From Heritage to Azeroth

Screenshot of Obama FCC Agency Review co-chair Kevin Werbach's World of Warcraft, Level 70 Resto Shaman, Supernovan.

The Heritage Foundation's Helle Dale and Tony Blankley released a new report today, "Reforming US Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century," which almost feels like a companion report to Kristin Lord's Brookings Institution report similarly titled "Voices of America: U.S. Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century."

The Heritage report, which was teased in a Washington Times editorial by Dale this week, rehashes a lot of important but previously mentioned points for the incoming Obama Administration to consider. And it focuses on public diplomacy's role in countering extremism. As with most of these reports, they touch on the importance of technology, but mostly focus on the systemic bureaucratic problems at hand rather than offering substantive suggestions. I appreciated this graf in particular:

Inability to Use Modern Communications Tactics. The State Department has been slow to adopt new communications techniques and technologies that are regularly exploited by the commercial sector and often by U.S. adversaries. In 2007, the GAO reported that the State Depart­ment failed to evaluate the impact of its commu­nications efforts on target audiences. Instead of polling target groups and analyzing focus group data to determine which messages would reso­nate, "State's measurement efforts rely on anec­dotal evidence and program outputs, such as favorable articles by foreign journalists." With­out the ability to assess performance--which is common practice in modern public relations and marketing firms--establishing any type of mea­surable objectives is impossible.

There are so many issues that contribute to this problem. I think one source of the problem stems from the fact that the State Department is not a culture that supports or facilitates continuing education. It's really a boots (or wingtips, as it were) on the ground culture. Once you're in, you're in. In contrast, the Defense Department has entire communities of PhDs -- who earned their graduate degrees as employees of the Defense Department. They send their brightest out to learn more. I've always been amazed by this disconnect between the two cultures. It's not like Foreign Service Officers aren't educated. In fact, the number of public diplomacy officers with whom I've worked and who have PhDs has been astonishingly high. This might also be reflective of the lack of opportunities in academia.

It's also that State is relatively cash-starved, as Kristin Lord of the Brookings Institution noted in her October 29 Christian Science Monitor Op-Ed:

Department of Defense will pay private contractors $300 million over three years to produce news and entertainment programs for the Iraqi public. These well-intentioned efforts aim to "engage and inspire" Iraqis to support the objectives of both the US and Iraqi governments. ...The $100 million annual price tag of the initiative described above is just one element of the Pentagon's communication efforts in one country. Yet, it is equivalent to roughly one-eighth of the State Department's entire public diplomacy budget for the entire world.

Back to technology.

The challenges facing government seem so daunting organizationally and administratively that reports over the past weeks (and years, even!) like the above-mentioned Heritage Foundation report seem focused on the fundamentals rather than some of the more critical details, namely that the culture and way that the world is communicating has changed and changed radically. The policy recommendations that we are preparing for the Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project, which will be released in coming weeks, will address a number of these specific issues.

But perhaps there is reason for "hope". Immersive Internet experiences are increasingly mainstream. One need look no further than World of Warcraft, termed the "New Golf" because it has replaced golfing as a venue for exchanging ideas and sizing up potential business partners.

Take the Obama Administration transition team. My friend Kevin Werbach, whose guild I'm in and play in World of Warcraft (which has now been outed on BoingBoing!) is now co-directing president-elect Obama's FCC agency review team. Wagner Au who broke the original Werbach in WoW story noted earlier that both Werbach and his co-director Susan Crawford are Second Life residents as well.

Hope springs eternal.