An IT Strategic Plan in the Air Force of the I.R. of Iran

Information plays a key role in the successful performance of organizations; especially it enables their management to make decision on wider scopes of functions. Since the Air Force of the I.R. of Iran is characterized by multiple functions, staff members and professions and accommodates wider geographical borderlines, collection of large amount of valid, accurate, transparent and relevant data which needs sorting, processing, analysis and retrieval, depends on applying comprehensive and strategic approach to IT. Deputy of the Air Force in Educational affairs, heading for education management and policy making for the affiliated institutes (i.e. aviation university, aviation training center and nursing institute, etc.) is responsible to implement various training processes including designing, planning, organizing, implementing and evaluating (materials preparation, syllabus design, teaching methods and facilities, educational counseling and any supplementary activities) that all make strategic IT inevitable.
Aimed at understanding the status quo of IT in the Education Deputy of the Air Force and identifying the effective factors in a strategic planning along with an IT strategic plan, this study was conducted thereby an IT strategic plan model was suggested for the Education Deputy. The study was descriptive- survey in nature for which the participants were 150 respective managers and exports from stratified randomly selected from the Education Deputy, Aviation command, strategic Research Office, Aviation University and Aviation Training Center. To collect data, a researcher-made and validated 33- item questionnaire was employed. The data was analyzed using SPSS and LISREL program. To this end, t-test, F-value and multi-variate regression analyses were run. The findings explored the target status quo; thereby a sound model for IT strategic plan was suggested for the Education Deputy.