The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) is a non-profit
umbrella organization for national societies working in the field of information
processing. It was founded in 1960 under the auspices of UNESCO. It is organized
into several technical committees. This book represents the proceedings of the 2006
conference of technical committee 8 (TC8), which covers the field of information
systems. This conference formed part of IFIP's World Computer Congress in Chile.
The occasion celebrated the 30th anniversary of IFIP TC8 by looking at the past,
present and future of information systems. The proceedings reflect not only the
breadth and depth of the work of TC8, but also the international nature of the group,
with authors from 18 countries being represented in the 21 papers (including two
invited papers) and 2 panels. All submissions were rigorously refereed by at least
two reviewers and an associate editor and following the review and resubmission
process nearly 50% of submissions were accepted. This paper introduces the papers
and panels presented at the conference and published in this volume. It is never
straightforward to classify a set of papers but we have made an attempt and this
classification is also reflected in the sessions of the conference itself. The
classification for the papers is as follows: the world of information systems - early
pioneers; developing improved information systems; information systems in their
domains of application; the discipline of information systems; issues of production;
IT impacts on the organization; tools and modeling and new directions.