Now available: Proceedings from the CITMO Workshop on CD >>

Commercial Information Technology For Military Operations (CITMO) is an informal initiative involving government, military, and commercial organizations. The initiative includes delegates from government, military, and industry who desire to be part of this collaboration and who participate in workshops and other technical exchanges agreed to by the group in general.

The intent is to establish a dialog among military/government users and technology providers, to identify where systems may be applicable to the needs of the military forces and associated government and non-governmental organizations. CITMO also provides a venue for an exchange of thoughts regarding information technologies and services suited to both military and non-military needs and to offer recommendations to participating nations and multinational organizations for establishing information infrastructures and services that can support multinational operations.

The emerging commercial vision for "anytime-anywhere" information services and portable computing is converging rapidly with the military vision for similar capabilities. Similarly, the new military vision for network-centric operations is very similar to the electronic-commerce practices in the commercial sector. These similarities, and the rapid evolution of commercial Information Technology capabilities, have motivated this initiative to bring all the parties together.

A number of important factors motivated this collaboration between the commercial sector and the military and government participants. These are:

(1) the role of modern computing and communications technologies in new military concepts for network based operations;

(2)
growing importance of multinational interoperability, often based on ad hoc coalitions that are assembled quickly to address immediate problems;

(3)
increasing need for operations that span military, non-military, and non-governmental, organizations;

(4)
rapid progress in the industrial sector toward globally standardized, high quality information services that extend to users on-the-move; and

(5)
the general cost-effectiveness and interoperability advantages that result from use of standard products and services.

The CITMO initiative was organized through collaboration among several government and industrial organizations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden. An initial workshop (CITMO 2002) was held in Östersund, Sweden during June 2002, hosted by the Mid-Sweden University and the Jämtland Rifles Regiment and organized and managed by IDG-Europe, AB. CITMO 2002 brought together approximately 60 delegates from international organizations and military and government organizations and provided a forum for exchange of ideas related to military requirements and commercial technologies that addressed similar types of functions. Results were judged by the delegates to be of sufficient value to motivate a second workshop, and this is planned to be held in April 2003, in Ronneby, Sweden.

CITMO 2003 will focus on specific operational requirements related to peacekeeping and humanitarian relief operations conducted under UN leadership. A real world scenario will be used to describe operational requirements and issues, and working groups will address the potential for existing and emerging products to address some of the shortfalls and to enhance the effectiveness of the force.

CITMO 2003 will explore how commercial technology can help make military support to the UN easier to achieve. The military often provide transportation and logistic support as well as security support, and this workshop will emphasize the ability of commercial systems to operate in a humanitarian relief situation where cooperation from multiple nations' military forces would be useful. The main aims will be to see how we can achieve interoperability across commercial, civil, and military information systems. The war fighting aspect of military operations will not be one of the themes for CITMO 2003.

The need for interoperability among the members of a coalition is one of the central issues to be addressed in the CITMO 2003 workshop. This includes interoperability of both high-end and low-end systems with the core infrastructure. The use of a commercial infrastructure can enhance interoperability since each participant will be able to connect to a well-defined, commercially standardized information network.

Participation in the workshop will be by invitation, and the overall number of delegates will be limited to assure a manageable size for the working groups and plenary sessions. Invitations will be issued based on requests received via the web site www.citmo.net. Further information on CITMO 2003 will be posted on this web site as the agenda is developed.

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