A Model for Monitoring National Science and Technology Indicators: A Business Intelligence Approach

The economic growth and competitiveness of countries is strongly influenced by their national science and technology (S&T) systems. Hence, national S&T policymakers must make appropriate decisions to flourish national S&T systems. For this purpose, an integrated view on the dimensions of national S&T systems is much needed. Due to the distribution of relevant data sources for national S&T indicators and the complexity of national S&T systems, establishing an integrated view is challenging. In this paper, we propose a business intelligence (BI) model to monitor and analyze national S&T indicators. For this purpose, a five-layered architecture for monitoring national S&T indicators, a star schema-based national S&T indicator data warehouse, and a process for monitoring national S&T indicators using a business intelligence approach are designed. After developing a prototype system focused on the Iranian S&T system, the S&T indicators of the Iranian National S&T Roadmap (having a look at Iran Vision 2025) are monitored. Moreover, the performance of the Iranian S&T system is compared with selected countries to know the country's position in the global S&T arena. Using the results from monitoring Iranian S&T indicators by the developed system, the status of the Iranian S&T system is analyzed in the end.