Government plans Iran Pass rollout to replace paper documents with digital services

Iran plans to roll out Iran Pass, an upgraded government services portal offering digital identity checks, electronic signatures and documents, by the end of the Iranian year in March 2027, a senior official said.

Mohammad Mohsen Sadr, a deputy communications minister who heads the Information Technology Organization of Iran, said the upgrade is intended to spare people from submitting physical documents to government agencies. He outlined the plans at an October 25 news conference reviewing the organization’s work under the current administration.

Sadr said 87 million users had accessed the existing National Smart Government Services Window. The next version would build on that infrastructure while adding more practical services.

Reported savings and shorter routes through government

Sadr said electronic services had generated 8.5 trillion tomans in cost savings since the administration took office, an increase of 431%. A toman is the conventional unit equal to 10 rials.

He said the number of in-person visits avoided had risen from 2.1 million to 11.5 million, while paper savings had increased from 5.8 million to 22.8 million sheets.

The government’s interagency data exchange center recorded 1 billion successful transactions during the 40-day war, Sadr said. He said transaction numbers had increased by more than 25% since the start of the administration.

The land services window had received 2.3 million requests, about 172% more than at the start of the administration. It allows people to submit a request through one route rather than approach 14 or 15 agencies separately, with the necessary interagency checks handled through the same process.

The average response time for those checks had reached 19 days over the past two years, Sadr said. He acknowledged that this was still unsatisfactory and that some checks should be answered instantly.

More than 13.5 million licenses had been issued through the national licensing portal, he said. Technical changes had addressed some problems with submitting requests, selecting options and receiving responses to checks. A forthcoming 13th evaluation would examine portal performance, service quality and automated license issuance, with results to be announced officially.

Private companies to deliver services across agencies

Sadr outlined a move toward services organized around processes that span agencies. The organization had initially defined 15 digital government “ecosystems” after reviewing international experience and United Nations models. Studies for eight had been completed with eight universities, involving a reported 105,000 to 114,000 person-hours of work on business, process and economic questions.

The first group includes taxation, land and property, cross-border services, logistics and agricultural supply chains. In land services alone, 230 processes spanning agencies had been identified, some connecting 15 bodies, he said.

Calls for private-sector participation would follow approval by the Economic Council. Sadr expected the necessary authorizations within two to three weeks of the briefing, private operators to be selected two to three months later, and results from the projects to become visible within six months.

The organization had also reviewed 100 requests to create new national systems since the administration took office and found many unnecessary. New proposals would need an architecture, proof of need, confirmation that no similar system exists and evidence that the private sector cannot provide the service, he said.

Sadr said coordination with the judiciary had prepared the way for private platforms to participate in services related to mandatory formal registration of real-estate transactions. The organization was also working with Iran’s police on the “Cobra” project, involving vehicle platforms and checks on vehicle authenticity and users’ identities.

Where private companies can provide a service, the government should enable them to operate and earn sustainable revenue rather than provide it directly, he said.

AI operators await preliminary approval

Three companies had been referred to the communications regulator for preliminary approval as AI operators, Sadr said. He expected approval during the week of the briefing or the following week.

The companies must meet specified computing infrastructure requirements before receiving full licenses. Preliminary approval would allow those falling short to complete their infrastructure, he said.

Responding to private-sector criticism of the AI operator rules, Sadr said the ministry consults businesses before decisions and would review and amend conditions in consultation with them if they submitted comments.

Applications from seven prospective AI product evaluation laboratories had also been reviewed with the ICT Research Institute. Licenses were expected in the days after the briefing, enabling the centers to test AI products developed in the country, he said.

Domestic infrastructure cannot replace the internet

Asked about the dependence of services on internet access and the possibility of another shutdown, Sadr said the National Information Network, Iran’s domestic network infrastructure, could not meet all the country’s needs on its own.

Its ability to provide some services during the war did not remove the need for the international internet, he said. He added that the authorities knew they should not cut access when national security did not require it, and said officials were working to make internet access available at suitable speeds.

Sadr also described tools for finding services and checking outages. He said Iran.ir, launched during the war to make government portals easier to reach, received 25 million visits on its first day. A dedicated search service, Yab, was designed to direct people to government services through keyword searches. More than 5,900 government services have identifiers and should be available electronically, he said.

Dideban.ir was created to show service availability and outages, allowing the public to check status and responsible agencies to track when and why services stopped, he said.

Security, government cloud and energy use

Sadr said security alerts issued to agencies had risen from 31,000 at the start of the administration to 61,000. He also reported an increase in identified vulnerabilities from 477 to 9,273, which he attributed to expanded monitoring and early detection capacity.

Government agencies would receive data center assessment results in the coming weeks and would need to develop facilities to specified standards or connect existing infrastructure to the unified government cloud, he said. He cited Article 107(a) as setting requirements for agencies’ data center arrangements.

A pilot energy management system connected the Communications Ministry building and eight other buildings on its campus. After two months, energy use at the Information Technology Organization’s building had fallen by more than 20%, Sadr said. He estimated that extending the system to government buildings could cut consumption by 15% to 20%. An agreement for wider connections was due to be signed with the Interior Ministry the following week.

A reference model for municipal digital services had also been prepared jointly with the Municipalities and Rural Administrations Organization and the Administrative and Recruitment Organization. It would be issued after all three bodies signed it, with municipalities evaluated annually to discourage fragmented projects.

Sadr said conflicts of interest between agencies sometimes obstructed progress and urged media scrutiny of service quality. He said Iran ranked 101st in the e-government index at the start of the administration and that the Seventh Development Plan set a target of 75th by its completion.