Held on-site at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Palo Alto, California, the three-day conference energized the global discussion about connection technologies and how they can foster the global sustainable development agenda. The interactive event also explored the issues… more »
About the Authors: Maura O'Neill serves as Chief Innovation Officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and Dr. Alex Dehgan serves as the Science and Technology Adviser to the USAID Administrator.
We are proud to announce the Higher Education Solutions Network Request for Applications (RFA), which invites higher education institutions to compete to join USAID as new strategic, long-term partners to have a greater impact on development through creative partnerships. From USAID's start 50 years ago, partnering with universities and research organizations has been part of the Agency's vision. Over the years we have worked with partners on sector-specific projects, but today we are pursuing an unprecedented relationship with… more »
About the Authors: Gayle Smith is Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Development and Democracy at the National Security Council. Tom Kalil is Deputy Director for Policy, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Senior Advisor for Science, Technology, and Innovation, National Economic Council.
The weather in Paris today reflected the mood in UNESCO's conference room -- gloomy with a chance of sunshine. For just as the clouds were heavy, so too was the discussion of Holocaust education and how genocide and hatred still exist despite the global effort to teach the lessons of the Holocaust. And just as the sun poked through at the end of the day, so did the optimism that great minds can come together and tackle this problem.
Just last week, on January 27, the world remembered the victims of the Holocaust on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This week, while still remembering the victims, we sat down to discuss how to make "Never Again" a reality.
The morning started with a welcoming address from Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO. She highlighted the point that as the world becomes more interconnected and a new global history begins… more »
World Wetlands Day is here! Join us in congratulating our Wetlands Photo Celebration fan favorites -- with images and photographers from around the globe. We have four categories of favorites within our wetlands and tourism theme: plants, landscape, tourists, and wildlife. In the slideshow, you'll see a silt village in Ghana, a gorgeous river in West Virginia, a diver in the coastal wetlands of Mexico, and a beautiful damselfly in Cambodia. Also, many thanks to all of our wetlands tourists and photographers for the hundreds of photo submissions. You can learn more about our World Wetlands Day Photo celebration on our Flickr page. We salute the world's wetlands for their beauty and many critical benefits to humankind. Happy World Wetlands Day 2012! more »
Technology and new innovations are changing the world in which we live. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is responding to these challenges by adapting our foreign policy agenda to leverage new innovations in service of our diplomatic and development goals. This is 21st Century Statecraft -- complementing traditional foreign policy tools with newly innovated and adapted instruments of statecraft that fully leverage the networks, technologies, and demographics of our interconnected world.
Today marks the end of "21st Century Statecraft Month" at that State Department -- an entire month dedicated to using new tools and engaging new networks in pursuit of addressing today's challenges. During the month, I had the privilege to speak with a group of journalists and bloggers… more »
Innovate or die. It's an oft-repeated phrase about the adoption of technology and innovation that evokes Darwinian images of people running scared, trying to stay ahead of the curve just enough not to get trampled by the pack. From the perspective of the State Department, we see a different image -- that of a blank canvas that is being painted a bit every day. We see how harnessing technology and digital networks is making our public diplomacy more strategic and how it is strengthening and amplifying the bonds between individuals and institutions like the State Department.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made 21st Century Statecraft, or using digital networks to advance America's interests around the world, a key part of our foreign policy approach.
Public outreach and engagement with the American people and media to present and explain U.S. foreign policy is one of the key missions of the Bureau of Public Affairs. Last week, I had the opportunity to spend two days in Miami, Florida, where I visited our Media Hub of the Americas -- one of six State Department media hubs worldwide (Dubai, London, Brussels, Tokyo, Pretoria, and Miami). The hubs are strategically located throughout the world to serve as satellite offices of the Bureau of Public Affairs. The Media Hub of the Americas is the only one located stateside with a two-track goal of communicating America's foreign policy to Spanish-speaking media within the United States and throughout the Americas.
I had a packed schedule principally focused on outlining U.S.… more »
Last night, Americans gathered around their television sets -- or computer monitors -- to watch President Barack Obama deliver the State of the Union Address. For the first time, international audiences were able to watch the State of the Union Address live on U.S. embassy and consulate websites. The U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) streamed the speech with a new video player, placed directly on almost 300 English-language embassy and consulate websites and Facebook pages worldwide.
I think just about everything on www.state.gov is interesting, but you might not take the same interest in food security, women's issues, or the human rights reports that I do. With the site's roughly 100,000 pages of content (and growing), we set out to create a way to help you, the end user, more easily access the categories of information that matter most to you.
That's what's behind the pilot release of My State Department -- an optional, customizable interface that makes the most of the vast electronic collection that comprises www.state.gov so you can be better informed and stay on top of foreign policy topic areas that you find most interesting or in which you want to become… more »
Dear Mr. Ford, Thank you for your support to the Syrian people. As you well know, the Asad regime is intent on using all means of violence, including…
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Spokesperson Nuland (Feb. 10): "We will have more of this declassified U.S. national available both on Robert's site in coming days but also on our new site www.stateondemand.com, where news organizations can find all of our content to pull down around the world. more »
Secretary Clinton (Feb. 9): "I want to underscore how confident we are in Italy, in Italy's future, in the extraordinary commitment that Prime Minister Monti and his government are bringing to the challenges confronting the Italian people..." more »
![University of Wisconsin Superior students practice counting rotifer cysts, eggs of an invasive freshwater zooplankton on June 9, 2009, in the wet lab of UWS' Lake Superior Research Institute. [AP File Photo]](http://blogs.state.gov/images/Dipnote/behind_the_scenes/2012_0209_usaid_universities_m.jpg)
![Samuel Pisar, right, a Polish-born Holocaust survivor and international lawyer, author and human rights activist, is made UNESCO Honorary Ambassador and Special Envoy for Holocaust Education by UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova, in Paris, Jan. 27, 2012. [AP Photo]](http://blogs.state.gov/images/Dipnote/behind_the_scenes/2012_0202_holocaust_unesco_education_m.jpg)
![Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Mike Hammer, center; responds to #AskMike questions from the Department’s official Spanish Twitter feed, @USAenEspanol, on January 24, 2012. Also pictured: Director of the Office of International Media Engagement Abigail Dressel, left; Specialist Assistant Mireille Zieseniss, third from right; Public Affairs Specialist Sarah Goldfarb, second from right; and Acting Director of Digital Communications Center Ed Dunn, right. [State Department photo by Ben Chang/ Public Domain]](http://blogs.state.gov/images/Dipnote/behind_the_scenes/2012_0201_twitter_qa_m.jpg)
![Radio host Sabina Covo interviews Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Mike Hammer in Miami, Florida, January 2012. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]](http://blogs.state.gov/images/Dipnote/behind_the_scenes/2012_0127_hammer_radio_interview_m.jpg)
![Screenshot of My State Department, an optional interface that allows users to customize their view of the vast electronic collection that comprises www.state.gov, for targeted, quick and easy access to the foreign policy topics that they find most interesting. [State Department image/ Public Domain]](http://blogs.state.gov/images/Dipnote/behind_the_scenes/2012_0123_my_state_m.jpg)
