The Foreign Service Journal, March 2003

8 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 3 State’s Digital Edge Still Ragged In June 2002 Secretary of State Powell wrote in State Magazine that he wanted the State Department to “set the standard within the U.S. gov- ernment on harnessing the power of cyber-technology.” State’s “F” on the House Committee on Government Reform’s Computer Security Report Card in November, and the depart- ment’s inability to meet requirements under the Government Paper Elimination Act — not to mention the fact that State Department nego- tiators abroad still have to run to the nearest embassy between sessions to keep in contact with headquarters! — suggest that there is still a way to go. As of January 2003, approximately 70 percent of State’s employees were connected to OpenNet Plus and thus benefitting from the Internet. The Classified Connectivity program will put e-mail and access to SIPRNET (the closed network for “secret” level communications) on all overseas clas- sified desktops: 155 out of 231 posts now have this facility. Both programs, the first stage of State’s 1998 IT over- haul plan, are on target for completion in 2003. Bells and whistles are being added rapidly in the form of trendy Web pages and portal designs for the more than 300 sites, offering many useful services, across the depart- ment’s Intranet. The “refresh and upgrade” program to replace 25 percent of the department’s comput- ers and servers every year is also proceeding on schedule. The status of the far-reaching second stage of the overhaul plan — a modern, worldwide messaging and document management system to replace the current telegram and e- mail systems — is somewhat less clear. Dubbed SMART — State Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolset — the new messaging system is in the hands of a steering committee headed by Ambassador Joe Lake, working together with a Program Management Office, established by C YBERNOTES SITE OF THE MONTH WWW Virtual Library: International Affairs Resources H ere is a well-organized and regularly updated Web site that is a gold mine for the student of interna- tional relations. WWWVirtual Library: International Affairs Resources , at www.etown.edu/vl , co ntains more than 2,600 annotated links that run the gamut of foreign policy and international affairs subjects — from media and news sources to organizations, regions and countries, and to topics such as international development; study, work, internships and service abroad; public health; inter- national law; conflict resolution; international security; and so on. The user-friendliness of this site can be seen in the first item in the table of contents, “Getting Started,” which includes an annotated list of links to the best online tutori- als on how to do research on the Internet, annotated links to the major virtual libraries, and links to the best search engines and directories for maps. Almost all the sites are in English, and have been chosen carefully for their long-term value. Cost-free sites with high-quality information and analysis online are favored. This site is just one section of the WWW Virtual Library system started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of HTML and the Web itself. The WWW Virtual Library is the oldest catalog of the Web, and, though not the largest Web index, it is widely recognized as being among the highest-quality guides to particular sections of the Web. Unlike commercial catalogues, the WWW Virtual Library is run by a loose confederation of volunteers who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert. The International Affairs Resources section was created, and is edited and maintained, by Wayne A. Selcher, a professor of International Studies at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pa. WWW Virtual Library: International Affairs Resources has received numerous awards and citations. In August 2002 the site was featured in Choice , a publication of the Association of Colleges and Research Libraries, a division of the American Libraries Association, that advises libraries and educational institutions on Web resources. Individual indexes for the WWW Virtual Library reside on hundreds of different servers around the world. A set of catalogue pages linking these indexes is maintained at www.vlib.org in the U.S., with mirrors of the site in the U.K., Switzerland and Argentina. As of January 2000, the affairs of the WWW Virtual Library are being co-ordinated by an elected council.