Historical Archives: Read

The President of the National Statistical Institute is appointed by decree of the President of the Republic on the proposal of the Prime Minister after deliberation by the Council of Ministers. The President is selected from among full professors of statistical, economic and related subjects; his term of office lasts four years and may be renewed once only.
He is the legal representative of the Institute with regard to issues of a general nature, oversees Istat’s performance and ensures its technical and scientific coordination. He attends to relations with institutions and international organisations. He verifies the implementation of guidelines expressed by the Governing Board, to which he reports periodically.

Istat President

(from 1926 to 1989 Central Institute of Statistics, then National Institute of Statistics)

• Corrado Gini (Motta di Livenza 1884 – Rome 1965), statistician, sociologist, university professor, in office from 1926 to 1932
• Franco Rodolfo Savorgnan (Trieste 1879 – Rome 1963), statistician, sociologist, university professor, in office from 1932 to 1943
• Alberto Canaletti Gaudenti (Sirolo 1887 – Rome 1966), statistician, university professor, politician, Senator, Councilor of State, in office from 03/29/1945 to 1949
• Lanfranco Maroi (Avellino 1889 – Rome 1974), economist, statistician, university professor, in office from 07/31/1949 to 1961
• Giuseppe De Meo (Rome 1906 – Rome 1996), economist, statistician, university professor, in office from 1961 to 1980
• Guido Maria Rey (Bologna 1936), economist, statistician, university professor, in office from 1980 to 1993)
• Alberto Zuliani (Rome 1940), statistician, university professor, in office from 05/1993 to 2001
• Luigi Biggeri (Bibbiena 1939), economist, statistician, university professor, in office from 2001 to 2009
• Enrico Giovannini (Rome 1957), economist, statistician, university professor, Minister of Labour, in office from 08/04/2009 to 04/28/2013
• Antonio Golini (Catanzaro 1937), statistician, university professor, in office from 13 June 2013 to 2014
• Giorgio Alleva (Rome 1955), economist, statistician, university professor, in office from 2014 to 2018
• Maurizio Franzini (Rome 1950), economist, university professor, in acting office since 08/2018 to 03/02/2019
• Gian Carlo Blangiardo (Arona 1948), economist, statistician, university professor, in office from 4/02/2019 to 21/03/2023
• Francesco Maria Chelli (1959), statistician, university professor, in acting office since 15/05/2023 to 05/2024, president from 30/05/2024

Learn more about the biographies, activities and publications of the Presidents

The Historical Archive was established in 2001. It preserves the main types of documents produced by the Institute: official and administrative acts, methodological studies and researches, questionnaire models, statistical analyses, preparatory material for surveys, reports and project analyses of collegial bodies, brochures and press releases.
In order to establish the Historical Archive, first of all, all documentary material produced by Istat was collected, as well as the still existing documentation previously produced by the General General Statistics Departmentfor of the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade, which later merged with the Institute in 1926.
The filing intervention affected therefore the archival documentation of the Institute relating to the period from the origins of the activity up to 2002.

Data collection was carried out taking into consideration the type and method of preservation of the material examined: for example, for payment and collection orders, filing of the storage units was sufficient, which contain the individual documents sorted by year and issue number. In other series, on the other hand, it was appropriate to carry out a more analytical filing, by describing individual issues or groups of papers.

By examining the papers, it was found that Istat documentation was organized according to two previous classification systems, one presumably in force from the origins of the Institute until the end of 1946 and another that entered into force on January 1, 1947, applied until introduction of the new system in 1956.

The work of reconstructing and sorting the series led to the identification of two large sections in which the general archive was organized:

• a collection of papers (both original and in copy) ordered according to a classification scheme by subject and by entity, which testifies to the activity of the Institute in its totality and entirety, regardless of the internal partitions of competence, called the Central Archive;
• a collection of papers organized into funds corresponding to the various producer offices, structured in series according to criteria set by each office and functional to the performance of their tasks, called Local Archives.

There was therefore a double and parallel system for collecting and storing papers: documentation relating to a file could also be found preserved (at least in some of its parts) in both partitions.

The new organization of the archive since 1956 has resulted in the dismemberment some existing series, which have been brought to the arrangement suggested by the new classification scheme.
A comparative prospectus between the classification schemes from 1947 and the previous one was also found. Therefore, even if the original organization of some series, especially the oldest ones, has been lost, it is however possible to outline their structure at least virtually through this same prospectus.
Part of the documentation prior to 1956 had not been included in the new organization: these files have been placed within the series of documentary complexes belonging to the local archives.

Continue reading, deepen the Articulation of the Historical Archive.

Consult the funds cards in Istat Multimedia Historical Archive.