§ Mr. J. H. Osbornasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much money has been allocated to research and development in the use of computers and telecommunication systems for information storage and retrieval by all Government Departments in the current year; what proposals he has for accelerating this work; and what sum of money will be allocated for this purpose next year.
§ Mr. DiamondMany of the automatic data processing projects at present under development in Government Departments will be used in part for information storage and retrieval, but it is not practicable to separate that element of the268W cost which is attributable to this facet. The Office for Scientific and Technical Information has been allocated £290,000 for 1966–67 for research and development into scientific and technical information services and part of this sum will be used for computer and telecommunication aspects of this work. This Office's estimate for 1967–68 will be published in the Civil Estimates.