German Society for Informatics

Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI) is a non-profit organization with about 20,000 members living across the world. Most of them develop the discipline of informatics by teaching, researching or working in the field of informatics, while others are involved in related business and political areas. The main purpose of this network of professionals is to promote the impact that informatics has had on the economy, business and society in general.

Starting about 50 years ago – at the time when the first informatics departments were being set up in Germany – our first aim was to build up, implement, grow and strengthen the academic discipline. Accreditation has been one of our important goals for some time now. In the past, together with a small group of experts, the society drew up the "Standards for the Accreditation of Study Programs in Informatics and Interdisciplinary Informatics Study Programs at German Institutes of Higher Education", which at that time were the first standards of that kind and which later served as the basis for the formulation of the subject-specific ASIIN criteria for this field. Updates of these standards has been published in 2005 and 2016.

GI supports networking between researchers in industry, research institutes and universities by providing more than 100 special interest groups and about 40 regional branches. They can all rely on the same network of knowledge, best practices, skills and experience. Scientific and technical staffs from all types of colleges and research institutions play an active role in GI. For the students, GI offers a network of contacts, information and coaching across many universities. The number of freelance and self-employed IT experts in Germany is growing. Within GI those run an own special interest group. Our cooperation with the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry reaches from blue chip companies developing new architectures and solutions to a broad range of small and medium-sized companies who are adding value to their products by producing or using advanced IT solutions.

https://gi.de