ZKI – centres for communication and information processing

The ZKI is the German association of Higher Education (HE) IT centers and public funded reasearch organisations. The members represent all research driven universities, many of the universities of applied sciences and other kinds of universities. En masse they educate nearly 90% of all students at German universities.

ZKI is focussing on bilateral knowledge transfer and support between HE IT and companies as well as public organizations.

Many IT-companies have joined ZKI as supporting members. They have no vote in the general assembly but can participate in ZKI's activities.

ZKI organizes a twice-yearly congress for the HE IT directors.

Permanent working groups with university staff members cover nearly all fields of IT:

• strategy and organisational aspects
• information security
• identity management
• service management
• software licensing
• campus management
• e-learning
• graphics and multimedia
• network services
• central and distributed IT systems
• supercomputing
• web
• human-resources development

Committees with temporary assignments work on topics as

• frameworks for co-operation
• eduroam off campus

ZKI is member in some international associations such as EUNIS (www.eunis.org) or educause (www.educause.edu).