 Good afternoon and welcome to the Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy. Today we're talking to Fergus Hansen, who is an expert on e-diplomacy. Fergus has been visiting the ANU today to talk to our Masters of Diplomacy students who are having a series of diplomatic practitioner seminars. And Fergus is the Director of Innovation at Walk Free, an NGO committed to ending slavery, modern day slavery. He's also a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution and previously has worked at the Lowy Institute in Sydney and also at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra. We're going to start off with asking Fergus a little bit, basically to describe e-diplomacy and the practice of e-diplomacy, but particularly to talk about his recent research on the US State Department and their use of e-diplomacy. So Fergus, tell us about your most recent paper. Well, the paper, Baked in and Wired, basically builds on a mapping exercise idea looking at the extent of e-diplomacy at State. And it focuses in on the three areas where e-diplomacy is used the most. So that is knowledge management, the internal, the use of technology to exchange information internally within the Department, public diplomacy, so how the State Department communicates using social media and other electronic tools with the rest of the world. And also internet freedom, the way it is countering efforts by other states to try and monitor and filter and censor the internet and prevent people from accessing whatever they want to access online. And tell us a little bit about the internet freedom part of it because that might be a point of difference from the way Australia uses the internet freedom. This is probably the really pointy end of e-diplomacy and since 2008 the US Congress has allocated $100 million towards efforts to counter the censorship and filtering of the internet by other countries. So for example if you're in China it's very difficult to access Facebook or Gmail for example. And so the developed tools are not just countering China but all countries that filter the internet are tools that individuals and activists can use to communicate with each other without being observed by government officials or security forces and that they can keep on communicating if the government tries to shut down the internet. So they've developed tools like the internet and the suitcase which is a mobile version of the internet that can be carried into situations where the government might be shutting down the internet as happened in Libya and Egypt for example. They're developing tools to protect activists if they're arrested so they can race the contents of their mobile phones. And they're working online to try and counter messages that promote these tools and also train activists in awareness and how to be safe online as well. And I've heard Hillary Clinton talk about the freedom to connect which is kind of a 21st century idea, a new human rights idea but it is controversial as I know. It's basically right on the edge of what's allowable under international law and diplomatic practice with respect and sovereignty. So it's a really unusual aspect of diplomacy because traditionally there's this notion that you shouldn't interfere in the internal affairs of a state but I think what the State Department has done is really taken this issue and put it as a... badged it as a human rights issue in a way and in that sense it's an overarching issue so it supersedes domestic political issues and it's something that really covers the sort of global issue of the right to free speech and the right to access information and I think that that notion is so appealing to people around the world that it's very hard for a lot of governments to really push back against that. It's so hard to argue against the free flow of information or the right to communicate with your friends or your family online. It is very much linked to the huge internet-based companies being American companies though. Do you think it's... I mean it's twinned with that national interest you would think? I think that there is an extent that obviously the United States is home to the internet and Silicon Valley and a huge number of companies that make a fortune through the internet but I think that this really fits more closely with its human rights aspect of its foreign policy rather than so much pushing its products. Of course it's a handy byproduct when all the whole world wants to communicate on Facebook and Twitter. That's fantastic for US business but I think it does run deeper than just a commercial interest. That's my impression at least. So Australia just needs to create the next Twitter. Yeah. Okay, well we'll get on that. Now I'm interested in... Is there any lessons from the US State Department and the use of e-diplomacy in any of those fields, maybe not the internet freedom one so much but the other two, knowledge, management and public diplomacy that would help the Asia Pacific region and maybe the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and trade? I think one of the issues that has been done in the Pacific in particular is mobile phones and we've only just recently seen the mobile phone market open up in the Pacific through the entry of DigiCell. There's much more work to be done there and there's almost a... If you look at Africa for example and parts of Asia as well the potential use of those tools in a whole range of everyday circumstances is enormous from mobile banking in particular I think has enormous potential in the Pacific and also communication on a whole range of fronts from basic market conditions and basic information that people need as well as just communicating with each other or transferring money around the place. It can be a really helpful tool. What about for the practice of diplomacy from DFAT's point of view is there things we can learn from the State Department? I think there's a lot we can learn. One of the things that has fundamentally sort of shifted as a result of these tools is the way that governments are now starting to communicate with much larger audiences so diplomats in the past used to communicate with maybe if they were lucky a dozen or up to 100 people at a time if they were giving a lecture or something like that occasionally they might have an op-ed in the newspaper now there's potential to communicate with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis so the nature of communication has really fundamentally shifted and also the timeliness with which they need to communicate so in a lot of situations nothing has changed if you're negotiating a tax treaty with the Netherlands you can take as long as you like the Australian public won't get worried about that and the Dutch public won't get worried about it but if there's a crisis that hits and an example might be the recent Indian student crisis that we faced here in Australia there's an absolute imperative to be communicating very quickly and trying to minimise the damage to your national interest as quickly as possible and I think this is an area where there needs to be a radical change in the way that we approach communication so that we get on top of these things really quickly and nip them in the bud before they become serious and have a serious impact on the national economy and what about monitoring of social media for our P&G, High Commission and our Fiji commissioners that have had issues with rumours swirling about them in social media, is it useful in those situations? Yeah, I think one of the things that Alec Ross when in his exit interviews was talking about one of the big changes that this has brought about is listening at state and I think that this is a really powerful tool for diplomats to be able to pick up conversations beyond those that are just his amongst its small group of face-to-face contacts that each diplomat happens to have. This is a real opportunity to listen in on a whole range of conversations across a whole range of areas and to really get information very quickly rather than have to percolate through traditional media or through to senior interlocutors. So there's a lot of opportunity there I think to really monitor this if not a scientific way, at least in a way that sort of captures key influences and allows you to pick up on things very quickly that might impact the national interest. I don't want to explain Alec Ross and I might ask you, do we need an Alec Ross, do you think? Does our DFAT need an Alec Ross? Well, Alec Ross is the Secretary Clinton Senior Advisor for Innovation and he's led quite a lot of the diplomacy initiatives at State. I think it would be great if Australia had an Alec Ross equivalent. It's a real, really sort of important, I think, for such a new and big change to really have somebody that's out there making the case for this change and really helping the department move along and catch up with that and encouraging risk and encouraging people to adapt the technologies into experiment because that's the way you really drive good innovation and really get this technology better down and make sure that you stay with it. Any Australian ambassadors do you think are particularly good? I do like Greg Moriarty. Yeah, in Indonesia, I follow him too. Now, just on your own career focus you're very interesting to our students that they aim you because you've had a really varied background so you've joined DFAT as a grad you've had a posting in the Hague focusing on international law you've worked for the Lowy Institute and written a whole lot of important papers about the practice of diplomacy you've worked at Brookings which is, you know, pretty fancy in the US and you've worked for an NGO so what reflections do you have about the practice of diplomacy having worked in all those institutions? I think that what I really like or what I've sort of picked up through that experience is how important it is to bring different experiences into diplomacy. I think in an age gone by it was very common for people to have one career and to stick with that and specialise the whole way through their lifetime. I think one of the great things that I've seen in diplomacy is particularly in the United States is this sort of revolving door model where you can let people in and out of the system quite fluidly which allows you to bring in expertise that you need in a particular moment in time so you can bring in Silicon Valley people and technologists when you need them and you can bring in people with commercial expertise when you need that and there's this culture of exchange of information and a desire I think on behalf of also people in the private sector to want to give back to the country and spend some time in the Foreign Service contributing and an appreciation within the Foreign Service itself for that external expertise coming in and bringing that information and the time that I spent at the state there was even a revolving door when you weren't even talking about employees so people with experience and say best buy or different corporations in the United States would come in and give a talk just to provide information about how they're doing things in the private sector that might be applicable within the State Department. That's a thought for another day and another interview because thank you so much for coming to the end.