After a nearly-ten-year quest, the State Department is about to get a new official communication system, replacing cables with electronic messaging.
I recently glimpsed a developmental version of SMART Messaging, which is undergoing tests at several foreign posts and in selected bureaus of the Department. If the remaining pilots are successful, State will roll out the system to all embassies starting late this year or early next. During 2001 – 2003, I was privileged to serve on the Steering Committee that set the basic parameters of the new system. It was refreshing to see that SMART preserves the essential characteristics that the Committee called for when we gave SMART its name. (Back then, the moniker was not so overworked.)
The new messaging application matters to diplomats because it dramatically expands who can see their reports. It matters to the public because more messages, which shape and implement foreign policy choices, will be archived and potentially available to historians and other interested parties.
The present diplomatic cable technology dates back to World War II, patched and digitized to fit with modern communications networks. But only so much can be done. For example, if an embassy is not on the distribution list of a message, its officers cannot see the message without making an express request — if they learn of the message’s existence in the first place. Official cables carry text only – no pictures, much less sound or video. Unclassified messages are not accessible on the computer screens of diplomats who are using the classified network.
Because of limitations like these, diplomats have done more and more business and reporting via e-mail, which is not archived according to government standards as cables are. For every cable that goes out, thousands of e-mails are sent, meaning that a great deal of the official record is being lost to future historians.
With SMART, e-mail will take the place of cables. A special Microsoft Outlook application on every State Department classified and unclassified computer will let the user create a simple non-record message (“the embassy library will be closed tomorrow”) or an official message for the archive (“2009 Human Rights Report” or “H1N1 flu update for Honduras”). The same user can query that archive for others’ messages, using a Google search engine inside the network, and can set up alerts specifying topics. SMART has the appearance of Outlook, but it is, well, smarter. Think of one of those NASCAR racers that looks like any old Dodge on the outside, but is rather complicated under the hood. SMART, by the way, stands for State Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolset. It has lots of features that I don’t mention here.
To establish this new system involved more than a lengthy software development program. It took a decision by Secretary Colin Powell in 2002 to change the “need to know” rule and to permit general access to messages by cleared personnel. Before, technology and need-to-know security rules conspired to limit what officials could see – even if they held the proper clearance.
Sending record e-mails that are searchable within an official government archive will surely concentrate the mind. Ambassadors, senior reporting officers and officials in Washington will know that their record e-mails can be seen by anyone in the Department (and other agencies of government) with the right clearance, and that they may at some time be subject to Freedom of Information Requests or even legal demands. Every time they initiate a message “for the record,” SMART will prompt them to make conscious decisions to justify classification and to tag the message for retrieval.
Knowledge is power, and State has been described as a knowledge machine. To exploit SMART technology, however, diplomats will have to learn its technical nuances and will also have to exercise judgment about what belongs in the government archive and what doesn’t. All part of smart power.
