Media Finally Picking Up on Secretary Clinton’s Use of Technology in Diplomacy

Secy Clinton announces program to use text messaging to get donations for Pakistan humanitarian aid

Well, it took them long enough, but better late than never I guess:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rolls out a massive campaign expanding the use of techy gadgets to enhance U.S. diplomacy around the globe.

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“She pushes us to think big and to take big chances and to try new approaches,” says Alec Ross, an Obama techie Clinton tapped to be senior adviser for innovation at State. “She’s sort of the godmother of all of this,” he adds of Clinton, who’s used her personal BlackBerry since 2006, though not inside the security-sensitive walls of State. The secretary of state especially likes using cellular phones to connect people around the globe. “Particularly in the developing world, people are increasingly getting their information through mobile phones,” explains Ross. “So we at the State Department are thinking about how that can be a distribution channel for good information.”

Those of us who follow Secretary Clinton and the work she’s been doing, have been aware of her efforts to merge technology and diplomacy, for some time now. I blogged about her ’21st Century Statescraft’, here and about her efforts to use text messages to obtain donations for humanitarian relief for Pakistan, here.

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