The Foreign Service Journal, March 2012

16 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 2 Recognizing that these trends are global and being driven by forces outside the department, there is no need for State to invent or own such technologies. That is good news, for that will greatly reduce the costs and progress need not be held to the pace of government. The opportunity and the challenge for foreign affairs agencies like State will be to find new ways to collaborate with academia, nongovernmental or- ganizations, industry and foreign part- ners, and to commit to keeping information open to the maximum ex- tent possible. Institutionally, these methodolo- gies offer inexpensive ways to respond to growing pressures to be more ef- fective with limited resources. Bu- reaus may incorporate visualizations to formulate better policies, imple- ment them more effectively or pres- ent them more compellingly. State’s leadership should encourage adoption and development of such practices. At the same time, success in any reasonable time frame will require these technologies to be embraced by State employees, democratizing visu- alization. Workers need to be able to integrate internal and external data sources, and for this they will need to access emerging external data aggre- gation and social media tools, with the latest browsers, from their desktops. Making employees more capable will make the Department of State (and the other foreign affairs agen- cies) more capable. Chris Bronk is a fellow in Rice Uni- versity’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, and also teaches in Rice’s computer science department. A Foreign Service officer from 2002 to 2006, he served in the Office of eDiplomacy from 2005 to 2006, where he participated in the development of Diplopedia. Scott Smith, a career FSO, serves as chief of the Diplomatic Innovation Division in the Office of eDiplomacy. Since joining the State Department in 1985, he has served overseas in Tokyo, Singapore, Fukuoka, Amman, Ankara and Beirut. S P E A K I N G O U T