He said the initiative was part of a move made by the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) and the National Reform Steering Assembly (NRSA), which want to come up with a more up-to-date bill that facilitates free access to public information in line with people’s rights addressed in the draft charter.

Meechai said the idea of boosting public participation came about in 1997, but the law on access to public information only came into effect a decade later. However, since the system mostly relied on paper communication between the state and the people, it put the country in the 1.0 era, Meechai said.

He added that even after the amendment of the law was put forward by the NLA in line with the country’s 4.0 upgrade, the country is still at 2.0.

He explained that this was because information channels through which public information flows are still owned by the state, which means the country cannot move into the information and innovation-based Thailand 4.0 yet.

To overcome this, the Constitution Drafting Commission (CDC) chief called on authorities to come up with more creative ideas and rely on technology to allow easy access to public information.

The forum, “Public Information Bill: An Important Mechanism to Reforming Public Sector Towards Thailand 4.0”, was organised by the NLA and the NRSA.

In opening remarks, NLA vice president Surachai Liengboonlertchai said the principle of the bill was to allow people to scrutinise public administration and corruption.

However, the biggest concern at the moment is still the confusion between public and personal information, especially when the biggest point of concern was still the confusion between public and personal information, especially when it is shared online, he said.

Everybody should be more careful about the use of such information and not use it against national security or for their personal benefit as that was against the law, he warned. Surachai also said that the distortion of information was also a pressing concern that required attention.