Inter-organization Support Assessment includes five factors as follows:

Intra-organization Support Assessment includes two factors as follows:

Individual Support Assessment includes six factors as follows:

 The outcome evaluation being able to be quantified into ratio number is not 100 percent successful.  The word success and effectiveness may be used interchangeably.  The criterion has been set according to the desired outcome elaborated into five hypotheses.  We would look through

 For total sample, three out of five hypotheses are confirmed with the satisfactory level of significance (H1, H4, and H5).  For Transportation subgroup, only one hypothesis is confirmed with 95 percent level of significance.  Retailer subgroup provides result similar to total sample which is H1, H4, and H5 are confirmed with less level of significance.  The Supplier subgroup seems to implement EDI successfully.  The only hypothesis which is not confirmed is H5.

For stakeholder analysis, the overall EDI satisfaction and policy satisfaction are investigated throughout several dimensions of demographic characteristics.

Demographic characteristics do not provide significant difference in EDI satisfaction.  It is widely accepted that EDI is highly technology-related, and male, the younger, and technicians are more interested in technology than the other groups.  The fact findings strongly confirm this.  Compared among types of business, the transportation subgroup tends to be the most satisfied.  The reason behind the finding is the majority of transportation respondents is male.  The ratio of male to female is almost three to one while other subgroups likely contain the same ratio between male and female.

For policy satisfaction analysis, demographic characteristics do not provide significant difference either.  The results are exactly the same as EDI satisfaction assessment; that is, with regard to gender, male is more satisfied than female.  As for types of business, transportation subgroup is the most satisfied.  Regarding career, technicians are the most satisfied.  Same reasons as EDI satisfaction are applied.

The total sample which can be viewed as the average of all respondents reveals that the intra-organization cooperation satisfaction, overall policy satisfaction, inter-organization cooperation satisfaction, management support, EDI success, and overall EDI satisfaction are at slightly satisfied level.  It means that the respondents’ attitude toward EDI satisfaction is positive.  Unfortunately, as for user and law satisfaction, both of them are at acceptable level.  This absolutely confirms findings perceived from key-staff interview.  Most respondents complained much about the existing laws which slow down the electronic trading and even double the paperwork.

The transportation group contributes greatest number of respondents to the total sample.  Its evaluation results present exactly the same as total sample such that intra-organization cooperation satisfaction, overall policy satisfaction, inter-organization cooperation satisfaction, management support, EDI success, and overall EDI satisfaction are at slightly satisfied level whereas user and law satisfaction is at acceptable level.  The same reasons as total sample are applied.

The retailer subgroup shows that management support satisfaction is at satisfied level.  Mostly, type of organization of this group is private organization.  Their organization chart is flat.  The chain of command is neither complex nor bureaucratic resulting in only thin line barrier between management and general staff.  Therefore, staff can perceive strong support from management.  Intra-organization cooperation is perceived even higher degree of satisfaction which is at rather slightly satisfied level.  Other indexes e.g. overall policy satisfaction, inter-organization cooperation, user satisfaction, EDI success, and overall EDI satisfaction are not bad. These are at slightly satisfied level.  However, it is not surprising anymore for law satisfaction which is only at acceptable level.

The supplier subgroup feels positive about intra-organization cooperation.  The index shows that it is at rather slightly satisfied level.  The overall policy, and overall EDI satisfaction is at slightly satisfied level.  They feel that cooperation across organizations is not adopted well together with management support.  EDI success is only at acceptable level while law satisfaction is worse than that.  The perception about laws of this group is even worse than other groups.  They rate at neutral level for law satisfaction.

There is only one respondent under health care subgroup.  The analysis will not be included.

The path analysis is also conducted to assess causal factors of EDI satisfaction.  For total sample, the direct independent variables consist of education attainment which is “less than high school”, how they are satisfied with policy which is “policy satisfaction”, and how good they cooperate within their organizations which is “intra-organization cooperation”.  The indirect independent variables which may affect are “EDI team” and “policy content”.  If the team is expert, EDI users will run the program to exchange data smoothly, they would feel positive about EDI. 

For transportation subgroup, the independent variables are similar to the total sample.  The education of respondents has been proven to be direct independent variable.  It is “less than high school”.  Policy satisfaction and cooperation within organization and across organizations are also the direct independent predictors.  The indirect independent variable is one factor under inter-organization cooperation assessment.  This factor is the composite items consisting of strong support from public sector, hand-in-hand between public and private sectors, and support from government agencies, VAN providers and software vendors.

In conclusion, to answer research questions, the total sample represents overall stakeholders.  EDI was created mainly to facilitate international trade or to as the main major.  It is thus expected to help clear all the red tape export procedures. The first research question is whether  EDI really solves the problems.  At this stage, we cannot state that EDI is fully effective although it can help solve some major problems.   

The last research question involves the impacts of EDI.  Its impacts spread out through stakeholders ranging from regular staff to the management of the organization or even across organizations.  The impact evaluation study shows that individuals must adapt or adjust themselves to new technology and must not resist change.  The EDI team should be the expert and be the leader of this project rather than users.  Management must strongly support EDI for full achievement.  Most organizations have problems about human resource and budget.  Thus, Management plays important role in this issue.  The whole organization is inevitably involved.  Cooperation among organizations is needed to help each other walk through it.  Public agencies must reduce bureaucratic system and flatten their organizations in order to see the real problems and collaborate.  Moreover, their staff must be able to guide private sector in this case.  Information concerning EDI must flow without burdens.

This research hypothesized whether EDI is effective. The answer is yes but not quite effective.  The second hypothesis concerns with the causal relationships between EDI satisfaction and policy contents, inter-cooperation, intra-cooperation, demographic characteristics.  Policy contents, inter-cooperation, intra-cooperation have been proven to have a causal relationship with EDI satisfaction except demographic characteristics. 

The discussion about TradeSiam, a national EDI service provider, is not totally positive since founded.  TradeSiam has been established quite late.  The study from Anderson Consulting finished in 1993.  The cabinet approved in 1995, two years later.  But TradeSiam was just founded in 1997, four years after the study.  Just before TradeSiam was founded, there had been another state network provided.  It is the Communication Authority of Thailand (CAT) network.  It did not start with EDI applications.  But it began with online projects and further developed to service EDI.  CAT is, therefore, TradeSiam’s competitor.  CAT has its own network called Solnet.  It has been prohibited so far to search for subscribers.  However, its network can have new customers. The result is that TradeSiam is not the only one service provider as stated in the policy.  However, if TradeSiam has three years, there can be other EDI service providers legally.  TradeSiam cannot provide a translation software to convert CARGO-IMP standard to UN/EDIFACT standard or vice versa so that Thai Airways cannot join TradeSiam.

Service fee of using EDI is expensive.  Actually, the policy states that the trading partners can be directly connected to TradeSiam.  Practically, they are unable to do so.  They have to connect via each one of VANs first.  Normally, TradeSiam charges four Baht/KB.  These VANs must charge their customers more than four Baht/KB in order to pay this amount to TradeSiam.  The service fee ranges from six to eight Baht/KB which is slightly higher.

Recommendations

According to James E. Anderson (1981), the policy process conceptual framework is viewed as a sequential pattern of activities.  This pattern consists of problem identification and agenda setting, formulation, adoption, implementation, and evaluation.  The EDI policy strictly follows this framework.  The evaluation provides feedback to all stages with strong implementation emphasis.  Prior to presenting my recommendations, the obstacles to successful EDI will be discussed.

1.  Recommendations on Policies and Laws

The law is the topic that the respondents complained most often, no law to support electronic signatures, general electronic data interchange will be meaningless.  The data exchangers must have paper as a certified document to endorse their trading.  This certainly doubles the workload and is confirmed empirically with the statistical results.  The procedure redundancies and the volume of paper still exist.  Direct EDI laws should be enacted as soon as possible to solve the problem of certified signature.  Otherwise, the paperless goal cannot be achieved, and trading partners still have to work on paper in parallel to EDI.

According to www.nitc.go.th/itlaws/news01.html, Thailand is on the verge of accepting electronic transactions as well as paper documents.  The National IT Committee approved the first of six IT-related laws in November 1999.  NITC approved in February 1998 plans to facilitate a series of IT laws.  Six sub-committees under the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC) are working on:

O      E-Commerce Law,

O      EDI Law,

O      Privacy Data Protection Law,

O      Computer Crime Law,

O      Electronics Digital Signature Law,

O      Electronics Fund Transfer Law, and

O      Universal Access Law.

The so-called IT-Law Development project was carried out by NECTEC, which is the secretariat office for the six drafting subcommittees (www.nitc.go.th/itlaws/news02.html).  The first three, the electronic commerce law, a digital signature law, and the electronic fund transfer law were expected to be completed in 1999 and submitted to the Parliament.  The second group of laws is expected to be completed in 2000.

The first reading of the draft was presided over by Deputy Prime Minister Dr. Trairong Suwankiri, with NECTEC as the secretariat.

The drafting committee consists of legal experts from such institutions as Thammasat University, the Council of State, the Civil Court, the Penal Court, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bank of Thailand, the Stock Exchange of Thailand and is chaired by Prof. Arun Phanupong with Prof. Kanung Luchai as deputy chairman.

Laws are not enacted easily especially in developing countries.  Even the government approved EDI in principle in 1993, the first IT bill was approved by the Cabinet in December 1997; it took four years.  EDI is not the factor pushing IT-related laws.  Fortunately, at this moment, E-Commerce, E-Business, and Internet are popular.  They need IT laws to be supported for trading.  Therefore, EDI law, which is one of the six IT laws, will pass soon.

Another reason why the process of IT laws is slow is that it is concerned with technology and needs experts from both legal and IT areas.  According to Dr. Thaweesak, Thailand’s Electronic Transactions Bill was supported by extensive research by a large team of legal and technical in-house experts at NECTEC and more than 25 meetings of the committee and its working group.

2.  Recommendations on Management

There are several recommendations which were stated in the policy, but TradeSiam cannot comply with them.  For example, TradeSiam should have been established no later than 1996.  But TradeSiam was established too late and EDI is almost obsolete now.  This definitely affects international trading organizations and others.  Before the establishment of TradeSiam, there was CAT network to provide EDI services.  At present, CAT network still exists.  That means we have both TradeSiam and CAT EDI service providers.  And both of them seem to be competitors to each other.  This contradicts the policy since it states clearly that TradeSiam should be the only single provider to reduce confusion.

The policy also states that TradeSiam must provide the translator software between CARGO-IMP and UN/EDIFACT standards.  This is not successful by now, either.  As a result, Thai Airways is still unable to connect or utilize TradeSiam.

The policy recommends that all trading partners must connect to Customs via TradeSiam directly.  Unfortunately, this is not possible.  Trading partners must connect to Valued Added Network (VAN) first and then VAN will further connect to Customs via TradeSiam.  This makes VANs the interfaces between trading partners and TradeSiam.  The service fee is, therefore, higher than it should be because these VANs have to charge their customers higher than TradeSiam in order to pay some service free to TradeSiam.  This also contradicts the policy.

All the problems stated above involve the policy administrative organization, Thailand EDI Council (TEDIC), which has full responsibility to monitor and manage these matters.  TEDIC did not follow up and solve these problems promptly.  Accordingly, EDI is not successful, unlike it was expected to be.

TEDIC members consist of representatives from several organizations.  These representatives do not have time to monitor a policy thoroughly.  These members should meet once a month or every two months to listen to the problems from the lower levels or to obtain reports from TradeSiam.  Also, they should be a core group working full time to do the administrative work for TEDIC.  The core group must be responsible, accountable, open-minded, service-minded, and active.

Moving down to the implementation level, the problem of lacking cooperation among organizations is also significant.  At the early stage, all organizations feel insecure.  They need cooperation to obtain information and others because they do not know the direction.  State agencies are expected to be their prime confidence and to lead them to the right direction.  Unfortunately, state agencies lack information technology and human resources to meet this expectiation.  Respondents complain that they have no experts to help them.  Therefore, state agencies should educate staff members to gain more IT knowledge or have more technicians to support trading partners.  This study also found that they need a 24-hour help desk from state agencies.  This leads to the well connections between state and private agencies.

The readiness of organizations is another the important factor for the EDI success.  It implies several meanings, namely, resource and budget, and strong support from management.  Small organizations face more problems because the initial investment in EDI is very high.  Moreover, VANs set service fee at the high price.  The high quality human resources are required to cope with new technology while the existing staff members resist new technology.  These problems can be solved at organizational level by strong management support.  All the literature reviewed confirm this success factor.  Management must turn the whole organization’s attitudes to the same direction.  They should set the internal policy to reduce staff resistance, and to increase resource and budget to cover the EDI investment and expenses.  When an organization is basically ready, the positive attitudes are realized.  Switching to the state side, service fee should be reduced in order to create an incentive for using EDI.

At this moment, trading partners are getting bored with EDI.  State agencies must stimulate them by arranging seminars, face-to-face meetings, conference calls, to exchange the ideas and knowledge among organizations.  The information is automatically disseminated across organizations to promote and make clear and better understanding about EDI. The collaboration to solve the existing problems and to seek the guidelines is necessary.  State agencies are able to know whether or not their trading partners are ready.  Consequently, they will issue applicable rules to their trading partners.

These concerns directly lead to the management of state agencies.  Right now, there are not enough staff to serve trading partners.  Therefore, agencies must increase more staff members.  There should be two main groups.  The first group will take care of administration and public relations.  This group will cooperate among trading partner organizations, disseminate information, setup seminar and face-to-face meeting so that trading partners can be more confident and prepare their organization being ready for EDI.  The second group will take care of technical support and problem-solving.  This group must be trained and skillful in order to answer questions from trading partners.  There should be staff members standby and telephone lines are available for 24 hours with available telephone lines.  The system to manage the calls from trading partners should be well organized.  If there are not enough telephone lines, we need to increase them.  They may use the automatic answering machine for users to leave messages and telephone numbers to call back in case that all the lines are busy.

3.  Recommendations on Academics

This research is the first evaluation of the EDI policy in Thailand.  Since there have been no such study before, there is a scope of study.  There are several interesting areas, for example internal management of organizations, politics, groups study, and so on which should be studied deeper.  The future of TradeSiam is also attractive since at this moment, E-business and E-commerce are becoming popular.  TradeSiam will have to adjust itself to these technologies.