The Gosplan Automated Planning System as a Necessary Step Toward the Nationwide Automated Data Processing and Control System (NACS)

Abstract

Introduction. Given the ongoing digitalization of public administration, the Soviet experience in introducing computer-aided planning warrants more research with regard to overcoming departmentalism in creating supra-institutional (national) information systems. Based on the Russian State Archive of the Economy funds, interviews with the planners and Soviet economics literature, this paper examines the reasons behind the creation of the Automated Planning System which was meant to serve as a necessary intermediate step toward the National Information System (NACS). Materials and Methods. Through the lens of the institutional economics and actor-network theory, this research explores the inter-institutional struggle for the right to supervise the creation of the new instrument for the national economic planning. Results. A vast body of Soviet literature on the Automated Planning System and the archival documents from the Russian State Archive of the Economy was compiled and analyzed alongside with the interviews conducted with the chairmen of the Main Computing Centre of the Gosplan (V. B. Bezrukov, V. V. Kossov, Y. M. Urinson) and its other employees. It enabled the author to reconstruct the history of the ASPR, describe its architecture (key blocks and functions) and trace the political struggles over the computerization of the nationwide planning system. Discussion and Conclusions. This research improves upon the historiographic narrative on the NACS as a completely unimplemented project and offers an explanatory model for the Gosplan tactics which proved most effective in the competition for the right to run the nationwide administration system. ASPR is regarded as an interim solution crucial for suppressing the bureaucratic opposition. As the Gosplan institutional system, it allowed for the exclusion of other institutions from the creation process while the conceptual shift from a single system to a unified one turned all the opponents aspiring to have their information systems into observers. At the later stage, when ASPR had been launched, the Gosplan used the obtained results to insist on linking up other systems to build the OGAS with the ASPR at its core.