Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Volume 1, Number 2, Summer/Fall 2000

CIAO DATE: 05/02

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

Volume 1, Number 2, Summer/Fall 2000

From U2 to URL: Technology and Foreign Affairs
by Richard M. Moose^*

Four decades ago, I was a junior Foreign Service Officer lugging code machines around Africa to keep the Soviets (and the French) from reading our mail. That experience seems very distant today. Virtually everything about that world of foreign affairs has changed, and technology is one of the principal factors behind this transformation.

The United States still appears undecided about whether and how we should respond to the challenges and opportunities of the new era–opportunities that would flow from a deliberate exploitation of our global primacy. Whether the United States chooses to lead or merely to react to events, the foreign affairs agencies must be prepared to deal with a very different world.

Change is the dominant theme of our time; the ability to manage change is the distinguishing mark of successful organizations, be they public or private. The ability of the U.S. government to reshape its institutions, using technology to engender and enable new forms of communication and new responses to events, will have a critical bearing on our future security and well–being. This will be the case in the new world of foreign affairs, just as it has proven to be in the business world. The challenges of effecting these changes have as much to do with redefining organizations and culture as they do with simply incorporating new technology. If the U.S. government is unable to marshal its internal expertise and analyze problems in a timely, nearly instantaneous manner, the rest of the world takes note. If its leaders lack rapid, two–way means of coordinating the component elements of the foreign affairs community, its potential strength may be wasted. When its official responses are perceived by the rest of the world to be one or more laps behind emerging realities, its capacity for leadership is impaired. The United States may be the most knowledgeable, most wired country in the world, but if its foreign affairs institutions are not organized and equipped to compete with its international counterparts as well as the host of new informal actors, its interests will suffer.

Is Technology the Answer?

The U.S. executive branch and its foreign affairs components continue to experience great difficulty in coping with key aspects of the Information Age. No longer a bipolar contender, the United States has become the reluctant hegemon. With the end of the Cold War, the United States became the singular focus of the world’s hopes and grievances, whatever their nature or origin. Causes and movements of all forms, repressed or ignored in the bipolar era, now gain worldwide saliency, often through access to technology. Globalization makes it difficult for the United States to escape their thrust, even when it wishes to ignore them.

There is broad agreement that better use of information technology (IT) by foreign affairs agencies could help address the aforementioned challenges and dangers. In reports published over the last two years, three panels of experienced foreign policy practitioners addressed the relationship between technology and international affairs. The reports examined the array of new actors, traditional and non–traditional, that have engulfed foreign affairs. Each emphasized, in its own way, the contribution that IT can make by enhancing the capacity of the foreign affairs community to cope with the changing global environment. The panel sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found “unacceptable performance gaps” in the community’s priorities, leadership, infrastructure, resources, technology, and relations with non–governmental players. “In short,” the report said, “the State Department and allied agencies are encumbered with traditions and tools that inhibit the practice of diplomacy.”

The U.S. government is faced with an increasing array of issues affecting the national interest in which private expertise exceeds that available in the lead government agencies or in any combination of agencies. Ethnic lobbies and non–governmental agencies are often more intimately informed about conditions in obscure locales than the government’s vast and costly intelligence apparatus. If properly equipped, the government could, if it so chose, assemble its own “virtual” expert panels and capitalize on the knowledge of those outside the government bureaucracy. More inclusive modes of technology, aided by personal interaction, would enable government to have a better understanding of local situations–or at the very least not be caught off–balance so often. A recent Stimson Center report, for example, spoke of the need to forge “an inclusive diplomacy in a complex world.” Non–traditional international actors with worldwide electronic access, unencumbered by cryptographic constraints and clearance protocol, act more quickly than hierarchical, stove–piped bureaucracies. Technology can facilitate the horizontal sharing, gathering, and coordinating of information, thereby enhancing the speed and coherence of responses.

The State Department at the Dawn of IT

The State Department arrived at the dawn of the IT era heavily equipped with Cold War technology dedicated to the protection of closed, inward–looking processes and classified networks. Today’s concepts of accessing and riding the Internet are the antithesis of what the Department’s systems were designed for, what its IT staff was trained to execute, and what its practitioners were trained to use. Even so, in 1977, the much–maligned WANG computer made the Department a leader in the technology arena among agencies in the executive branch. This early success soon faded, however, as the Department missed the start of the PC revolution, having failed–as did many others–to grasp its potential. Thereafter, the State Department could never lay its hands on the substantial funds required to invest in a transition away from its legacy systems, explaining why its IT systems were seriously lagging when the Internet exploded onto the technology scene. Burdened with continuing budget and security concerns, the Department has never caught up. But at least the last WANG has finally been retired.

Stresses in the System

In the past, the foreign affairs elements of the government gathered information largely through personal observation and interaction. This information was reported to headquarters through the protected, classified telegraphic channels. The emphasis was on control of highly sensitive, internally generated information. This prevailing style of managing information, however, is obsolete. The information most needed to feed today’s processes is often unclassified and readily available outside the government. The challenge is to find efficient means of gathering and sifting through information to make it available where it is needed most. The tempo of today’s interaction, coupled with the frustration with laborious, hierarchical telegraphic clearance processes, have created the need for faster, more flexible, and less formal channels of communication.

Until a decade or so ago, the speed of international interaction allowed the government to rely heavily upon individual knowledge and manual retrieval of information. Similarly, individual agencies pursued their respective missions with an eye on a few clarified goals, and with the overall thrust of their activity driven by the imperatives of a bipolar world. Today’s broader agenda, however, challenges old missions and engages an unprecedented number of agencies whose previous orientation was primarily domestic. For example, U.S. law enforcement agencies, today the fastest growing component of the nation’s official presence overseas, used to be primarily concerned with domestic crime, not international terrorists and drug traffickers.

Obstacles to Progress

As a member of the aforementioned CSIS panel, I agree with most of its findings and with many of those of the other panels. I yield to no one in my advocacy of the Department’s need for substantial additional funding. But I also believe that the depth and persistence of the information technology gap has diverted attention from underlying problems of management and mission that must be addressed before current technology problems can be surmounted. In my view, the distinguished panelists seriously understate the non–technical difficulties that inevitably accompany the introduction of new technology into any bureaucracy–large or small, public or private, civilian or military. While steady progress has been made by the State Department in its use of IT over the last few years, the potential of these advances will not be realized unless the underlying problems are identified and the necessary energy is marshaled to solve them. These problems span three areas that bear directly on technology use–funding, leadership, and mission focus.

Funding: Who Is Responsible?

There is no doubt that funding will remain the most obvious obstacle to the modernization of foreign affairs technology until the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recognizes, or is instructed by the president, that it should give a higher priority to the IT budget. During my years as Undersecretary of State for Management, the Department was invariably obliged to squeeze the IT budget within the constraints of the OMB “guidance” for the international affairs account. In the Department’s internal budget process, no major proposal for IT modernization could hold its own against any “policy” or “program” requirement. Secretaries of state share responsibility in this matter. They must recognize that their Department’s dysfunction may, in the long term, be just as great a liability to the protection and promotion of U.S. interests abroad as the failure to obtain enough funds for the regional crisis du jour or the perpetual Middle East peace process. It is not fair to reproach Congress when the executive branch consistently fails to ask for sufficient funding.

Leadership and Interagency Coordination

Changing domestic and international agendas have induced a great increase in the number of U.S. government agencies operating abroad–presently more than thirty–five. Globalization and today’s speed of information exchange require interagency responses that are better informed, well–coordinated, and equally rapid. Poorly coordinated agency activities can–and often do–send contradictory signals about U.S. policies. The Overseas Presence Advisory Panel (OPAP) report found that inefficient information systems “leave the [State] Department ’out of the loop.’”

The foreign affairs agencies have not yet responded to new demands, and there has been only limited pressure for them to do so. The executive branch missed an historic opportunity to put its interagency house in order when Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms sought, beginning in 1995, to force the consolidation of the foreign affairs agencies under the Department of State. This proposal was, at once, both constructive in its logic and mischievous in its effect. While the Department vacillated, the other agencies fought to protect their autonomy, budgets, personnel, and the right to exclusive control of their own communications channels. The White House shielded the Agency for International Development (USAID) from consolidation, while allowing the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) and the United States Information Service (USIS) to be absorbed–albeit on terms that nullified most of the potential benefits. One of the most potent (and transparently self–serving) arguments invoked by opponents was the Department’s alleged lack of interest in our capacity to manage other programs or, indeed, to properly manage itself. Many in the Department agreed.

Greater ease in sharing information among the agencies, both at home and abroad, would greatly enhance interagency coordination and thus the execution of U.S. foreign policy. Still, the expectation that constructive interagency action can be realized through a foreign affairs intranet–recommended by the OPAP–is unrealistic. Sharing communications is generally the last thing that competing agencies want to do. Anticipating this resistance, the OPAP sagely recommended the creation of an interagency technology regulatory body, directly empowered by the president, in order to “overcome the natural tendency of agencies to want their own systems.” Leadership is at the heart of interagency dysfunction, but it is a touchy subject. The CSIS report, for example, approached the matter with great delicacy, observing: “That some presidents and secretaries have not effectively used the bureaucracy of diplomacy to advance national interests reflects, in part, their own personal style, but also the failure of diplomacy to keep up with the pace of change.” Progress in the State Department’s utilization of new information technologies will require leadership that can convince its own personnel, as well as the personnel of the other foreign affairs agencies, that greater interagency communication will create a more fluid and responsive foreign policy apparatus.

Focusing on the Mission

The preconditions for successful technology modernization in any organization, including the State Department, involve rethinking the organization’s mission and reshaping its structure and processes (taking into account its goals and operating environment) before investment occurs. The State Department is almost universally at fault for not having undertaken these critical steps. Managing organizational change in order to achieve a clearer mission focus is particularly challenging when strong organizational culture is a factor. Other equally proud but troubled organizations, however, have succeeded in remaking themselves. In the case of the State Department, nothing is more important than rethinking its mission around those whom, in the words of the CSIS study, “listen, interact, analyze, interpret, and communicate.” The OPAP believed that “since gathering and disseminating information [has] . . . been among the core functions of overseas representatives, the United States can better ensure the future success of its overseas presence by fostering an organizational culture that values knowledge–its development, sharing, and storage.” These opinions are consistent with the “value–added” perception of “stakeholders” who were interviewed during the Department’s short–lived Strategic Management Initiative (SMI) of 1995. More recently, the Stimson panelists declared that “information is State’s primary commodity and product. State’s value–added is knowledge.” Re–evaluating the Department’s mission in terms of its value–added should be the first step; fitting new technology into the mission can enhance its pursuit.

Knowledge is often useless to policymakers and foreign affairs executives unless they can gain access to it easily and quickly. The Department experiences immense difficulty in streamlining the process of accessing information partly because its internal communications channels are clogged by self–imposed constraints and distractions. High on the list of measures that could re–energize the Department would be the revival of the neglected objective put forth by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher: to eliminate layers in the Department’s organizational structure and simplify the clearance process. Behind those bland prescriptions lies a bureaucratic black hole that devours energy better spent on leadership and analysis. Similarly, the endless, self–imposed clearance and crosschecking undertaken in the name of coordination serves primarily to obscure accountability and stifle initiative. Here again, technology can help, but first there is the matter of will.

Like many other venerable public and private organizations, the State Department has accumulated functions over the years that are not integral to its principal functions: gathering and disseminating information, as well as coordinating foreign affairs activities. Basic management philosophy would suggest that the Department divest or outsource to the private sector, to the greatest extent possible, its numerous non–core functions such as property management and telecommunications network operation. The Department’s top management has traditionally not given those activities adequate oversight. Overseas, non–core responsibilities substantially distract senior officers from their primary missions. As the CSIS study observed, “the foreign affairs community has too many administrators and other support personnel–and too few people who listen, interact, analyze, interpret, and communicate.” Ironically, one of the unfortunate side–effects of belated attention to IT and security has been to shrink even further the number of personnel positions available overseas for core functions of reporting and analysis.

Aligning Technology with the Mission

The alignment of new technology with the State Department’s mission is bedeviled by two factors: first, a reluctance to embrace the new, broader agenda; and second, a continuing lag in matching appropriate IT tools to the tasks at hand. The Department’s IT staff is doing more planning than ever before and are attempting to take advantage of the OPAP recommendation for an interagency intranet. Still, insiders experienced with IT worry that the planners are not adequately engaging the would–be users: The CSIS panel noted that political and economic officers, as well as specialists in fields such as public diplomacy, should be given a greater say in the allocation of resources. While this point is valid, the greater challenge lies in convincing policy officers to participate meaningfully, for they are often disinterested or insufficiently conversant in technologies to contribute effectively to the planning process. The problem of familiarity with technology may be, at least in part, a generational phenomenon. Still, if the technology is not available, how will the senior officers ever learn its value?

Encouraging Innovation

As noted earlier, culture plays a role in retarding the development of the foreign affairs institutions and the related application of technology. The Stimson Report, citing the need to foster a change in culture at the State Department, urged the seventh floor principal officers–including the secretary, undersecretaries, and other high–level officials–to familiarize themselves with the information technology currently used by the top leadership at the Department of Defense. (Those who are critical of State’s IT performance are prone to exaggerate the Pentagon’s success.) But wiring a handful of top officials will not get the job done. The Department has always ensured that its top principals are well–equipped, but where most of those below them in the hierarchy work, the Information Dark Age still prevails. By contrast, what is most remarkable about the Pentagon is not the digital displays in the office of the Secretary of Defense, but that CNN and the Internet are available for everyday use throughout the building.

Leadership by example can help overcome cultural and organizational resistance to technology. One assistant secretary has created intranet sites for an entire geographic bureau, an organizational entity that is central to the Department’s policy mission. The pilot program demonstrates how enlightened leadership can use IT to improve the dissemination of directives downward, how it can quickly draw upon the expertise below, and how flexible, lateral communication can knit together a far–flung bureau. The application has its limitations: It is expensive and provides primarily internally generated information. Still, the pilot demonstrates IT’s potential to change the way people approach their work. Pockets of innovation such as this need to be encouraged and explored.

The Right Connection

The main State Department building reportedly now has more than 1,000 Internet hookups, but officials acknowledge that they are significantly under–utilized–except by the public affairs staff. One explanation for this is the current security requirement for a separate network to provide Internet connections. This means that, with a few exceptions, Internet stations are located for shared use. While many, if not most, officers can access the classified cable system on their desktops, most must leave their desks and walk to a shared location to access the World Wide Web. Work habits and the level of Internet use are not likely to change under these circumstances.

The recent case of the missing top secret laptop will only make it more difficult for the Department to surmount the security concerns that currently constrain its use of the Internet. Acknowledging the cost and complexity of sustaining adequate firewall protection to guard sensitive information, the Stimson panelists emphasized the need for State to replace its current policy of risk avoidance with risk management. The atmosphere must change, they argued, from one of “information policing” to one of “information providing.”

In this spirit, one may wonder about the changes that might result if the Internet, rather than the classified telegram system, were at all workstations in the State Department. The classified terminals could then be safely locked away in nearby closets. At first, some staff might find this procedure difficult, but before long, I posit that work habits, as well as the general level of Internet awareness, would be greatly enhanced.

Preparing a Strategic Plan

Use of technology in foreign affairs boils down to questions of mission and money. The foreign affairs community must modernize its outlook on its collective mission and the role of technology. As the Stimson Center report noted: “The State Department needs to view technology . . . as a way to improve policy rather than seeing it as just a tool of communication.” Having rethought the Department’s mission–something they must do for themselves–the benefits of and necessity for technology would be readily apparent to its leaders. Only at that point could a convincing, coherent modernization plan be prepared–one that embraces the entire community–and presented to the president and the Congress as a matter of the highest national priority.

Endnotes

Note *: Richard M. Moose is President of the Institute for Public Research and former Undersecretary of Management at the United States Department of State in the Clinton administration. Back.