Government Information Leadership Master of Science Degree Program 

The Master of Science in Government Information Leadership (GIL) Degree Program is a selective program that addresses the educational needs of defense and government leaders who seek to lead complex and diverse 21st Century organizations. Participants from across defense and other federal, state, and local government organizations create a learning community hallmarked by partnerships, information sharing, and network synergies.  This program is offered on a distance-learning basis.

Successful graduates of the Master of Science in Government Information Leadership will be able to:

• Employ information and information technology for strategic advantage.
• Evaluate the role, challenges, and opportunities of their organizations within the context of cyber, homeland, national, and global security.
• Apply critical, strategic, ethical, and innovative thinking to achieve results-oriented organizational goals.
• Collaborate across boundaries to leverage talent, resources, and opportunities to achieve mission outcomes and stretch vision.
• Create resilient, adaptable, agile, and productive government organizations focused on national security in the Information Age.
• Lead Information Age government organizations.
• Commit to lifelong development of self and others as reflective learners.
• Communicate at the strategic level demonstrating command of the topic, logical organization, compelling argument, and excellence in English grammar and syntax.

Degree Concentration

National Security and Cyberspace Studies

The NDU CIC provides a curriculum that produces national security leaders and advisors who develop the strategies and the necessary doctrine to successfully leverage information and cyberspace operations within the broader national security framework.

The curriculum focuses on the information/cyberspace instrument of national security. It provides graduate-level education to senior military and civilian leaders with an emphasis on the military, government, and private sector dimensions of information/cyberspace as a critical component of national security strategy. The CIC program concentrates on developing the habits of mind, conceptual foundations, and cognitive faculties graduates will need at their highest level of strategic responsibility.

Students in the National Security and Cyberspace Studies Program will be able to:

• Apply a perspective that is Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIIM).
• Demonstrate an expertise in strategic leadership, creative and critical thinking, and decision-making, combined with a thorough understanding and commitment to ethical conduct and exemplary leadership.
• Evaluate and apply the lessons of history with special focus on the impact of information access and dissemination.
• Evaluate the dynamics of international relations and the formulation of the information/cyberspace aspects of foreign policy.
• Apply the JIIM perspectives for the employment of information/cyberspace instruments.
• Evaluate the man-made terrain that underpins information and cyberspace operations.
• Evaluate how actions in cyberspace can at once be both strategic and tactical.
• Assess the health and strategic direction of the information/cyberspace industrial base.
• Evaluate the IT/cyber acquisition processes, resource policies, resource management, and operational contract support.