Digital Diplomacy as a Skill for the Foreign Office
In November last year, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British Parliament concluded a parliamentary inquiry on skills needed in the diplomatic service, Delivering Global Britain: FCO Skills. According to the authors of the report, the FCO’s “reputation for diplomatic skill has historically been very strong,” but recently the situation has been deteriorating. This is caused by “ a continuing lack of clarity over the FCO’s purpose and role in government, including confusion over the meaning of Global Britain” as well as by FCO’s internal shortcomings: the lack of data on the existing skills of its staff and the loss of expertise due to staff rotation. The authors listened to diplomats — both British and international — as well as experts and have come up with measures to solve these current problems.
The entire report deserves attention: across the globe diplomacy as a profession is adapting to new realities, which is reflected in requirements for skills that are needed in the diplomatic service. That said, I will focus specifically on the subsection dedicated to digital diplomacy.
“Witnesses told us about the importance of digital diplomacy, primarily in the context of diplomats using social media,” — the report says. This requires new skills and their use in public diplomacy, which is not new per se. The use of digital tools allows reaching out to new audiences. To make a good use of this opportunity, the diplomat needs being empowered “to take risks that might traditionally have been avoided.”
So, what are digital diplomacy skills? Within the ongoing reform of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a Priority Skills Statement was developed. It includes a set of skills labeled Digital, Data & Technology (DDAT). Also, the UK Diplomatic Academy identifies four strands of “core diplomatic skills which everyone in the FCO needs to be effective at,” and the use of “social media and digital” is included in the Communications strand. Both DDAT and “social media and digital” skills have to do with how the FCO operates in the digital domain but in different ways.
There are 20 DDAT specialists working permanently at the FCO. This professions was defined on the government-wide level under the aegis of the Government Digital Service. These specialists are in charge of digital transformation. Like in other departments, they are responsible for designing and building services, working with data, etc. They are not directly involved in public diplomacy, but they make an indirect contribution to it as they are involved in developing the front end, i.e. the client side of interfaces and they have a role to play in creating content (DDAT roles include content designer and content strategist).
In the FCO, public diplomacy by means of social media is within the purview of digital communications specialists. According to the FCO written evidence, “[t]here are nine digital communications specialists in London and approximately ten to 15 permanent digital specialists at Posts” such as Moscow, Washington, Madrid, and New York. Altogether more than 100 staff across the UK diplomatic network work in digital issues. There is also “an extensive training programme to ensure anyone with a communications role can do basic digital communication.”
When speaking to the Foreign Affairs Committee during the inquiry, Director of Diplomatic Academy Jon Benjamin reported:
“We have about 100 people in the network globally who work on digital diplomacy. It is about using the skills in how to use digital to conduct public diplomacy, to influence and to get our view across, and sometimes to speak directly to publics in other countries, rather than just to Governments — sometimes in a way that Governments in certain countries do not like.”
When asked by a Committee member whether Foreign Office recommends diplomats in senior positions or sensitive locations to refrain from digital diplomacy, Jon Benjamin spoke to the contrary: “No, quite the opposite. We encourage our ambassadors to tweet, to use their Facebook page and to use modern electronic media to convey their message. Of course, in some cases that takes us into the need to rebut certain things.” He went on to describe how a UK Ambassador in Turkey became “ something of a legend for his digital diplomacy in rebutting a lot of silly things that were going around the Twittersphere” in Turkish. “That was a very effective device, which added to the efficacy of our Ankara mission.”
The digital diplomacy section of the report concludes with authors’ assessment and recommendation. The authors “welcome the FCO’s recognition that digital communication, including social media, is now a core aspect of diplomacy.” The appointment of the head of the Diplomatic Academy who is personally savvy with digital diplomacy is a signal that the FCO takes this skill seriously. As for recommendations, the authors favor a more active digital diplomacy. The call on the Foreign Office leadership “to set a tone for digital diplomacy — leading by the example of their own social media activity — that encourages calculated risk taking and promotes creativity and innovation.”
Having published the report, the Committee is awaiting a response from the Government.
