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Diplopedia : Wiki Culture in the U.S. Department of State

Diplopedia : Wiki Culture in the U.S. Department of State. Presented at Wikimania 2008 Office of eDiplomacy • U.S. Department of State July 19, 2008. A State Department primer. Basic roles Make and execute foreign policy Provide consular and passport services

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Diplopedia : Wiki Culture in the U.S. Department of State

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  1. Diplopedia:Wiki Culture in the U.S. Department of State Presented at Wikimania 2008 Office of eDiplomacy • U.S. Department of State July 19, 2008

  2. A State Department primer Basic roles Make and execute foreign policy Provide consular and passport services Manage official U.S. presence abroad 57,000+ employees worldwide 46,000 unclassified network users Africa (47) East Asia & Pacific (43) International Organizations (7) Europe (77) Near East South Asia (36) Western Hemisphere (49) … plus 30 Geographic, Policy and Management Bureaus and Independent Offices 2

  3. Legacies • 18th Century business model – highly autonomous business units (embassies and bureaus) • Mid-20th Century official communications system (telegraphic cables) • Cold War security (need to know) 3

  4. A knowledge and information factory • 1,800,000 cable messages a year • 1,500,000,000 e-mail messages a year • 500,000 printed volumes in the foreign affairs collection • 1,000 public and internal web sites (give or take a few)

  5. Office of eDiplomacy • Created in 2002 as a task force, became a regular office in 2003 • Promotes knowledge sharing • Major projects include: • Classified Web publishing from diplomatic posts • Enterprise search • Community blogs • Diplopedia wiki

  6. Authorship within the Department • Documents are already created by multiple authors • Multiple editors change, or at least approve, documents • Roles in cable drafting are defined by the Foreign Affairs Handbook

  7. “Classic” media: the diplomatic cable Cable (old) Cable (new) 7

  8. Social media and the State Department Social media are useful in State Department for several objectives… • Knowledge management • Collaboration • Expertise location • Sharing information • Reaching new audiences

  9. The Diplopedia plan • Open it up to all State employees, but no anonymity • Oversee, but don’t overkill • Make sure everything is informative and not ephemeral Wikis are two-thirds planning, and the rest is a leap in the dark.Napoleon Bonaparte

  10. How it has developed • Slow start for first several months, then interest grew • Integrated with enterprise search • Acceptance increased as Diplopedia grew in size and quality, and wikis seemed less scary • No article is locked down (yet) • No edit wars (yet) • Hard to argue with success

  11. Things we weren’t expecting • Mobile reading • Biographies • Trivia contests • Interagency interest

  12. Diplopedia statistical snapshot • 1,000 registered editors • 4,400+ articles • 650,000+ page views

  13. Ingredients for success • Cultural change • Marketing & training • Governance • Gardening

  14. Cultural change • Room for collaborative technologies • New culture emerging around wikis (and other collaborative technologies) out of the old one • Drafting roles • Grassroots technologies in a top-down organization

  15. Marketing & training • Find the early adopters • Provide training where necessary • Tell lots of people about the wiki, or they won’t use it or contribute to it • Repeatedly explain why benefits (large) outweigh risks (small) • Integrate with enterprise search

  16. Governance • Central initiative and oversight with decentralized contribution of content • Key tenets: • Informative and deliberative, not authoritative • General guidance for conduct and content • Anyone can read but contributors must register • eDiplomacy office director adjudicates disputes

  17. Gardening • Gardeners help provide the right environment for content to grow • Gardeners assist the growth of the wiki by organizing content • Gardeners also help contributors with their articles, including scope and length

  18. Main Page

  19. Portal example

  20. Article example

  21. Related State Department projects • Podcasts • Web chats • Instant messaging • Second Life presence • Recruiting through Facebook

  22. Wikis in other U.S. Federal agencies • Department of Defense • Intelligence community (Intellipedia) • Other civilian agencies either creating them, or in the process

  23. What’s next for Diplopedia • Classified Diplopedia • Expanded use of portals • Replacement of “traditional” web sites • LDAP authentication • More support from management (we hope)

  24. Contact Eric M. Johnson Team Lead, Knowledge Management Action Team Office of eDiplomacy, U.S. Department of State johnsonem3 /at symbol/ state.gov More information: eDiplomacy page on the State Department web site http://www.state.gov/m/irm/c23839.htm

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