IFIP

The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) is a global non-profit, non-political federation of societies of ICT professionals that aims to achieve the worldwide professional and socially responsible development and application of the information and communication technologies. It was established in 1960 under the auspices of UNESCO.

Software has become pervasive and increasingly complex. Many non-software products and services, from healthcare to transport, education to business, finance to energy, depend on reliable, high-quality software. The increasing demand for software is fuelled by the increasing capability of software to perform tasks that were previously accomplished through some form of hardware. However, many problems continue to exist in software projects, which can be attributed to poor preparation, poor project management, insufficient understanding, and insufficient resources. One issue is the massive increase in the volume and quality of software required to fuel the demand in new domains where software has not been always of primary significance. The software required for domains such as health and medicine cannot be “more of the same”. It is essential that continued software research helps to raise the practice of software and system development to a fully–fledged professional discipline (similar to the other sciences and engineering) rather than the “craft” (reliant on a limited pool of talented and educated professionals) that it is today. As in other fields, we can learn from the past and past experience. Software Heritage provides invaluable expertise, experience and data that will help us improve our software development processes.

— Mike Hinchey, President of IFIP