Iran Technology Analysts Network (ITAN) was founded on 2000 with the following objectives:
1. Strengthening intellectual-cultural infrastructures for technology development through networking the different centers of analysis and thinking
2. Providing technology analysts with appropriate grounds to make acquaintance with each other and discuss different subjects
3. Conveying the analysts’ demands and complaints to the authorities and securing their continuous communications with one another, aiming to make better decisions
4. Paving the ground for thought centers to participate in developing economic, industrial, and technologic policies
5. Strengthening the relationship between technology analysts on one hand and artists and media on the other hand in order to properly reflect the proceedings to public opinions.
The network has two divisions, namely Headquarters and Independent Thought Centers. “Network” here means synergistic relation of these centers with one another as well as with the headquarters while the thought centers enjoy independent legal entity.
The headquarters publicly supports specialized groups and centers founded by other organs, scientific societies, universities, specialized civil institutes, thought centers, and prestigious research centers. These supports are proportional to assessment scores achieved by these centers and include educational, advertising, media, artistic, software, and other material and spiritual supports and also making relations among them.
The member centers of ITAN Network enjoy different media inclusive of internet and written media such as magazines, bulletins, and special reports as their communication media and information repositories. Besides internet and regular reports, these centers take advantage of holding different meetings and seminars as well as cooperation with the press and TV and Radio to reinforce technology analysts’ relations with one another as well as with the authorities and society. These activities ultimately aim to influence “decisions of the authorities”, on one hand, and “public opinion”, on the other hand.
ITAN now possesses the most widespread, versatile, and influential network of thought centers in the country. Attendance of more than 250 full-time experts and synergistic relation with nearly 2000 elites, experts, and directors of the country points to a portion of the networks’ capabilities and capacities that may contribute to development and eminence of the country.
Thought Centers; Centers for Decision-Making
In the developed countries, “Thought Centers” are considered the main decision-making and policy research centers. These centers are, indeed, the missing link of programming and policy-making in such countries as Iran. The authorities must admit their inability to understand and analyze all opportunities and positions and so employ analysts and thinkers in the form of thought centers to analyze the situation, take decisions, and create new ideas. Here, the process of decision making is distinguished from decision taking and decision makers are only responsible for a portion of decision taking and any decision is the resultant of different views from different experts, elites, and directors and their relative consensus. Thought centers have been born commissioned to do “intellectual and consultative support for policy and decision makers” and aimed to do “research policy”.
The duties of thought centers
Thought centers intervene among government, university, and industry and through creation of communication network among directors of the country, industrial and economic elites, and academic experts and aggregation of their comments and ideas, involve in analyzing the issues and providing proposals based on the majority of the comments. The following are some of their main duties:
1. Role taking as an independent and critic entity on issues related to policy making as well as critical assessment of the policies and plans of the government and policy making institutes;
2. Turning general undeveloped ideas and crude proposals to detailed and applicable policies and plans;
3. Directing media policies in the field of industry, technology, and economy, as well as using public media to propagate and inculcate development-oriented policies and propositions in these fields among public opinions;
4. Performing comparative studies and reviewing the model of the developed countries to identify strength and weakness points of their policies;
5. Localizing the thought models acquired from the comparative studies;
6. Identifying and training prominent experts in the realm of researches on policy making;
7. Identifying and introducing future opportunities and the access route to them and also how of creation of the future (future study and foresight).
