Sajad, Pamtak, Farnama: Iran's Ministry Now Reads University Data Directly

On 5 October 2026 Iran's Student Affairs Organization launched a single system for study exemptions for students abroad. Mehr News reported that applicants used to file the same request twice: once in Sajad, the Ministry of Science's student portal, and once in Sakha, the conscription service's system. Salehi, the organization's director-general for technology and smart services, said the double entry produced duplicate records, "a noticeable rise in data mismatches" and students lost between two offices chasing one file.

The new flow is one application in Sajad. The rest runs over a web-service exchange between Sajad and Sakha, and degrees are checked online against Pamtak, the national database of academic records. Five days later, on 10 October, a second Mehr report quoted the ministry's director-general for cultural and social affairs saying that data in the Farnama system is used to evaluate universities and in decisions on budget allocation.

Put the two reports side by side and the direction is plain. The ministry is reading university data directly instead of asking each university to confirm it. Students will like that. For a university IT office it changes what a data error costs.

What changed, system by system

• Sajad and Sakha. Exemptions for study abroad are now filed only in Sajad. The exit letter is issued in the applicant's Sajad inbox, and checks on earlier degrees go through a link between Sajad and office automation, per the 5 October report.
• Passport office. The first infrastructure for a direct link to the passport office has been built. Full use waits on a joint circular between the Student Affairs Organization and the conscription service.
• Pamtak. The database held 19 million records in September 2025 after a 90 percent rise, according to the organization's deputy head for international students. Salehi has proposed using it for domestic exemptions as well, so the conscription service would read admission, graduation, withdrawal or expulsion status straight from Pamtak instead of waiting for each university to confirm it in Sakha. For now that is a proposal, not a rollout.
• Farnama. Universities log their cultural and social activities here. The ministry says accuracy and completeness matter because the data feeds performance evaluation and budget decisions.

Why this lands on the university's desk

Under the old model a clerk confirmed each student's status by hand in Sakha. It was slow, but every confirmation was also a check. If a student who withdrew last year still showed as enrolled in the education system, somebody had a chance to notice before the answer left the building.

A direct lookup skips that person. Whatever your systems sent to Pamtak is what the conscription service will see. Whatever your staff typed into Farnama, or forgot to type, is what the people setting budgets will see. The ministry gets faster answers and the university inherits responsibility for records nobody may have opened in years.

Most universities we have worked with keep student status in at least two places: the education system, and a spreadsheet in the faculty office that is "more up to date". We wrote about how that happens in why university IT systems don't integrate. Central lookups make the gap visible from outside.

What to fix first

1. Name one master for each status. Enrolled, graduated, withdrawn, expelled. Write down which system is the source for each one and stop editing the others by hand.
2. Spot-check your own data every month. Take a small sample of students, compare the education system with what the national inquiry channel returns, and log every mismatch. The mismatches show you which office or which import is leaking.
3. Keep an audit trail. When a status changes, store who changed it, when, and on the basis of which document. If a student disputes an exemption decision, that record is your answer.
4. Enter Farnama activities as they happen. A catch-up session at the end of the year loses events, and the ministry has now said that gaps carry a budget cost. Keep the evidence, such as letters and attendance lists, in your own system so every entry can be backed up.
5. Give each feed one owner. One office and one named person for Sajad, for Farnama, and for whatever the ministry adds next. A feed that belongs to everyone tends to be checked by no one.

Where FanCampus fits, and where it doesn't

FanCampus does not connect to Sajad, Sakha, Pamtak or Farnama. These are ministry systems with their own access rules and we have no integration with any of them. FanCampus covers the in-house side: the university website, staff profiles, the IT service desk, faculty promotion and staff insurance under one sign-on, with role-based access and an audit log for every action. That helps with points 3 and 5 for the workflows it runs. It does not replace your education system, which stays the master for student status. Five separate logins are usually the first symptom of the problem described here; see five logins, one SSO. See FanCampus.

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