 Again, welcome back, and I hope you enjoyed lunch and the remarks by the Undersecretary General. So, thus far, we've heard from a panel on strategic communications, some of the challenges in peace operations, and the second one on best practices. Our third panel will look at innovations for strategic communications. Moving the Strategic Communications Front here forward and is chaired by Mr. Sven Erich Söder, General Director of the Focal Bernadotte Academy. Sir, over to you. Thank you very much, and welcome back from the lunch and to our last panel. As I said, we have, during the morning, had two panels, one on challenges today and another one on best practices. And right now, in this last, the third panel, we are going to focus on how can we move the StratCom Front here forward. But personally, I have, in different capacities, worked with communications and StratCom, and I have learned over the years that it is very practical to base communication on solid knowledge, of course, but also to try to learn from others and to see what is best practice. So, if you, forgive me for a minute, I would like to do some public relations for an upcoming publication from the Focal Bernadotte Academy, because we are right now in the process to put together a very practical and very handy, we think, communication advises handbook to be used in the field in peace operations and in crisis management operations. And our aim with this handbook is to create a sort of a toolbox for communication professionals. And we try, as much as possible, to draw lessons learned from both the United Nations, the European Union, also the African Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the NATO, and also from what we can call field journalism. And this handbook deals with topics like media relations, crisis communications, and importance of social media in this new communication landscape we have, and we have talked about earlier today. And hopefully this handbook will be published later this year. But let's turn to our panel, and this imminent panel I have here beside me. And some of the questions that we have asked our panel to consider include, what tools can the UN draw upon to effectively communicate both internally and externally? What are the platforms that the UN peacekeeping should target? And what tools does it need to do so? And how can the UN secure a position at the forefront in this important evolution that is strategic communication? And to my left here, first, we have Stephen Dreyer, and Stephanie, sorry, Stephanie Dreyer. My dad. My dad. Stephanie Dreyer, sorry. And Stephanie is Director of Digital Media and Strategy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Public Affairs Department of Defense United States. And as the Director of Digital Media and Strategy, Stephanie develops the messaging and content strategy for the US Department of Defense Digital Media Platforms, including all the Department of Social Media challenges. She recently launched the first Facebook page for the Secretary of Defense to help Secretary Carter to better communicate his priorities both to the force and also to the American people. Stephanie was previously also the Communications Director of the Truman Project and the Center for Natural Policy, and served as its on-the-record Spooksperson. She has also been the Spooksperson and Public Affairs Director for Group Energy, Biofuels, Advocacy Group, and served as Deputy Press Secretary for US Senator Charles Chummer. Left to Stephanie is Mr. Peter Gio. Peter is President of the Better World Campaign and Vice President for Public Policy and Advocacy at the United Nations Foundation. Peter joined the Better World Campaign in 2009 and leads the Campaign's Strategic Engagement with Congress and the Administration to promote a strong US-U.N. relationship. He also serves as the Vice President for Public Policy and Advocacy at the UN Foundation, and Peter has over 20 years of legislative, analytical, and management experience, including senior rules on Capitol Hill and in the State Department. He has worked on a broad range of foreign policy and foreign aid issues, leading negotiations around repayment of US areas to the UN, being part of the US delegation to the climate negotiations in Kyoto, and successfully also leading negotiations for the landmark HIV AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003. And to the left of Peter, we have Mr. Daniel Storschaffer, who is the President of ICT for Peace Foundation from Switzerland, and Daniel is a former Ambassador of Switzerland and the Founder and President of the ICT for Peace Foundation, which since 2003 explores the use of information and communication technologies, ICT for peace building and crisis management and humanitarian aid, and supports diplomatic processes for peaceful and open cyberspace. And as an Ambassador of Switzerland, a special representative of the Swiss federal government, Daniel was responsible in the earlier for hosting the UN World Summit on the Information Society in 2003. Daniel has also worked in the Swiss federal office for foreign economic affairs and in the Swiss mission to the EU in Brussels, and prior to joining the Swiss Foreign Service, he worked for several years in the UN based in New York, but also in Laos and China. So as you can hear, we have a very skilled and experienced panel here. So without further ado, I give the floor to Stephanie, please. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. I hope that nobody has a food coma going on. We'll try to keep it interesting. So as Sven said, I'm the Director of Digital Media and Strategy for OSDPA, the Office of Secretary of Defense, and this is a brand new role for DOD. And the role was created to address a lot of the challenges that have been discussed here today. Obviously, we all know that social media is huge, right? It is more prolific than traditional journalism in some areas. In the past, we had policymakers sitting around in rooms thinking of policy, and then we would have events like this, and journalists would come and cover the events, and that's how we would get our news. But now anybody with a smartphone can be a journalist. And this creates a lot of opportunities, right? There's this opportunity for two-way communication. There's this opportunity for crowdsourcing. There's also a lot of disadvantages to having everybody have a microphone. So although I'm not a peacekeeping expert, I have a lot of experience in digital media, overseeing a very large government agency with strategy. And so I'm going to talk a little bit today about how digital communication can help the UN embrace the 21st century. So specifically I'm going to talk about three things. The first thing I'm going to talk about is digital communication strategy as media strategy. The second thing I'm going to talk about is audiences and platforms. And the third thing I'll talk about is some new tools and what are the advantages and disadvantages. So I think that based on the panels that we had today and the lunch with the Under Secretary speaking, everybody understands that embracing 21st century communication methods that are now standard practice elsewhere is critical if you want to be relevant in today's fast-moving world. So the DOD was a little bit slower than other government agencies when it came to the digital media game. But we've made fantastic strides just in the last year. And part of that is because my current leadership understands this idea that digital media strategy is media strategy. And what I mean by that is that I worked in traditional communications, as you would say, for about a decade. And in that time we've seen social media explode on the scene. And many people were very hesitant to embrace these new technologies. And so what ended up happening is you would see the social platform as being run by the youngest person in the room or in some cases the intern. And while that may seem like an easy answer, the truth is that your social media strategist has to have a seat at the table with your traditional strategist for communications. They need to be able to work hand in glove with your traditional communication tools and personnel. So when I was interviewing for my current position, that was the first thing that I asked the people that I was interviewing with. Am I going to have a seat at the table? Are people going to take me serious? When I'm sitting in rooms with four star generals who don't understand what a Twitter feed is. And fortunately, my leadership, they made good on their promises. And so they've allowed me to be in those strategic meetings and they've allowed me a lot of room to run. And so in the last few months, we've really started to streamline our strategies and the DOD is, in my opinion, doing a lot better in terms of communicating with our audiences. So we use social media to showcase the amazing work that our service members and their families are doing. We also use it to communicate with our stakeholders, which includes veterans and policymakers. And we use a number of different platforms to do this. At DOD, we use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine. We also have a Google Plus account. But we tend to focus on the platforms that work best for us. And we know that because we did the research. There are studies out there that show us that among military families, 93% of military families use Facebook. That's compared to 67% of civilians. 4 million people on Facebook are veterans or active duty members. 13 million people on Facebook are family members of a veteran or an active duty member. So this is obviously a great platform for us to be using when we want to communicate to the force. And that was a huge reason why the Secretary of Defense decided that he wanted to go on Facebook. So we told him these statistics and we explained to him that, look, sir, if you want to talk directly to your audience, you want to talk to the troops, we're going to put you on Facebook. Because there is no way that we can have you visit every single service member across the world. But we can create a sense of accessibility by putting you on Facebook. And so after his 100 days, we launched his Facebook page. It's facebook.com slash secdef, if you want to take a look at it. And we use that in conjunction with our DOD Facebook page to showcase what he's doing, to push his priorities, and to make sure that the force can stay up to date with what he's doing and what other service members are doing. So I think that it's really important if you're going to think about using platforms like Facebook or Twitter, that you know that your audience is on there. Identifying where your audience is, where they go to get their news, is going to help you define the platform that works for you. Just because Pinterest is really popular, it doesn't mean it's the right platform for you. And it means that you might have to make some tough decisions. Just recently, sorry, for years, we had something called the Pentagon Channel, which is a 24-7 television station that broadcasts around the world. And we were spending a lot of time and resources filling that content. And with the proliferation of technology and on-demand services, we noticed that we were talking to a diminishing audience. And so last month, we decided to get rid of the Pentagon Channel. And we are now throwing those resources behind our new digital media platforms. We're trying to teach our tech sergeants how to do 30-second videos instead of 30-minute videos. When we put, actually, this year, when we do the secretary's Fourth of July message, we're not gonna have him sitting in front of a flag, just talking to the troops. We're gonna do something a little bit more fun, something that's more designed for a social media audience. So making those tough decisions is gonna allow you to focus on the platforms that are gonna work best for you. So there are lots of tools out there that I think that the UN can invest in. And there are many reasons why they should do so. Just from a positive perspective, social media creates accessibility and the news-streaming opportunities. UN peacekeepers are deployed in some of the most dangerous conflict areas around the world, but new technologies can help them monitor conflicts, carry out early warning, and maintain situational awareness to identify threats and support proactive peacekeeping. So obviously there are a lot of platforms that you all know about, right? Facebook, Twitter, there are live-streaming opportunities, but there are new technologies out there as well. There's a new technology called Yik Yak, which is basically, it's a tool which allows people to anonymously create Yaks, which is basically like a post, to people within a 10-mile radius. And so all users have the ability to contribute to the stream. You can write, you can post, and then you can upvote or up-down a post, depending on whether or not you like it or you want it to be seen by more. So this can obviously be used, this type of technology can be used by peacekeepers who want to easily monitor conversations in a smaller area. In addition, I just read about this new app called Jot, which is a messaging app that works without a data plan or Wi-Fi. So it's actually targeted at tweens and teens who don't have access to their data plans when they're in school, but they have access to their iPods. And so they can talk to each other without data. And so obviously there are a lot of areas around the world that do not have the best internet accessibility. These kinds of technologies could really help enhance the communication efforts in that area. Also, social media obviously creates the opportunity for transparency. I am not in any position to disclose our strategy to degrade ISIL. However, our audience really wants to know what are we doing? What are we doing every day to go after these guys? And so what we started doing is we started to get video from CENTCOM of basically strikes on ISIL. And these videos are not that great. They're grainy, they're literally, they're one shot of a missile coming in and hitting a bus or a car or whatever it is, wherever the target is. But every time that we put these videos out, we get more than a quarter million views. We get positive reinforcement on our page. People are volunteering their unsolicited advice about how we should go after the terrorists. And it's not to say that we are taking that advice, but the point is, and this is a good idea, right? But my point is that this is essentially a crowdsourcing opportunity, right? We're showcasing what we're doing without giving away the too many details. And we're keeping a positive, putting a little bit of a positive spin, right? Because as I said in the earlier panel, right? ISIL is very good at using social media for propaganda purposes. And so that actually gets me into a little bit of the disadvantages, right? So just as we use social media to bypass the traditional communication pillars, so do terrorists, right? Social media plays a major role in disseminating ISIL propaganda and getting new recruits. And in addition, there is a risk that as you put out live updates about attacks or violent episodes, if you pinpoint them on maps, for example, you know, hostile parties or looters can use that information to their advantage. And so what I would caution is that it is really important that there is a balance between how much you put online. And it means you have to be careful about who posts, when they post, and what they post. Specifically because social media is in real time, when there's a crisis, there's the desire to just get out there in front. And I think that that's the right mindset, but it is very important that we don't respond without knowing all the information. So I heard this really great stat earlier, well it's not a good stat, but the stat is that there are 148 UN public affairs officers to more than 120,000 peacekeepers in the field. So that means that you have one PAO to every 1,000 peacekeepers. And that can be tough, right? If you're trying to disseminate information to 1,000 people, right? So it means that you have to be really clear about who has the information, who do you give it to, if you're gonna put talking points out, make sure that the right stakeholders have access to those talking points. And there's nothing wrong with putting out a post, let's say that your Twitter gets hacked. There's nothing wrong with putting out a tweet that says we are aware of the situation and we will update you when we have more to tell, right? That means that you are admitting that there is an issue, you recognize that there is something that has to happen, but you're not responding without the proper information or without talking to the right people. So again, don't get caught into this cycle where social media means you have to go like that. You do have time to take a minute, gather the troops and get out the right message. So one of the first things that I did at DOD in this role is I created a social media crisis plan and your social media strategist should work with your communications strategist to create that and it will identify who needs to be contacted, who gets out there in front of the camera and what gets put out. So I think that there are a lot of lessons to be learned from DOD and other agencies, but I think that in the end, it has to be a targeted strategy for the UN. So identifying the right platforms, identifying the right audiences and making sure that you're using the technologies that are going to work for you. The last thing I would say is that it's really important that you have strong passwords and two-step authentication. That's just my PSA for the day. And yeah, bottom line, I just think that if executed correctly, the advantages of social media far outweigh the disadvantages and the UN should dive headfirst into more dynamic communications efforts that will support the mission. And that's my appeal. Thank you very much, Stephanie. Thank you very much and please, Peter. Great, well, thank you very much and thank you, Sven Erick, for chairing the session and it is a pleasure as well to appear with Stephanie and Daniel. And I'm Peter Go with the Better World Campaign and our job at BWC is to create a stronger relationship between the US and the United Nations. We were created by Ted Turner 15 years ago when the US owed a billion dollars in pastures to the UN for peacekeeping and he was in typical Ted form pretty darn angry about it. Tried to give a billion dollars to the UN itself and that was not workable from a legal perspective and created the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Campaign instead. So our job is to work with Capitol Hill, the executive branch in the media and civil society to create the strongest possible relationship between the US and the UN and make sure that American policy makers appreciate the value in working hand in glove with the UN as a partner to tackle some of the most important global challenges out there on the development front, the economic front, the strategic front and foremost among them is peace operations. I did wanna pick up on a point that Stephanie made at the beginning of her presentation which is a digital media strategy is a media strategy. We feel that strongly at the Better World Campaign because from our perspective, so many of our supporters, so many of the people that we work with not only around the country but also in the executive branch on Capitol Hill and in the media are getting as their primary source of news from a digital channel. So if we're not reaching them digitally then we're not doing our jobs effectively. And as a parent of a 22 year old son and a 16 year old son, I know where they get their news now. Their first exposure to any news is on Facebook for my 22 year old and my 16 year old. His first exposure to news is he'll see it on Twitter and that's the reality. He's not gonna see it on CNN.com. They're gonna see it on their social media, digital platforms first. So we need to go to where they are as opposed to hoping to that they're gonna read some press release that we're gonna send out. So it's core to what we do and it's core to what our ability to get our job done. You know, the peacekeeping issue is always a challenge in the US context because we are the largest financial contributor to UN peacekeeping at the moment more than 28% and going up as we approach the end of the year. Now, a percentage is a percentage but $3 billion which is the US share of UN peacekeeping each year is a very large and sizable contribution. And so from the budgetary perspective as Congress looks at this issue they look at $3 billion and think that's a large chunk of money as they should because these are taxpayer dollars that we're sending to the UN to enhance peace operations. Really pleased that for the past six years the United States has fully paid its dues to the United Nations and not only paid its dues to the United Nations but made up for $1.5, $1.6 billion in arrears that had accumulated at the end of the last administration. So over the last six years because of a variety of initiatives we have been paid up to the UN. So, but the only way this happens the only way that we pay our dues the only way that we make sure that Americans understand the value of working with peace operations working through the UN is by telling the UN story that peacekeeping story from an American national perspective on foreign policy and a national security basis. So let me tell you just a little bit about how we view strategic communications and digital platforms as allowing us to tell this story because if we don't tell the story we know for a fact that lawmakers will prioritize other areas of foreign affairs spending. The members of Congress are bombarded with messages fund this, fund that and unless they hear not only from advocates here in Washington but from their constituents they will fund other priorities. And we can go to the Hill as much as we want and say that the US is legally bound to pay these peacekeeping assessments but really what matters is making sure that Senator Schumer and other members of Congress hear from their constituents because as cynical as we all are about members of Congress their motivations and I worked on the Hill for 22 years I get it. Nobody loves Congress. I mean, every time somebody complains about how unpopular the UN is my response is if you look at Congress's approval ratings right now I think the UN is the least of your issues there in the low 50s percent I will note which is way above Congress. But the end of the day so it's easy to be cynical about Congress but members of Congress are listening to their constituents. We see it all the time. We see it in lobby days where the members of Congress want to meet with their constituents are listening and are reprioritizing what they fight for because of what they hear. And our ability to effectively harness digital is absolutely essential to reaching members of Congress and we see it increasingly when members of Congress are tweeting themselves. Now sometimes they have their staff tweet a lot of members of Congress tweet themselves which means that when you tweet at your Senator and you tweet at your member of the House of Representatives guess what? They're gonna see it. They see that message and that's an important thing. And from our perspective we're not only making sure that we're using digital platforms to reach members of Congress when there's a problem. When they do something right first thing we do we go to our constituents please use social media use digital platforms let your member of Congress know that we appreciate what they did because they gotta hear the thanks. If they don't hear the thanks they won't do it again. And so the biggest way that we do this is through our annual Thank a Peacekeeper campaign. Now from our perspective thank the Peacekeepers designed to remind Americans of the essential bargain of UN peacekeeping. You know we have enormous control because of our veto power in a security council there is not a mission that's created or ended or it's mission changed without active American support. So we're one of a very small group of countries that have this power. We also don't contribute troops to UN peacekeeping missions there's no more than a hundred troops American soldiers participating in UN peacekeeping missions which is a statement about the bargain which is that we pay the dues. We rely upon other countries to become troop contributing countries but we at the United States a wealthy country pay 28% of the dues. That's the bargain that's what Thank a Peacekeeper is all about. So through our Thank a Peacekeeper campaign since we've launched it we've had 130,000 Americans signed digital postcards which our friends at the UN help deliver directly to UN peacekeepers and then our friends at the UN will do videos with the peacekeepers having received the Thank you cards expressing their gratitude to Americans for supporting them in their work. And again that sort of feedback loop is very helpful in terms of the success of the campaign. It also allows us to reach a younger audience. We frequently now go to model United Nations around the country with our Thank a Peacekeeper helmets and we find that students are more than happy to participate in this campaign because it's something they can understand. They're already in Model UN so they know what the UN is. If they're in Model UN somebody's taught them about peacekeeping. So it's a captive audience and we're going to them with a fairly simple advocacy ask which is Thank a Peacekeeper for their contribution. So as a result of this effort we've had 45,000 young people take part in Thank a Peacekeeper that are not part of the Better World Campaign United Nations Association family who are using digital platforms to tell their friends about the importance of peacekeeping and how it serves not only American but global interests. So last year we decided to take it to an even greater level to try to get more young people involved and so we ran a contest where we asked students to submit various entries to explain peacekeeping from their perspective. My favorite was George Stanton's students who did a comic book talking about peacekeeping then we had some middle school students from Washington, D.C. do a video about why peacekeeping serves American interests. We brought them to New York as contest winners and they helped present the Thank a Peacekeeper helmets to the United Nations in a ceremony. So we fundamentally believe that as we think about strategic communications we think about our digital platforms that it's absolutely essential but frankly, there's a lot of fatigue there's a lot of noise out there, you know you experience this all the time as you probably communicate to your own troops they get bombarded with messages how do you reach them how do you get them to open and read what you have to say. So this year we tried something new we got five former presidents well fictional presidents they played presidents on television Alfre Woodard, Jimmy Smiths, Michael Douglas Tony Goldwin and Bill Pullman to do a video thanking peacekeepers and just within the first three weeks of launching this video we got a half a million impressions and we surpassed all of our previous records for number of actions during that period of time because we were offering something new unexpected, different and that's absolutely essential when we think about effectiveness in digital communications it is a very crowded space and in fact, you have to be short in how you communicate with people if it's long, nobody will read it and so our most common shared item on the UN Foundation blog is the 10 facts on peacekeeping it's been shared 11,000 times and it's because it's an infographic it's 10 things you probably don't know about peacekeeping and so when you break it down in that way it allows you to use the digital platform not only so that people share it on their own smaller networks but what are the advantages for us about bringing the five former fictional presidents into our family and doing videos is they all agreed to push out to thank a peacekeeper campaign to their entire network and all of these stars have hundreds of thousands of millions of people in their various social network whether it's Facebook or Twitter so as we think about digital communications it's also not an end in itself we are advocates we're trying to influence policy so yes, digital communications tweeting at your member of Congress is important tweeting at the president sharing at Facebook all important we're trying to move people up the advocacy commitment curve we want people to get used to talking about peacekeeping so that they're willing to take the next step which is to send a letter or to do the next thing which is do an in-district meeting with their member of Congress or to do the next thing which is come to Washington and participate in the lobby day or do the next thing which is become a champion and train others how to do this so our goal is to move people up digital media is like heroin you know it's a good taster you really like it you get used to it and then you really in and we find that it works incredibly effectively to try to move people up the constituency commitment curve and make them even better advocates for UN peacekeeping and I just want to end on a point that Stephanie raised as well which is the importance of transparency you know I think that that's one of the best things that social media has done to all of the peacekeeping missions deployed throughout the world is by having social media presence it allows them to explain in real time to people in the country in which they're serving and to supporters around the world what that peacekeeping mission is doing and the challenges it's facing and I think that that the use of digital media by the UN by the UN in a peace operation setting has great potential to increase transparency and with greater transparency there's greater confidence in what people are funding so thank you very much thank you Peter thank you very much Peter and now I give the floor to Daniel please so good afternoon thank you very much to the organizers for the kind invitation to participate in this very important workshop on I will talk about more from a maybe policy, diplomacy, procedural how, way or how to bring the UN into the 21st century and help move forward in this strategic frontier so before I do that allow me to say a few words about ICT for Peace Foundation which of course is not now let's see if I get that right known to many of you maybe the ICT for Peace Foundation is a think tank who does research, advocacy and it's a brainchild of the World's Homidon Information Society maybe some of you will remember we have some colleagues in the audience who have been very actively involved in these processes in 2003 and 2005 and in 2003 we were very worried about the digital divide and that developing countries would be left behind so ICT for development was a very important topic and then when we moved to Tunisia to the Summit in Tunis some people came and said how about peace couldn't we also say Mutatis Mutandis we can use information technology as we use it for business or health or for education also for peace and it was that reason that some leaders like Marti Addisari asked us, convinced us to do some basic research which is contained in this paper this report which was then finally published in 2005 and which led then and here comes my diplomatic background in this paragraph 36 in the Tunis commitment which we feel at that time you have to understand that ICT was still sort of very early days and not so evident and ubiquitous as we have it today in all life so we were able to get this paragraph where you see ICTs can as a tool help those people who are in the business if you allow me for early warning prevention, mediation, post-conflict reconstruction peace keeping, peace building so this is the story, the beginning and then we had this paragraph and said it's all good and nice and so but what we're gonna do about it and one of the first areas that we said I mean it's a huge field and so we said let's look at crisis crisis management which sort of and define it man-made or natural so you have peace keeping you have also humanitarian operations and how ICTs can help in this particular field so I will talk about the work that we've been doing and the second field increasingly cyber security became important because if we wanna use this fantastic internet and web and all these tools we have to have an open free and sustainable and trustworthy space so that's why we then in 2007, eight and then leading 2011 increasingly got involved in this space and called for a code of conduct for responsible behavior, state behavior we started with policy research to accompany the emerging consultations negotiations at the UN and elsewhere and also of course trying to enable members of developing countries to participate in this increasing space. This is just to show you another area of work that we are deeply committed and which is sort of supporting the first area which is crisis information management. Now we have talked about this high level report but I think we should also look at this particular report which came out and which the Undersecretary Gerald mentioned out of which a lot of recommendations are coming out in the field of technology, information technology very important and therein of course they also talk about strategic communications and we have seen a text of that but he also talks about crisis information management as such in crisis and that's why we see and it has been mentioned by some of our colleagues, Yasmin I think also that when we look at internally and externally there is a symbiosis of the work we're doing in terms of strategic communication but also as what we're doing in crisis information management and by that we mean really how is for instance in a peacekeeping mission or in a humanitarian operation how are we collecting data, information and sharing it for better decision making and protecting and reporting and we feel these two areas are linked I think you cannot do strategic communications if you talk with your colleagues who do information management in crisis in a peacekeeping mission and you all know how many civilians, police and military components they are in a mission and then the country team so if you don't talk to them you cannot do effective strategic communications so that's we have been internally thinking a little bit how the future could be what would be sort of the terms of reference in a mission, peacekeeping mission but I would broaden it because often now we have hybrid situations, we have peacekeeping but we have also humanitarian operations and you have humanitarian actors and so we have to develop terms of reference or what we could call digital blue caps is my colleague who put this term that can do information management but also be public information officers I think again the tools that we have been describing both categories of people have to leverage them have to understand these partfalls and because in both cases you have these two way communications and tools and you have to understand it to use them for both purposes so we have to rethink in a mission what are the roles and responsibilities of an information management or strategic communication officer so the training that we have to do let me talk about that maybe later is really needed to understand these tools and the pitfalls and the challenges and the noise and how to separate the CHEF and so forth so this is very important so we have to create in these missions new institutional architectures to carry out our job in both internally and externally to generate data and to push it out so maybe this is a little bit going too far but we have to really get a new way of Carter that can enable them to be able to counter even some of the narrative and disinformation and to be able to get rid of some of the wrong information and get the good message out as we have been discussing this day now allow me a little bit and I think it could be interesting for this because of the linkage of crisis information managers and strategic communicators and see what leverage or lever we could have within strategically, diplomatically but also from a process point of view in 2008, the secretary general appointed for the first time a chief information technology officer at the ASG level and he, one of his first tasks was to ask us to do an inventory of tools and practices in terms of crisis information management and we wrote a report and which was of course sobering 2008, 2009 and but while doing so we were able to talk to all the organizations, the UN family from UNHCR, WFP, DPKO, DFS, UNDP, UNICEF, et cetera how they do and how do they share information when they go into a mission and of course the report was sobering but then we had the opportunity to have them together and build this crisis information management advisory group which then collectively built the first strategy crisis information management strategy of the secretary general the first time which sort of should help as a lever again to bring about a crisis information management strategy that deserves this word and basically has this vision recognizing the need for credible, accurate, complete and timely information for managing crisis the new United Nations working collaboratively with its stakeholders to improve situational awareness and crisis information management capabilities to protect people, human dignity, environment basically the UN mission. Based on that the strategy was developed and has basically four components which is so high level but so strong that all of these different organizations could subscribe to, very important first is the data architecture, the data governance. What data actually are we need to share for each particular crisis even in each particular peacekeeping operations define what's the data that we are sharing what's the technology that we're gonna use and there of course we know that these technologies are changing fast every six months and so we need some capabilities to follow that the UN needs some capabilities. Then who is involved, who are the stakeholders? Now we know that even victims produce data, information that we can use and then of course capacity building. So we are implementing these strategies being implemented and has of course these outcomes which should lead to increased effectiveness impact and so forth. While we were doing that and now you know all that we have been new tools have come about. So an additional sort of challenge to the organizations who tries to bring itself together to harmonize an information management strategy has now to its disposal these new tools which of course we now is history but the organization has to take into account. So a crisis information manager or a strategic has to look at these new breakdown of data and information before it was just the SRG who sent out his staff to look and report back today these information managers or analysts who have to produce information to the SRG for decision making has to look and master all this. And with regard to the data architecture there is surprisingly still a lot of work to be done. For instance, very basic information about each country is not consistently available. So we're still always confronted where organizations come in a country and ask the same questions. Fortunately now the UN has been making some progress in using technology to enable organizations to share data more easily. And so new technologies come about but still a lot of data, a lot of information is produced outside of the UN and the UN has to find ways and means to get in touch and obtain information from groups like crisis mappers who have been providing a lot of information for the first time in Haiti and now on a consistent basis also in other crises. And there are now new communities like the Digital Humanitarian Network that will be able to provide data information for instance now again in Nepal or in other areas. So this is positive development. We have also been able to work with peacekeeping operations and support DFS to go into a particular mission and talk and discuss how for instance a mission can develop an data architecture and within the mission we're having military police and civilian components and even try to see how they can work with the country team in each country. And so at the same time we were able to provide some training course on how to use new technologies, new media and so forth. So we feel that lastly that training is extremely important and so we have developed a training course which we call crisis information management training course. The first ones were executed in with the support of in Egypt but now we have done it in several places for peacekeeping operations again to introduce and how we could master new media in the mission. This having said I think we still have a long way to go. I think thank God we have now these reports who recognize the challenges and the opportunities and we will use these reports how we can push forward the frontier forward but is still sort of below the radar screen not enough money is available for information management. We have heard from our colleagues and so we are working very hard and close with some member states like Sweden and others how we can introduce more money on a consistent basis into UN operations, peacekeeping or humanitarian operations. These are the things that are cut first if money is very low. We have some progress made quite recently that now in the budgetary process in the fifth committee and so forth based on a report by the Secretary General more recognition is given to this area and potentially more funds and that there is a mechanism now how the Secretary General and the Secretary is doing in terms of improving crisis information management. Something which is also still missing is when we look at peacekeeping operations and others we're not looking enough how we're doing in crisis information management and I think there also some work is to be done with the competent organizations in the UN then also there must be a capability how the UN can follow this fast moving field and so there I think also the UN needs to be strengthened to follow for instance the policies of UN aviators including some of the tricky questions the ethical questions how what are we doing with the data when we're flying over refugee camps and so forth. So there is a lot of work to do and so we are of course happy that we can be part of this process and having the family together we just had a meeting two weeks ago in New York where we were reviewing process again with the support of Sweden so thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much Daniel and we have already got some questions from you in the audience and if you have further questions you're welcome to write them down and I will be collected by our colleagues from USIP. I have a question here to Stephanie but I think it can also be a question to all of you and it has to do with the culture in our organizations company culture or organization culture well the culture in organizations and the question is can you speak about how senior DUD officials are learning about the social media to be used as a tool for threat cons? Absolutely and first actually I just want to give credit where credit is due the statistic that I mentioned earlier was from the peaceoperationsreview.org so I just said that I would do that. Answer that question, it's a little bit varied. I convene a meeting with all of the digital leads for all the services and we're all kind of going through this process as one and we all have different leaders and we all have different leaders in terms of their familiarity and comfortable comfort with social media. So for example the Air Force, no, sorry excuse me the Marines in order to get the commandant on social media they did a little experiment. They had the commandant sit down for a traditional Q&A where they asked him questions that were submitted by Marines and he answered the questions and then they put the full interview online. It was a 30 minute interview and it went online and then they decided that they were gonna do something a little different they were gonna do a Facebook town hall and so they put the commandant on the Marines Facebook page and they did a live Q&A session and they saw there were just huge differences in who was asking questions what kinds of questions the commandant was asking what they found is that they were getting as I would say a little bit more less PC questions in the Facebook town hall people were much more willing to ask the questions that were really on their mind versus in the sit down Q&A where it was a very, it was a more formal setting they were getting technical questions tell me about my pay, tell me about my benefits but when they put them on the Facebook town hall he got questions about what if I have a DUI how is that gonna impact my service really like hard hitting questions and so that got the commandant realizing that there were a lot of benefits to getting on social media he does not have his own account at this time and he is now going to become the chairman of the joint chiefs who does have a Facebook page so it'd be very interesting to see if he takes over that page when he becomes the new chairman in the fall and then I think just lastly, as I said earlier just to come back to what we did with the secretary of defense we showed him stats, right we found there was a 2014 Blue Star Families Report that had all these numbers showcasing who's on Facebook we asked our Twitter contacts who's on Twitter we looked at where our audience was and that is how we convinced the secretary that he should be involved I will say that I was not originally a fan of putting him on Facebook because it does require commitment from the host it requires the principal to be active and to want to engage and so that's something that we're working on right now trying to get him to be liking comments and responding to people and that'll just be something that we work on over the next few months Oh sorry the only thing I would say is there's two additional points which is making sure that use of digital media is included in everybody's performance reviews because we as an organization a medium sized organization everybody goes through the performance review process once a year and making sure that digital and use of digital media is part of their performance reviews has an amazing impact on people's willingness to use it and I think the second element is from a generational perspective I mean 90% of the people at the UN Foundation have it as part of their DNA so you don't need to educate them but for old people like me you have to show some of the buddy that use of digital media actually produces results and so making sure that you do an internal storytelling not just about number of impressions and how many people could have theoretically seen this but what happened when a policy maker somebody in the media saw that digital trend and therefore it led to another level of either an advocacy action or a media exposure and I think trying to help tell that internal story about the relationship between digital and then a broader message sometimes helps Daniel would you also like to comment on this question? No, not really I mean I'm also part of the older generation but that's a part of our struggle to convince I kind of talk about the UN but my government, Swiss government how difficult it is to get understanding for this changing world and it has to do that most of our decision makers have a certain age and then they hear from their children but how, you know and the gene, the reaction, the reflex so I think we have to wait a few years Well, we have also got another question very practical but still very important question on resources and the question is as a first step, what type of resources does the human need to take the frontier forward? What type of investments are we talking about in terms of human resources, financial resources and technical resources and that's a question to all of you Daniel please Actually, I don't think it takes much it's just, you know, reprioritizing the money and put the political will behind it to have staff, more staff, better trained staff who can master these challenges from a strategic point of view or information management point of view so that is just reprioritizing staff and have it as a generalized staffing For instance, I mean, talking about more like maybe a humanitarian operation but in Burma, when they had big humanitarian crises a lot of people, organizations come in Ocha and so with lots of resources and information management and then when the crisis goes down and then everybody's gone and then there's nobody there and when it's a new crisis then you have to build up the data architecture, the capabilities so we need also permanent staffing in and we're talking to the UNDP now and the resident coordinators to have a minimum of capability in now the other one is technology the technology as we said is a very fast moving and it's not costly anymore but you have to have somebody who can really handle it and ideally, you mentioned Lebanon I think they have very strong capabilities there but not everywhere so then it needs to be built in some new capabilities kind of a lab, you know some people who understand these technologies and are part of the mission that's my recommendation but in terms of resources it doesn't cost very much I would agree the only thing I would say is to echo your point which is the digital media person needs it can't be their secondary responsibilities you need to make sure that your media and outreach operation has somebody who's sole job it is to do digital and if you don't it will always be somebody's second priority Yeah I would just add that I agree it doesn't take much I mean the beauty of social media is that it is social and the idea is that if you have a good piece of content your audience will share it in my previous role at the Truman Project we had a miniscule budget and I think I spent maybe you know like I had a campaign where we spent $5 a week for a month and that was like the budget you know and we still saw gains because if you are strategic about how you are spending that money if you are using the right hashtags if you are putting it out at the right time if you're targeting at the right people you could a dollar can go a long way at the DoD we do not have a paid strategy it is all earned and so we really have to think strategically about when are we posting what are we posting about who are we tagging who are we talking to and what content are we sharing and so it's a combination of those things but you really can go far with not a lot I have also another question to you Stephanie and the question is as follows how do you deal with the problem that military cannot or are not allowed to tweet practically does everybody have to become a communicator Observe that they can't tweet what was the military cannot tweet that that was the question well I'm not exact I think what they're asking is if you are not familiar with the platform but you're being put on it I'm gonna kind of go in that direction I think that yes at some level in your you know you do have to understand how to communicate but if you are a policy expert I would hope that you can communicate on your issue and what that means though is just finding maybe a less wonky way to communicate right so I always try to think story first you know give examples behind the scenes of pictures always do well on social media right so if you are about to go you know go speak at an event or you're going to travel somewhere really cool you know don't necessarily just focus on the speech but focus on what is happening so a great example of that is the secretary traveled to Singapore recently and was on an Osprey where he flew over the Malacca Straits to see the economic activity that was going on and of course that's a pretty cool photo but it was gonna be hard for us to explain that so what we did instead is we contacted the literal combat ship Fort Worth which is a ship stationed on the Malacca Straits and we asked them can you make a video one minute long of your sailors explaining why is it important for you to be here and so they gave us a two minute video showcasing three of their sailors talking about why it was important for them to be in the Malacca Straits and that video did so much better than if we had had the secretary try to explain I'm here at the Malacca Straits and it's important right so I think that there are different ways for you to communicate it doesn't always have to be through you you can showcase other people's work we tend to use especially for the secretary's page we use the social media strategy it's called the rule of thirds so one third of our content is original content from the secretary's page one third of our content is shared content from DOD channels and then a third of our content is content from people like-minded individuals to the secretary and that strategy helps us kind of showcase his priorities but also amplifies what DOD is doing writ large thank you Stephanie well I would like to finish by putting up a question myself and let's think a little bit after the box next year we will get the new secretary general and let's think that he or she decides to appoint an undersecretary general responsible for communication and public affairs and you are the person so my question to you is what should be your first decision and advice to the new secretary general when it comes to communication and public affairs as the new appointed undersecretary general Daniel well I would I would I would ask him finally I mean he has of course had you know it's his strategy the crisis information management strategy which could include all these components but I think he should really put his weight behind it you know and he can do quite a lot I think that's what we could refer to this report the which I mentioned and so forth so that's what I would want to do and then go to some countries member states who will support him and say yes you're doing a good job we'll support you all the way so that's what I would recommend thank you Daniel Peter well when she is sworn in as the next secretary general because I will be shocked if it's not a woman because there are plenty of qualified women in this world to be secretary general of the United Nations so when she is sworn in my suggestion is my advice to her new undersecretary general for public information and communications will be to get the digital communications teams like Stephanie from the member states to come brief the team there and give them advice about here the top five or six things that you need to be doing within the UN system and work with them for a few weeks on a little bit of a detail so I would say there's so much wealth of talent among member states and they should be asked to offer it to the UN thank you Peter and Stephanie I would do obviously an assessment of the digital communications I guess capabilities and I would identify where the gaps are and then I would ask for a budget to fill those gaps so whether or not that means hiring a graphic designer whether or not that means hiring a social media strategist or whether or not that means creating a budget for a paid strategy that's what I would do Excellent thank you Daniel thank you Peter and thank you Stephanie and please join me in a big hand to our excellent panel