Brian Wynne Oakley, CBE FBCS FInstP (10 October 1927 – 17 August 2012)[1] was a British civil servant and industrialist who took a leading role in the area of information technology, especially the 1980s Alvey Programme.
In World War II, Oakley served with the Royal Signals as a subaltern.
He then worked in Whitehall as a civil servant, joining the Ministry of Technology under the Harold Wilson government in 1969.
Oakley was director of the United Kingdom Alvey Programme (1983–87), a British government-sponsored research programme for projects in the area of information technology, initiated as a reaction to the Japanese Fifth generation computer project.
[6] In 1991, on hearing that British Telecom planned to dispose of its site at Bletchley Park for housing, together with Tony Sale, he helped to save the site,[7] establish the Bletchley Park Trust, and became a director of the Trust.