Promise Of Web 2.0 Inside The Firewall Fed Press Dec 9

Editor's Notes

• #32: Diplopedia, billed as the Encyclopedia of the United States Department of State, is a wiki running on the State internal Intranet, called "OpenNet". It houses a unique collection of information pertaining to diplomacy, international relations, and Department of State tradecraft. The wiki may be used by U.S. foreign affairs agencies domestic and abroad with State intranet access. It is also available to the United States intelligence community and other national-security related organizations using the Intelink-U network as a mirrored, read-only archive. Both sites are rated by the government as Sensitive but Unclassified. The wiki on either network is not open to the public. Diplopedia is a project of the Office of eDiplomacy (eDip), located in the Bureau of Information Resource Management within the Department of State. Diplopedia uses MediaWiki, the same software used by the Wikipedia free-content encyclopedia project.[1]
• #33: Facebook chatterboxes take note: The Department of Foreign Affairs has launched an investigation into a senior Canadian diplomat's use of the popular social networking site to make disparaging remarks about the prime minister and other matters of import. "We are taking this extremely seriously," a high-ranking Foreign Affairs official told us. The government probe follows our recent column about Stephen Rheault-Kihara, a 46-year-old public relations attache posted to the Canadian embassy in Thailand. Despite his profession's general devotion to discretion, the veteran Canadian diplomat recently left 18 months of banter on his Facebook "wall" open for the world to read. Rheault-Kihara's exchanges with friends in high places included some decidedly undiplomatic opinions of Stephen Harper as a "terrible leader," and Conservative cuts to arts funding as the work of "rednecks." While many Canadians might agree with his views, sharing them with foreign governments and anyone else with Internet access likely is not in the handbook of effective diplomacy abroad. For its part, Foreign Affairs at first issued an official statement -- known generically in this office as condensed fog -- claiming privacy laws prevent the department from discussing specific cases of alleged misconduct. "The department takes any allegation of a breach of policy very seriously," Foreign Affairs said in its prepared statement, adding violations can lead to "administrative or disciplinary measures." Well, duh. It also notes the department has policies regarding the use of government computers and social networking sites such as Facebook. One would certainly hope. (For the record, it took Foreign Affairs just over 51 hours to produce that piece of enlightenment.) Whatever the outcome of the Facebook probe, the incident is sure to be a warning shot heard around the federal government -- and likely around every sensitive organization both public and private. Rule No. 1: Don't post anything on social networking sites you wouldn't want to read on the front page of your newspaper. Needless to say, our report sparked some heated debate and an array of colourful responses from around the world. A number had particular fun with the offending diplomat's Facebook comments that Greg Weston is a lazy, good-for-nothing something, but not a journalist. We've been called a lot worse. The story that prompted Rheault-Kihara to excoriate your faithful scribe on Facebook was partly about Foreign Affairs cancelling a traditional three-week, cross-Canada junket for all new foreign service recruits to help them get to know their own country. We had taken a gentle poke at the program, and at the Ottawa-based diplomatic newspaper, Embassy, for splashing the junket-junking across its front page as though we were witnessing the death of canapes and limos. In response, the latest edition of Embassy featured a lengthy and spirited defence of the three-week freebie, written by former diplomat David Jones, who called our criticism of the cross-country tour "over the top." "A diplomat must represent his country's interests abroad," Jones wrote, "but to do so, he must first understand his own country. That is why domestic travel is incredibly invaluable for new Canadian diplomats." Turns out the guy making the case that all newbie foreign service officers need to know Canada better is, ahem, a former American diplomat. Now there's something for Facebook. greg.weston@sunmedia.ca