Laura Williams, US Department of State | Catalyst Conference 2016
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 2016-04-22

How Colin Powell’s tech mandate within the Department of State led to eDiplomacy 

https://siliconangle.com/2016/05/16/how-colin-powells-tech-mandate-within-the-department-of-state-led-to-ediplomacy-gitcatalyst/

 by Marlene Den Bleyker | May 16, 2016 

During the early 2000s, the U.S. Department of State received a mandate for eDiplomacy by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, who called for a tech upgrade and a culture upgrade when it came to sharing information.

Laura Williams, regional eDiplomacy officer at the U.S. Department of State, met up with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference in Phoenix AZ, to explain what eDiplomacy is and why we need it.

Governmental culture change

Williams began the interview explaining what eDiplomacy is and telling the story of her first day on the job that coincided with Powell’s first day. After announcing his new technology mandate, Williams said, “He sort of blew people’s minds when he said, ‘You know it’s not about need to know any more, it’s about need to share.’ The state department is still a very bureaucratic sort of hierarchical culture, so this initially didn’t rest so well.”

The first thing that Williams team did with eDiplomacy was to bring in a wiki into the internal part of the state departments network. Critics told her that it would never work because of the department’s “clearance culture.” Williams was proud to announce, “We have 22,000 Diplopedia articles running now, so it did work. We brought blogs into the department in order to tell stories across bureaucratic and geographical divides.”

The need for diplomacy using technology

According to Williams, the State Department employees working in 190 countries and in 275 offices needed collaboration. She said that the notions of high-level diplomatic meetings, while still important, do not define what the State Department does.

“It’s a people-to-people diplomacy, not just envoy-to-envoy,” she said. “And how do we do that on a massive scale? Technology is a big part of how to do it all.”

Security matters

“Like every other CIO of an organization that is as large as the State Department, there is a constant worry about security and a constant worry about being able to manage a diverse toolset,” said Williams. She said if that toolset doesn’t provide the technology your organization needs, there will be bigger security problems. She believes it is necessary to find ways to bring collaborative technology and technology that individuals use every day in their personal lives inside the safety of the Department’s network.

For Williams, the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference showed her that the challenges are the same in the private sector; they’re the same if you’re a startup or a big fancy company like Intel or IBM. “A lot of the stories are the same if you’re in government,” she said.

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