Investigation on quality of information management in municipalities,Emphasis on GIS's abilities A case of: Babolsar

Accessing and using updated and precise information is counted as important factors in decision making and planning process. This issue gets more important in cities، because of complexity and diversity of a huge amount of Information which is used in urban decision makings. Despite of GIS''s abilities as a strong decision making support system it has not been respected truly by urban managers especially in small and medium size cities in Iran. This paper aimed to investigates quality of information management in a small size municipality (Babolsar) regard to GIS''s abilities. Sample units of the case municipality are: official، urban development and public services units. A survey was conducted on staffs using interview and expert checklist. T student test and descriptive statistics were used. The results show، the case municipality suffers from serious weaknesses based on information quality indicators (regarding to GIS''s abilities). Some of weaknesses are inflexibility، security، data processing and analysis، data management system، structure of database as well as outputs.