Dr. Sadigh: The development activities of ICT Park are in line with the activities related to the realization of the National Information Network

At the start of this visit, Dr. Mohammad Jafar Sadigh Damghanizadeh, the Advisor to the Minister and the President of ICT Park, welcomed the visitors and introduced the members present at the meeting, referring to the Director of ICT Park’s Techno-units’ Development Center as the heart and driving engine of the Park, emphasized that according to its Article of Association, ICT Park does not aim to merely hold some startups: "The four main missions of ICT Park include helping fledgling companies to grow and reach the level of medium-sized companies, internationalizing these companies, attracting the elites and reversing the process of their migration, creating a network of Parks and growth centres under the title of the Digital Economy Development Network (DEDN)," he explained. 

Then, he presented the Park's operational plans for fulfilling the mentioned missions to be producing and exporting cultural data, producing and exporting cloud services, employing IOT in food security, reducing water consumption, maintaining the industries, producing basic hardware and software for the national information network, providing national operating systems as the overall infrastructure of software, and the entire collections of the global information network. 

Dr. Sadigh Damghanizadeh also mentioned ICT Park's plans to transform the Park area into an environment-friendly area to be distributing drinking water in bottles or in grey water pipes for cleaning uses, and then, leading it to the treatment plant for irrigation purposes and also retrieving electricity from solar cells. 

"For the growth of companies, we need to build a pyramid so that our forces have the ability to work professionally and then start a skill-oriented training program with the aim of creating new jobs," the advisor to the Minister of Communications continued. 

Dr. Sadigh Damghanizadeh named three of the Park's other programs at the national scale as creating innovation clusters with the method of guaranteeing purchase in case of quality assurance, employing IOT in creating a network of small-scale greenhouses and reducing water consumption, and creating three free cyber zones in Iran or outside Iran. 

Dr. Sadigh Damghanizadeh also emphasized the necessity of converting small companies to medium and then large companies, providing grants, considered the Park's evaluation system and Technology Atlas as the most effective ways for achieving this goal, and by explaining these procedures, while emphasizing the significance the companies' entry into the supply chain, referred to the contribution of Iran to the global information network and mentioned the experiences regarding Malaysia, Turkey and the UAE in the field of IT and digital economy: "Helping to achieve national information network is also one of ICT Park's objectives, which results in two remarkable benefits for Iran, including civilizational infrastructure and national wealth," he said. 

In continuation of this meeting, Eng. Meysam Abedi, the Deputy Minister of Technology and Innovation of Iran's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, expressed his gratitude for learning about the experiences of ICT Park's managing complex in the Ministry of Communications' project, clarifying the latest projects implemented by his office regarding the digital economy, technology, and innovation. 

He named the active groups of his office as the localization group, export group, job creation group, empowerment group and smartification group, elaborating on the latest measures taken by these groups. 

In the end, Eng. Abedi pointed out the different perceptions of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Presidential Vice President for Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Security regarding knowledge-based and technological products, and emphasized the need for a synergistic view of these three institutions regarding technology products, considering the current conditions of Iran.