As the National Computing Centre celebrates its 40th
anniversary, chief executive Michael Gough sees innovation
management bringing deeper integration of human and digital
interaction. John Riley reports
The National Computing Centre, which celebrates its 40th
anniversary this Saturday (10 June), is well positioned to be the
hub of the future convergence between IT and broadcasting, says its
group chief executive Michael Gough.
The NCC’s mission to be a centre of information and expertise on
the implications and exploitation of technology could easily be
applied to a wider convergence, says Gough.
“We are already beginning to resemble a broadcast environment
rather than a traditional computing model. We are not many years
from a full-blown convergence of every form of information and
content in response to queries in real time over the internet,” he
says.
Gough believes the NCC, with its proximity in Manchester to the
BBC’s regional headquarters and Manchester University, should be at
the forefront of this convergence. “Manchester is set to be the
home of digital industries in the converged world,” he says.
Gough sees the NCC as a distributor to chief information
officers of advice and content for the knowledge economy. “We are
very interested in supporting the emergence of a new breed of
people who can handle content creation, management and delivery,
together with the IT skills for making these services available,”
he says.
According to Gough, the next major infrastructure shift for IT
will be innovation management, integrating human and digital
interaction, and he intends the NCC to play a key role in these
developments.
“The 1960s developed structured programming; the 1970s,
structured design; the 1980s, structured analysis; the 1990s,
project management; and the 2000s, service management. Innovation
management is next.”
Gough envisages a methodology for structured IT management
processes to incorporate human interaction.
“You can only get creativity from human networks. So little
meaning is carried over the internet. Some 80% of the way you
communicate is non-verbal. Human networks are the source of
innovation,” he says.
Gough is also committed to helping CIOs establish IT as the
recognised heart of businesses by 2010. “In some sectors, such as
finance, retail and distribution, is it already there,” he
says.
“The more businesses become dependent on IT, the more they
appoint people who understand IT. Therefore it is not a question of
getting the chief executive to turn their head to IT, but of
getting boards to recognise that they have to appoint people who
are savvy about IT.
“There will always be a requirement for business operations
directors to have a healthy understanding of IT,” he says.
Gough predicts a technology renaissance in the near future. “I
see something of a swing in interest in technology over the next
three years,” he says. “We will see the emergence of highly skilled
architects and engineers because the complexity of the world is
increasing. There is a real need for capacity planning, and
technical migration planning skills.
“By focusing on management, project, process and business
skills, some people say that technology doesn’t matter – but it
does matter.”
The rise of the NCC
The NCC was forged from the “white heat” vision of a technology
revolution whipped up by Harold Wilson’s Labour government in the
1960s.
Originally a government quango, it was set up in June 1966 as an
impartial computing resource to promote the effective use and
understanding of computers in every field of national and
commercial activity.
From the outset, it has been a user-oriented membership body,
and a strong continuity of focus underlies its past and current
activities.
The NCC has broken new ground for IT users and suppliers through
its involvement in areas such as interoperability, IT process
innovation, training and education, regulation, research, testing,
accreditation and administration of government IT schemes.
For its first 20 years the NCC was a not-for-profit
organisation, hired by the government to administer various
national IT schemes.
As public funding dried up, the NCC survived thanks to Filetab,
a ground-breaking piece of interoperable report generating software
it developed for mainframes. Filetab’s success underpinned the
NCC’s finances as successive governments cut back its funding.
Enabling interoperability is still important to the NCC today.
It is the sole certification and accreditation body for all
E-Government Interoperability Framework practitioners. Adherence to
the framework is mandatory for all systems used to deliver public
services electronically.
The NCC took an early lead in pushing for better software
standards, documentation and management processes. In the 1980s it
developed SSADM (Structured Systems Analysis and Design
Methodology) which was subsequently mandated for government
computing.
It has since contributed to the project management and service
management methodologies that developed into the Prince and IT
Infrastructure Library guidelines.
Testing and validation became a mainstay of the NCC, especially
in the 1980s, when it launched testing facilities for the OSI
seven-layer communications standards, as well as for Cobol and
Fortran. In 1985 it won a US Department of Defense contract to
validate the Ada programming language.
That heritage remains alive with the NCC’s open source and
Microsoft/Dell evaluation suites, which help local government
agencies to compare the technologies.
Such activity could not be maintained while the organisation was
run on a not-for-profit basis, and in the mid 1980s, after
suffering its first loss, the NCC decided to become a
profit-generating organisation.
Revenue from software and services, particularly from escrow,
testing and validation tools, as well as training, grew steadily
during the 1990s. This culminated in a management buy-out of the
organisation’s software and services activity in 1999, which became
the NCC Group.
The remaining membership organisation retained the name National
Computing Centre and focused on providing services to its 1,400
corporate members.
Fuelled by the cash from the split, Gough, who took over as NCC
chief executive in 2000, embarked on a series of acquisitions of
user organisations.
These included Certus, which brought in a leadership programme;
the blue-chip user organisation CIO-Connect; the Institute of IT
Training, which oversees the IT trainers; and the Impact Programme,
which facilitates business/IT understanding.
“Our role is unique, to be a lifelong partner for members at
each stage in their careers,” said Gough.
The ProfIT alliance, launched last month to create a formal
competency framework for IT professionalism in the UK, fits well
the NCC’s mission to help UK organisations contribute to the
economy through the effective use of IT.
“The ProfIT programme is a fantastic opportunity to make a
difference,” said Gough. “It will be a tragedy for the country if
we don’t succeed.”
A brief history of the NCC
1966 Prime minister Harold Wilson launches the
National Computing Centre in Manchester to promote understanding
and effective use of IT
1967 Develops systems analysis training
programme which develops into government-mandated methods SDM and
SSADM
1969 Develops Filetab mainframe
interoperability software
1976 Launches Threshold Scheme to provide
on-the-job IT training for school leavers
1983 Establishes software escrow service
1986 Sets up Ada validation centre for the US
Department of Defense
1987 Publishes SSADM reference manual
1990 Launches Impact Programme to promote IT
management to senior staff – the programme is acquired by
professional services firm KPMG in 1992.
1995 Develops PC driving test, which later
becomes the European computer driving licence. The scheme is now
accredited by the British Computer Society
1999 Management buys out of software
consultancy and services operations and adopts the name “NCC
Group”. It floats as a plc in 2004. NCC continues as
membership-focused organisation
2002-2004 NCC buys Certus, Institute of IT
Training, and blue-chip IT user organisation CIO-Connect
2004 Rebrands membership services under the
Principia banner
2004 Wins Office of Government Commerce
contract to accredit all E-Government Interoperability Framework
practitioners
2005 Re-acquires Impact Programme
2006 Joins with the BCS, Intellect and E-Skills
UK to form ProfIT Alliance to promote IT professionalism in the
UK.