A nationwide computer network proposed from 1962 by Soviet cyberneticist Viktor Glushkov to gather data and help plan and manage the USSR's economy. The Politburo reviewed it on 1 October 1970; it was never funded in full or built.
OGAS (All-State Automated System) was designed by Viktor Glushkov of the Institute of Cybernetics in Kyiv. The 1962 plan envisaged one central computer centre in Moscow, several hundred regional centres and up to 20,000 local centres with remote access, and electronic receipts in place of paper money. Glushkov pressed the project for about twenty years. Rivalry between the Central Statistical Administration and the Ministry of Finance, and the cost, stalled it; a smaller network of computing centres was favoured instead. Only local systems were built.
No national network was built. Smaller computing-centre systems and local management systems were developed instead. The design later became a standard case in histories of cybernetic planning and the Soviet 'internet'.
Peters attributes the failure mainly to competition between ministries over who would control the network, not to technology alone. Cost and Glushkov's death in 1982 also weakened it. By 1989 the effort had lapsed.
In 1962 Glushkov proposed a three-tier computer network (one central centre in Moscow, several hundred regional centres, up to 20,000 local centres) for accounting, planning and governing the Soviet economy, including electronic payments instead of paper money.[1]
The Politburo heard Glushkov on 1 October 1970; Finance Minister Garbuzov opposed the full plan and favoured a narrower network of computing centres, so OGAS was not adopted as proposed.[1][2]
Peters argues OGAS failed chiefly through unregulated competition among Soviet institutions, not for lack of technology or private property; other accounts add cost and Glushkov's death in 1982.[1][2]