A knowledge flow framework for e-government in Iran

Abstract

Iran’s fifth Four Year Development Plan (2011-2015) and other high level acts in recent years have paid more attention to the topic of knowledge management. This in turn has encouraged the government agencies to pay special attention to this topic for the development of their regulations and future plans. The information technology field has not been an exception to this trend, and in September 2014 an Administrative and Technical Criteria Act (ATCA) was approved for the development of an agile and effective e-government in Iran. Under Article 40 of ATCA all executive bodies of government are required to design and implement a comprehensive knowledge management system within the next 2 years. In this paper, by developing and using a four-phased methodology, a knowledge flow framework is designed for the development of Iranian e-government, based on the contents of ATCA. The proposed framework specifies a total of 30 horizontal and vertical knowledge flows in five distinct layers: inter-organization, organization, group, role, and machine. These knowledge flows occur among 14 different knowledge agents in the mentioned layers. The subjects of the knowledge packets which are transferred in these knowledge flows are developed based on the articles of ATCA. By presenting such a knowledge flow framework, the role and place of knowledge management systems of the executive bodies in support of the e-government is recognized. Also in this framework the interaction of these knowledge management systems with other knowledge management systems, knowledge agents and knowledge bases is determined.