NEW INITIATIVE OFFERS POSTS ASSISTANCE TO IMPROVE

UNCLAS STATE 099654 SIPDIS PARIS FOR UNESCO PARIS FOR USOECD ROME FOR FODAG E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: AADP AMGT ECON PREL CMGT SUBJECT: NEW INITIATIVE OFFERS POSTS ASSISTANCE TO IMPROVE CONTENT ON CLASSIFIED HOMEPAGES FOR POL AND ECON ALSO DCMs PLEASE ENSURE WIDEST DISTRIBUTION OF THIS MESSAGE Assistance Program ¶1. Over the next several months, the Department will provide assistance to as many as 30 posts to improve their classified web presence. The Department will pay for a cleared dependent to load post's hard-copy content; provide a scanner for capturing pictures and documents; and provide on-site training. This pilot effort aims to make publishing content to the embassy's classified homepage quicker and easier. Summary End ¶2. Any post with an active classified homepage on the SIPRNet can participate in this program. Detailed information and a very brief online questionnaire can be found by clicking on the Net-Centric Diplomacy logo at www.state.sgov.gov/rm/irpcip/ on ClassNet. To be considered for participation, posts should complete the questionnaire by Monday, May 10. Please ensure that only one questionnaire is submitted per post. Details ¶3. As posts maintaining SIPRNet homepages already know, the classified web is rapidly becoming an important way to share foreign policy information both inside the Department and with other U.S. Government agencies. The material that posts publish on your SIPRNet homepages is broadly and instantly available and can be easily found using Google and other search engines. Some embassy classified web pages are already well on their way to becoming key resources for policy makers. ¶4. To encourage web-based information sharing across systems, the Department of Defense has launched an initiative dubbed "Horizontal Fusion." The Department of State has been selected to participate in this initiative and has been given funding to 1) increase the amount of data we publish on the classified web and 2) make that data more accessible to DOD knowledge management systems. More information on this program can be found on the Internet at: www.horizontalfusion.dod.mil. ¶5. We are using Horizontal Fusion funding to improve web publishing of biographic files and reporting telegrams. Many posts have a large number of biographic files, but few find the time to publish more than a small fraction of them to the classified web. We are developing a utility that will allow a user at post to scan, tag, and publish the entire contents of a paper bio file to post's classified embassy homepage. Once the bio files are stored online, they will be easier to maintain, use, and search, and posts will be able to eliminate/minimize paper bio file holdings. ¶6. Similarly, most posts have web-published only a small fraction of their reporting telegrams since doing so requires considerable clicking, cutting, and pasting. We are developing a way for a user at post to take a cable from CableXpress and publish it on the embassy's classified website with something approaching drag-and-drop ease. ¶7. Both of these web-publishing tools will allow users to prepare files offline and then send them to the Washington- based server. We hope that this approach will speed up the web publishing process, particularly at posts with slow or unreliable connections. ¶8. Minimize considered. POWELL