It collects and publishes information about the French economy and people and carries out the periodic national census.

The INSEE was created in 1946 as a successor to the Vichy regime's National Statistics Service (SNS).

[6] As part of this reorganization, six new offices were created in the Northern (occupied) zone whose regional structure is maintained today in INSEE.

René Carmille created an Applied Sciences School (predecessor of the current ENSAE) to specially train members for the SNS.

From his position in the SNS he sabotaged the Nazi census of France, which saved untold numbers of Jewish people from death camps.

In order to prepare for the dissemination of the 1999 French population census, INSEE developed a system for dividing the country into units of equal size, known as IRIS2000, now known simply as 'IRIS'.

Since 1999, IRIS has represented the fundamental unit for dissemination of infra-municipal data in France and its overseas departments and regions.