Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency

Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency

Abbreviation	CCTA
Formation	1957 (as the TSU)
Dissolved	2000 (subsumed into the OGC)
Legal status	Defunct executive government agency
Purpose	New telecommunications and computer technology for the UK government
Location	Rosebery Court, St Andrew's Business Park, Norwich, Norfolk, NR7 0HS, UK
Region served	UK
Membership	Electronics and computer engineers
Parent organization	HM Treasury
Website	www.ccta.gov.uk

The Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) was a UK government agency providing computer and telecoms support to government departments.

History

Archived Records

CCTA records are now available in The UK National Archives, but, in 2024, not covering the full lifetime of the organisation

In 1957, the UK government formed the Technical Support Unit (TSU) within HM Treasury to evaluate and advise on computers, initially based around engineers from the telecommunications service. As this unit evolved, it morphed into the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency, which also had responsibilities for procurement of United Kingdom Government technological equipment, and later, that centrally funded for University and Research Council systems.

Technical Services

Note that nearly all names and authors, quoted or referenced in this section, were CCTA engineers or scientists.

In 1965 responsibility for TSU was transferred from HM Treasury to the Ministry of Technology. At that time telecommunications engineering staff comprised 8 dealing with Systems Evaluations, 6 with Peripheral Equipment and 10 in the areas of Accommodation, Testing, and Maintenance. Details of names, grades, qualifications, salary and relevant experience can be found in Hansard Volume 717: debated on Tuesday 27 July 1965.

Technical Services Reliability and Acceptance Trials

Procurement contracts included guaranteed service levels where, at least in the early days, was monitored by TSU engineers, to whom all fault incident occurrences and system availability levels were submitted on a monthly basis. The contracts also included requirements to run on-site and sometimes predelivery acceptance trials of a specified format, designed and supervised by engineering staff.

The acceptance tests comprised a series of demonstrations to verify that everything had been delivered and appeared to function, followed by stress testing of up to 40 hours, over a few days, depending on system size. For the latter, engineering test programs were included and available user applications. Then, the criterion of success was to achieve a given level of uptime. In 1968, new procedures were introduced, particularly involving stress testing, where each main tests were aimed to run for 15 minutes, with criteria that, besides a maximum time limit, each test was required to run failure free six times in succession.

During this period, on invitation, five CCTA engineers presented papers on acceptance testing at the Institution of Electrical Engineers.

At this stage, concern was raised regarding how to test computers with the new Multiprogramming Operating Systems. The problem was solved by Roy Longbottom who, at various promotion levels between 1968 and 1982, was responsible for designing and supervising acceptance trials of the larger scientific systems. He produced 17 programs, written in the FORTRAN programming language, 5 for CPUs, 4 for disk drives, 3 for magnetic tape units and others for printers, card and paper tape punchers and readers. Program code listings are included in the book *Computer System Reliability* (Appendix 1).

By 1972, 800 acceptance tests of computers systems and enhancements were carried out including 500 for complete systems systems, reported in The Post Office Electrical Engineers Journa. The latter tests included 100 using the new procedures from 11 different contractors. The first candidate was an IBM 360 Model 65 at University College London in 1971, then in 1972 by trials on all mainframes, minicomputers and supercomputers covered by CCTA contracts. Later that year, top end systems tested were the $5 million scalar supercomputers CDC 7600 at University of London Computer Centre and IBM 360/195 at UK Meteorological Office.

Not included in the 100, but significant, 1973 trials included the Atlas_(computer) at Cambridge University, a latter day version of the 1962 UK supercomputer. During the 100 trials, 23 systems failed to meet the specified criteria, at the first attempt.

By 1979 more than 1600 acceptance tests of computers systems and enhancements were carried out. For the latest 400 system tests, 14% were recorded as failures and 24% as having a conditional pass. Up to three attempts were allowed with none being completely rejected, albeit some accepted with penalty conditions. See Chapter 10 in the Longbottom book.

Detailed analysis of fault returns, hands on observations during acceptance trials and system appraisal activities lead to a deeper understanding of reliability issues, initially publish in a 1972 Radio and Electronic Engineer Journal, titled “Analysis of Computer System Reliability and Maintainability”, with probability considerations. Later, came a conference paper “Reliability of Computer Systems” (Archive) and the Roy Longbottom book that particularly acknowledges input provided by Ian Thomson on computer system maintainability and Trevor Jones on environmental aspects..

Trials in 1979 included the first Cray 1 vector supercomputer to be delivered to the UK at Atomic Weapons Research Establishment and, by 1982, the CDC Cyber 205 for UK Meteorological Office, where total system costs could be $10 million. Both these systems had pre-delivery trials in the USA. For these, Roy Longbottom converted the scalar CPU programs to fully exploit capabilities of the new vector processors. Results of the converted benchmark were included in the paper “Performance of Multi-User Supercomputing Facilities” presented in the 1989 Fourth International Conference on Supercomputing, Santa Clara.

For the systems identified as supercomputers, there were nine acceptance testing sessions, two of which were failures, one due to excessive CPU problems and the other due to design issues on the I/O subsystem. Both of these were induced by the CCTA stress testing programs.

IS/IT Strategies

In this area, CCTA's work during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s was primarily to (a) develop central government IT professionalism, (b) create a body of knowledge and experience in the successful development and implementation of IS/IT within UK central government (c) to brief Government Ministers on the opportunities for use of IS/IT to support policy initiatives (e.g. "Citizen's Charter" / "e-government") and (d) to encourage and assist UK private sector companies to develop and offer products and services aligned to government needs.

Over the 3 decades, CCTA's focus shifted from hardware to a business oriented systems approach with strong emphasis on business led IS/IT Strategies which crossed Departmental (Ministry) boundaries encompassing several "Departments" (e.g. CCCJS – Computerisation of the Central Criminal Justice System). This inter-departmental approach (first mooted in the mid to late 1980s) was revolutionary and met considerable political and departmental opposition.

In October 1994, MI5 took over its work on computer security from hacking into the government's (usually the Treasury) network. In November 1994, CCTA launched its website. In February 1998 it built and ran the government's secure intranet. The MoD was connected to a separate network. In December 1998, the DfEE moved its server from CCTA at Norwich to NISS (National Information Services and Systems) in Bath when it relaunched its website.

Between 1989 and 1992, CCTA's "Strategic Programmes" Division undertook research on exploiting Information Systems as a medium for improving the relationship between citizens, businesses and government. This parallelled the launch of the "Citizen's Charter" by the then Prime Minister, John Major, and the creation within the Cabinet Office of the "Citizen's Charter Unit" (CCTA had at this point been moved from HM Treasury to the Cabinet Office). The research and work focused on identifying ways of simplifying the interaction between citizens and government through the use of IS/IT. Two major TV documentaries were produced by CCTA – "Information and the Citizen" and "Hymns Ancient and Modern" which explored the business and political issues associated with what was to become "e-government". These were aimed at widening the understanding of senior civil servants (the Whitehall Mandarins) of the significant impact of the "Information Age" and identifying wider social and economic issues likely to arise from e-government.

Merger

During the late 1990s, its strategic role was eroded by the Cabinet Office's Central IT Unit (CITU – created by Michael Heseltine in November 1995), and in 2000 CCTA was fully subsumed into the Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

Successors

Since then, the non-procurement IT / Telecommunications co-ordination role has remained in the Cabinet Office, under a number of successive guises:

• The Office of the E-Envoy (OeE)
• The eGovernment Unit (eGU)
• The Transformational Government (TG) Group
• The Government Digital Service

Activities

CCTA was the sponsor of a number of methodologies, including:

• Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM)
• PRojects IN Controlled Environments (PRINCE, PRINCE2), which is an evolution of PROMPT, a project management method created by Simpact Systems Ltd in 1975 that was adopted by CCTA in 1979 for Government information system projects
• Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which has largely evolved through BS15000 into the ISO20000 series
• The CCTA Risk Analysis and Management Method (CRAMM), developed at the request of the Cabinet Office in 1985

The CCTA Security Group created the first UK Government National Information Security Policy, and developed the early approaches to structured information security for commercial organisations which saw wider use in the DTI Security Code of Practice, BS 7799 and eventually ISO/IEC 27000

CCTA also promoted the use of emerging IT standards in UK government and in the EU, such as OSI and BS5750 (Quality Management) which led to the publishing of the Quality Management Library and the inception of the TickIT assessment scheme with DTI, MOD and participation of software development companies.

In addition to the development of methodologies, CCTA produced a comprehensive set of managerial guidance covering the development of Information Systems under 5 major headings: A. – Management and Planning of IS; B. – Systems Development; C. – Service Management; D – Office Users; E. – IS Services Industry. The guidance consisted of 27 individual guides and were published commercially as "The Information Systems Guides" (ISBN 0-471-92556-X) by John Wiley and Sons. The publication is no longer available. This guidance was developed from the practical experience and lessons learned from many UK Government Departments in planning, designing, implementing and monitoring Information Systems and was highly regarded as "best practice". Some parts were translated into other European languages and adopted as national standards.

It also was involved in technical developments, for instance as the sponsor of Project SPACE in the mid 1980s. Under Project SPACE, the ICL Defence Technology Centre (DTC), working closely with technical staff from CCTA and key security-intensive projects in the Ministry of Defence (such as OPCON CCIS) and in other sensitive departments, developed an enhanced security variant of VME.

It managed (ran the servers) of UK national government websites, including those such as the Royal Family's and www.open.gov.uk.

Structure

CCTA's headquarters were in London at Riverwalk House, Vauxhall Bridge Road, SW1, since used by the Government Office for London. This housed the main divisions with a satellite office in Norwich which focused on IS/IT Procurement – a function which had been taken over from HMSO (the Stationery Office) when CCTA was formed.

The office in Norwich was in the east of the city, off the former A47 (now A1042), just west of the present A47 interchange near the former St Andrew's Hospital. The site is now used by the OGC.

The HQ in London had four divisions:

• Project support – major IT programmes – software engineering
• Specialist support – evaluation of individual items of hardware and software
• Strategic Planning and Promotion – project management and office technology (hardware and office automation)
• Advance Technology – telecommunications and advanced technology (latest generation of computers)