accurately speaking, "between the cracks" of — the 

 system of planning and control. Finally, a constant 

 flow of operational information is lacking on the 

 course of plan implementation. Information comes at 

 regular reporting periods which may not coincide with 

 the planned completion of projects and tasks. Thus, 

 the information may come too late to permit timely 

 corrective act ion. H 



It is also important to note that the "technology" 

 of Soviet planning is still relatively primitive. 

 Simple and semi- intuitive methods of evaluation and 

 manual calculations predominate. The inadequacy of 

 technique becomes all the more apparent in the light 

 of the increasing scale and complexity of the task it 

 must tackle. In preparing the annual plan alone Gos- 

 plan works up 47 million indicators. One variant of 

 the national macroeconomic plan requires 83 billion 

 separate calculations. At present nearly four bil- 

 lion documents circulate on various levels of the 

 planning and management hierarchy. Within industrial 

 enterprises, associations, and other economic organ- 

 izations almost five billion work orders and more 

 than two billion supplementary requests are formula- 

 ted each year. 12 The head of the Main Computer Cen- 

 ter at the USSR Gosplan reported with some pride that 

 about 20 percent of the Tenth Five Year Plan (1976- 

 1980) was prepared on the basis of computer tech- 

 niques. On the eve of the 1980s the pocket calcu- 

 lator has not yet arrived in the Soviet Union, and 

 the dominant tool at hand remains the abacus. "It is 

 no accident," observes Boris Milner, now of the In- 

 stitute for Systems Studies, "that a serious contra- 

 diction has developed between the growth of the vol- 

 ume of information and the traditional methods of da- 

 ta collection and processing." 1 



The need for more "science" in R&D planning and 

 management is generally recognized among Soviet auth- 

 orities today. Defects in the conduct of analytical 

 work in scientific organizations are decried at all 

 levels of the planning ladder. 15 Special attention 

 is being given to enhancing integrative capabilities, 

 both analytical and administrative, of central deci- 



91 



