Afghanistan Information Management Services (AIMS) is a

Kabul Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into #Districts, 22 municipal dist ...

-based Afghan

non-governmental organisation A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in ...

(NGO). It specialises in the application of information, communication and technology (Information Communication Technology) solutions, software development, and project management.

Background

In 1997 AIMS was established under the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is a United Nations (UN) body established in December 1991 by the General Assembly to strengthen the international response to complex emergencies and natural disaster ...

(UNOCHA) in

Islamabad Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

, to serve the

information management Information management (IM) concerns a cycle of organizational activity: the acquisition of information from one or more sources, the custodianship and the distribution of that information to those who need it, and its ultimate disposal throug ...

needs of Afghanistan. In 2001, it was relocated to Kabul and became a project of the

United Nations Development Programme The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...

(UNDP). Since its inception, AIMS has served the

Government of Afghanistan The government of Afghanistan, officially called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is the central government of Afghanistan, a unitary state. Under the leadership of the Taliban, the government is a theocracy and an emirate with political pow ...

, non-governmental organizations and the international donor community as a provider of information management services including the development of

software applications Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases ...

solutions,

geospatial information Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also ca ...

and

map A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...

s. AIMS is located in a new office facility in Kabul, and in 2002 AIMS established offices in five regional centers:

Jalalabad Jalalabad (; Dari/ ps, جلال‌آباد, ) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jala ...

Kandahar Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118. It is the c ...

Herat Herāt (; Persian: ) is an oasis city and the third-largest city of Afghanistan. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 574,276, and serves as the capital of Herat Province, situated south of the Paropamisus Mountains (''Selseleh-ye Safē ...

Mazar-i-Sharif , official_name = , settlement_type = City , image_skyline = , pushpin_map = Afghanistan#Bactria#West Asia , pushpin_label = Mazar-i-Sharif , pushpin ...

, and

Kunduz , native_name_lang = prs , other_name = , settlement_type = City , image_skyline = Kunduz River valley.jpg , imagesize = 300 , image_alt = , image_caption = , image_ ...

. The regional offices provide services in information management, capacity development (''i.e.'' job training), and mapping. In 2004, AIMS shifted its focus from simple data provision to the development of information management capacity in the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) and the broader humanitarian community, especially in the areas of Geographic Information Systems GIS and database development. In September 2008, it transitioned from being a UNDP project into a national NGO as authorized by a Memorandum of Agreement between UNDP and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MoCIT). The AIMS Transition Plan and Official Charter were authored by J. Brown (International Development Advisor) and Lisa Gomer (International Attorney). The Executive Director for AIMS at the time of the Charter was Neal Bratschun. Mr. J Nicholas Martyn was the 1st Executive Directory retained by AIMS to lead the organization. AIMS served as a certified training site for

ESRI Esri (; Environmental Systems Research Institute) is an American multinational geographic information system (GIS) software company. It is best known for its ArcGIS products. With a 43% market share, Esri is the world's leading supplier of GIS ...

and authored multiple software solutions for the International Development Community such as GEOBASE, and PIMSS.

References

* * * * The writer is Editor, Communications and Advocacy, Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU).

External links

Afghanistan Information Management Services website
{{authority control Information management Non-profit organisations based in Afghanistan United Nations organizations based in Asia Mass media in Afghanistan Afghanistan and the United Nations Defunct organisations based in Afghanistan