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"The Doughnut" is the nickname given to the headquarters of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British cryptography and intelligence agency. It is located on a site in Benhall, in the suburbs of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in South West England.〔 The Doughnut houses 5,500 employees; GCHQ is the largest single employer in Gloucestershire.〔〔 Built to modernise and consolidate GCHQ's multiple buildings in Cheltenham, The Doughnut was completed in 2003, and GCHQ moved into the building in 2004.〔 It is the largest building constructed for secret intelligence operations outside the United States. The Doughnut was too small for the number of staff at its completion, and a second building in a secret and undisclosed location in the 'Gloucestershire area' now also accommodates staff from GCHQ. The Doughnut is surrounded by car and bicycle parking in concentric rings, and well protected by security. The construction of the building was financed by a private finance initiative and construction costs were greatly increased after difficulties in transferring computer infrastructure to the building. The building is modern in design and built primarily from steel, aluminium, and stone. An annual Community Day is held at the Doughnut to highlight the charitable and volunteer work by GCHQ staff in the local Cheltenham community. ==Background== The construction of the Doughnut in 2003 consolidated the operations previously spread across two sites into a single location, replacing more than 50 buildings in the process.〔 The last staff from the nearby GCHQ site at Oakley were transferred to the Doughnut in late 2011. The design of the Doughnut reflects GCHQ's intended new mode of work after the end of the Cold War, with its design facilitating talking among staff, and between them and the Director of GCHQ and his subordinates.〔 It was estimated that anyone in the building could reach any other worker within five minutes.〔 The director of GCHQ has no office; in 2014 director Iain Lobban described his desk as being located "within the shouting distance of lawyers".〔 At a cost of £330m, the construction of the Doughnut was funded by a private finance initiative (PFI) put forward by a collective that included British facilities management and construction company Carillion, the Danish security company Group 4/Falck (now G4S), and the British telecommunications company BT Group.〔 The consortium are scheduled to be paid £800m to maintain the Doughnut for 30 years. The creation of the Doughnut was the largest PFI project to date for the British government.〔 The building was designed by the British architect Chris Johnson for the American architectural firm Gensler, and constructed and built by Carillion. In 2004 the chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh, criticised the increasing cost of GCHQ's move to the Doughnut. Leigh said that "It was astonishing GCHQ did not realise the extent of what would be involved much sooner".〔 Leigh had said in 2003 that GCHQ's original estimate for the cost of the move was "staggeringly inaccurate". For security reasons, GCHQ moved its own computers and technical infrastructure to the Doughnut, which caused the cost of its move to increase from £41m to £450m over two years.〔 The moves of MI5 and the SIS to new buildings had also cost more than three times their original estimates due to issues with transferring computers. HM Treasury paid £216m toward a newly agreed budget of £308m, having initially refused to finance the original high figure.〔 The final cost of GCHQ's move to their new headquarters was more than seven times the original estimate.〔 The complexity of the computer network at GCHQ was responsible for the increase in costs. Issues with the network were found while preparing computers for the "Millennium bug". Simply shutting down each computer individually before restarting them in the Doughnut would have left GCHQ unable to complete key intelligence work for two years, while moving their electronics according to the original schedule without "unacceptable damage" to intelligence gathering would cost £450m.〔 In a review of GCHQ's move in 2003, the National Audit Office said government ministers might never have approved the consolidation of facilities had the final cost been known.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Doughnut」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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