My dissertation explores management information systems (MIS) in East Germany to write a new history of socialist governance and advance a novel understanding of the making of technocracy. I argue that with the creation and proliferation of MIS and its algorithmic rules in the government and enterprises, East German governance took on a new mode that I call 'computing technocracy,' in which management algorithms replaced a significant portion of managerial knowledge processes encompassing data analysis, information processing, forecasting and planning, and decision-making. While scholars tend to portray the algorithm-based governance as a cutting-edge form of managerialist exploitation of labor and humanity, my dissertation shows the opposite. Focusing on the making of algorithmic decision models and industrial systematics for MIS, I demonstrate that computing technocracy in East Germany was shaped by the constant efforts of managers and experts to carefully understand and respond to workers’ vocal political claims and unpredictable behavioral patterns.