Britain's Alvey Programme
On 28 April 1983 the UK Secretary of State for Industry, Patrick Jenkin, told Parliament that the Government accepted the Alvey Committee's recommendation: a five-year programme of collaborative research by industry, universities and government laboratories in four areas, among them intelligent knowledge-based systems. The report put the programme at about 350 million pounds, some 200 million of it public.
Why it matters
Artificial intelligence research in Britain became part of industrial policy, on condition that firms share results with their partners; the minister called it the first collaborative research project on anything like this scale in the country's history. The Government said outright that it was a response to the Japanese initiative.
The four areas: software engineering, very large-scale integration, man-machine interfaces and intelligent knowledge-based systems. Academic research, about 50 million pounds, is paid for in full by the Government; industrial research, about 300 million, by half. The committee had proposed 90 per cent public money for some projects; the Government declined, since in the minister's words that share does not secure a sufficient industrial commitment. The money comes from three departments, Industry, Education and Science (through the Science and Engineering Research Council) and Defence, without adding to their allocations. A directorate in the Department of Industry under Brian Oakley runs the programme. The Government received the report in September 1982; the opposition in both Houses complained of eight months' delay. What the record does not claim. The committee's report itself was not read: the record gives it only as the Government summarised it. How much the programme finally spent and what it achieved, the statement could not know.