State Department: Reach out and touch someone

State Department officials are about to retire their World War II-era cable system and replace it with a new communications network for diplomats worldwide.

In the coming months, department officials will launch a long-awaited intranet that will link posts in northern Europe and the United States electronically.

For the first time, diplomats will be able to access secret and sensitive documents from anywhere in the world through the network instead of waiting for a diplomatic cable to arrive at their location.

The project will help bring the department and diplomacy into the 21st century, said Joseph Lake, chairman of State's Steering Committee on Messaging and Interagency Collaboration.

"The ultimate goal is to make our system available to the entire foreign affairs community," said Lake, a former U.S. ambassador to Albania and Mongolia who had been stationed in remote places without modern communication tools.

Although the antiquated cable system served the diplomatic community well, a cable was addressed only to one person overseas and was not available to others who had clearances to see it.

A benefit of the older system, however, was that it could not be hacked, Lake said.

"The basic goal we're wrestling with in this [post-Sept. 11, 2001] world is how the information gets to the right people at the right time," Lake said.

To modernize the communications system, State officials awarded a $240 million contract to Northrop Grumman Information Technology to build the Department of State Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolset (SMART).

It will replace existing messaging and

e-mail systems; incorporate document management, search and retrieval tools; and form the basis for a knowledge management system.

About 3,000 users will participate in the launch of the pilot project next month, and it will support 46,500 users at 260 locations by the end of 2005.

Allan Bellacicco, Northrop Grumman IT's program manager for SMART, said the project is merging State's existing e-mail and cable systems into one to allow State employees to view their mail and diplomatic memos on the road.

"It will be merged into a single system," he said. "It puts an archive on the back end to make diplomatic information much more broadly available."

The system also provides a higher security level that will be used to notify ambassadors worldwide of necessary diplomatic actions.

To protect the network from hackers and viruses, users must pass through several layers of security and authentication before viewing a document. Bellacicco added that multiple layers of sensors will be able to detect intrusions, viruses and anomalies.

"It will pick up an unusual pattern of behavior," Bellacicco said. "For instance, if a political officer accesses financial data, it will detect the anomaly and report it to the diplomatic security folks." n

Communicating anytime, anywhere

State Department officials are planning to launch a pilot project early next year that would provide intranet access for diplomats and others working at U.S. embassies

worldwide.

It would replace a system that is more than 50 years old and make it possible for embassy employees to retrieve secure documents in real time instead of waiting for a cable to arrive.

State's Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolset will offer document management, search and retrieval tools, and capabilities for knowledge management.

Officials will introduce the system in a pilot project beginning in January 2005 to Eastern Europe, including Budapest, Hungary; Prague, Czech Republic; Oslo, Norway; Stockholm, Sweden; and Iceland. Worldwide inauguration of the program is expected

in 2006.

The messaging system is part of State's anytime, anywhere computing effort to give the diplomatic corps access to information wherever they're located.

Among the goals for the system:

n A single, worldwide e-mail system for

classified and unclassified traffic.

n Innovative worldwide, integrated

messaging.

n Mobile computing and promotion of technology innovation, which are critical to modern diplomacy.

Source: State Department