Dr. Sadigh: The national information network will be a great national service and the origin of crucial economic and social transformation

Dr. Mohammad Jafar Sadigh Damghanizadeh, the Advisor to the Minister and the President of ICT Park, explained that what can save Iran is the private sector, but this statement is not implemented practically: "We have established the private sector's official tribunes within the governmental structures. Today, Iran's Ministry of Industry has become an industrialist institution which is a mistake. If the Ministry of Industry becomes industrialist, it will turn into a competition with the private sector instead of representing the voice of this sector,” he said.

"Iran's private sector has its own problems. First, the job opportunities are limmited in Iran and it is difficult to get a proper work project; It means that the private sector cannot operate in accordance with its real potentials. Even if it does operate so, it lacks the required force. Now, if the private sector implements the intended works and finds the required force, the financial costs will not be provided. We shall help for solving these problems. Additionally, other issues, including the hostility of Western countries worsens the effects of these problems. The target of the West's hostility is not the Islamic Republic, but Iran," he said.

"Of course, we too, maintain wrong policies in Iran and provide the enemy with opportunities to take advantage of them. In some casese, we have taken the worng path. There is a large amount of unemployed individuals in Iran. We have to train these individuals, so that in case of workforce migration, we can quickly make up for the loss. Trainings should be technical and skill-based only.," the Advisor to the Minister explained.

The President of ICT Park then, referred to the existing instructions for training freelance workers in Iran: "The aim of this instruction is to train freelancer users. These trained individuals can manage a database. There is a fundamental problem regarding the regulations of this issue; this regulation needs improvement. The companies cannot hire expensive labour; hence, the freelancers become partners of the companies. We are ready to train freelancers and this is the second step that ICT Park takes,” he said.

National Information Network: A great National Service and the Origin of Economic and Social Developments

The President of the Information and Communication Technology Park mentioned that some people consider the National Information Network as becoming dissociated from the world: "In the near future, the National Information Network will become a magnificent national service and the origin of crucial economic and social transformation," he said. 

"My recommendation to those businesses that currently operate on Western platforms, including Instagram, is that instead of focusing on foreign platforms, they would better turn to national platforms or try to operate in websites. Digikala can be mentioned as a good example which suffered the least amount of damage during the internet outage," the Advisor to the Minister clarified. 

"The government has a serious plan for empowering domestic platforms. By paying 30% of the tuition fees required for the training of IT experts, changing the payment system of IT engineers, and pursuing the export of digital data content, the government aims at supporting domestic platforms as much as possible," Dr. Sadigh Damghanizadeh said.

Technology Atlas; ICT Park's Solution to Further Support the Real Private Sector 

The President of Information and Communication Technology Park referred to the significance of this issue: "In ICT Park, we are pursuing a process through which all the products of the associated companies will be evaluated annually and the relevant documents will be published under the title of ICT Park's Annual Technology Atlas. In this regard, we extract the depth of the technology in each product, determining which parts of each product are produced in Iran and which parts are imported.

In continuation of this meeting, Eng. Hasan Hashemi, the Head of Iran Internet Group (IIG), thanked ICT Park for its cooperation in holding the exhibition and emphasized the need for private sector's participation in legislation and macro decision-making in order to solve the existing policy problems in Iran: "The trade volume of the global information network market is five thousand billion dollars, and our country, despite having one percent of the world's population, only has one percent share of this market, which equals 50 billion dollars," he explained.

Eng. Hashemi mentioned that the Iranians own eight billion dollars of cryptocurrency in their digital pockets: "In previous year, the IT industry has faced many crises and several solutions have been presented to the government sector in this regard," he said.