Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière

The IGN depends on the French Ministry of Equipment, Transport, Town and Country Planning, Tourism and Sea.

The IGN runs four laboratories to research geographical information acquisition, production, distribution and applications.

The IGN is responsible for the management and updating of: It has to lead research, and to take part in the standardization process in the field of geographical information.

A group of French public administrations, in partnership with the IGN, establish the Large Scale Reference (Référentiel à grande échelle, RGE): orthophoto, topography, cadastral survey and address databases which can be superimposed on all the French territory, with a 1-meter resolution.

The associated shop Le Monde des Cartes at 50 Rue de la Verrerie in Paris closed in 2017.

The old maps produced by the SGA were divided into two batches: one which remained at the Institute and one which joined the military files of Vincennes.

1982 to 1988, the control of a large topometric project and numerical cartography in Riyadh is the occasion to massively introduce digital techniques into the processing production; in parallel, the idea of a topoland data base emerges at meetings of the "national Commission of the geographical information" chaired by Guy Lengagne; this commission returns his report in 1983 and outlines numerical geographical information then in agreement with the period of the basic map with 1:25 000.Publicly owned establishment related to administration since 1 January 1967, it is placed under the supervision of the ministry for Transport, the equipment, tourism and the sea.

From 2000, the IGN develops the concept of Reference frame on a Large Scale (référentiel à grande échelle = RGE); it is a question of completing within a deadline short digitalization the cartography of the French territory with a meter scale and according to four components: topography, land registry and address.

At the end of 2006, the IGN was involved in the production of a receiver GPS, for the excursion and automobile navigation, called Evadeo.

In June 2007, the IGN started offering a service whereby it is possible to have a map printed centred on any location in France.

In July 2007, Géportail – an online map service – began offering 3D movable views in a similar style to GoogleEarth.