Guest Post: Three (More) Steps to Better E-Diplomacy

Hillary Clinton’s willingness to embrace the use of technology and bring Alec Ross on as an advisor for innovation is a welcome and critical step for a 21st century State Department operation. Employing social networking tools to share information with foreign publics, collaborating to produce new software to improve services around the world, and working together across borders to improve all facets of State’s work. From a diplomatic perspective, however, installing the critical infrastructure for sharing information is only a first step. There are three crucial next steps that will likely be the difference between a disappointing legacy of good ideas and a lasting legacy of good diplomacy. They are:

  • Closing the global digital divide with open internet access,
  • Engaging, not lecturing, and
  • Expanding and restructuring the Foreign Service’s digital presence at home and abroad.

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The Future of Public Diplomacy

The world increasingly operates on perceptions created by the “Now Media” environment. Governments must fully take into account these perceptions in the forming and conducting of foreign policy. From the perspective of the United States, the simple and essential fact is that everything we say and do both at home and abroad, as well as everything we fail to say and do, has an impact in other lands. This isn’t a new idea but an observation originally made by a certain general running for president in 1952.

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