Catalogue description Records of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency and predecessors

The Central Computer Agency was established on 1 April 1972, following the report of the Select Committee on Science and Technology in October 1971, in order to bring together the central functions concerned with the use of computers in government. The formation of the agency within the Civil Service Department integrated the department's Management Services (Computers) Division (which had previously assumed from the Treasury responsibility for financial control of administrative computer projects); the Computer Procurement Division and the Central Computer Bureau of the Stationery Office; and the Technical Support Unit of the Department of Trade and Industry. In 1973 the agency was given responsibility for central policy and practice in the provision and use of telecommunications for administrative purposes in departments. This included functions previously undertaken by other divisions of the Civil Service Department and by the Department of the Environment, including the development of administrative telecommunications systems for government.

The agency changed its name to the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency in 1979, and in 1981 responsibility for it passed to the Treasury. In 1992, responsibility moved again to the Office of Public Service and Science, by which time the agency's acronym, CCTA, was expanded to ' the Government Agency for Information Systems'.