The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) 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 (TCs) which are organised into more than 100 Working Groups (WGs), 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 (AICT) series, the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series or the Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP) 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 (BPA) and/or Student Travel Grants (STG). 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 (IFIPS). 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 (like a teletype) connected to the computer, while another program was running in the computer at the same time.John McCarthy, Reminiscences on the History of Time Sharing (Stanford University 1983). "in 1960 `time-sharing' as a phrase was much in the air. It was, however, generally used in my sense rather than in John McCarthy's sense of a CTSS-like object. " 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".F. J. Corbató, et al., The Compatible Time-Sharing System A Programmer's Guide (MIT Press, 1963) . "To establish the context of the present work, it is informative to trace the development of time-sharing at MIT. Shortly after the first paper on time-shared computers by C. Strachey at the June 1959 UNESCO Information Processing conference, H.M. Teager and J. McCarthy delivered an unpublished paper "Time-Shared Program Testing" at the August 1959 ACM Meeting."
The name was changed to IFIP in 1961. The founding president of IFIP was Isaac L. Auerbach (1960–1965).
In 2009, IFIP established the International Professional Practice Partnership (IFIP IP3) to lead the development of the global ICT profession."
Congresses the following IFIP World Computer Congress events took place: 1959 Paris, France (pre IFIP) 1962 Munich, Germany 1965 New York, USA 1968 Edinburgh, UK 1971 Ljubljana, Yugoslavia 1974 Stockholm, Sweden 1977 Toronto, Canada 1980 Melbourne/Tokyo, Australia and Japan 1983 Paris, France 1986 Dublin, Ireland 1989 San Francisco, USA 1992 Madrid, Spain 1994 Hamburg, Germany 1996 Canberra, Australia 1998 Vienna/Budapest, Austria and Hungary 2000 Beijing, China 2002 Montreal, Canada 2004 Toulouse, France 2006 Santiago, Chile 2008 Milan, Italy 2010 Brisbane, Australia 2012 Amsterdam, the Netherlands 2015 Daejeon, South Korea 2018 Poznan, Poland
Technical Committees IFIP's activities are centered on its 14 Technical Committees, which are divided into Working Groups. These groups, (with names like "WG 2.4 Software Implementation Technology") organise conferences and workshops, distribute technical papers and promote discussion and research outcomes.
A full list of IFIP Technical Committees is listed below: TC 1: Foundations of Computer ScienceIFIP Working Group 1.2 "Descriptional Complexity" TC 2: Software:Theory and Practice TC 3: Education TC 5: Information Technology Applications TC 6: Communication Systems TC 7: System Modeling and Optimization TC 8: Information Systems TC 9: Relationship between Computers and Society TC 10: Computer Systems Technology TC 11: Security and Protection in Information Processing Systems TC 12: Artificial Intelligence TC 13: Human-Computer Interaction TC 14: Entertainment Computing
IFIP TC1 Foundations of Computer Science 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 (joint with WG 2.15) 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 2.4 Software Implementation Technology WG 2.5 Numerical Software WG 2.6 Databases WG 2.7 User Interface Engineering (Joint with WG 13.4) 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 (Joint with WG 12.14) WG 2.13 Open Source Software WG 2.14 Service-Oriented Systems (Joint with WG 6.12/WG8.10) WG 2.15 Verified Software (joint with WG 1.9) 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.John Impagliazzo, History of Computing and Education 2 (HCE2): IFIP 19th World Computer Congress, WG 9.7, TC 9: History of Computing, Proceedings of the Second Conference on the History of Computing and Education, August 21–24, Santiago, Chile (2006), p. 8
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 (COVE) 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 (Communication Systems) is one of the largest TCs within IFIP in terms of activities and revenues. TC6 has nine Working Groups (WGs) as well as a number of Special Interest Groups (SIGs), 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 (IM) and Wireless Days (WD).
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 (past) TC6 members include: Vint Cerf, André Danthine, Donald Davies, Roger Scantlebury, Peter Kirstein, Robert (Bob) 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 (vice-)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 (DL). 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 (usually 500 Euro each) as well as Student Travel Grants (usually 750 Euro). Conference organisers who intend to obtain IFIP sponsorship are encouraged to fill-in the online Event Request Form (ERF). Depending on the category and type of event, IFIP may charge fees to conferences to cover the costs of (future) 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 (Joint with WG 8.10/WG2.14) In November 2015, a new Special Interest Group on "Internet of People" (IoP) was created.
IFIP TC7 System Modeling and Optimization