The Thai government’s top legal advisory body is partnering with Microsoft to transform access to legal information, advance toward OECD membership and prove that digital transformation is not just about technology – it’s about people.
Inside a stately building along the historic Chao Phraya River—once a vital artery of regional trade—a quiet digital transformation is taking shape.
For almost a century, the Office of the Council of State of Thailand (OCS) has stood as the guardian of the nation’s legal framework. Today, it’s leading a digital transformation that redefines not only how laws are drafted, updated and accessed but also how a nation positions itself on the global stage.
Digital transformation is not just about the technology.” says Nilprapunt, secretary general of the OCS. “It’s about people. It’s about how we can use technology to better serve our citizens and support Thailand’s progress.”
And that’s exactly what OCS is doing. By leveraging Microsoft’s cloud and AI capabilities, OCS can better manage huge volumes of legislative documents, ease complex research of inter-linked laws, and accelerate the transformation of Thailand’s legal framework in alignment with international standards—an essential step in the country’s ambition to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
A legal landscape in need of innovation
Thailand’s legal system, like many around the world, faces unique challenges in the digital age. With over 70,000 legislative acts, ministerial regulations, Royal Decrees, and agency notification and guidelines in force, the scale and complexity of information at hand is immense.
“These documents aren’t just large in number, they’re deeply interconnected,” explains Nilprapunt. “Each law can impact or be constrained by others, and all must align with the Constitution as well as international standards. Keeping this synchronized is a monumental task.”
In the past, OCS staff relied on printed records and institutional knowledge to perform their duties. A foundational legal database was launched in 1994, but it was limited in terms of searchability, structure and accessibility.
Enter AI and the TH2OECD initiative
At the core of the OCS transformation is TH2OECD – an AI-powered legal comparison system co-developed between OCS and STelligence, a Microsoft partner. The AI system, built on the Microsoft Azure OpenAI platform, enables OCS staff to analyze over 70,000 Thai legal documents and compare them against more than 270 OECD legal instruments — in real time, and across languages.
“Language has always been one of the biggest barriers to aligning Thai law with international standards,” says Nilprapunt. “Now, with AI translation and comparison tools, we can bridge that gap.”
The TH2OECD AI system automatically translates Thai laws into English and OECD standards into Thai. It then uses natural language processing (NLP) to compare and highlight differences, allowing legal professionals to assess how aligned the provisions are and recommend updates more accurately. All of this runs securely on the Microsoft Azure cloud, which has enabled OCS to transition from storing laws as unsearchable PDFs to saving them as structured, searchable legal texts. With Microsoft 365 and Copilot, OCS teams now collaborate more easily, update documents faster, and conduct policy analysis more effectively from anywhere in the country.
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