DOPA and DOLA

Since I am often referring to the website of the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA), I should maybe write about this government structure a bit.

DOPA (กรมการปกครอง) is one of the departments of the Ministry of Interior (MOI, กระทรวงมหาดไทย), and it has its offices located within the compound of the ministry.

Another related department of the Ministry of Interior is the Department of Local Administration (DOLA, กรมส่งเสริมการปกครองท้องถิ่น). In fact this department was split off from DOPA in 1997, when the decentralization to the local administration with municipalities and Tambon administrative organization came into the focus. This office is located near Vimanmek palace. The emblem above is the one of DOLA, but the one of DOPA and the ministry use the same lion as their emblem, but I could not find an equally clean picture on the web.

In the great graphical visualization of the 2009 budget created by Markpeak one can directly see the relative importance between DOPA and DOLA. In fact DOLA has a much larger budget than DOPA, 70% of the budget of MOI goes to DOLA, but only 12.6% to DOPA. Or in numbers (in million Baht)

Department of Local Administration (DOLA)	136,152.3
Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA)	24,705.1
Ministry of Interior (MOI)	195,574.1

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