ARPNET is the acronym which identifies the whole set of networking services provided by CSI-Piemonte to local public administrations.

CSI (Consorzio per il Sistema Informativo) is a government agency which combines the Piedmont Region, the City and Province of Turin, the Turin universities and 11 local Piedmont administrations in the form of a consortium. It is the main tool in the implementation of regional strategies and planning. It was set up in 1977.

CSI designs, develops and manages information systems for the region as well as for the other members of the Consortium. It promotes and implements forms of continuing co- operation between territory agencies and universities in the research and development of new information technology, in its application to both Public Administration and industry and in the use and training of such new technology.

The Consortium aims at providing local agencies with technical know-how and developing schemes for co-ordinating their systems. It provides them with systems engineering assistance, specialised skills, online data centre support, consultancy with respect to procedure updating and development of application software.

CSI operates in the fields of health care and assistance, the environment, civil protection, land use, libraries and data banks, expert systems, training, telecommunications and office automation. It offers advanced technology projects. Its clients range from the smallest municipality to the national Government, through to every intermediate local agency, and it tackles the most diverse application problems with a view to global integration.

The Consortium provides local public administrations with INTERNET resources, with an interactive access to services of remote hosts in the net in order to use specific applications such as e-mail SMTP, news, telnet, ftp, Gopher, HTTP, etc. It offers its public partners consulence for the realization and development of online applications.