Major Programs of the Office of eDiplomacy
The Office of eDiplomacy runs several knowledge-management and new media technology programs for the State Department. Among the most prominent are:
The Virtual Presence Posts program helps the Department broaden its engagement with key cities, communities, regions, and countries without an American embassy or consulate building. For example, most Virtual Presence Posts have a website and diplomats in nearby embassies or consulates may use travel, public outreach programs, media events, or online webchats to create a "virtual" presence that is quite real to local populations.
Diplopedia is the State Department's internal unclassified online encyclopedia. Just as people create and edit articles on public wikis on the Internet, Department personnel are using Diplopedia to create a broad, informative and expanding reference tool for knowledge-sharing about the Department, its programs and offices, and other international affairs subjects.
Diplopedia References:
This initiative enables and encourages Department personnel with shared professional interests to form online communities to publish information, connect with others, and discuss issues. Transcending organizational boundaries and geographic constraints, these websites use a simple blogging tool to allow online community members to easily and quickly publish deliberative content. By choice of the community administrators, most of these online communities are available to members of the interagency foreign affairs community.
To ensure best use of limited resources and to promote successful online communities, eDiplomacy has designed guidelines and a planning questionnaire to help prospective community leaders to form and manage their communities.
The enterprise search project provides a versatile set of search tools and databases to increase the ability of State Department and other agency personnel to find knowledge resources on its unclassified intranet and on classified homepages available to classified interagency networks.
This program enables more than 240 bureaus and posts to share their knowledge and perspectives with the interagency national security community by publishing diplomatic reporting, analysis, and other information on homepages and databases available to the classified interagency network.
In cooperation with other offices, eDiplomacy leads a Collaboration Clearinghouse that advises State Department employees on collaborative tools and best practices to meet their business needs and advance the Department's Knowledge Leadership goals.
eDiplomacy works with other offices in State to develop policy and programs for social networking for professional purposes among State Department employees and with external partners.
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