A multinational federation of professional and technical organisations (or national groupings of such organisations) concerned with information processing. From any one country, only one such organisation - which must be representative of the national activities in the field of information processing - can be admitted as a Full Member. In addition, a regional group of developing countries can be admitted as a Full Member. On 1 October 1993, 46 organisations were Full Members of the Federation, representing 66 countries.

IFIP was founded under the auspices of UNESCO and advises them and the ITU-T.