When active service ended in 1945, the signal services were established in all branches without the existence of a central command. Formally, the signals were assigned to the engineer corps.
It took five years until the former engineer chief of arma-ment asked the Federal Council to reorganise the engi-neer battalion and to establish a new independent com-munications division because of the greatly increased importance of telecommunication. On 1 January 1951, the Division for Signal Troops was founded with 28 officers.
This organisation existed until the end of 1978. By that time it had grown to a staff of 300 including career offi-cers. The militia forces comprised roughly 30000 signal soldiers. In 1979, within the course of the federal administration’s reorganisation, the Division for Signal Troops was raised to the level of Federal Office of Signal Troops.
With the 1995 reorganisation of the Federal Department of Defence, the Federal Office of Signal Troops was integrated into the new General Staff as Training Command Directorate, while the forces together with training resources and administration were outsourced as essential parts. The number of staff sank to less than 150. The reorganisation of IT in the Federal Administra-tion, known as NOVE IT, transferred the former Telemat-ics Division National Government / Armed Forces (for-merly troops and operations) in September 2000 to the freshly founded Information Technology Directorate.
When planning began for Armed Forces XXI, the request of the head of the Training Command Directorate to create a comprehensive command support agency for the DDPS was granted. The way was thus open for the Command Support Organisation CSO that commenced its services on 1 January 2005. It comprises everything the Federal Office for Signal Troops used to have – without schools / command support training unit. At the same time, the Information and communication Technology DDPS and the IT service provider organisation for the entire DDPS were integrated into the Command Support Organisation CSO.