The Italian National Institute of Statistics (Italian: Istituto Nazionale di Statistica; Istat) is the main producer of official statistics in Italy.^[2] Its activities include the census of population, economic censuses and a number of social, economic and environmental surveys and analyses. Istat is by far the largest producer of statistical information in Italy, and is an active member of the European Statistical System, coordinated by Eurostat.

Its publications are released under creative commons "Attribution" (CC BY) license.

Istat was created in 1926 as "Central Institute of Statistics" (Istituto Centrale di Statistica), to collect and organize essential data about the nation. It took its current denomination with the reform of 1989. This also gave Istat statutory responsibility for the coordination and standardization of official statistics collected or published under the aegis of the national statistical system SISTAN, whose membership includes the statistical offices of ministries, national agencies, regions, provinces, communes, chambers of commerce, and similar bodies. Since 4 August 2009, Enrico Giovannini, former Chief statistician of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has been the President of the institute.

Istituto Centrale di Statistica:

Istituto Nazionale di Statistica:

Istat has 18 regional offices which host public access points named Centri di informazione statistica, in English Statistical information centers. The center in Rome also offers data from Eurostat.

The library, established in 1926, is open to the public and contains Istat publications, national and international works on statistical and socioeconomics subjects, journals from other national statistical institutes and international organizations (Food and Agriculture Organization, International Monetary Fund, OECD, United Nations, etc.). The library collection includes 400,000 volumes and receives about 2800 periodical journals. There are also 1500 volumes printed prior to 1900.