t B4. Beijing 2008
The International Archives oj the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008
21
is lots of efforts in
sly all of these
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sidered as follows:
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of governmental
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it of IT network
\N
ivemment in Iran
Drities and policy
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mment in Iran to
eristics, and also
access to science
e in ensuring its
iment in Iran is
rising to a new
ations cycle time;
?ens in receiving
ilso fulfilling the
of the systems.
3.1 Islamic Republic of Iran E-Government action plan
The road map and action plan for implementation of the E-
Govemment project by different agencies was prepared by the
Management and Planning Organization (MPO) and approved
by the Supreme Administrative Council (SAC). In this
document, actions to be taken were mostly put in five
categories:
■ Automating general processes like office automation,
paperless environment, human resource management
systems like personnel and financial systems, etc.
■ Applying IT to re-engineered agency-specific procedures
(work flow) across the nation for a total of ten procedures
each year. The main criterion for selecting these procedures
is the importance of the mechanization of procedures in
providing greater majority of citizens with better services.
■ Requiring all governmental agencies to connect their LAN
to the Internet and to create their websites.
* Creating a citizen portal through which governmental
agencies' information and services might be accessed.
■ Selecting IT courses and specifying their contents by all
governmental organizations so that their employees can
take these IT courses.
3.2 Progress of E-Government in Iran
E-Govemment may be a new phenomenon in our country, but
with a little effort from the authorities and responsible sources
and help from experts, this technique is going to accelerate
more. It is significant here to mention that regardless of all
historical and political concerns which Iran has experienced in
the last decades, the people have showed their innovation and
ability for improvement. That is one of the basic reasons for
implementing of E-Govemment in this country. E-Govemment
is going to effect on every social, technical as well as the
political aspects. It improves the level of the education, public
relations with the authorities and private sectors and eases the
daily administrative job for a single Iranian.
In the past few years, Islamic Republic of Iran Government has
attached great importance to allocating increased budgets to
public organisations and state companies to develop IT
industry. The Islamic Republic of Iran in its five-year
Development Plan seriously started to provide the government
family with the specified annual budgets for ICT. It was in 2001
when the first considerable budget, about US$160 million, was
allocated to the expansion of the ITC industry. This budget has
been increased annually and almost three-fifths of this budget
was considered for hardware and software equipment as well as
a commercial comprehensive information network, while the
remaining was spent on employment generation through IT.
Economic and social affairs office of the United Nation
Organization issued a report entitled UN E-Govemment survey
2008 and compares the situation of countries in terms of E-
Govemment readiness. For this reason, an E-Govemment
readiness index has been designed which includes three sub
indexes namely web measure index, infrastructure index and
human capital index. According to this survey, measures of
mentioned sub indexes for Iran are about 0.26, 0.18 and 0.79
respectively. It makes the total measure for Iranian E-
Govemment readiness index equal to 0.41 and Iranian ranking
among 192 countries is 108. Although the measure for Iran E-
Govemment readiness has been improved during the last 3
years (from 0.38 in 2005 to 0.41 in 2008), but the ranking of
country has been decreased from 98 in 2007 to 108 in 2008. It
shows our speed toward E-Govemment is less than the world
average.
4. SPATIAL INFORMATION AND ITS ROLE IN
E-GOVERNMENT
Public has right to access information in general and spatial
information in particular. This information is crucial to
decisions of national policy and to the general public and every
country tries to endure this concept. Traditionally governments
acquire information as mandated by laws and regulations and
for day-to-day operation of public administration; as a
custodian manages and processes information in a systematic
manner; as a regulator prevents the abuse of information and
ensures fair and equal access to information and as a user uses
information for day to day operation and policy making.
Access to this information is every citizen's right. The right to
know is the foundation of modem democracy. Now there is
growing recognition of the importance of information or
knowledge-based industries to the nation's economic well-being.
Spatial information on the web has important role in improving
public access to environmental and other data, and involvement
in decision making. The rising public demand for access to
government information gives rise to a strong opportunity to
build a national Clearinghouse. Facilitating public access to
spatial information is a key National Information Infrastructure
requirement. National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)
addresses issues pertaining to spatial information within the
conceptual framework of National Information Infrastructure.
There is a need to increase the awareness of the value, use and
management of spatial data among governmental agencies;
fostering development of a variety of educational and training
opportunities to increase the awareness and understanding of
the vision, concepts and benefits of NSDI, and to improve the
collection, management and use of spatial data.
4.1 National Spatial Data Infrastructure
The idea of national spatial data infrastructure tries to make a
linkage among important factors such as policies, organizations,
data, technologies, standards, delivery mechanism and financial
and human resources in order to facilitate access of all
interested people to geo-information. Establishment of such an
infrastructure is a step by step process and it may consist of
several components. The key components of a national spatial
data infrastructure can be summarized as follows:
Organizational structure reform
Establishing national standards
Providing fundamental data and associated metadata
Establishing national network
Creating a national framework for training and education
Establishing national clearinghouse
Creating a framework for data sharing and partnership
Designing standard services
It should be considered that national Spatial Data Clearinghouse
is an important component of the National Spatial Data
Infrastructure (NSDI). The Clearinghouse provides a pathway
to find information about spatial data available in the country.
Clearinghouse uses the Internet infrastructure, including the
international standard and other standards. Locator records
maintained by Clearinghouse will be reviewed for accuracy at