The Foreign Service Journal, February 2007

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 domestic assignments, FSO Chris Bronk, then posted to the Office of eDiplomacy, explained to the Wiki- mania 2006 conference in August ( http://wikimania2006.wikimedia. org/wiki/Proceedings:CB1 ). “In an agency that can ill afford reinvention, the wiki model, one of widely avail- able, electronically searchable textual information, may serve as a valuable tool in translating corridor knowledge generated slowly over time, to institu- tional knowledge available via com- puter,” Bronk, who was an information technology professional prior to join- ing the Foreign Service, added. As Molly Moran, one of the devel- opers of “Diplopedia,” told a confer- ence at Georgetown University in October, the department hopes the wiki will become an arena in which employees share their unofficial (and unclassified) insights on everything from the functions of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor to recommendations on quality family restaurants near the U.S. consulate in Dubai ( http://cct-10.com/event/ ) . Moran notes that the department’s adoption of the wiki is remarkable because State is a large bureaucracy that relies heavily on carefully defined and often immutable hierarchies of power and scope. In contrast, the wiki ignores traditional notions of authority and assumes all authors are equal in experience and expertise. We’ll be looking forward to the summer 2007 evaluation of this groundbreaking experiment. — Susan Maitra, Senior Editor The Open Budget Initiative On Oct. 18, 2006, civil society orga- nizations from 59 countries unveiled the Open Budget Index for 2006 ( www.openbudgetindex.org/Open BudgetIndex2006.pdf ), the first index to rate countries on how open their budget books are to their citi- zens. Of the 59 countries that participat- ed in the survey, more than half do not make public the seven key budget reports they produce each year and just less than half hold no public hearings on the budget. France, New Zealand, Slovenia, South Africa, the U.K. and U.S. rank highest in budget transparency, providing “extensive” information to their citizens. Egypt, Nigeria and Bolivia are among the countries that provide “scant or no” budget information. Overall, nine in 10 countries rated fail to provide bud- getary information needed for ac- countability. The index is the brainchild of the International Budget Project’s “Open Budget Initiative,” designed to pro- mote government transparency and accountability ( http://www.openbud getindex.org/ ) . It provides citizens, legislators and civil-society advocates with compre- hensive and practical information about their government’s budgetary process. Armed with this kind of information — all available online — lenders, development advocates and aid organizations can identify mean- ingful budget reforms needed in spe- cific countries. In addition to the annual index and a detailed summary of key findings, The Open Budget Initiative Web site offers both a summary and filled-in questionnaire for each country listed. The questionnaire contains the detail- ed resources used in the summary and the identity of the person or institution who filled it out. — Susan Maitra, Senior Editor Be In the Know Before You Go ... The Foreign Service Institute’s Overseas Briefing Center offers online access — both via the Internet and State Department intranet — to extensive resources on overseas posts that are useful both at the bidding stage and in preparing for a new assignment ( www.state.gov/m/fsi/tc/ c6954.htm ). Besides a special set of resources for assignments to Iraq, the site offers such items as “Bidding Re- C YBERNOTES W ell, I’m not sure — it’s a success that hasn’t occurred yet. I don’t know that I view that as a failure. — White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend, when pressed on the administra- tion’s failure to capture Osama bin Laden, on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Dec. 28, 2006, http:// transcripts.cnn.com/ TRANSCRIPTS/0612/28/ sitroom.03.html