CINI (Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l’Informatica)
CINI is a non-profit association of Italian Universities, established in 1989 under the patronage of the Italian Ministry for University and Research, to promote and support the cooperation among Italian computer scientists and engineers in national and international projects in the ICT area. Currently, 34 Universities are affiliated to CINI. These include most of the major Italian Universities, among others the Technical Universities of Milano and Torino, the Universities of Bari, Bologna, Calabria, Catania, Genova, Lecce, Milano Statale, Milano Bicocca, Napoli “Federico II”, Palermo, Pavia, Pisa, Roma “La Sapienza”, Salerno, Torino, Trento, Udine, and the Scuola Superiore S.Anna in Pisa. CINI research activities are carried out by the local Research Units located in the affiliated Universities and by research groups working in common research facilities, thus exploiting a potential workforce of several hundreds of researchers in the ICT area. The major research facility managed by CINI is the National Laboratory for Computer Science and Multimedia Systems, located in Napoli, established in 1999 with the specific goal of tackling research and technological issues in the area of design, control and management of complex network infrastructures and distributed information systems.
In the last decade CINI and the affiliated Universities have been involved in a number of e-government projects at local and national level, in cooperation with ministries and Government agencies, with the aim of devising complex ICT infrastructures and of redesigning administrative procedures to improve the efficiency of the Public Administration. It has therefore acquired a valuable experience on various topics related to the management and the preservation of digital records, and to interoperability issues in accessing digital archives and exchanging digital information.
CINI has been, or is currently involved in the following EU projects: the EU IST Program projects CADENUS (FP5-IST-1999-11017) and INTERMON (FP5-IST-2001-34123); the Network of Excellence E-NEXT (FP6-IST-2003-506869); the EU IST Program projects NETQoS (FP6-IST-2005-033516); OneLab (FP6-IST-2005- 034819); the Network of Excellence CONTENT (FP6-IST-2005-038423); INTERSECTION (FP7-ICT-2007-216585); OneLab2 (FP7-ICT-2007-224263); INSPIRE (FP7-ICT-SEC-2007-1); CoMiFin (FP7-IST-225407-STREP) and INSPIRE-International (FP7-ICT-2009-4).
