It was founded in 1959 to proliferate the building of permanent indoor ice rinks,[1] which numbered fewer than 100 at the time, as well as to promote skating as a recreational activity.
[1] The ISI has developed a program of tests and competitions in all areas of figure skating, as well as limited areas of speed skating and ice hockey, from "Tot" levels to advanced tests that would provide interesting challenges even to Olympic medalists.
The ISI operates its programs independently from the International Skating Union, which regulates Olympic-style figure skating competitions, and its national member federations such as U.S.
ISI competitions differ from those sanctioned by the ISU, USFSA, and other ISU-affiliated national governing bodies in several ways.
The ISI testing program is considerably broader in scope than its counterpart in the serious end of the sport: tests are offered in a slightly wider variety of disciplines, and there are test levels ranging from extremely elementary (such as the "Tot 1-4" levels for very young children, and the "Pre-Alpha" test for skaters not yet ready for the "Alpha" through "Delta" basic skills levels) through the various "level 10" tests in the figure skating disciplines (e.g., "Freestyle 10," "Figure 10"), which pose non-trivial challenges even for world-class skaters.