Computerization and Knowledge Production in East and West German Security Authorities, 1960-1990

无论是计算机化对国家机构的影响，还是国家知识生产，在联邦德国和德意志民主共和国的当代史研究中都没有引起足够的关注。计划中的项目分析了1960年代初至1980年代末西德和东德警察和情报当局计算机化与知识生产之间的相互联系。因此，它研究了东德国家安全部和三个西德国家当局，即联邦刑事警察局、联邦宪法保护局和联邦情报局，所有这些机构都较早和广泛地引入了计算机的使用。该项目确定了三个重点：第一，分析计算机化与组织变革之间的关系，这一关系在当局的组织结构、雇员概况和沟通渠道中得到了体现。其次，它研究了当局内部权力结构的变化及其在特定社会框架内的监督能力。第三，探讨保安机关知识生产与流通的变迁。最后一种观点强调了新的存储和传输技术对所收集信息的内容和格式的影响。此外，报告还探讨了新的信息和通信技术在多大程度上增加了横向信息转让或促进了新的知识层次的建立。所要求的项目审查了计算机化和知识生产的相互关系，因此，在比较的方式，鉴于安全当局分别位于国家社会主义和西方自由社会。因此，可以看出特定政治制度在多大程度上影响了电子数据处理的发展及其在安全部门的使用方式，或者反过来说，计算机化在多大程度上导致了不同政治制度中的类似解决办法。除此之外，该项目的重点是知识转移。申请项目的工作计划建立在申请人早期关于民主德国国家安全局和联邦刑事警察局计算机化的工作基础上。所要求的项目首先更进一步，包括联邦宪法保护办公室和联邦情报局的档案记录。其次，它旨在将安全当局的计算机化嵌入建立在知识历史基础上的解释框架中，将其与国家知识在“数字现代性”中的变化等更深远的问题联系起来。第一个工作期的重点是分析最近才能查阅的档案记录。第二个工作期的重点是编写一份350页的专题论文，在24个月内完成。

Neither the impacts of computerization on state institutions nor state knowledge production have gathered much attention in contemporary history research about the FRG and the GDR. The planned project analyzes the interconnections between computerization and knowledge production on the part of West- and East-German police and intelligence authorities between the early 1960s and the late 1980s. Therefore, it studies the East German Ministry for State Security and three West German national authorities, the Federal Criminal Police Office, the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service, all of which introduced computer use relatively early and extensively. The project sets three focuses: First, it analyses the relationship between computerization and organizational change, which is seen to become manifest in the authorities' organizational structures, employee profiles, and channels of communication. Second, it studies the change of power structures within the authorities and of their surveillance capacity within their particular societal framework. Third, it investigates the transformations of the security authorities' production and circulation of knowledge. This last perspective put emphasis on the effects of the new storage and transportation technologies on the gathered information's contents and format. In addition, it addresses the question to what extent the new information and communication technologies increased horizontal information transfer or fostered the build up of new knowledge hierarchies. The requested project examines the interrelation of computerization and knowledge production therefore in comparative manner, in view of security authorities situated in a state socialist and a western liberal society respectively. Thereby, it shall become visible to what extent the particular political system had influence on electronic data processing's development and its manner of use in the security sector, or, conversely, to what extent computerization led to similar solutions in different political systems. Beyond that, the project focuses on knowledge transfer. The requested project's work program builds on earlier work of the applicant about the GDR-State Security's and the Federal Criminal Police Office's computerization. The requested project goes further first, by including archival records of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service. Second, it aims to embed the security authorities' computerization within an interpretative framework built on the history of knowledge, to link it to more far-reaching questions about state knowledge's changes within the "digital modernity". The first working' period focuses on the analysis of archival records that only recently have become accessible. The second working period focuses on the writing of a 350-page monograph to be completed within the 24 months.