The Foreign Service Journal, March 2010

age the “information tsunami” that flows through the organization daily, threatening to swamp those charged with crafting our nation’s foreign policy. IT and the Mission of Diplomacy We live at a time when half the planet is able to log on to a communi- cations medium where there are al- most no barriers to international ex- change of information— the Internet. This connectivity, of course, has al- ready changed the practice of diplo- macy. For nearly a century we relied upon trusted envoys to serve the na- tional interest in distant foreign capi- tals, employing the telegraph to stay in touch with the mother country, usually via the briefest of messages. Today, communications may flow from a BlackBerry to Berlin, Bamako or Baghdad instantaneously. Yet though the department is con- nected, wired and wirelessly, by fiber and satellite, its official communication channel remains the same telegraphi- cally-based cable format that George Kennan used to send his prescient analysis fromMoscow in 1946. E-mail has replaced the telegraph, of course; but the organizational process built around it has yet to leave the building. For all the discussion of technology, ul- timately its adoption and use are largely dependent upon how well it fits an or- ganization’s process. Organizational change rarely comes easily, and is often prompted by crisis. In industry, if companies fail to inno- vate or adapt, they soon decline and fade away, but government is different. Without a balance sheet by which to measure effectiveness, identifying met- rics to evaluate the performance of an agency can prove elusive. At the IRS or U.S. Postal Service, benchmarking efficiency can be as straightforward as counting tax returns or pieces of mail. And at NASA and the National Institutes of Health, success can be identified by scientific or tech- nical breakthroughs. Diplomacy is harder to categorize in a spreadsheet or win-loss columns. We know that diplomacy is an information- intensive business, but we have not en- tirely figured out how to apply tech- nology tomeet the mission of statecraft, an area populated by an ever-increas- ing number of actors, many of whom are not states. Getting the Balance Right Today, IT is the State Department’s electronic nervous system. Where it was once viewed as a career-enhancing skill to learn how paper moved around the department, it is probably more useful today to understand where the bits flow. E-mail is the overwhelmingly dominant form of communication, likely making up more than half of the digital traffic across the department’s network. Entrusted with delivery and storage of the bits is State’s IT organ, the Bureau of Information Resource Management, which runs the enter- prise network that delivers cables and e-mail, accesses Web pages and com- pletes telephone calls. IRM is the physical apparatus of the department’s digital nervous system, its intercon- nected system of links and nodes. But there’s a lot of IT at State that’s not in IRM; perhaps as much as half of the department’s $1.2 billion IT budget re- sides in other bureaus. Across the department, information technology is employed to transmit, process, digest and disseminate infor- mation. IT facilitates political and eco- nomic reporting, is key to visa adjudica- tion, and delivers new media for public diplomacy. Nearly a decade later, the words of former Director General of the Foreign Service and Under Secre- tary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman at the Net Diplomacy con- ference in 2001 remain true: “Vital to our ability to achieve [our diplomatic] goals will be an ability to create and, if we are lucky, lead a diplomacy for the 21st century. The ability tomanage and master information technology will be vital if we are to succeed.” So how well has State done at meet- ing Grossman’s mandate? I would argue that it has achieved what most government organizations have, in roughly the same period of time. It has implemented an IT strategic plan, with the emphasis on the capital T. That has brought a rise in data traffic and the need for larger digital “pipes” connect- ing Washington to the world. Day-to-day expectations of big “T,” which falls under the auspices of the deputy chief information officer for operations, are straightforward, but daunting: keep the networks up and running 24/7, year-round; make sure no data are lost or corrupted; and strive for increased efficiency and declining cost. The other side of IT in the mission of diplomacy is the big “I,” or informa- tion. As hard as IRM’s operations job may be, the information or knowledge piece requires not only an eye for effi- ciency, but a vision for the future of diplomacy. “Will Twitter be a good public diplomacy tool?” “Can blogs supplement cables?” “Is e-mail over- loading desk officers?” These are just some of the many questions to be con- sidered. An organization can spend all the money in the world on hardware, but without ideas on how to adopt and har- ness game-changing technologies to distill a more useful information pic- ture or manage relationships, that in- vestment will produce scant returns. 44 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 1 0 The most significant change in diplomacy since the advent of the telegram is likely at hand.