The Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) is a non-profit private law body associated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of NTUA which has been established in 1989 by the Ministry of Education of Greece, in order to promote research and development activity in all diverse aspects of computer and telecommunications systems and their applications.

The Information Management Unit (IMU) operates within the ICCS as an interdisciplinary Unit engaged in research and consulting activities, which lie in the area of information technology management.

IMU aims to develop and validate innovative models, tools, structures and processes that leverage the use of Information Technology for value creation in private and public sector settings. Our motivation is to assist organizations create added value with radically new ways of organizing work and conducting commerce, such as virtual work, e-collaboration and collaborative commerce.

Our research is multidisciplinary and focuses on: Knowledge management and semantic technologies; Collaborative spaces and workflow management; and Enterprise transformation and process engineering. We strive to provide practical results in: e-government service provision; networked virtual organizations and enterprise application integration. Some applications of our work include: corporate KM solutions, models and systems for the electronic delivery of public services, p2p architectures for knowledge sharing, e-contracting and e-negotiation systems, and systems for supporting the management of virtual consortia.

During the 1998-2004 period IMU participated in eight (8) research projects with a total funding that exceeds one million euros, which were funded by the European Commissions fifth framework programme for Research and Technology Development (programmes ESPRIT and Information Society Technologies) and by the Greek General Secretariat for Research and Technology (Operational Programme on Research and Technology).

IMU has developed collaborations with industrial partners like SAP AG, IBM, HP, Siemens, BT, France Telecom, EADS, VTT, SchlumbergerSema, COWI, CARSA, TXT e-solutions, Gruppo Formula, Alfamicro, OpenGroup, SINTEF, CAS Software, Cézanne, UBS, Empolis, TWI, Indra systemas, NAI Gooch Webster, Knowledge Associates, Netguide, Tradezone and DHC. Moreover, the academic co-operations of IMU include institutions like INSEAD, University of St Gallen, BIBA, Arizona State University, Telematica Institute, University of Karlsruhe, CIMRU, University of Aachen, London School of Economics, Politecnico di Milano, University of Brighton, University of Sunderland, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, FZI and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).

IMU is a member of the European Knowledge Management Forum (EKMF: A Forum for the Exchange of European Knowledge Management Expertise) and the Ontoweb scientific community (Ontology-based information exchange for Knowledge Management and Electronic Commerce), through which it participated in the First European Summer School on Ontological Engineering and the Semantic Web (SSSW-2003).

IMU has also been active in disseminating research results in the Knowledge Management community. Specifically the unit has been active in the organisation of the following conferences and workshops: the 4th Conference on Knowledge Management in Electronic Government (KMGov2003) jointly organised by IFIP WG 8.3 & WG 8.5 and GI FA 6.2.; the «Knowledge Management Initiativeâ?, a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to the advancement of the state-of-the-art in methods and tools for Knowledge Management in South-Eastern Europe; the workshop â??Knowledge Management and the Learning Organisation", 16 November 2000 [invited speakers included Larry Prusak (IBM) and Dorothy Leonard (Harvard University)]; the conference Knowledge Management for Competitive Advantage in the Digital Economy, in cooperation with the European IT Services Association, 23/10/2001.

IMU will be led by CLOAKING .