The State Department is employing plenty of technology tools in its campaign to improve public messaging efforts around the world, but is taking care to employ human-centric approaches to make sure that messaging is succinct.
Kerry Porter, acting deputy assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Global Public Affairs, discussed the agency’s “people at the center” approach to new messaging technology adoption during the Adobe Gov Forum Experience Tour hosted by GovExec on June 25.
“We’ve experimented with and adopted technologies that have revolutionized how we carry out that process,” Porter said in explaining the approach to improved messaging. “But we found that technology can’t be a standard for how we think – we learned a few lessons along the way.”
One of those lessons, she said, is focusing on being “data-informed, not data-driven.”
“When thinking about how we’re getting the content in the hands of our audiences, we started with the data for the website, which was how they are finding us,” said Porter.
“But we didn’t stop at the data,” she said. “We married it with the mission for the State Department to protect and promote U.S. security, prosperity, and democratic values and shape an international environment in which all Americans can thrive.”
Other lessons learned include unifying branding images so that the agency presents a united front across all social media platforms, and ensuring that messaging is tailored for local audiences.
“We trust our spokespeople worldwide, whether at the podium in Washington, D.C., or the embassy in Abuja or the Belfast consulate, we trust them to take our … our content and tailor it to their local audiences,” Porter said. “It’s why we have more than 1,400 digital accounts around the world.”
Porter emphasized that any technology-driven work at the agency needs to be human-centered from start to finish.
“Human centered isn’t just about how we design platforms and how we craft digital content,” she said. “We know that human centered is every step of the way.”
