The Foreign Service Journal, March 2012

M A R C H 2 0 1 2 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 transparent public poli- cies to encouraging more consistent and transpar- ent international market- places. Such transparency, however, also drives com- petition among countries to achieve more effective policy environments in order to attract invest- ment and business activ- ity. This competition, in turn, rewards those coun- tries that embrace these new technologies and use them to capture, utilize and display their data. Visualization needn’t be the cre- ation of highly specific technical artistry, however. It is desirable for the process to flow down to workers who typically work with word processing and spreadsheet applications. To note just one of the many online tools freely available to the public, IBM’s Many Eyes can support data visualization with any dataset and requires no soft- ware download. It also al- lows users to rapidly import data from a spreadsheet, database or other digital file format. One can easily map a single parameter for geo- graphic context —as shown in the diagram at right with Standard &Poor’s sovereign debt ratings—or layer mul- tiple parameters to explore more complex relationships. For a public institution like the State Department, there are two broad appli- cations for data visualiza- tion. First and foremost, it has great potential to ad- vance mission objectives. But we should also consider its role in chang- ing public expectations of government and the importance of disseminating government data in an open and trans- parent way for the general public to interact with and use. This dual-hatted approach reflects an Obama administration priority out- lined in the Data.gov Initiative. It also positions State for a leadership role in a growing, international, open govern- ment movement. Such disciplines may well improve the credibility and effectiveness of our international mes- saging and policy advocacy. Visualizing Data at State The Department of State has long been a vast producer, consumer and S P E A K I N G O U T OECD’s national well-being visualization. IBMMany Eyes visualization of sovereign debt ratings, August 2011.