When I was looking earlier today for the SAIC news on the URL you gave us I saw some info on Bangkok. Here it is, I thought it was interesting and goes along with what you are saying.
JUNE 3, 1996
USIA
Web spreads U.S. ideals in Bangkok
BY JENNIFER JONES
Bangkok traffic is so bad that it affects just about everything the U.S. Information Agency outpost
there tries to do. At least it did, before USIA embarked on an intensive program to use technology
to improve the way it does business worldwide.
From being a relative backwater technologically, USIA has recently leapt to the forefront of
government agency information technology users, employing the World Wide Web, digital
videoconferencing and CD-ROM to help it carry through on its charter of promoting American
democratic ideals abroad.
"We, as an agency, have come further technologically in the past two years than we did in the past
20,'' said Bill Kiehl, public affairs counselor at USIA's Bangkok, Thailand, branch, which he put
among "the top dozen or so USIA offices" in its use of IT.
The agency earlier this year developed its Democracy Home Page, which it uses as the central
repository of all its political papers, manuals and original source material. Eventually, all USIA
foreign offices will have direct links to it.
The Bangkok office is one of the first to have such links. As well as feeding USIA information
through the home page, Kiehl's office is also using its Web site as a point of Internet access for
USIA's Thai audience.
"People here want to access the Internet in the [United States],'' Kiehl said, in an interview from his
Bangkok home. "It is easier for them to access our local Web site, which mirrors parts of USIA's
site pertaining to Thailand.''
USIA's Web site in Thailand is supported by one of the country's eight local providers, which
connect internationally through a network maintained by the country's Ministry of Sciences and
Technology.
"It is much like Arpanet or NSFnet is in the states,'' Kiehl said.
The Thai site also serves as an electronic hub for many of the 37 U.S. federal agency offices
co-located in the area, with links to many of the agencies' own Web sites available through USIA's
home page.
Outside the Internet, use of other technologies has been forced on USIA because of sinking budgets
and resulting strains on such things as travel budgets.
Kiehl's office has traditionally relied on speakers to travel to Bangkok to make presentations on
broad topics such as U.S. trade or human rights. But getting a speaker to Bangkok, a congested
city of some 6 million people, is a financial and logistical nightmare.
"In addition to the high cost, the trip is so far that a person has to stay a few days to make it worth
their while, and they arrive jet-lagged'' only to face the atrocious traffic, Kiehl said. "What we are
finding is that teleconferencing is an attractive alternative to bringing a speaker here."
The city's congestion is also a reason why USIA is spending money to install high-speed
videoconferencing lines in the Bangkok branch rather than use existing Thai facilities.
Agency personnel now must travel across town to the Thai government's studio, a trip that can take
hours. Plus, "everything done by the Thai government is done from nine to five, Thai time, which is
terrible for U.S. audiences,'' Kiehl said, because of the 11-hour time difference between Bangkok
and Washington, D.C.
Integrated Services Digital Network lines are now planned for 10 embassies overseas, including
London, Tokyo, Canada and Geneva, said Barry Fulton, associate director for USIA's Bureau of
Information.
USIA has also begun using CD-ROM technology in foreign student advising, which offers to
overseas students a host of information on U.S. universities that can be tailored to specific needs.
USIA sees this focus on technology as a reaction to what the agency is being called on to do to
accommodate new realities.
"I think we are really at the first phases of the confluence of two changing paradigms that affect our
work and the conduct of foreign affairs,'' Fulton said. One is the fast-paced evolution of technology,
and the other is post-Cold War diplomacy, he said, adding that "questions no longer stop at country
boundaries.''
Jones is a free-lance writer based in Arlington, Va. |
