By Diana Weston
The author is a public affairs specialist in the Office of Public Communication.
“The public is finding more current information on the web than was ever available on paper. ”
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The web is changing how we do busines
 ave you visited your web site lately? If not, you’re missing out. Secretary Madeleine K. Albright, along with millions of students, journalists, businesses and web users worldwide, has browsed to the Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Network (DOSFAN at ). In just two years, DOSFAN hits increased from 8,000 to 1.7 million.
The Internet and the World Wide Web have revolutionized how the Department communicates with the public. Secretary Albright has embraced the web as a tool to communicate more directly with the American people and convey our foreign policy message. She has her own web site at http:// secretary.state.gov, which carries all her remarks.
The secretary gets involved personally with net users. In Moscow, she became the first Secretary of State to hold a “web chat” with some 3,000 students in 50 states and 47 countries through the GLOBE education network (for a transcript, look under “Meet the Secretary” at http://secretary.state.gov). In another first, she adopted the first public e-mail address for a secretary of state at secretary.state.gov. Immediately after its release, Secretary Albright received 1,000 e-mails, most from school children congratulating her on becoming secretary. Since then, the public has sent about 300 e-mails per week.
The Bureau of Public Affairs also responds to about 200 e-mails to the Department’s main web site each month requesting information ranging from foreign policy issues to how to get e-mail addresses of embassies and employees. In addition, some bureaus, such as Consular Affairs, have web sites linked to DOSFAN, which responds directly to the public.
The upsurge in web use fundamentally has changed the way bureaus and posts provide public information. PA has shifted from predominately printing hard copy to electronic publishing via the web and CD-ROM. While the drafting, editing and clearing processes remain the same for releasing information to the public, the similarities end there. Web publishing is fast-paced and inexpensive, and our users expect regular updates and current information. If the public can’t find what they’re looking for, their comments are just an e-mail away, as State Magazine has found since going on-line last August (see Letters to the Editor).
The public is finding more current information on the web than was ever available on paper. All of the secretary’s remarks, for example, are on-line. The daily press briefing transcript is available to the public at the same time it reaches the press. Hundreds of pages of reports to Congress on such topics as human rights, narcotics and terrorism are also available to the public as soon as the press embargo is lifted. Companies and individuals interested in doing business overseas can access information on trade policy, per diem rates, country reports and travel warnings. They also can link State’s site to those of other agencies, such as the Department of Commerce.
State employees with access to the Internet also reap benefits. They can retrieve information quickly that in hard copy is scattered across the Department, easily keeping current with policies and events in other areas. For those without net access, the Department’s library has three customer work stations, with four more on order.
PA is working with other State offices to create a comprehensive Department presence on the World Wide Web. Key bureaus are already on the web, and PA’s goal is to create web pages for each one by the end of the year. Some bureaus and offices, including Consular Affairs and the Office of the Procurement Executive, use Internet service providers to maintain and upload their own material in coordination with PA. While posts overseas work through USIA, PA and other bureaus, such as EB, seek more involvement in information on existing web sites. To ensure that U.S. businesses and other members of the American public have direct access via the web, all posts are being encouraged to create web sites.
PA established a cooperative arrangement with the federal depository library at the University of Illinois to connect all Department Internet sites. In 1993, when PA first discussed an “electronic partnership” with the library, few envisioned the public’s rapid acceptance of this new means of communication. Next year, according to Department spokesman Nick Burns, hits should increase from almost two million a month to one million daily.
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