COSI contributes to the development of individuals, organisations, and society through research on human-centred design and deployment of information and communication technologies (ICT). COSI focuses on understanding the people and organisational dimensions, the complexities and needs of the social networks that ICT serves, in order to optimise its social, cultural and economic benefits.

COSI builds on and extends research undertaken by its predecessor, the Enterprise Information Research Group (EIRG), which brought together a cross-disciplinary group of researchers and research activities with the common objective of improving enterprise and interpersonal information flow and recorded memory, an internationally recognised area of research strength at Monash since 2000.