digital diplomacy
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in cooperation with experts from the Center for Digital Society Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), held a joint study on the future of digital diplomacy for Indonesia. More than 30 experts in diplomacy and information communication technology, as well as 100 observers, consultants, academics, and foreign diplomats, participated in the Experts Meeting on Diplomacy, which was held in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences UGM, Wednesday.
Inquiries from overseas prosecutors to their British counterparts about cyber crime have soared, underscoring the vital role the UK plays for investigators and criminals alike.High quality global journalism requires investment. The number of so-called Mutual Legal Assistance requests from foreign authorities to the UK relating to cyber crime jumped by 12 per cent in 2016, to 1,855, according to Home Office statistics gleaned through a Freedom of Information request.
Digital diplomacy, a priority for the State Department under the Obama administration, appears to be at a crossroads. [...] The department is particularly challenged now, Cochran said, "because there are not enough leaders in the building." "What you need is assistant secretaries, you need undersecretaries, you need deputy secretaries,” he added. “You need a team of people telling the crew, where's this ship going."

Clingendael's Jan Melissen and Emillie de Keulenaar on the urgency of going digital.
China has employed tens of thousands of scholars to write an internet version of its national encyclopaedia, which will go online next year to compete against Wikipedia. [...] Designed to be the nation’s first digital book of “everything”, it will feature more than 300,000 entries, each about 1,000 words long, making it twice as large as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and about the same size as the Chinese-language version of Wikipedia.
More than 20,000 other people also observed that moment after Adam posted a 40-second video of his experience on Facebook. It was one of many this social activist would share during his six-week trip to Somalia [...] Today, Adam is harnessing that following to galvanize support for Somalia, which is on the brink of a famine that threatens the lives of an estimated 6 million people, according to the United Nations.
Many who speak Q’eqchi never learned to read or write it. And even if they did, it’s Spanish that’s the lingua franca at colleges, employers, and any other opportunity for economic growth. In turn, the nonprofit Choice Humanitarian–backed by Microsoft’s Edge team and the agency Pixel Lab–has launched a pilot program called Accent to teach 18 women from Chulac, Guatemala, how to read and speak Spanish.

Ilan Manor on the historical relationship between diplomacy and technology, and how it can help a world in crisis.