Category Archives: DDC Blog

By Maria Belovas, Member of the DDC Washington Chapter Leadership Team

The digital diplomacy conversation has moved beyond the ‘why’ and ‘how’ to new levels of listening and engagement. This sentiment was stressed recently in Washington at the Digital Diplomacy Coalition’s (DDC) “Progressive Nation Building in the Age of Digital Diplomacy” panel.

The panelists, as well as the moderator were no strangers to the theme:

• Petrit Selimi – Deputy Foreign Minister of Kosovo and author of Kosovo’s National Strategy on Digital Diplomacy
• Joakim Edvardsson Reimar – Head of Swedish Digital Diplomacy
• Gökhan Yücel – President of Yenidiplomasi.com and “Turkish Digital Age Geek”
• Jimmy Leach – Portland Communications Digital Consultant and former Head of Digital Diplomacy at the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)

Tasked with moderating that bunch? James Barbour – Minister Counselor & Head of Press and Public Diplomacy at the EU Delegation in Washington, formerly Head of Communications at the British Embassies in both Washington and Moscow.

Although each participant presented their views at a slightly different angle, none of them questioned the significance of digital tools in achieving diplomatic goals. Having worked in this field for a while I am glad to see that the conversation has moved from ‘Why’ and ‘How’ to ‘How to be even better’. And as Joakim Reimar stressed – it is essential to be good at this, because when you’re not you will only hurt yourself (your country).

So how can governments be good at using digital tools for diplomacy? Definitely not by using those tools as an extension to how things have been done in the past. As Jimmy Leach put it – “in the past digital diplomacy was tweeting a photo of two men shaking hands in front of a 19th century painting”. Of course you can do that too, once in a while. But will that transform the way nations interact with one another? Will that empower citizens to act as ambassadors of their country?

Back to my question – how? First of all you listen. The most important conversations today do not necessarily take place behind closed doors in fancy buildings. There are communities, forums, interest groups where real people deal with real issues. There are also misconceptions going around which could easily be overturned by providing accurate information. You won’t be able to do that if you don’t listen. And if you hear about them in the evening news…well it’s too late now isn’t it?

You listen carefully. And then you speak. You speak about what is important to you in a way which inspires others to take action, to keep the conversation going. Meanwhile you do not stop listening. A conversation requires two-way communication. This is what digital engagement should look like and I am not saying it is an easy task.

Governments are not always eager to truly engage. Engagement is arguably foreign to the ways in which governments traditionally operate. There is a lot of talk about two way communication but it sadly often boils down to officials posting press releases on social media and counting “likes” and “retweets”. This isn’t success, nor does it truly have an impact.

Tougher yet, often the people who have mostly been receivers of information in the public sphere, traditionally called “the audience”, aren’t always prepared  to interact as equal counterparts of the “serious” conversations.

But governments are made up of people too. We’re all people as a matter of fact. And we have these amazing technological possibilities to listen and to be heard. The more governments recognize  this – and the more they see “the audience” as “the community” – the more governments will be able to have a meaningful digital impact.

Maria Belovas is responsible for Public Diplomacy and Media Relations at the Embassy of Estonia in Washington. She is also a member of the DDC Washington Chapter Leadership Team. All views expressed are solely those of the author and may not reflect the views of her employer or the Digital Diplomacy Coalition.

This post follows our recent “Progressive Nation Building in the Age of Digital Diplomacy” panel. Watch the video here.

A couple diplomatic tweets have caught quite a bit of attention lately. What do you think? Should governments be engaging in more clever and web-savvy ways, or have they gone too far? Have your say in the comments below.

Geography can be tough. Here’s a guide for Russian soldiers who keep getting lost & ‘accidentally’ entering #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/RF3H4IXGSp

— Canada at NATO (@CanadaNATO) August 27, 2014

Commemorating the 200th anniversary of burning the White House. Only sparklers this time! pic.twitter.com/QIDBQTBmmL

— British Embassy (@UKinUSA) August 24, 2014

UPDATED

The Russian Mission to NATO responded to the Canadian Tweet with their own map:

Helping our Canadian colleagues to catch up with contemporary geography of #Europe @CanadaNATO pic.twitter.com/MjzRxpFFfN

— Russians at NATO (@natomission_ru) August 28, 2014

ICYMI – This is how the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded when Russian forces entered southeastern Ukraine from Russia:

#UkraineUnderAttack #RussiaInvadedUkraine RT PLZ pic.twitter.com/KMM9ezqAfv

— MFA of Ukraine (@MFA_Ukraine) August 27, 2014

By Allen Brandt, Legal and Policy Fellow, Future of Privacy Forum

Government agencies, like many private organizations, use social media for a variety of purposes. At its most basic form, monitoring of social media gives the agency feedback on how your constituents feel your agency is performing its duties; if you are seeing many complaints and negative statements posted, it might give insight into how to improve services. Some governments, however, are using social media or website tools to track their citizens, with potentially harmful results.

With the continually-decreasing cost of data storage, it is now easier and cheaper to keep data than it is to systematically delete it, so you can now hold an ever-increasing history of your users, their interactions with your web and social media sites or other people, and using simple tools, the ability to identify and track the identities of these users, and the use of this history could be in conflict with local or international data privacy laws.

A major use of social media by governments around the world is to relay official announcements, press releases and statements in a consistent and coherent way. One government agency in India, taking a cue from the new Prime Minister, has mandated that every government department post both a tweet and a Facebook post, at least once every 15 days, regarding their agency’s welfare schemes or achievements. The use of social media, in addition to speed, has the advantage of lower costs, since your agency can get official announcements published to your constituents at essentially no cost.

Privacy Policy

Does your agency have an easy to find privacy policy, written in plain language? For U.S. Government sites, writing in clear language “that the public can understand and use” is now the standard, starting from the Plain Writing Act of 2010 and the Executive Orders that follow. For others, take the effort to have your websites and social media postings written for your audience. In many global organizations, that may mean insuring that your writing is to a 6^th or 8^th grade level. If you are unable to have your privacy policies rewritten into easy to understand language, consider adding an easy summary section to the beginning, where a user can get a one or two sentence description for each part with a link to the longer, more formal language, sometimes called a “layered privacy notice”, and are considered an industry best practice. This is especially important if your audience is multinational, such as USAID or the State Department in the US, or for your customs or immigration accounts.

Transparency

As a big advocate in transparency: do your public facing policies match the actual practices that your agency has in place? Doing this often eliminates constituent FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt), and goes a long way towards your agency’s credibility, and the elimination, or at least minimization of your users’ surprises. One recommendation is to review your policies against actual practices on an annual basis. In the private sector, an organization failing to have their actual practices match their website statements could lead, in the US, to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) section 5 violation, commonly called an unfair or deceptive trade practice, in the UK, an Unfair Trading Regulation, and other countries are similar.

Data Collection

A privacy concern is the potential secondary uses of this collected data. First, it’s seemingly impossible to give proper notice to a social media or website user for future uses of their information that are not yet known at the time of collection. Mass collection of personal data, without consent by the individual or another legal basis, could be in violation of both EU and US data protection laws. And some secondary uses, especially those for the public good, would be generally seen as positive, such as using social media after a hurricane or natural disaster, when normal telephone or mobile service was overloaded or slow, if working at all. Of course, with the speed and available to all access of social media, rumors and false information can be just as easily transmitted. After Hurricane Sandy, FEMA published a rumor control website, giving people the real story on what was happening and ways to contact them via phone, website or mobile device. The First Responder website offers guidance, best practices and lessons learned from the use of government agency’s use of social media during times of disaster.

But care should be taken for secondary uses of data that might not be universally appreciated. While a user’s social media name might be personal data, as it is in the US under GSA guidelines or would be under most EU laws, removing the individual identifiers to use, share and analyze the data without the means of identifying any individual has many advantages, including the ability perform research and analysis without risk of identifying any user. Google shares anonymized data with the public for both flu and dengue trends, allowing health officials to better respond to outbreaks. Working with university and other researchers may give your agency additional options to remove individual identifiers from social media logs and allow you to use and analyze the data without the risk of potential disclosure.

Using anonymized Google data to help determine where the flu might be headed is one thing, but to track or potentially identify users who may be searching for information about a communicable or socially unacceptable disease, and the use of this information could lead to legal or labor issues, Privacy Act violations, Genetic Information Act issues, or other problems, should be something to be avoided.

Finally, care should be taken that uses of collected data do not profile individuals, or perform some algorithm that disadvantages any individual (the concept of algorithmic accountability or insuring that your data processing is fair, just non-discriminatory, and in conformance with society’s standards and norms), and the credibility of your agency may depend, in large part, on the public’s perception of how they are treated and if they feel that their person information is being protected.

International, Host Country, and Domestic Laws

Remember that all data that your agency collects in your home country, and under many foreign laws, could be subject to eDiscovery or the ability of citizens to request that your agency produce for inspection, the information that you hold on an individual. The data that you collect or use for analysis have privacy impacts, often subject to various and often conflicting legal and use rules, conflicts between intelligence gathering and the internal agency’s policies, and requests for secondary uses.

Ask your agency’s privacy office and general counsel for guidance, or other agencies, to learn what they are doing and create your own policies and procedures that work for you, and help educate your agency’s management on these issues and how to navigate them.

ABOUT ALLEN BRANDT

Allen Brandt is an attorney who has merged his technical skills with delivering practical data protection and privacy advice, bringing more than 20 years of experience in the technology and information industries. He also served as a panelist at the Digital Diplomacy Coalition’s “Digital Diplomacy and Proactive Monitoring: Challenges to Solutions” event with the Open Technology Institute and Future Tense at the New America Foundation in Washington DC.

Headed to SXSWi this week? Check out some of these digital diplomacy sessions.

Crowdsourcing Diplomacy

March 9 at 11:00AM
This panel will illustrate how the State Dept is leveraging its social media network to address humanitarian crises.

Presenters:

• Hilary Brandt, Director, Office of Innovative Engagement, US Department of State
• Joshua Campbell, GIS Architect, Humanitarian Information Unit, US Department of State

“Open Source” Foreign Policy in the Digital Age

March 9 at 12:30PM
How are governments, NGOs, and international business leaders leveraging social/digital tools to build partnerships across boundaries, cultures, disciplines, and sectors? This panel organized by The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy brings together multidisciplinary expert experience from NATO, USAID and the US Department of State to examine the opportunities and challenges of “Open Source” problem solving in this turbulent 21st century.

Presenters:

• Farah Pandith, Special Representative to Muslim Communities, US Department of State
• James Stavridis, Dean, The Fletcher School The Fletcher School at Tufts University
• Joshua Haynes, Senior Development Technologist & Media Adviser, USAID
• Spencer Ackerman, US National Security Editor, The Guardian

7 Ways to Engage with the US State Department

March 11 at 9:30AM
The talk will include details on 7 mechanisms created to enable more engagement between the State Department and US startups and the innovations they hold, as a way to demonstrate some new avenues for entrepreneurs to consider, earlier in their maturation phases, as to potential uses for their products and services.

Presenters:

• Rebecca Taylor, Venture Principal at Shell Technology Ventures and Entrepreneur-In-Residence at the US Department of State

The New Digital Age

March 7 at 12:30PM
Google’s Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen tackle some of the most interesting questions about our future: how will technology change privacy and security, war and intervention, diplomacy, revolution and terrorism? How will technology improve our lives? What new disruptions can we expect?

Presenters:

• Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google
• Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas, Google

Wiki at War: Conflict in a Socially Networked World

March 9 at 3:30PM
The war for winning dominance over social networks and using that dominance to advantage is already underway. James Carafano presents an extremely timely analysis of the techno-future of information and the impact of social networking via the Internet.

Presenters:

• James Carafano, VP, Foreign & Defense Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation

How Data Is Changing International Development

March 8 at 12:45PM
The Aid industry historically shares financial capital to build roads, or human capital to respond to a crisis, but now there is a new source of value. We can now share the rich value of information capital to the technologists that are blossoming in the developing world.

Presenters:

• Nathaniel Manning, Director of Business Operations, Ushahidi

The World Bank & Innovation: Striking Poverty

March 10 at 1:15PM
José-Manuel Bassat from the World Bank Institute will detail how they are listening, discovering, and creating change by engaging the community in conversation through a variety of channels. Discover how the World Bank is “Striking Poverty” by investing in technology and innovations to help citizens around the world become better informed, governments become more transparent, and those in poverty become more engaged in decisions that affect their lives.

Presenters:

• José-Manuel Bassat, Senior Communications Advisor, World Bank Institute

The Future of Government-Citizen Interaction

March 10 at 5:00PM
The concepts of collaboration and location-based services have become popular not only with wikis, social media, and advertising, but are also changing a notoriously strenuous process: interaction between local governments and citizens. Governments can clarify their procedures and encourage citizen input through platforms that support communication, location-based responses, and fast, widespread distribution of information. Citizens can more effectively create change in their communities by offering ideas and discussing issues with their local government and with each other. PublicStuff, for example, utilizes users’ locations and input to pinpoint issues, facilitate review, and ensure resolution. The goal is to transform a previously isolated experience into a collaborative exchange of information and ideas that lead to change in our communities.

Presenters:

• Surya Yalamanchili, CEO, PublicStuff

SXSW Social Good Hub

March 10 at 9:00AM 
Multiple events bringing together digital creatives, entrepreneurs, filmmakers and other SXSW attendees focused on social change.