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Big, BIG Changes Afoot at State Department
Sorry for the late notice, but apparently unbeknownst to me, big, BIG changes took place a few years ago at the State Department. With the pace of change at State such as it is, it can be hard to keep up. I guess I am a little surprised this is not still being talked about on State’s social media, or that someone has not made a Gangnam Style-Call Me Maybe mashup video about it.
Nonetheless, for the naysayers who claim the State Department cannot change, have a look at what one alert reader of this blog noticed online:
Even U.S. diplomats have responded to the age’s new imperatives. In 2004, the U.S. State Department declared that it was abandoning the font it had used for years — Courier New 12 — and replacing it with a new standard font that would henceforth be required in all documents: Times New Roman 14. The internal memorandum announcing the change explained that the Times New Roman font “takes up almost exactly the same area on the page as Courier New 12, while offering a crisper, cleaner, more modern look.” What was more remarkable than the change itself — and what would have been unthinkable had the change occurred a generation ago — was that everybody in the State Department understood what the memo was talking about.
(Special thanks to ever-alert reader Lisa for this breaking news. It takes a village to run this blog, people.)
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
State Department Conducts Open Government Briefing Off the Record
You just can’t make this stuff up.A pair of State Department briefings in connection with the UN General Assembly meetings in New York in recent days suggest President Barack Obama’s drive to bring more transparency to the U.S. government is, well, a work in progress.
Obama is proudly touting a new open government partnership, a group of 30 countries committing to greater transparency and to share best practices on making government more accessible to the public. However, journalists could not hope but note the irony when State Department officials insisted that a briefing Monday on the new effort be conducted on an anonymous basis, meaning the officials involved could not be identified by name in news stories.
“Has it struck anyone as odd to [hold] a briefing about open government and transparency on background?” one journalist asked during the session. “Why is that necessary?”
“Just so you understand this, we have to explain why officials are speaking anonymously,” a flabbergasted reporter said. “To write a story talking about U.S. officials anonymously plugging an Obama initiative for open government just – it makes – I’m sorry.”
That just says so much about State, where innovation is supposedly a new organizational goal. Clearly the only thing taking place are new, innovative methods of risk avoidance. They are practically at the point of needing an Intervention.
I’d try and contact State for a comment, but I hate to see grown adults break down in tears and run into the bathroom.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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