International Federation for Information Processing


The International Federation for Information Processing is a global organisation for researchers and professionals working in the field of computing to conduct research, develop standards and promote information sharing.
Established in 1960 under the auspices of UNESCO, IFIP is recognised by the United Nations and links some 50 national and international societies and academies of science with a total membership of over half a million professionals. IFIP is based in Laxenburg, Austria and is an international, non-governmental organisation that operates on a non-profit basis.

Overview

IFIP activities are coordinated by 14 Technical Committees which are organised into more than 100 Working Groups, bringing together over 3,500 ICT professionals and researchers from around the world to conduct research, develop standards and promote information sharing. Each TC covers a particular aspect of computing and related disciplines, as detailed below.
IFIP actively promotes the principle of open access and proceedings for which IFIP holds the copyright are made available electronically via IFIP's Open Access Digital Library. Downloading articles from IFIP's Open Access Digital Library is free of charge.
Conference and workshop organizers who prefer publication with the IFIP publisher can take advantage of the agreement between IFIP and Springer and publish their proceedings as part of IFIP's Advances in Information and Communication Technology series, the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series or the Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing series. IFIP Proceedings published by Springer in IFIP's AICT, LNCS, and LNBIP series are accessible within IFIP's Open Access Digital Library after an embargo period of three years.
An important activity of the IFIP Technical Committees is to organise and sponsor high quality conferences and workshops in the field of ICT. Sponsoring is generally in the form of Best Paper Awards and/or Student Travel Grants. To assist conference and workshop organisers, IFIP has facilities to host conference websites and supports conference management systems such as JEMS, which include export functions that seamlessly integrate with IFIP's Open DL.

History

IFIP was established in 1960 under the auspices of UNESCO, originally under the name of the International Federation of Information Processing Societies. In preparation, UNESCO had organised the first International Conference on Information Processing, which took place in June 1959 in Paris, and is now considered the first IFIP Congress. Christopher Strachey gave a paper "Time Sharing in Large Fast Computers" at the conference where he envisaged a programmer debugging a program at a console connected to the computer, while another program was running in the computer at the same time. At the conference, he passed his time-sharing concept on to J. C. R. Licklider. His paper was credited by the MIT Computation Center in 1963 as "the first paper on time-shared computers".
The name was changed to IFIP in 1961. The founding president of IFIP was Isaac L. Auerbach.
In 2009, IFIP established the International Professional Practice Partnership to lead the development of the global ICT profession."

Congresses

As of 2022 the following IFIP World Computer Congress events took place:
  1. 1959 Paris, France
  2. 1962 Munich, Germany
  3. 1965 New York, USA
  4. 1968 Edinburgh, UK
  5. 1971 Ljubljana, Yugoslavia
  6. 1974 Stockholm, Sweden
  7. 1977 Toronto, Canada
  8. 1980 Melbourne/Tokyo, Australia and Japan
  9. 1983 Paris, France
  10. 1986 Dublin, Ireland
  11. 1989 San Francisco, USA
  12. 1992 Madrid, Spain
  13. 1994 Hamburg, Germany
  14. 1996 Canberra, Australia
  15. 1998 Vienna/Budapest, Austria and Hungary
  16. 2000 Beijing, China
  17. 2002 Montreal, Canada
  18. 2004 Toulouse, France
  19. 2006 Santiago, Chile
  20. 2008 Milan, Italy
  21. 2010 Brisbane, Australia
  22. 2012 Amsterdam, the Netherlands
  23. 2015 Daejeon, South Korea
  24. 2018 Poznan, Poland

    Technical Committees

IFIP's activities are centered on its 14 Technical Committees, which are divided into Working Groups. These groups, organise conferences and workshops, distribute technical papers and promote discussion and research outcomes.
A full list of IFIP Technical Committees is listed below:
The current IFIP TC1, which focuses on Foundations of Computer Science, was established in 1997. There was an earlier TC1, covering Terminology, which was IFIP's first Technical Committee. Formed in 1961, it produced a multilingual dictionary of information-processing terminology but was later disbanded.
The working groups of the current TC1 are:
  • WG 1.1 Continuous Algorithms and Complexity
  • WG 1.2 Descriptional Complexity
  • WG 1.3 Foundations of System Specification
  • WG 1.4 Computational Learning Theory
  • WG 1.5 Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems
  • WG 1.6 Term Rewriting
  • WG 1.7 Theoretical Foundations of Security Analysis and Design
  • WG 1.8 Concurrency Theory
  • WG 1.9 Verified Software
  • WG 1.10 String Algorithmics & Applications

    IFIP TC2 Software Theory and Practice

Established in 1962, IFIP TC2 explores Software Theory and Practice with the aim of improving software quality by studying all aspects of the software development process to better understand and enhance programming concepts.
The working groups of IFIP TC2 are:
  • WG 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi
  • WG 2.2 Formal Description of Programming Concepts
  • WG 2.3 Programming Methodology
  • WG 2.5 Numerical Software
  • WG 2.6 Databases
  • WG 2.7 User Interface Engineering
  • WG 2.8 Functional Programming
  • WG 2.9 Software Requirements Engineering
  • WG 2.10 on Software Architecture
  • WG 2.11 Program Generation
  • WG 2.12 Web Semantics
  • WG 2.13 Open Source Software
  • WG 2.14 Service-Oriented Systems
  • WG 2.15 Verified Software
  • WG 2.16 Programming Language Design

    IFIP TC3 Education

The formation of TC3, to deal with computers and education, was announced in 1962. Richard Buckingham of the University of London was appointed its first chairman and TC3 held its initial meeting in Paris in February 1964.
The working groups of IFIP TC3 are:
  • WG 3.1 Informatics and Digital Technologies in School Education
  • WG 3.3 Research into Educational Applications of Information Technologies
  • WG 3.4 Professional and Vocational Education in ICT
  • WG 3.7 Information Technology in Educational Management

    IFIP TC5 Information Technology Applications

Established in 1970, IFIP TC5 provides a focus for multi-disciplinary research into the application of information technologies and practices to facilitate information management. It encompasses work in product life-cycle management, digital modelling, virtual product creation, integrated manufacturing/production management and more.
The working groups of IFIP TC5 are:
  • WG 5.1 Information Technology in the Product Realization Process
  • WG 5.4 Computer Aided Innovation
  • WG 5.5 Cooperation Infrastructure for Virtual Enterprises and Electronic Business
  • WG 5.7 Advances in Production Management Systems
  • WG 5.8 Enterprise Interoperability
  • WG 5.10 Computer Graphics and Virtual Worlds
  • WG 5.11 Computers and Environment
  • WG 5.12 Architectures for Enterprise Integration
  • WG 5.13 Bioinformatives and its Applications
  • WG 5.14 Advanced Information Processing for Agriculture

    IFIP TC6 Communication Systems

Established in 1971, IFIP TC6 is one of the largest TCs within IFIP in terms of activities and revenues. TC6 has nine Working Groups as well as a number of Special Interest Groups, the majority of which are concerned either with specific aspects of communications systems themselves or with the application of communications systems. In addition, one WG focuses on communications in developing countries. TC6 meets twice a year, in spring and fall, usually co-locating its meetings with a related conference. Examples of TC6 conferences include IFIP Networking, DisCoTec, Middleware, WiOpt, CNSM, Integrated Network Management and Wireless Days.
Membership of a TC6 WG or SIG is open to leading researchers within the field, independent of the national society within the country of origin. Well-known TC6 members include: Vint Cerf, André Danthine, Donald Davies, Roger Scantlebury, Peter Kirstein, Robert Metcalfe, Louis Pouzin, Otto Spaniol and Hubert Zimmermann. Many were members of the International Network Working Group. Each WG or SIG elects a chair and vice-chair for a period of three years. WG and SIG chairs are, next to the national representatives and some key researchers, automatically members of TC6.
TC6 is a strong proponent of open access and the driving force behind the IFIP TC6 Open Digital Library. The IFIP TC6 Open DL is currently operated by TC6 and eventually will move to the INRIA HAL system. To ensure maximum accessibility of accepted papers, several TC6 conferences publish their proceedings not only in the IFIP TC6 Open DL, but also in other online systems, such as IEEE Xplore, ACM DL, ResearchGate and arXiv.
TC6 supports conferences by providing Best Paper Awards as well as Student Travel Grants. Conference organisers who intend to obtain IFIP sponsorship are encouraged to fill-in the online Event Request Form. Depending on the category and type of event, IFIP may charge fees to conferences to cover the costs of awards as well as the IFIP secretariat.
The working groups of IFIP TC6 are:
  • WG 6.1 Architectures and Protocols for Distributed Systems
  • WG 6.2 Network and Internetwork Architectures
  • WG 6.3 Performance of Communication Systems
  • WG 6.4 Internet Applications Engineering
  • WG 6.6 Management of Networks and Distributed Systems
  • WG 6.8 Mobile and Wireless Communications
  • WG 6.9 Communications Systems in Developing Countries
  • WG 6.10 Photonic Networking
  • WG 6.11 Communication Aspects of the E-World
  • WG 6.12 Service-Oriented Systems
In November 2015, a new Special Interest Group on "Internet of People" was created.