Keynote: Professor Brian Randell

Abstract

System complexity is a challenge both with regard to defining and agreeing on basic concepts of system dependability, and to actually achieving such dependability in practice from large computer-based systems. In this talk I will discuss such issues, and give a brief description of some recent work on a new approach to formally modelling and analysing the activity of complex (un)dependable systems. I will end by discussing some likely dependability and security consequences of the overall complexity and chosen architecture of the huge National Programme for IT (NPfIT) that is currently being undertaken by the National Health System in England, and which is claimed to be the world's largest civil IT project.

Bibliography

Brian's earliest work, during the period 1957-1964 while with English Electric, was on compilers. This led to the book: Algol 60 Implementation. (Co-author L. J. Russell). Academic Press, London, 1964.

He then joined IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y. where, with an intervening year during 1965-66 in California, he worked on high performance computer architectures (the ACS Project), then on operating systems and system design methodology. During this time, and shortly after he returned to the UK to become Professor of Computing Science at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, He was co-editor of the reports on the two NATO Software Engineering Conferences.

In 1971 he set up the project that initiated research into the possibility of software fault tolerance, and introduced the "recovery block" concept. Subsequent major developments included the Newcastle Connection, and the prototype distributed Secure System. He has been Principal Investigator on a succession of research projects on system dependability funded by the Science Research Council (now Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), the Ministry of Defence, the European Strategic Programme of Research in Information Technology (ESPRIT), and the European Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme. Most recently he has performed the role of Project Director for CaberNet (the IST Network of Excellence on Distributed Computing Systems Architectures) and for two IST Research Projects, MAFTIA (Malicious and Accidental Fault Tolerance for Internet Applications) and DSoS (Dependable Systems of Systems).

His current computing science research is focused on Dependability and, to a lesser extent, on the History of Computing.

He was a founder-member of IFIP WG2.3 (Programming Methodology) and is a founder-member of IFIP WG10.4 (Dependability and Fault Tolerance). In 1979 he helped found MARI (Microelectronics Applications Institute) and in 1993 He was involved in setting up the Northern Informatics Applications Agency, both of which flourished and did some excellent work for a number of years.