made to change education in Thailand, to build skills within the workforce and in schools.
Klaus posed the question of “what is being done to remove the fear?”
Theresa said that incentives such as awards should be provided to organisations to applaud them for their innovation efforts. She said that organisation strategy and culture are also important. Practice is crucial with failure and mistakes being part of the process.
Polawat and Sak shared similar views that spaces should be created for people to think. When you encourage people to fail, you allow for learning to take place more effectively.
Agile systems should be encouraged, permission should be given to fail, and the right leadership is needed for all this to take place.
