Research activities include:
- All of the mandatory activities – whether provided for by law, by the Institute’s Statute or by higher-level administrative proceedings – that are formally requested by public administration – be it local or national – and whose results can prove beneficial to the country’s scientific, cultural, technological, economic or social enhancement. Such tasks of institutional research are commissioned to INAPP by virtue of its establishing decree (art. 10 of Legislative Decree no. 150/2015), as well as in consequence of its official intermediary function within the framework of the Italian National Operational Programme (SPAO) based on a special convention with Anpal (the Italian National Agency for Active Labour Policies), and by virtue of its participation in SISTAN – i.e. the National Statistics System.
Among the activities that INAPP performs by virtue of law or on behalf of the Ministry of Labour is the issue of periodic reports, which include: the Report on the national system of vocational training and on its current state and future perspectives; the Annual Report on apprenticeships; the Report on vocational training options on offer; the yearly Report on activities of monitoring of educational practices as far as the right and obligation to education and training are concerned with respect to state-of-the-art education and training curricula in Vocational High Schools (IeFP), which includes the IeFP dual system; the yearly Report to Parliament on continuing training in Italy and on Italian educational and training practice, with a focus on the outcomes of related policies and public and private support tools; the report to Parliament on the enforcement of Law # 68/1999 (Right to Work for Persons with Disabilities).
On the matter of active ageing, the Institute cooperates with the national Ministry for the enactment and monitoring of MIPAA (the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing); it also participates in MIPAA-related activities of national coordination initiated by the Department for Family Policies of the Italian Council of Ministers (2019-2022). Inapp also cooperates with the General Department for Immigration and Migrant Integration Policies of the Italian Ministry of Labour, taking part in the “Activities of intervention, analysis, monitoring and evaluation of integration policies in support of subjects from foreign countries”. As an intermediary agent for the SPAO PON (National Operational Programme), and in keeping with the activities it carried out when it was a beneficiary of the European Social Fund, the Institute performs tasks in the domains of employment (Axis I of the PON), Education and Training (Axis II of the PON), Institutional and social capacity (Axis IV of the PON), Technical Assistance (focusing on information and communication).
- Studies and surveys related to the autonomous definition of stances, strategies to tackle and themes to focus on, which shall be based upon a reading of contemporary contexts and anticipation of possible scenarios in the future. Insofar as it is multidisciplinary, integrated by comparisons with international research, and based on stringent scientific methods and standards, such research activity is apt to serve as a scientific foundation stone for the definition of political choices and criteria against which results in this domain can be assessed.
As far as the Third Mission is concerned, the activities performed by the Institute primarily consist in the sharing of research outcomes through non-academic channels and recasting them in a language that is made comprehensible to unspecialized audiences; the sharing of research outcomes with the relevant parties via open-access platforms (such as INAPP’s Open Archive); the planning, launch and involvement in social, educational and cultural initiatives for the benefit of both specialised and general audiences (such as institutions, universities, schools, companies, associations, foundations, etc.); the engagement of scholars and other professionals in activities of peer revision, to guarantee the high quality of scientific projects or validate the results of research. For such projects, the Institute often seeks cooperation with external researchers who are experts in the relevant fields.