• Fergus Hanson

30 November 2010E-diplomacy is disrupting old ways of achieving foreign policy goals, writes Fergus Hanson for the Australian, and DFAT needs to catch up.

Last week Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd set out his vision for the future of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He said he was "acutely conscious of a core fact: we now have 18 per cent fewer staff abroad than we did in 1996".

That was a recognition of underfunding, but also perhaps a sign that things need to be done differently. And there are other, more efficient ways to do things. In leading foreign ministries the digital age is producing dramatic change. Every day a single American diplomat communicates with more than a quarter of a million Indonesians using Facebook.

Australia's diplomatic service, by contrast, doesn't even use social media in Indonesia.

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