Performance evaluation and spatial distribution Pattern of rural ICT offices (Case Study: Lenjan County - Isfahan province)

Today, ICT is considered as one of the most effective approaches to sustainable rural development; having undoubtedly brought widespread changes in different aspects of human life. The impact of ICT on human societies is such that it is rapidly converting the contemporary world to an informational society. In the recent decade, this approach is widely spread in rural areas, especially in the form of rural ICT offices, and evaluating the performance of this offices is a major step forward in their productivity improvement.   The present research has been performed with the aim of investigating the performance of rural ICT offices and their distribution pattern in Lenjan Township.   The research method is descriptive-analytic and the data collection is done through documentary and field methods. The statistical population of the study includes all villagers benefiting from rural ICT offices in the County of Lenjan. The research field information is achieved through completing 294 questionnaires from villagers in 5 villages, based on the Cochran formula. The reliability of the questionnaire is 0.824, confirming the validity of the research tool. In data analyzing, two descriptive and inferential methods were used on spss software. The spatial distribution of rural ICT offices has been measured using two models of entropy and concentration index   The significance level of less than 0.05, and the negative high (6.60) and low (8.40) margins, indicate the unsuccessful performance of communication services offices in the studied area villages. Results of using the entropy model (with a coefficient of 0.65), and the concentration index model (with a value of 0.01) in assessing the distribution pattern of offices, also indicate the unsuitable distribution of offices. In various researches, although studied the performance and satisfaction of rural ICT offices, but their geographic distribution pattern was not considered. In this study, not only all functional dimensions, with all strengths and weaknesses; but also the spatial distribution pattern -that it is  a geographic attitude- was concidered.