Governance, Innovation, and Information and Communications Technology for Civil-Military Interactions

Abstract

Civilian and military participants in relief and stability operations rely upon Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to collect, analyze, store, display, and share information that is critical for these civil-military interactions. This article investigates ICT innovation in these operations over time. As researchers in the sociology of technology school might predict, ICT innovation for relief and stability operations emerges in a distributed fashion, within clusters of specialty expertise that migrate across interconnected technology systems and across humanitarian and military activities. Major events such as natural disasters have punctuated the development of ICT for civil-military interactions, often driving community learning and coherence. Among the many stakeholders in the United States, the federal government in particular has played an important role in shaping the ICT ecosystem through policies and engagements. Government policies and changes in the field of action in the 1990s created imperatives for the US military in particular to collaborate with civilian agencies on ICT innovation. Civil-military information sharing gaps persist today due, in part, to institutional factors.