The Department of State is applying open government principles to move from an information hoarding environment to an information sharing culture. This panel will discuss the behavior change desired and the approach taken, which involves the use of social media, crowdsourcing and reverse mentorship initiatives as a method of culture change. The development of an information sharing culture in the Federal Government cannot be mandated. In an environment where “Need to Know” is the operating mindset, the challenge is changing minds. Projects discussed include: • Virtual Student Foreign Service: Allows students to work with foreign embassies to perform micro-tasking type functions. • Communities@State: an initiative to enable people with common professional needs and interests to form self-managing online communities of practice • Sounding Board: Crowdsourced method to share ideas with a Bureau or the Secretary • Virtual Presence Post: Allows State Department engagement with communities where no physical diplomatic facilities exist. • Civil Society 2.0: Cultivates citizen leaders and NGOs to take ownership of significant world problems. • Diplopedia: Wiki-based online encyclopedia of foreign affairs information written by State Department employees.
Christopher Bronk, Ph.D., is the Baker Institute fellow in information technology policy. He previously served as a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State on assignments both overseas and in Washington, D.C. Since arriving at Rice, Bronk has divided his attentions among a number of areas, including information security, technology for immigration management, broadband policy, Web 2.0 governance and the militarization of cyberspace. He teaches on the intersection of computing and politics in Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering. Holding a Ph.D. from The Maxwell School of Syracuse University, Bronk also studied international relations at Oxford University and received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Noel Dickover is currently supporting the US Department of State’s eDiplomacy office, heading up their Civil Society 2.0 implementation effort. For his night job, Noel is a co-founder of CrisisCommons, which is a movement of technology volunteers that has transformed the way regular citizens can impact crisis-response efforts in a disaster. Recently, as a consultant to the Department of Defense, Noel has served as one of the principle authors of DoD’s social media policy (Responsible and Effective Use of Internet-based Capabilities). Noel is also a Board Member for the Open Forum Foundation, a non-profit devoted to fostering responsive, open government, and a master pumpkin carver (fantasypumpkins.com).
As a digital strategy and design consultant over the past decade, Raina has helped brands and ideas get their messages out in innovative and fitting ways, while instilling positive messaging and employing design thinking. Her parents hail from India by way of Malawi. She was raised in the Silicon Valley with an international and entrepreneurial perspective. She studied Film at Boston University, Interactive Design & Technology at New York University, and Urban Studies and Architecture at the Harvard Design School. She got her start as an editor at Newsweek.com, next heading up digital production at Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and then as an interaction designer at R/GA. She led the interactive department at Wieden+Kennedy NY as Director of Digital Strategies – growing it from scratch. Raina has lectured on design for public space at UCLA & the HvA in The Netherlands, directed two documentaries, and is engaged in various strategic marketing, branding, design and social impact projects globally.
In late 2006 she started the Agency for Holistic Branding to serve brands and ideas through a new platform of experts. Her research areas include emerging technologies and cultural trends. She is deeply passionate about bringing social change and impactful design solutions to real-world problems.
Richard Boly is a career U.S. diplomat and currently the Director of the Office of eDiplomacy, an applied technology think tank for the United States Department of State. Previously, he was a National Security Affairs Fellow the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he launched the Global Entrepreneurship Program. He recently served in U.S. Embassy, Rome, where he developed and ran a program to promote entrepreneurship in Italy. Other embassy assignments include the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Paraguay. Richard is the most junior diplomat to win the Cobb Award for commercial diplomacy. In a prior life, he was the first Presidential Management Fellow with the Inter-American Foundation, was a consultant with the Inter-American Development Bank, and founded and ran a shrimp hatchery in coastal Ecuador. He is a graduate of Stanford University and the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UCSD.
Tiffany Smith Licciardi is the Knowledge Leadership team coordinator at the Department of State’s Office of eDiplomacy. Her team develops projects that help personnel throughout the Department to find and share information and collaborate effectively. She previously served as Collaboration Policy Advisor for The Sounding Board and project lead for Diplopedia, and she led the development and launch of the Virtual Student Foreign Service. A graduate of Fordham University and The Catholic University of America's School of Library and Information Science, her research interests include collaborative sensemaking, information retrieval, and online community behavior. Tiffany joined the State Department in 2007 as a Presidential Management Fellow and was a 2010 NextGov Award recipient for innovative uses of technology in the US Government.
