Thailand’s Digital Revolution: Is The Screening Industry Keeping Pace?
The Thai government has ambitious digital revolution plans. In 2017, the Ministry of Industry issued an action plan detailing a shift towards a highly-digitized economy, which is an incentive structured around boosting economic development, productivity, and job creation across industry sectors.
According to the plan, this shift involves massive investments in nationwide ICT (information and communication technology) infrastructure, anchored by “Big Data centers,” to create well-integrated information systems and databases to significantly improve operational and administrative services for citizens and enterprises. This refers to the collection of hardware, software, networks and facilities within organisations.
The move is part of a broader plan to position the country as Southeast Asia’s “innovation hub” as it seeks to ramp up employment rates, with hopes that seamless, accessible digital platforms will forge closer ties between public and private sectors and ultimately, connect the local market with eager foreign investors.
In 2025, a World Bank Economic Monitor report showed that Thailand’s digital drive is hitting impressive milestones. For one, the study named the nation’s digital economy as the second largest in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region, trailing Vietnam, and credited Thai digital government services as foundational to this progress.
The report identified the National Digital Identity (NDID) platform, launched in 2018, as a catalyst in the country’s rapidly expanding digital public infrastructure, with the technology now playing a central role in enabling services across banking, online shopping, loan applications, education, and healthcare. As computerized identity authentication and digital governance become the new default, how is the local screening industry keeping up?
Digital ID Ecosystem
Thailand’s digital ID infrastructure is unique in more ways than one: rather than merely establishing a digitalized version of the biometric smart cards, which are an upgrade to its paper ID cards, the country has developed a decentralized digital ID ecosystem based on a 13-digit number assigned to nationals at birth.
This encompasses the blockchain-based verification platform NDID, the ThaiID mobile app, and a developing “Thailand Verifiable Credentials Framework”, the third of which will serve as an encrypted mobile wallet for cryptographically signed digital documents to reduce the need for third-party verification.
In their report, the World Bank explained that the document wallet would enable candidates to seamlessly share academic transcripts with prospective employers or for businesses to present legal documents when applying for government loans. A European Commission study suggests Thailand’s digital ID drive has largely aimed at streamlining public administration. But in the past five years, the NDID verification platform has pushed beyond government services, extending into business services, security, and other private sectors.
The shift means private firms such as background screening companies, can now plug their systems into the NDID platform as a relying party or request access to the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA) database for digital ID checks. Thailand’s fast-growing digital ID ecosystem has also fueled a wave of technology and software firms branching into risk advisory and background screening.
Meanwhile, local employment screeners that have yet to catch up with new digital tools, including e-KYC, e-signing platforms, access to the DOPA database, and AI-powered OCR technology, will face mounting pressure to bridge the gap between the country’s digitalization agenda and outdated verification processes.
Criminal Checks: An Analog Gap
Nowhere is the gap between Thailand’s digitalization ambitions and screening practices more evident than in manual criminal record verification.
A recent European Commission report on Thailand’s e-government initiative noted that the shift toward digital public services has so far covered healthcare claims, tax filings, and business registrations.
However, the procurement of criminal record and police clearance certificates by the Royal Thai Police—a step integral to securing employment, has received notably less attention within the country’s digital government strategy.
Thailand’s criminal record verification process still relies on manual, paper-based methods, with no public online database available. Citizens can file requests through the Royal Thai Police website, but they must still visit a local police station in person to collect the documents.
The challenge is compounded by Thailand’s fragmented court system. Criminal records are kept at the provincial court corresponding to an individual’s registered address, with no centralized online database in place. With 77 provinces across the country, this decentralization makes the clearance process time-consuming, often stretching up to three weeks from submission to delivery.
If a record is flagged during a police check with the Royal Thai Police, the results will indicate the type of offense and the court that handled the case. To obtain further details, however, one must contact the specific court involved. Alternatively, a direct check with the relevant provincial court can provide case details from its database, but this requires additional coordination and resources.
The absence of adequate citizen-facing infrastructure for criminal record processing has historically resulted in lengthy turnaround times, leading screening companies to rely on local networks and expertise to navigate the bureaucratic maze.
And while this approach provides a workaround, it introduces variability in processing times and may put the element of compliance at risk which are challenges that could be addressed through the establishment of an open portal for court searches.
Toward Integration
Since the Ministry of Industry announced Thailand’s digitalization plan, official open databases have rapidly expanded, with progress most evident in industrial reporting and citizen portals developed by the Digital Government Development Agency (DGA) and Citizeninfo.
These achievements, alongside Thailand’s digital ID framework, demonstrate the country’s commitment to empowering its economy and improving citizens’ quality of life. To fully align with its digital push toward increasing employment opportunities across the country, the public sector must prioritize upgrading existing infrastructures to better connect quality employers and businesses with local talents.
Today, local screening providers face a dual challenge as they must navigate traditional methods for conducting criminal checks and develop their own software solutions that lack integration with existing court databases.
Nationwide digitalization should aim to be holistic, enhancing not only government services but also an employment ecosystem that foreign investors and local businesses depend on.
At the same time, background check providers that are slow to invest in digital infrastructure may find themselves at a disadvantage, as Thailand’s expanding e-KYC and digital ID framework presents a clear opportunity to extend technological leadership into employment verification. Embracing these tools will be important if the country is to realize a digital economy where essential services keep pace with modern commerce demands.
