CIPAL is an inter-municipal ICT service with headoffices in Geel

Geel

Geel is a city located in the Belgian province of Antwerp which acquired the status of a city in the 1980s.It comprises Central-Geel which is constituted of 4 old parishes a/o towns : Sint-Amand, Sint-Dimpna, Holven and Elsum...

. Its name refers to the province of Antwerp

Antwerp (province)

Antwerp is the northernmost province both of the Flemish Region, also called Flanders, and of Belgium. It borders on the Netherlands and the Belgian provinces of Limburg, Flemish Brabant and East Flanders. Its capital is Antwerp which comprises the Port of Antwerp...

 and Limburg

Limburg (Belgium)

Limburg is the easternmost province of modern Flanders, which is one of the three main political and cultural sub-divisions of modern Belgium. It is located west of the river Meuse . It borders on the Dutch provinces of North Brabant and Limburg and the Belgian provinces of Liège, Flemish Brabant...

. The organisation is a governmental ICT-agency and inter-municipal association of municipalities, cities, towns, Social Welfare Centers, Provinces and other public authorities and it only provides services for public authorities.

History

CIPAL was founded as CIPA (E: Centre for Informatics of the Province Antwerp) by Royal Decree on 2 April 1979 as a subregional centre of informatics and CIPA started in 1 January 1980. On 2 April 1983 CIPAL was founded as a collaboration between the Antwerp CIPA and the Limburg LIRIC (Dutch: Limburgs Reken- en Informatiecentrum). In 1987, the ICA (Dutch: Informatica Centrum Antwerpen) was created, aimed at the City of Antwerp which would become Telepolis Antwerpen and now Digipolis. In 1994, the headquarters of CIPAL moved to Geel. CIPAL nowadays services public authorities of the Flemish

Flanders

Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

region of Belgium. On 22 April 2002 an agreement was signed for the development of a metropolitan library network for Antwerp.