The seemingly simple question turns out to be relatively complicated. There are at least three clear answers, and the one that has been chosen officially does not even belong to these three but is rather arbitrary. In April 1963, the newly established Office of the University Chancellor, UKÄ, appointed a committee to investigate academic education in administrative data processing (ADB). The committee is mentioned in DSV’s chapter of the faculty’s jubilee book on page 46. In November 1964, it submitted its report to the newly appointed University Chancellor, Nils Gustav Rosén. The report proposed a new examination subject, administrative data processing, and new departments for the subject at the universities of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Lund. Rosén had never worked within the university sector and had limited opportunities to understand the report. One should also remember that universities at that time did not control or decide their organisations themselves. Everything was centrally controlled by the government via the parliament and the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs. Every new professor or lecturer who was hired was decided by parliament through formal changes in the detailed staffing tables at each institution. Universities could not employ anyone whose position and title were not listed in such a table. For a better understanding of why 1964 was such a significant year for the entire university system, see the first chapter of the faculty’s jubilee book.
In March 1965, the Government, referred to as His Majesty the King in Council, submitted a bill to parliament concerning research initiatives, one of which was the establishment of the subject administrative data processing (Prop. 1965:40, pp. 34–49). The bill discussed both the committee’s proposal and a proposal from an expert group within the National Audit Office, as well as UKÄ’s own summary, which was in practice its own proposal and partly at odds with its own committee. All proposals recommended that the subject of administrative data processing be established at the major university locations, but they differed with regard to placements and staffing. The discussion below focuses only on Stockholm.
1. The UKÄ committee proposed that the subject ADB should be established in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Stockholm University, SU, with one professorship and one lectureship.
2. The expert group at the National Audit Office instead proposed that only a lectureship be appointed at SU and that a chair be established, shared with Uppsala University and placed there. The latter was because UKÄ’s original proposal had recommended the establishment of the subject only in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Lund, with the motivation that the environment in Uppsala was too weak. The National Audit Office also proposed that a readership, roughly an associate professorship, in numerical analysis at KTH be abolished and replaced with a KTH lectureship in ADB instead, at the expense of numerical analysis. In this way the subject of numerical analysis at KTH was drawn into a discussion that in fact concerned only ADB. Numerical analysis at KTH had been its own division, commonly termed a department, since 1962 and belonged to applied mathematics.
Both proposals 1 and 2 were sent out at the same time for consultation. SU partly misinterpreted the consultation and saw it primarily as a resource reinforcement in numerical analysis (ibid., p. 42). SU also made the mistake of proposing that the existing professorship at KTH, held by Germund Dahlqvist, should be shared with SU, and at the same time proposing that the intended professorship in ADB should also be shared with KTH. This was noted by UKÄ and was later used as an argument against SU.
3. Based on the consultation responses received, the National Audit Office’s expert group modified its proposal and instead proposed both a professorship and a lectureship in ADB within the Faculty of Social Sciences at SU. As a consolation prize, KTH would receive a lectureship in numerical analysis instead.
4. As a summary in the bill, but in reality its own proposal, UKÄ suggested that larger integrated departments for information processing be created, with divisions for numerical analysis and ADB respectively, to achieve economies of scale. For Stockholm it was proposed that this larger department be located at KTH, not SU, and contain two professors, one per division. In addition, two lecturers in information processing were now proposed at KTH, but both would devote themselves to numerical analysis. It was noted in particular that the professor in ADB, unlike the one in numerical analysis, would have teaching duties at SU. The Finance Committee’s statement no. 107, which formed the basis for the parliamentary debate, followed UKÄ’s line entirely. Without this being stated explicitly in the text, the committee and thus parliament interpreted the concluding UKÄ text in Prop. 1965:40 as the real proposal. Thus SU lost both its intended department and its professorship to KTH, but had partly itself to blame when Rector Håkan Nial opened for the possibility in SU’s consultation response.
Prop. 1965:40 was passed in the First Chamber by 85 votes to 26 and in the Second Chamber by 142 to 72. Consequently, the Department of Numerical Analysis established in 1962 within the Department of Applied Mathematics at KTH was in the autumn of 1965 converted into the Department of Information Processing with two divisions. The department was from the beginning joint between KTH and SU but administered under the supervision of KTH. Germund Dahlqvist had his professorship from 1963 converted into a chair in information processing, with a specialisation in numerical analysis. To the new chair in information processing, with a specialisation in ADB, to be precise the methodology of administrative data processing, Börje Langefors from SAAB, a docent in structural engineering at Chalmers, was appointed as acting professor in the autumn of 1965. The new department moved late in the autumn of 1965 into the Clock Tower at KTH, directly adjacent to the Courtyard. The ADB division had previously had a single room at the Department of Mathematics on Hagagatan. Course planning started at once and the first introductory level one-semester course in information processing with specialisation in ADB was held at SU in the autumn term of 1966 with 70 participants in what is now the Student Palace on Norrtullsgatan, which at that time housed the departments of law and human geography. In the following years all teaching was held at KTH.
In some historical accounts it can appear as if today’s DSV was only the soft part of information technology and the technically forward-looking part were the numerics people, later NADA. But nothing could be more wrong. For example it was Börje Langefors, the first professor of ADB, who ensured that the Department of Information Processing acquired its first interactive computer, a Hewlett-Packard HP2000, as early as 1970. On it students could run BASIC interactively for the first time in Sweden. And a few years later the computer centre QZ acquired an interactive mainframe, the DEC-10, following recommendations from Jacob Palme, then employed at QZ but later a professor at what would become the Department of ADB. In fact the ADB division was significantly further ahead than the numerics division in terms of interactivity and user-friendliness. It was much later that the numerics side, under the leadership of Yngve Sundblad, would take an interest in these issues.
Unfortunately collaboration between the divisions did not work well as the two professors did not get along at all. The leadership of KTH, in consultation with the leadership of SU, after a few years felt compelled to separate the two divisions. As luck would have it, SU at that time, the early 1970s, was building a completely new campus area in Frescati just a few kilometres north of KTH, and through a late change in the location plans the ADB division could move into the southernmost building, F House, level 5, at the beginning of 1972 following a decision by the Rector in the autumn of 1971. At the same time it was decided that the Department of Information Processing would continue to be a joint concern of both universities, not organisationally split based on location. Therefore the department was made a joint department, included in two organisation charts but under the supervision of KTH, from previously having been solely a KTH department. In this way numerical analysis, from 1979 called NADA, became a department at SU as a side effect.
During 1977, the situation became untenable despite separate locations, and the departmental board meetings were far from constructive. It became clear to both parties that a separation was the only way forward. The Rectors of KTH, Rasmuson, and SU, Hoppe, decided by mutual agreement to allow the two divisions in practice to function as two separate departments even if formally they were only one and the same.
It was not until 1980 that the Stockholm Higher Education Region, the overarching body appointed by the government at that time, decided to establish the new Department of ADB based on the previous division. According to the new Higher Education Act (1977:218), the higher education sector in Sweden (ordinance 1977:458) was to be governed by six higher education regions, each with its own board, later repealed in 1988. With the blessing of the Rectors of the two universities the ADB division had called itself a department ever since the move, especially since 1977 when the issue had come to a head after far-reaching academic bickering and veritable wars of words between the two divisions during board meetings. According to the decision the new department would be joint for KTH and SU and be administered under the supervision of SU, not as previously KTH (reg. no. 199/79-319). The decision was made in the presence of Rectors Rasmuson of KTH and Helmfrid of SU.
The Department of ADB changed its name in 1987 to the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, DSV, to the displeasure of the Department of Numerical Analysis at KTH which in 1979 had changed its name to the Department of Numerical Analysis and Computer Science, commonly known as NADA, and which considered itself to have exclusive rights in Stockholm to anything that sounded even remotely like computer science. I served on NADA’s departmental board as a student representative at that time and remember the discussions very well.
In January 1990, between the autumn and spring semesters, DSV moved to the Electrum building in Kista which was an initiative by the City of Stockholm together with KTH to turn Kista into the Silicon Valley of the Nordic countries. As a joint KTH and SU department, DSV could not opt out, it was forced to move. The Electrum building housed many KTH departments, though not the old antagonist NADA. KTH gathered its research and education in IT in Kista, but NADA refused to move and argued, with the help of Professor Lindquist from mathematics, for the numerics side’s need to sit close to the Department of Mathematics.
KTH’s newly appointed Rector Anders Flodström launched in October 1998 his vision of the Silicon Valley of Northern Europe, now also including the Baltic countries, and he believed he could obtain considerable funding from the Ministry of Education for the initiative called the IT University. It did not turn out that way, but for the purpose IBM’s old customer centre, IBM Forum, in Kista was acquired and both DSV and the majority of KTH’s other Electrum departments, apart from the Electrum Laboratory, moved in 2001 to Forum. As a joint KTH and SU department, DSV could not opt out of the move this time either.
Campus IT-universitetet, which was a marketing name mainly governed by KTH and never a formal organisation, was closed before the autumn term of 2007. Already in July 2005, the whole of KTH had been reorganised so that departments were abolished and instead nine larger school units were formed following the model of MIT in the USA. The activities in Kista formed the School of ICT but received a three year deferment for abolishing their departments. It soon became clear that the new organisational form with schools was claimed to be incompatible with the idea of a joint department. KTH therefore refused to make any exception in Kista, so on January 1, 2010 DSV was divided into an SU part, roughly two thirds of the staff, which remained a department at SU, and a KTH part, about one third, which was immediately closed whereupon the staff were instead absorbed by a number of units within the School of ICT, which consisted of all other KTH activities in Kista. This was difficult to understand, not least for me who at the time was the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at SU and responsible for the process at the university top management level. Despite persistent attempts, there was no willingness to negotiate at KTH. Strangely enough, the corresponding exception was made at KTH’s main campus where NADA remains a department at SU even today despite the KTH part having been absorbed into the School of Computer Science and Communication (CSC) already in 2005.
The School of ICT moved back to Electrum in 2013, DSV moved in 2014 to the NOD building and the Forum building was disposed of. Here we stand now in the autumn of 2016 when DSV is said to be turning 50 years old, which is celebrated with a film.
But what is actually DSV’s year of birth? There are a number of suggestions:
Of all these, DSV has officially chosen 1966 as the year of birth, but in truth some of the others above are at least as good candidates and one probably better historically. I myself vote for 1965. But if one for some reason insists on the year 1966 then the birthday should be 5 September 1966, the first day of the autumn term when the A course started for the very first time. And in any case, CONGRATULATIONS on the 50th birthday DSV, whenever it occurs – really well done!
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