PRoof

People in the business of persuasive communication have trouble proving that what they do works.  Even if public opinion changes in your favor after you undertook a public relations campaign, that change might be due to some other factor.

That’s why an arcane piece of research called “marketing mix modeling” caught my attention.  In an article published by the Institute for Public Relations, several PR researchers found research done by consumer products companies that was able to isolate the effect of media activities from promotions, coupons and other marketing efforts.  They found that the “media-centric” PR offered better return on investment than other methods.

It’s no mean trick; the research involves multivariate statistics and regression analysis.  The article had trouble finding studies that it could publish, because they contained proprietary data belonging to the large-company sponsors.

The principle, though — proving the value of PR versus other tactics of persuasion — is interesting to those of us in the business services industry where word-of-mouth is an important marketing tool and “business development” is often simply sales work unsupported by public relations.

It is also something that the public diplomacy community should examine.  The State Department has demonstrated in a study that foreigners who participate in cultural and educational exchanges, or English-learning programs, or embassy library and cultural promotions, hold more favorable attitudes toward the U.S. than those who don’t.  However, the relative effectiveness of PD (meaning embassy PR) versus broadcasting, information operations, comparable USAID training, and other tools of statecraft are only beginning to be examined.

I have no idea how to do the math.  Any volunteers out there?

 

Cybersecurity: whistling past the graveyard?

Melissa Hathaway, who led President Obama’s Cyberspace Policy Review, now says the Administration and Congress don’t seem prepared to make the short-term sacrifices necessary to secure the Internet.

Hathaway co-signed an op-ed article in today’s Washington Post with Jack Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general in the Bush Administration.  The bipartisan byline captured my attention.

Citing the numerous reviews (including the one Hathaway just completed, the authors conclude: “We know what the road toward security looks like; the hard part is getting the government to travel down it.”

Threats from cyber-attackers, some sponsored by governments, are becoming more apparent every day (see my recent post.)  And our exposure and vulnerability to computer disruptions are growing.  Tomorrow it won’t be only Google, or (heaven forbid) the power plant  or hydroelectric dam.  Networked computers are playing a bigger role in traffic management, and are creeping into our health care records and even into our home appliances.

Hathaway and Goldsmith hint at how truly addressing the problem would restrict the private sector, change government and make our online activities more expensive.  Looking at some bills in Congress on the subject gives an ideas of some of the adjustments business and consumers would have to make.  One would require your ISP to notify you if your computer has become infected with a virus.

If you want a contrary view, read the recent article by Evgeny Morozov in the Wall Street Journal.  Still, the stronger software standards and better cross-government coordination advocated by Hathaway and Goldsmith seem reasonable to contemplate.

Any real solution will be a classic case of short-term pain versus long-term gain, with the gain hard to imagine until we encounter a worst-case scenario.  The situation is kind of like the uncontrollable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Disclosure: I work for CSC, a global information technology services company that has a strong suite of offerings in cybersecurity.

 

QDDR – sQuabble?

The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, undertaken last year by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was to issue an interim report “early this year,” then “in April.”  It seems to have got stuck in a dispute over State’s authority over development assistance.

Modeled after the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the purpose of the QDDR is noble: “Through aligning policy, strategy, authorities, and resources, the QDDR will provide the blueprint for our diplomatic and development efforts. The end goals are unified smart power; clear, mutually reinforcing State and USAID roles and missions; and tangible organizational change leading to excellence in performance.”

As it stands, the exercise seems to be living up to a quip that Anne-Marie Slaughter, State’s policy plans chieftain, made in a forum last year: “I hope the ‘Quadrennial’ part doesn’t refer to how long this is going to take.'”

The draft, surprisingly, has not leaked to the press as a draft study by the NSC, the Presidential Study Directive on Global Development Policy (PSD-7) has done.

That means the public knows little beyond the fact sheet and the names of internal working groups what the study is envisioning for diplomacy.  The Defense Department Review is based on broad thinking about the challenges to be faced; nothing indicates whether that sort of work has been done for the QDDR.

Perhaps the planners are taking the National Intelligence Council’s (NIC)  2025 Project as their baseline projection.  But that’s two years old.  They can’t count on an Obama Administration National Security Strategy either.  Still not out.

If the Beltway media are right that bickering over budget control and staff are dominating debate, that’s a pity.  Consider what the State Department’s official mission statement says it is supposed to be doing.

Advance freedom for the benefit of the American people and the international community by helping to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world composed of well-governed states that respond to the needs of their people, reduce widespread poverty, and act responsibly within the international system.

The QDR takes a broad (perhaps too broad) approach, analyzing the threats to our citizens, before addressing organizational lineups and resources.  The Department of State could too.  State holds deep expertise in questions affecting ordinary Americans — the rise of new economic powers, the scarcity of clean water and other natural resources, armed threats from overseas, global migration.  Let’s hope there is unseen debate at this level, too.

Othwise, the imbalance between the nation’s military power, which the Defense Secretary admits is unsustainable with our budget deficit, and its diplomatic capabilities will only widen.

 

Public Diplomacy training: emphasis on strategy

I teach a seminar on strategic planning for public diplomacy, a topic that seems to be gaining attention within the Department of State.  The latest episode, in New Delhi April 12 – 16, solidified a few thoughts about the subject.

These seminars take place overseas and involve between 15 and 25 U.S. embassy staff members, most of them locally hired.  It may surprise the reader that public affairs section personnel often lack training in fundamental public relations disciplines like audience analysis and behavioral research, and don’t always know how to measure their programs’ impact.  But that’s my observation after teaching about 75 people over the past year.

Whatever you think about the U.S. Information Agency, which was consolidated into the State Department in 1998, the old agency mandated annual strategic plans and marketing studies and conducted various types of research.  Outgoing Foreign Service Officers were generally well prepared, because their careers were focused on public diplomacy.  All those conditions changed under State Department jurisdiction.

When the performance of public diplomacy drew criticism after 9/11, the  General Accounting Office urged State to adopt best commercial practices in this area.  A couple of years ago, the Foreign Service Institute developed new teaching materials on communication strategy and planning, drawing  from a variety of commercial public relations sources.  One was the Public Relations Society of America.  (I’m a member, and also accredited in PR.)

For the regional seminars, each student brings an idea for a new initiative and uses our standard planning method to develop it, working up objectives, a message, and an action plan that includes ways to measure success.  They present their plan to the group on the last day.  My co-trainers, Brigitte Pressler and Greg Goble,  hold classes in visual diplomacy and events planning, and offer tips on making presentations and on self-management skills.

Locally-hired personnel are not always involved in strategy, even though they know their audiences best and can offer unique insights on how to make policy messages understandable.  The course content takes some of the participants far outside their comfort zone.

After the Delhi seminar, participants reported better awareness of their media and cultural programs to embassy objectives.  One mentioned  improving in “systematic thinking.”  A few days after winding up the seminar, I encountered a participant in her office in Delhi.  She was just coming from a kickoff meeting to pursue her course project.

This is only one of the Foreign Service Institute’s offerings in public diplomacy, and “how to” topics on media and exchanges make up the bulk of instruction.  Each has a strategy component embedded.  When you think about it, a boffo website or an SRO cultural presentation mean little unless they clearly relate to the strategic goals of the mission, and can demonstrate their effectiveness toward concrete objectives.  I think public diplomacy personnel need more of this type of training.

Everyone thinks what he or she does is the most important thing, of course.  I ‘m gratified that FSI wants to strengthen this type of instruction.

 

The Internet – Commons or Battle Ground?

Secretary Clinton’s speech about Internet freedom and security at the Newseum last January pulled cybersecurity out from under the radar.  It also planted another major issue on the capacious platter of Sino-U.S. relations.  Developments since then seem to place the emphasis on security more than on promoting freedom.

Media reports of cyber attacks on government and business Web sites and networks have multiplied this year, as the U.S. has begun taking steps to put comprehensive cybersecurity measures into place.  The “advanced persistent threat (APT)” attack on Google, which prompted a threat to withdraw from the Chinese marketplace, aimed to steal information from the company’s network.  Experts traced the attack to hackers with connections to Chinese technical schools.  Similar attempts against U.S. agencies including the State Department are rife.  My impression is that the government of China is secretly encouraging attacks like these while denying any involvement.

It’s now in the interest of all countries to define and enforce norms of behavior, as Secretary Clinton stated.  Our country cannot afford to be self-righteous about the issue.  Many of the attacks rely on armies of personal computers that have been compromised by software that allows hackers to use them at will.  McAfee, the computer security company, estimated over a million infected computers in both the United States and China.  McAfee also sponsored a survey recently, carried out by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to probe the views of 600 IT and security executives in 14 countries.  Respondents in Brazil, Spain and Mexico said the United States was to be most feared with regard to cybersecurity.

The new cybersecurity command at the Defense Department and the recent appointment of a White House cyber coordinator (Howard Schmidt) promise further development of a U.S. doctrine with offensive and defensive sides.  This aims to prevent the nightmare scenario of an attack that reaps destruction by disabling power stations, communications and other strategic national capabilities that are owned and operated by the private sector.  I’ve heard mixed assessments of how likely such a dire scenario may be.  However, former government officials in a simulation exercise this year called Cyber Shockwave found they had no powers to stop a cyber attack.

The government and a council of private companies (including CSC, one of my employers) have been consulting on cyber warfare defenses for a year or so.  On Capitol Hill, Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe have proposed legislation.  However, the U.S. has a road ahead before it can be confident that our Internet communications are well protected against outside interference.

Clearly, establishing some laws of cyber war is a big part of the solution.  James Lewis, director of SAIC’s Public Policy Program, described Secretary Clinton’s speech this way.  “This isn’t a declaration of war.”  [To the Chinese and others]  “It’s saying, ‘Hey, listen we’ve really got to talk.  There are rules, we need to make them clear, and we have to obey them.’”

 

Voice of America long on message, short on dialogue

The article I mentioned in my last post, Alan Heil’s essay on issues facing the new Broadcasting Board of Governors, emphasizes new media.

The title is a mouthful: “The Ever-Expanding Global Electronic Town Meeting: Challenges ahead for U.S. International Broadcasting.” Heil lists a variety of important issues, but the title emphasizes the era of social media by asking us to imagine broadcasting as a planetary “electronic town meeting.”

That is a distant vision.  To see how distant, take a look at My Voa, designed last year as a social-media platform for BBG’s flagship service the Voice of America.  If you register for My VOA’s “Communities” page, you’ll find that reader contributions are few and far between.  Discussions are thin.  VOA has built the pages using good-quality commercial Web authoring software (Kickapps, they say), but so far only a few have come.

Then let’s review VOA’s presence on well-established social media sites, starting with Facebook.  The largest on the planet, Facebook claims 400 million users.  According to a recent Comscore survey, 70 percent of them live outside the United States.  The VOA page has 6,000 fans.  The State Department’s eJournal USA page has nearly 97,000.  YouTube and Twitter also report numbers of viewers in the low thousands.  I found no active management of the sites, but only random comments from audience members.  The most readable thing I found was VOA’s blogs at various different sites (linked from voanews home page), but they’re bringing in virtually no comments.

How about other languages on the Web?  After all, VOA is primarily a foreign-language organization.  Well, VOA’s Portuguese page doesn’t have a link to Orkut, which is more popular than Facebook in Brazil.  I would welcome comment from any readers who can check different character sets and languages and report presence in China or the Middle East.

In short, my brief excursion on a recent snowy day in Washington found nothing like an electronic town hall meeting; only the bells and whistles.  Nor did all these sites appear to have a common rationale.

In fact, the major technology push right now for VOA and other BBG broadcasters is to adapt and send content to mobile devices: smart phones and regular cell phones that are proliferating throughout the developing world.  The communication concept here is messaging, not interaction.

If VOA intends anything like an electronic town hall, it needs a strategy first.  Last year the agency established a new Office of Social Media, which answers directly to the International Broadcasting Bureau, the executive arm of the Board.  Subsequently, BBG hired a new Director for the IBB, Richard Lobo, a veteran broadcaster from Miami.  It also brought in Andre Mendes, a new Director of Engineering, after an external search process.  Mendes has a degree and background in information technology.  Once a new Board of Governors is approved, we’ll see what direction the agency will take.

 

U.S. Foreign Broadcasting Under New Management

Among the large backlog of Presidential appointees pending Senate approval are four prominent Republicans.  They constitute half of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees six multimedia news and information services provided to foreign audiences on behalf of the United States.   The Secretary of State holds a ninth seat on the Board.

The present Governors have all resigned or exhausted their terms, and policy issues have been festering for years.  That’s why Alan Heil’s essay on how this part of American diplomacy may change in the future is worth reading. Heil (a friend and associate) is a former deputy director of the Voice of America.

Heil throws out some tantalizing glimpses of where the new board can wield its new broom – assuming Senate confirmation.  He writes:

[New Governors] are expected to take a fresh look at what has become a complex, multimedia operation that is facing the unprecedented challenged posed by the rapid emergence of new media and social networks around the globe.

The broadcast entities may insist on preserving their brand names and newsgathering systems. But might not more coordination and sharing of content among them be the daily norm, rather than the rare exception? All five networks have highly qualified CEOs capable of exchanging content to create a news service unmatched in scope and reach while reducing costs.

Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and former CEO of Time Inc. and CNN, is proposed as the BBG chairman, and other members come from stellar backgrounds.  With this new mix of people, we can anticipate some genuinely new ideas.

 

Snow storm outside, brain storm inside

Ten public diplomacy specialists who have come to Vienna from embassies on the European and African continents have taught me a lot this week about how U.S. public diplomacy is progressing on the ground.  Of course, I’m the lecturer listed on the formal schedule, not the FSNs.  But I should be taking notes.

This week’s seminar covers strategic planning and evaluation for communication programs.  It applies standard public relations methods to practice at U.S. embassies.   And I can see the participants learning — yes, some from me — and also a lot from each other.

The training is useful because of the turnover in local staff in recent years.  Ten years ago only two of our ten participants were working for a U.S. embassy.

Both the diverse nationalities and the different responsibilities of the students make for a rich exchange of ideas.  For example, one participant manages a democracy fund; another conducts press relations; a third develops cultural programs.  Here, they learn how their individual practice forms part of a general embassy strategy, and how to measure and evaluate their specific contributions.

We talked about social media, which nearly all are using for office work as well as at home.  Three work with social networks that are popular in country, but new to me.

I found there were not many questions about how to set up a Facebook page, for example, or tweet or follow Twitter subjects.  People seem to have learned that on their own.  The bulk of our discussion covered issues like: what content should be posted? what technical and policy rules apply? and how to evaluate a venture in social media?

One participant described reaction from her friends and family when she invited them to become “fans” of the American embassy’s new Facebook page.  “What?  You think I want to be a fan of the American embassy?”

This is only one of the Foreign Service Institute’s variety of offerings for both national and American employees.  Getting the right strategy in place is surely one of the more important things to teach.

 

Gaps in new media for diplomacy?

The State Department continues to exploit social media for internal collaboration and for public diplomacy.  But there is a third dimension where progress is less visible: using technology to conduct foreign relations.  It’s hard to find a consistent push in this direction — arguably the area where technology can produce the most concrete results.

State emphasizes mobile and interactive Web technologies for public communication, and appropriates new media organizations like Twitter and Facebook.  In the social media arena, Department headquarters is on par with standard commercial public relations; the embassies, less so.

New media also abound inside the State Department’s IT networks.  This year, e-mail will finally replace the venerable diplomatic cable as SMART rolls out to all embassies.  The best read on this development comes from Dr. Barry Fulton, describing the new SMART messaging system in the online journal American Diplomacy.  SMART cables will be available across the enterprise to anyone with the proper clearance (and special permissions for cables dealing with personnel and like topics.  Diplomats can arrange feeds and alerts on topics of interest among the stream of internal messages.  SMART is really a family of new ways to communicate, including instant messages and Sharepoint, which have already been in use for some time.

Internal blog pages and wikis allow employees to form groups to pool information.  Sixty communities share ideas about subjects ranging from desk officer tradecraft to Afghan strategic communications to IT technical problems.  The Secretary’s Sounding Board, an exercise in “ideation,” collects and displays ideas for more effective diplomacy and posts comments from readers.  The Diplopedia wiki hosts thousands of articles created by more than a thousand employees for internal reference.  For example, most every embassy publishes post reports, fact sheets and newcomers information.  Department employees have the tools and the will to share far more updated information than they did ten — even five years ago.

In fact, State is considering a new level of internal collaboration: a social network that might be compared to LinkedIn.  This would move the Department from the communal blog or wiki to a peer-to-peer style of networking.  Those who have worked in the Department can imagine the implications for hiring, selection and career advancement — not to mention the possibility of seeking out those other people on the network with a deep interest in, say, the Transnistria border dispute.

In other words, the State Department is only a step behind the private sector in the tools and traits of internal collaboration.  But what about using information technology to expand the communication channels with other governments?  Or to support broad U.S. interests in human rights or economic development?

Here the picture is less clear because there is no sponsoring office.  State’s eDiplomacy office has created and maintains the social media mentioned above, but its mandate outside the Department goes no further than other government agencies and NGOs — and this is not its main thrust.

Yet it’s hard to find innovation in communication between governments.  A generation ago, State set up hot lines with Russia to prevent unintential nuclear strikes.  Where are the ideas to expand risk-reducing communications with today’s adversaries like Iran?  And what role could online collaboration play at a global negotiation like Copenhagen?  The U.S. military has improvised technology to manage joint operations, exercises and humanitarian relief.  Am I missing similar efforts at State and USAID?

As for using innovation to advance U.S. interests,  there are points of light but — lacking a sponsor — there is no discernable path toward innovation.  USAID delivers technology training and works to narrow the digital divide.  It also develops economic opportunities by encouraging information sharing among entrepreneurs and even services like banking through mobile phones, which are becoming the poor man’s computer throughout the developing world.  But USAID’s information technology page is blank.  You have to look through its “success stories” to see how technology is being used.

This is the brief of Alec Ross, the Secretary’s advisor on innovation.  He spoke recently at Brookings Institution about using technology to effect change abroad, rather than to persuade or coordinate.  It was a wide-ranging presentation that balanced every point of light with the dark side of technology.

• An U.S.-supported anonymous SMS service enables citizens to report crimes in Ciudad Juarez without fear of retribution.  But criminals use the Internet for illegal trafficking of drugs and humans.
• Banking by mobile phone allows Kenyans to transfer and save money securely.  But the Internet also facilitates financial crime.
• Iranians and Chinese activists use Twitter and similar media to organize.  But authoritarian regimes penetrate citizen networks to stifle dissent.

Ross didn’t want to discuss the subject of cybersecurity (The Administration had just named a government coordinator for that.)  However, the subject kept popping up during the Q and A period.  Penetration of infrastructure technical systems and agency networks is among the United States’ many vulnerabilities.  On the policy level, the use of technology to combat international crime and promote human rights poses many trade-offs where technologists need to be conferring with foreign policy experts.

Perhaps more than an institutional sponsor, State and USAID need a review of initiatives and ideas that are surely percolating throughout their organizations.  An inventory of projects and innovations, with some case studies shared throughout the civilian foreign policy agencies, might identify successful approaches and stimulate new ones.

This may be one of those rising subjects for the Teens, or whatever we wind up calling the next decade.

 

Baby steps to balance our foreign relations

Commentators often point to the Pentagon’s increased responsibility and resources for development assistance and its growing influence over American diplomacy.  The current issue of FrontLines, USAID’s newsletter, contains a solid summary of where the Obama Administration is on restoring the balance. Guest author Ron Capps, of Refugees International, reviews the plus-ups in staff for State and USAID, the ongoing Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, and other initial moves to correct the situation.  “What’s the Story on Militarization?” is a good reference and marker.

Considering Capps’ inventory, I must conclude that the actions so far show little promise to tip the scales.  Our military’s resources are so robust that they are not likely to relinquish “nontraditional capabilities” (Gates’ words) until military spending drops.

Responsibility goes beyond the Defense Department.  I can find no one who looks for the congressional defense committees to make a conscious shift of budget from DoD to the “150 Account.”

That will happen only when America feels secure.  Ending the Long War is necessary to bring a lot of things back into balance.