Vision

GARR will increasingly be the reference point for its community, facilitating access to necessary tools and services and enabling interaction between users (applications) and infrastructure.

With features that will make it more innovative, state-of-the-art in technology, and internationally integrated. Ensuring security, reliability, inclusivity, and widespread coverage.

Mission

GARR is a non-profit association representing the Italian research, education, and scientific and humanities culture community.

It designs, implements, and manages the network infrastructure and services based on community needs, ensuring reliability, sustainability, and efficiency.

Strategy

To design, build, manage, maintain, and evolve an inclusive infrastructure that provides unique, high-quality tools and services to the reference community in close collaboration with it, optimizing costs, efficiency, and value.

Values

Community, inclusivity

• Make community needs and values central to vision and strategy
• Meet user requirements, anticipating needs and proposing the most effective solutions
• Maintain active information exchange within the community, facilitating dialogue and sharing
• Ensure openness to other similar communities

Neutrality and transparency

• Ensure the network treats all user traffic identically regardless of applications, content, and technology
• Not interfere in the market, not participate in open public tenders for commercial services
• Not filter information in any way

Simplicity

• Strive to offer users intuitive and quick usage

Trust and security

• Inspire community trust through competence, reliability, and results, explicitly addressing data confidentiality and processing
• Ensure constant security management by protecting users from network and cyber attacks, minimizing negative effects
• Provide training and information for prevention

Coverage

• Allow every community member to connect to the infrastructure regardless of location and technology

Solidarity, sustainability, economy

• Build the best possible network with available resources, minimizing costs and ensuring infrastructure sustainability by appropriately distributing costs across the community

State of the art

• Use the most advanced technologies to meet user requirements with maximum effectiveness, offering innovative usage possibilities

International collaborations

• Collaborate closely at European and international levels to represent GARR community needs and values and act as a liaison for specific requirements

Actions and activities

• A network based on owned fibers (IRU) to promote long-term stability and sustainability
• Network evolution in terms of transmission capacity, flexibility, and routing
• Experiment with new services above and beyond IP
• Develop and manage Cloud and IT services to maintain control of services and knowledge
• Actively participate in and support the European GÉANT network
• Maintain direct contact with users through annual workshops, conferences, and dedicated events
• Organize and conduct training events for the community on GARR expertise topics
• Disseminate information within the community through news, events, web, etc.
• Participate in national and European projects relevant to GARR and its reference community
• Develop the nationally and internationally federated authentication and authorization system
• Ensure network security and offer users increasingly better protection

Three-year Activity Plan

The Three-year Activity Plan outlines how GARR intends to fulfill its mission of supporting the national education and research community over the next three years through continuous evolution of the network infrastructure and highly innovative services.

The Plan illustrates the objectives for the three-year period regarding the development of network infrastructure, federated cloud services, connectivity and international cooperation, digital identity services and cybersecurity, as well as presenting the main activities for training, communication, and personnel areas.

Read the Three-year Activity Plan

Gender Equality Plan

Through its Gender Equality Plan, GARR actively supports gender equality and promotes the evolution of an increasingly inclusive organization.

The Plan represents a concrete commitment to valuing differences, particularly gender differences, and promoting an organizational culture free from prejudice, based on the fundamental values of inclusivity, equity, and transparency.

This strategic plan defines a comprehensive framework, covering legal, organizational, economic, and social aspects, to effectively implement gender equality. Through a combination of established policies and new initiatives, the GEP aims to overcome remaining obstacles.

Explore the activities

 

Documents

• pdf GARR Vision, Mission, and Values 2020(716 KB)
• pdf GARR Strategy Document - 2020(800 KB)
• pdf GARR Three-year Activity Plan 2026-2028(338 KB)
• pdf GARR Gender Equality Plan 2023-2025(2.86 MB)