The Foreign Service Journal, October 2009

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 23 fairs Office was already on its way to the State Department. Ten years later, the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Af- fairs for the Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau continues to operate, as do the other USIA “area offices” in their respective geographic bu- reaus. The sixth under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, Judith McHale, was sworn in this year. The two bureaus established in 1999 (Educational and Cultural Affairs and International Information Pro- grams) stayed in the USIA building on C Street SW until this year. Because most of USIA’s Washington staff remained in place when the transfer took place in 1999, a successful merging of the two agencies’ cultures was impeded. Moreover, much of the strategy and tradecraft that marked USIA withered. Over the years, many new people have replaced USIA veterans, and the ranks of trained PD offi- cers have suffered ups and downs along with the depart- ment’s overall work force. But by fits and starts, successive leaders of the old USIA and State have partially rebuilt the foundations and have adapted public diplomacy, both to new public expectations and to the revolution in global media. State’s New Web 2.0 Strategy In the mid-1990s, USIA pioneered Web technology with an overhaul of its Information Bureau. At the time of the merger, agency personnel felt certain that the State Department’s antiquated technology would hold them back. Their fears were unfounded, however, thanks to constant pressure from the newUSIA contingent, and also thanks to former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Diplo- matic Readiness Initiative. The latest and most dramatic change is the State De- partment’s embrace of new media for public outreach. With social networking, what’s new is not so much the un- derlying information systems and applications as how they are used. Feeding Web sites and sending “targeted” messages was the USIA mantra. That was appro- priate for that era; indeed, it is still a basic task for public diplomacy. But today the emphasis is on trying to draw people together in online so- cial networks. Using the Internet to discuss things and transact business has burgeoned all over the world in the past few years. In the March 3 issue of Business Week (“Why Widgets Don’t Work”), Ben Kuntz explains it this way: “There are three modes, or mindsets, people take on when they use interactive communications: receiving, hunting and doing. You receive a phone call. You hunt for a book at the library. You take an action — say, writing an article such as this. The history of the Web is a transi- tion between these phases.” The latest phase has been dubbedWeb 2.0, and the de- partment is definitely testing the waters, if not swimming just yet. It is making its own Web sites more interactive and also setting up pages on commercial Web sites like YouTube and Facebook. One of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s early speeches was a video appeal to citizens titled “21st- Century Statecraft,” reminiscent of the 2008 presidential campaign. (Watch it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6PF PCTEr3c&feature=channel_page.) Sec. Clinton talked about citizens’ direct involvement in building friendship among nations; touted the department’s pages on Face- book, YouTube and Twitter; cited State Department Web pages like the Dipnote blog and ExchangesConnect (http://connect.state.gov ); and urged viewers to send a $5 contribution to relief of refugees in the Swat Valley of Pak- istan via text message. Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Philip J. (P.J.) Crowley told me: “USIA was a great institution, created for a particular purpose — the Cold War — and for an in- formation environment with relatively fewmedia outlets.” The decline of mainstream media is happening faster in the United States than elsewhere, but throughout the world new media are on the rise. In 2008, the major public affairs Web pages of the State Department all changed to more participatory and visual styles. And a new social networking site, Exchanges- Connect, made its debut. F O C U S With social networking, what’s new is not so much the underlying information systems and applications as how they are used. Joe B. Johnson carried out every major public diplomacy and public affairs function during a 33-year career in the Foreign Service. He now consults on government commu- nication programs for the Computer Sciences Corporation and conducts training at the Foreign Service Institute.