The Congress, a joint initiative of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) and the Fédération de l’informatique du Québec (FIQ), will provide an opportunity for researchers, professionals and information technology experts, educators and policy makers to share present and planned action and to discuss the state of the art in information technology.

One of the main thematic areas of the Conference will be computer security, an issue that has become particularly critical these years and that will be discussed from a variety of perspectives, including that of large service firms, citizens interacting with governments and online shoppers.

The Congress will also host a series of workshops on how to make it easier for young people around the world to access information technology. Students will be shown the many avenues that technology allows them to explore. These workshops are expected to produce recommendations that will be presented to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS - Geneva. 2003, Tunis 2005).

IFIP has been involved in the UNESCO series of consultative meetings with non-governmental organizations to prepare WSIS that took place in February and April 2002. During the meetings, civil society representatives proposed inputs to the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action.