A high-quality working environment to enhance diplomatic action
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development (MAEDI) is the French administration responsible for implementing the foreign policy of France and for ensuring relations with foreign states. The ministry is responsible for diplomacy and coordinates the activities of over 250 embassies and consulates.
Challenge
The Diplomacy Portal brings together the 14,000 employees working in all French embassies and consulates around the world. The portal provides a privileged-access location for sharing information that forms the heart of diplomatic action.
In deploying eXo’s collaboration solution, our main objectives are knowledge sharing and the decompartmentalization of information.
Nicolas Milcent, Program Director, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
After implementing an initial portal that focused on diplomatic correspondence, the ministry wanted to modernize this function by adding collaborative tools to better facilitate discussions and teamwork and to improve knowledge sharing and overall effectiveness. Beyond these tools, the project team was also well aware of the need to promote the acceptance and use of these new ways to interact among staff.
Given the strong technical constraints imposed by a heterogeneous global computer network, the ministry’s IT department was concerned with improving user satisfaction, particularly among those who suffer longer response times. To make matters more challenging, the department services a population spread around the globe that demands 24/7 availability.
Why eXo?
A solution that is integrated and adaptable
The first version of Diplomacy Portal faced architectural limits because the portal and DMS functions came from different vendors. Moreover, the support provided by one of the two vendors was not satisfactory.
eXo Platform allows us to maintain continuity while providing the advantage of being integrated. Everything we did with two products is now possible with one.
Nicolas Milcent – Program Director, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
For the second version of Diplomacy Portal, the ministry preferred the eXo Platform because it integrates the portal and DMS functions as well as offers a wide range of additional features. In addition, this solution is open source and supported by a French vendor, which guarantees easy access to support for the project team.
The impact
New uses to enhance diplomatic action
With this new tool, the ministry wants to promote new uses among its employees. On the communications front, it provides a high-quality working environment for the preparation of diplomatic meetings and enables reports to be disseminated as needed and securely.
These are important, useful features, but it is on the sharing of knowledge that the ministry wants to move the lines—for example, creating digital spaces for inter-embassy discussions on the economic development of a given region or providing a common space for cultural attachés and thus enabling speedy electronic communications and interactions that are not available to traditional diplomatic organizations.
The roadmap for future enhancements to Diplomacy Portal contains plans for many rich and varied features such as around customized activity streams and calendar functions.
Although the Diplomacy Portal has had some capability for users at separate ministries to interact, the IT department plans to open the portal even more to other ministries and perhaps even to some degree to the public (e.g., journalists, business leaders). Eventually, more than 50,000 people will be able to interact through Diplomacy Portal.
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