The Foreign Service Journal, September 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2018 39 Efficient and secure information technology processes and platforms are the primary requirements for State’s operational modernization. Here is a candid look at the challenges and suggestions for a way forward. BY JAY ANAN I A Jay Anania retired in 2015 after a 31-year career as a management-coned FSO at the Department of State. His final tour was as U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Suriname from 2013 to 2015. Among his earlier as- signments, Ambassador Anania served under Secretary of State Colin Powell as director of the Offices of Management Policy and Rightsizing the USG’s Overseas Presence, and as the Bureau of Information Resource Management’s acting chief information officer. He was executive director for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, and then served as management counselor for U.S. Mission Iraq (2011-2012). In Iraq, Amb. Anania led the successful management transition as State took responsibility from the U.S. Army for supporting 17,000 personnel at 12 locations throughout the country. He also served in Tijuana, Havana, Amman, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Berlin. The opinions and charac- terizations in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. government. The author can be reached at Parbonia-1@yahoo.com . F irst, the good news. For all the justifiable complaints employees and customers may have about the Department of State’s electronic systems, State manages generally reliable and secure global systems con- necting several hundred U.S. locations and overseas posts, many in countries with poor telecommunications infrastructure. Very few organizations of any type confront the CAN STATE DELIVER? FOCUS E-Hell Is There a Way Out? complexities faced by the department. That accomplishment is worth appreciating, especially given some of the inherent and unusual challenges briefly mentioned in this article. And yet the performance of State’s information technology systems remains a sore spot for many employees from all ser- viced agencies. Customers accustomed to rapid developments in e-commerce and mobile computing chafe at using systems that often don’t share data or simplify routine processing. At many overseas posts, personnel are frustrated by poor perfor- mance as applications become more centralized, outrunning the quality of the connections to servers in the United States. Worse, malevolent intruders constantly threaten State IT systems as they seek (and at times, obtain) sensitive informa- tion and opportunities to derail U.S. initiatives. Even a cursory glance at the Office of the Inspector General’s online archive reveals persistent problems with State’s IT planning and execution, including issues that affect system performance and the integrity, confidentiality and access to data. At the heart of the difficulties is the fact that State, like many other federal agencies, lacks a centralized authority that is empowered to establish and enforce an enterprise-wide IT archi- tecture for domestic offices and overseas missions. Such a central- ized authority is needed to set standards for efficiency and data sharing, to guide specific IT initiatives, to prioritize spending and to direct cybersecurity operations among the myriad IT systems “owned” by individual bureaus, departments and posts. There are no easy solutions to the strategic failure of State’s IT systems. In this article, I discuss the various challenges, how they