Digital diplomacy campaigns - what are they then?
We've changed the way we describe our work on the web in the Foreign Office. We used to mostly talk about managing websites. Now we mostly talk about running digital diplomacy campaigns.
The approach is significantly different. Before, we might have worked with policy teams to make sure we presented their work in an clear, engaging and useful way. Now we ask policy teams what they're trying to achieve, and then help them to make use of online culture and tools to solve their policy problems.
Of course, we do still manage websites (255 of them in 40
languages), but increasingly we are focusing of our work around high
priority foreign policy issues, rather than managing a set of tools.
We have a campaign methodolgy (Listen, Publish, Engage, Evaluate) that we think we can apply to any problem. But the digital activity that we suggest can vary hugely depending on what it is we're trying to do.
So we run some big public-facing influencing campaigns, which might involve setting up new official online spaces, or work in partnership with others to reach broad audiences. But we also run less publically-visible engagement with small target audiences which involve us helping diplomats to collaborate with, or influence specific groups.
Some of our campaigns have a natural home on our official websites. Some of them are entirely delivered elsewhere.
To do all this we've recruited digital campaign managers who have a slightly different set of skills to typical web staff. We wanted campaign managers who could really get stuck into policy issues, and design and lead digital campaigns.
That's the theory. But it'll make more sense if I describe some of the problems we're currently trying to solve, and the campaigns we're working on to solve them. That's what I'll do in the next few posts.
Posted at 16:12 25 September 2009 by Stephen Hale | Comments[3]
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How to train a digital diplomat
We have digital diplomacy staff based in Washington, Singapore and New Delhi, as well as London. It's rare that we're all physically in the same place, but we were all in London last week for our annual bout of knowledge sharing, training and brainstorming.
Because it's so rare that we're all together, we try to pack a lot in when we do meet, sharing experiences from the last year and planning what's next. It's exhausting, but it's my favourite week of the year.
We spent a lot of the week doing and talking about training. We currently run 3 training courses for Foreign Office staff: 2 aimed at people who publish web content (which are really about how to use our content management tools), and a new course about digital campaigning.
They're all important, but it's the last one that I'm most interested in. At the moment we manage several campaigns out of our London based team. But we want people around our network to deliver digital diplomacy. There are 16,000 staff in the Foreign Office network, in 150 countries. If we're going to make the the most of digital diplomacy opportunities, we have to spread the word.
Our new digital campaigns course aims to do just that. It is aimed anyone who will be responsible for digital campaigns (which tends to be policy teams rather than web editors).
So how do you train people to embrace digital diplomacy? We try to cover a bit of theory (short), a workshop (using a real example), some case studies (recent things we've actually done), some practical help, and space for discussion.
I think that the key to the success of the course is to keep it rooted in the real world, avoiding hypothetical scenarios. We don't want to run an academic course on the theory of digital engagement - others can do that. We want the people we train to go back to their jobs and begin delivering practical digital diplomacy activity.
In practice this means using:
- real case studies (things we have actually done, or even better, digital diplomats talking about their work)
- real scenarios (so our workshop is introduced by a policy officer with a problem that needs solving, with the aim of developing real working solutions that the participants can then go and actually implement)
Having spent a week participating in expertly run sessions, I know there are lots different ways to share knowledge. I'm interested in finding the best ways to remove the novelty from digital engagement, so that the Foreign Office can make the most of opportunities to use digital diplomacy methods and tools. It will start with our brilliant digital diplomacy staff and our digital champions, but if we're successful, we'll spread the word much wider.
Posted at 17:23 29 July 2009 by Stephen Hale | Comments[2]
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We've just advertised for 2 new jobs in Digital Diplomacy Group:
Posted at 17:51 01 May 2009 by Stephen Hale | Comments[2]
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