The Foreign Service Journal, December 2005

tures”) prevented society from dealing with its most intractable problems. In our era, the phrase describes aptly the gap between the State Department’s generalists and its specialists. Technology’s value depends upon the willingness of the generalists to get involved in how it is applied, but so far only a few have been willing. A handful of Foreign Service officers have crossed the lines between information technology and generalist assignments. Jay Anania, a senior FSO from the manage- ment career track, is acting chief information officer. Ambassador James Holmes, a political officer, started the eDiplomacy Task Force in 2002, and in 2003 helped restructure the Bureau of Information Resource Management. The bureau clustered existing planning and customer service staff with the eDiplomacy task force as an office. Current eDiplomacy director Gary Galloway, whose experience includes both IT work and management, describes the office’s function in the following terms: “The challenge of eDiplomacy is to influence the depart- ment’s IT policy to ensure that investments serve the user community, particularly the diplomat overseas.” The eDiplomacy staff includes FSOs, General Schedule employees, IT specialists and a science fellow who evalu- ate emerging programs by gathering input from a growing cadre of employees around the world. They have pro- moted a broad range of technologies, especially access to State’s unclassified network for employees outside the office. Lately, eDiplomacy has focused on enabling online collaboration by virtual teams engaged in a common task like standing up Embassy Baghdad, or in pursuit of a com- mon interest like economic analysis. A 2002 study by Barry Fulton, published by Price- waterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government, analyzed 12 innovative State Department programs that emerged mostly from demands of the post- Cold War world: for instance, the collapse of Yugo- slavia, the bombing of the World Trade Center and effi- ciencies required by budget cuts. Analyzing the pro- grams, Fulton found that nearly all “were initiated and developed by individuals who were part of the user com- munity that they were designed to serve.” Powell’s team, where Fulton served as an adviser, incorporated that principle to form the steering commit- tee for SMART messaging. They recruited people like Charles Ries, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, to join func- tional and management bureau leaders along with tech- nology experts. Many new applications now involve gen- eralists to a greater or lesser degree. Some individual diplomats are taking the applications already on their desktops and using them in new ways. Some examples: • Embassies and consulates have opened more than 20 Virtual Presence Posts designed to deliver as much service to remote cities without a permanent U.S. diplomatic presence as possible. Thomas Niblock, a consul in Yekaterinburg, Russia, developed the concept by using tailor-madeWeb sites for several cities in his district to dis- play personalized information, link to standard sources, and coordinate and publicize official travel. The virtual post in Davao, The Philippines, staged a number of online discussions last year for locals on topics of interest, includ- ing visa regulations and study in the U.S. • The consulate in remote Chengdu, China, opened a blog to recruit officers and to provide State and intera- gency readers with information about Chengdu. Consul Jeffrey Moon says, “I have always believed that this is a dif- ficult-to-fill post because potential bidders are unfamiliar with conditions here. I attribute our success in attracting good bidders this year at least partially to our increased ability to share multimedia information about the post.” • Seven different bureaus are interested in combining information from databases into images from satellites to make policy-relevant maps and charts, according to Dr. Carol Christian of State’s eDiplomacy Office. These geo- graphic information systems and related technologies pro- vided new abilities during the 2004 Asian tsunami by visu- alizing the conditions of infrastructure, locations of affect- ed populations, existence of assets and the distribution of personnel with skills to support the relief and reconstruc- tion efforts. Next Stop, Your Desktop Most State employees use what is put in front of them and retain their hands-off attitude toward technology. But new technology will change how all of them get their work done. Here are some megatrends to expect. • More self-service. Administrative processes are increasingly driven by a simple Web browser, enabling each employee to apply for travel reimbursement, provide information to renew a security clearance, or apply for a job or assignment. Even senior officers will be doing more for themselves online — often through government- wide service providers other than State. F O C U S D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 27