Educational Finance in Thailand - UNESCO Bangkok

Recommendation for IS
Most involved personnel would like to have a system to help them work
automatically, especially those in the financial sections. Actually some of them are still
afraid of using computers for accounting, financing, and budgeting because they suspect
of the accuracy of the output processed by computer system. In manual systems that they
are used to, the checking of the output is done manually throughout the process.
Personnel responsible for data collecting and gathering to build up databases and
information for management at the central are confronting with the ignorance of those at
the local level who are supposed to report data. At the same time those officials at the
local center are struggling to respond to overlapping requests for data from various higher
organizations.
Under these circumstances, MIS should be designed in such a way that all
educational activities undertaken at all schools/institutions/centers can be monitored and
the available data would be really used for improving the local operation of a school/
institution/center. To accomplish this goal, representatives of schools/institution/center
and decision makers at local, district, provincial, regional, as well as national levels need
to discuss and make agreement on database design at each level. Emphasis should be
placed on the information needed for the sake of local school/institution/center
management by the reason that local personnel could take most advantages from the data
compiled or produced by themselves. This would raise the commitment of those at the
local level who are always asked to collect and send various kinds of data upward without
any interest to make use of available data.
Computers and application software should be supplied for each type of education
service to school/institution/center, district, and province to be linked up by modems, or
internet, if internet service is available in those areas. A bottom-up or local computerized
database at all levels could be implemented. In light of these conditions, it is hoped that
with such local database establishment micro-planning, action research, and
decentralization can be strengthened.
Most people in central information sections claimed that they never have
sufficient data to supply the decision makers. Those administrators always ask for the
data that do not exist in the current database. So when designing database, they tend to
include too many data requests in the reporting forms, which can overload local staff who
have to supply the data.
In designing database for MIS at each level, there are several things to keep in
mind. For examples, as more information is gathered, it is usual for MIS systems to
identity further elements of information that are needed for a more complete picture. The
application of MIS should be very dynamic and versatile system and must be designed
and operated with the need for flexibility in mind. And also, in the actual gathering of
information, very strict standards must be followed so that information from one
geographic area exactly duplicated the parameters of information from other geographic
areas. Only in this way, the information will provide the capacity for valid comparisons.
These key issues need to be built-in as flexibility requirement in the MIS.
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