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URUCIB: a technological revolution in post-dictatorship Uruguay (1986–88)

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Sauver quelque chose du temps où l´on ne sera plus jamais - Annie Ernaux

Abstract

When URUCIB was created, we did not know we were making an Executive Information Systems. In those days, the development of information technology was very nascent, and its impact on developing countries was even more limited. This paper tells how a government imagined using these resources and put them at the service of its management to have real-time information to guide decision-making. It shows how an interdisciplinary team of professionals from informatics, cybernetics, economics, statistics, and politics worked to create a state-of-the-art system in its time, using available information and communication technologies. It shows the challenges that had to be overcome, both technological and cultural, and how this was carried out. It compares the experience of Uruguay with a previous and similar one in Chile fourteen years earlier. It then argues some of the main problems faced and claims the innovative character of the project. Finally, it draws some conclusions from experience. Distinguished British cybernetics expert Prof. Stafford Beer was hired as an advisor, the President of the Republic, Dr. Julio María Sanguinetti, gave his enthusiastic support and project leader Eng. Víctor Ganón and his devoted team were instrumental in making this trailblazing design and successfully implemented the system.

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Notes

  1. Figure 1 shows the whole letter.

  2. The National Cooperative of Milk Producers, best known as CONAPROLE, its acronym, is the leading Uruguayan dairy company and its main individual exporter.

  3. When Beer spoke to me of his Mexican experience, he summarized it as: “I became a great expert on corruption.” And he gave me some specific details and had to escape from Mexico so that they would not take him in prison.

  4. See Figs. 4,5.

  5. See Fig. 7 for this example.

  6. As, at the beginning of some films, this narration is based on facts. The drought in 1988/89 was one of the worst in Uruguay in the last thirty years.

  7. The Treaty of Asunción creating MERCOSUR was signed by Presidents Carlos Menem (Argentina), Fernando Collor de Mello (Brazil), Andrés Rodríguez (Paraguay) and Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera (Uruguay).

  8. See examples of quantified flowcharts used in URUCIB in Figs. 7, 11, 12 and 13.

  9. From the Greek: “auto” (self) and “poiesis” (creation).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DCMS, University of London, London, UK

    Víctor Ganón

  2. QUANAM, Montevideo, Uruguay

    Víctor Ganón

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  1. Víctor Ganón
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Correspondence to Víctor Ganón.

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Ganón, V. URUCIB: a technological revolution in post-dictatorship Uruguay (1986–88). AI & Soc 37, 1231–1254 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01351-5

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