US Secretary of State
The United States secretary of state is a member of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States and the head of the U.S. Department of State. The office holder is one of the highest ranking members of the president's Ca ...
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
asked for the creation of an
online forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
for
State Department
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other na ...
employees to submit ideas directly to the Secretary. The Sounding Board was an
intranet
An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, easier communication, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services within an organization, usually to the exclusion of access by outsiders. The term is used in c ...
blog developed and launched in February 2009 by staff from the State Department's
Office of eDiplomacy
The Office of eDiplomacy is an applied technology think tank for the United States Department of State. The Office of eDiplomacy is staffed by Foreign and Civil Service Officers, as well as contract professionals. There are four branches, the Di ...
.
The platform metrics soon generated 27,000 page views a month and serves as a global water cooler for a workforce spread around the planet. It has served as a platform for
brain-storming
Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members.
In other words, brainstorming is a situation where a group ...
ideas and
crowd sourcing
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
non-policy solutions.
Employee response to the online forum varied from enthusiasm to concern for maintaining confidentiality and decorum. Some contributors to the Sounding Board expressed worry that public airing of internal discussion might embarrass the Department of State; comments that were subsequently published in ''
Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...
'' reporter Al Kamen's column "In The Loop".
The Sounding Board was an internal platform (discussion forum) for State Department employees to exchange ideas, while
DipNote is the Secretary of State's blog on the internet. The use of
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social me ...
was seen as essential for 21st century diplomacy. The Department of State was "integrating social media into the job descriptions of all the foreign service officers", says New Media Director Katie Dowd.
The Sounding Board was ended on August 31, 2017.
Other media references
Hillary Clinton Launches E-Suggestion BoxFederal News Radio How to integrate social media into your agency, August 16, 2011, interview with Sounding Board program manager Kerry O'Connor
Critiques
Everything Is Broken: My Two Years at the U.S. Department of State An excerpt that discusses the Sounding Board: "As an important side note, before resigning to attend graduate school in the summer of 2010, I had the chance to meet one-on-one with a high-level manager (and now ambassador) involved in oversight of the Sounding Board. He stated that the Sounding Board, which had been sold to us as a bottom-up tool for employee ideas in early 2009, was primarily a "cathartic" outlet for employees. Someone might want to explain that to the mass of State employees who cropped up to suggest specific, often in-depth ideas online—over 1,500 by the summer of last year. Indeed, when I left there was no meaningful process in place to review and take appropriate action to either reject or on some level adopt these employee suggestions."
See also
*
DipNote
*
Diplopedia
Diplopedia, billed as the Encyclopedia of the United States Department of State, is a wiki running on a State internal Intranet, called "OpenNet". It houses a unique collection of information pertaining to diplomacy, international relations, and ...
References
{{reflist
United States Department of State