When our embassies abroad are bombed or our forces are deployed overseas, U.S. Information Agency offices in 141 nations are expected to be ready with background information, policy perspectives and other information resources. But because they must rely on slow connections and inconsistent local telecommunications, agency employees sometimes feel as if they're working in an information vacuum.
Now USIA is trying to move its worldwide operations into the digital age by equipping its posts with satellite links that give employees most of the communications capabilities they would enjoy in the United States: Internet electronic mail, World Wide Web access, links to headquarters financial systems, reliable voice and fax channels and video teleconferencing.
In a four-site test of the new technology this year, USIA found satellite dishes could be installed more quickly and less expensively than its old-fashioned mainframe-based data connections. Operating expenses, estimated at $32,000 per year per site, are about one-third of the cost of the older technology.
The added functionality will allow employees to collaborate on policy documents, press releases and other USIA products without the delays occasioned by mail or even fax exchanges, according to Jonathan Spalter, associate USIA director for information.
At a press briefing Wednesday, Spalter and his staff demonstrated how USIA employees on two continents could see a live display of a document on their desktop PCs, discuss changes and come to agreement on the content. "What would take months [with older technology today] could take literally just hours" to complete via satellite, he said.
Edward M. Gabriel, U.S. ambassador to Morocco, appeared live by satellite to endorse the new setup. "We just have to make this business as usual in the Foreign Service," he said, volunteering that he had been surprised to discover how out-of-date the embassy's technology was when he arrived at his post last year.
The satellite system is to be deployed at 10 more posts this year. Although Spalter indicated he would like to move faster, USIA is limited by budget constraints and by the need to coordinate with the State Department. USIA will be merged into the State Department in October.
State and USIA have separate e-mail systems, and a Foreign Service officer in a foreign capital cannot send e-mail to a USIA employee in the same city. The satellite service could improve that situation, and Spalter said some State officials are interested in deploying it themselves. State and USIA also have agreed to build bridges for exchanging e-mail and increasing the interoperability of other systems.
However, he said State Department concerns about communications security would keep the satellite system from displacing State's networks soon. The USIA network is quite secure, he said, but is used only for unclassified communications.
Although the pilot USIA sites-Rabat, Morocco; Warsaw, Poland; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Accra, Ghana-have better e-mail links with Washington, they are not using advanced network features such as desktop videoconferencing routinely because the Washington headquarters systems are not yet set up for it.
The videoconferencing system uses commercial, off-the-shelf products: Microsoft's Windows and NetMeeting software on a $2,300 PC equipped with a small, inexpensive video camera. Although it appears to users as if the sites worldwide are on a single local network, they are connected via a leased commercial satellite.
In some cases, the cost savings are quite startling, Spalter said. For example, the USIA office in Buenos Aires was paying $4,000 a month for local Internet access, he said, and not all Web sites in Argentina were accessible.
The new system's capabilities could not be duplicated over the agency's older infrastructure, he said. Most USIA posts have 9600 bits-per-second data communications and are limited to e-mail and simple database access.
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