Vanguard - The Government Project to get British Businesses to use the Internet
Email isn't an obvious business benefit. Imagine it is the early 1980s and you need to communicate with people across the country. A first-class letter will cost you 17p - about 60p in today's money. The letter will be delivered the next day and you'll have your answer back the day after.
By contrast, a single computer terminal was likely to set you back around £3,000 - and that's before you take into account message transmission costs. That's roughly the same price as sending over 8,000 letters. Is that a sensible investment for the 1980's businessman?
In 1986, British Telecom started producing "The Communications Programme" which was "a new video magazine produced exclusively for the top communications people in the UK's largest organisations".
The show was distributed on video-tape and the archived shows are genuinely fascinating. They're a mixture of business reporting, thinly veiled advertorials, and a glance at the future of digital services.
Buried in the middle of episode 4 is this advert from the Department of Trade and Industry.
There's very little online information about the "Vanguard Project" - it was a VADS initiative (Value Added Data Services) run by DTI, BT, IBM, INS, ISTEL, and FASTRAK. Some of those acronyms survive, some don't!
Its aim was to promote awareness of EDI and its potential for the United Kingdom.
In 1986 the Department of Trade and Industry launched a project called Vanguard to promote the development of this kind of service in 10 different sectors including construction, educational supplies and wholesale food distribution. The major VADS suppliers (BT, IBM, INS, Istel and the Midland Bank) in the UK were heavily involved in the project from the beginning.
What's "EDI"?
Electronic Data Interchange.
Did it work? Well, that's hard to say!
There's a paper from 1989 called Survey of Electronic Data Interchange Users and Service Providers in the UK. It dives into the then current challenges of getting British businesses to adopt EDI.
It quotes Sir John Harvey-Jones saying that most people running companies were:
…old people like me not familiar with the technological possibilities! We have great difficulty in making imaginative jumps to see the way in which the whole of our business can be reorganised, revitalised, set up in totally new ways, releasing energy and cost and putting us into the pole position. I can see abundant evidence that the full benefits of EDI will only be reaped by the companies where the Chief Executives is seized with enthusiasm for the potential prize he can grasp.
Which still seems true today! Although over-enthusiasm has led us to a weird AI-in-everything future.
The paper doesn't talk about Vanguard specifically, although it does have this rather cute diagram adapted from one of its reports:
Not quite the Gartner Hype Cycle!
The paper concludes that:
Unfortunately the zealots of EDI tend to be unable to ‘sell’ the benefits to management in most companies, and this is not helped by the way that many companies have been forced to trade electronically. Management tends to think that EDI is about computers, and because they think that computers are technical they abdicate responsibility with the cry of ‘its all too difficult’. This must be wrong. It is up to those who understand EDI to learn how to talk to management, and it is up to management to understand that not only is EDI not about technology, but even if it was it is still their responsibility.
Again, true as it ever was!
Nestled in the bibliography is this tantalising list of publications from the now-defunct Her Majesty's Stationery Office:
None of which appear to be online, although a few are in The British Library - and a few more available on Google Books
The state awarded several contracts for Vanguard - most of which seemed to be in the training space. Here's what The EDI handbook said about it:
(My thanks to Don Thompson, Owen Boswarva, and Ms7821 for digging out some of those references.)
Did it work? By the time I entered the workforce in the 1990s, it seemed like every desk had a computer. Although the Internet was in its infancy, email and electronic ordering was a normal part of business. The various proto-Internet protocols were still around, but were quickly being replaced.
A thesis published in 1991 asked an important question:
why should a non-interventionist Government as Thatchers become directly involved in developing the market and working together with private companies whose normal aim is to increase market share at the expense of their competitors rather, than cooperate with them?
The impact of Electronic data interchange on Irish foreign trade and transport
Metcalfe's Law tells us that there is no value being the only business on a network. It simply isn't rational to invest in connecting to a data service that no-one else is on. But the value of that network increases as more people and businesses get connected. If you've read The Entrepreneurial State, you'll know that governments are often responsible for subsidising technological initiatives like this. The state, its citizenry, and its businesses all benefit from the increased efficiencies of electronic communications, so it is only right that the state should bootstrap these sorts of projects.
I sent an FoI request to find out more but it looks like all the information is now archived.
If you know of any other sources of information about Project Vanguard - please leave a comment.