Researchers, as well as those looking for documents for practical purposes, note the difficulty in tracing technical materials relating to the buildings and complexes constructed under the INA-Casa Plan. This difficulty is further increased by its decentralised structure, which means that in the majority of cases, the actual construction of the buildings was carried out by subcontracted entities: administrations, public entities (often no longer in existence, such as the INCIS), private companies, construction firms and cooperative consortiums. It is not unusual to find INA-Casa buildings today about which almost nothing is known.

This database has therefore been established to guide this research, as well as to provide data to researchers interested in the INA-Casa Plan’s social and economic impact. On the one hand, it provides researchers with documents produced under the plan itself, as well as its successor, Gescal (the ten-year plan for Housing Management for Workers) and by the Ente Gestione Servizio Sociale (EGSS), or Social Services Entity Plan: technical leaflets, informative booklets, budgets, communications, forms and posters. On the other hand are the volumes with historical texts about the INA-Casa Plan that can be found in the archive, including classics such as Beretta Anguissola’s I 14 anni del Piano INA-Casa (“14 Years of the INA-Casa Plan”) or the explanatory texts of Rosario Purpura (the materials of which included in the archive have been added to with materials produced by INA-Casa/Gescal or relating to INA-Casa, recovered by Assicurazioni Generali’s Heritage division in the antique market). The database is rounded off with a collection of booklets containing regulatory sources (laws and regulations).