Former diplomat Simon Dickson has some positive things to say about FCO bloggers following a seminar he attended:

How do they assess their success? For a couple, they are among the first bloggers in their respective countries, which should score a few credibility points for UK plc. Some quote instances where a particular post gets hundreds of comments; but there are more examples of cases where the blog has led to something else: coverage in traditional media, reaching many times further than the blog itself, or personal contacts made. (I must admit, I’m reaching a similar conclusion myself. It’s not about who comes to the blog, it’s about where the blog takes me.)

Blogzilla too was there, but was less impressed:

For a government department whose principal aim is to influence and persuade, it felt a curiously clumsy event — even with the organisational assistance of global PR firm Weber Shandwick. A set of (white, balding, upper-middle class) diplomats sat on one side of a row of desks and spoke at an audience that seemed to consist largely of other FCO and Weber Shandwick staff. Comically, the frosty FCO receptionists demanded that laptops be left at the front desk.

More pertinent to my mind is how "authentic" pronouncements can ever be from what is ultimately the UK government’s global PR agency. Craig Murray, the ambassador who spoke out over Uzbekistan’s torture and murder of political activists, was hounded out of the FCO as a result. Carne Ross, the UK delegation’s Middle East expert at the United Nations who testified to the Butler Review that the invasion of Iraq by the US and UK was illegal, left the FCO shortly afterwards. While today’s ambassadors stressed their day-to-day independence, there is a strong limit on how far this can be taken.

Why was I not invited, I ask?

Finally, Tony Curzon Price also joined the discussion:

This is obviously the big question for government use of new media. Just as technology allowed disintermediation of finance—and so all the excesses that we are now paying for—so that disintermediation is now hitting the production of knowledge. And we don’t want to happen to knowledge what happened to money …

My own take on this is that there are two views of the business of knowledge making: you are either trying to influence outcomes, or you are trying to "speak truth to power". In the new media, you can’t afford to pretend to be doing the one when you’re doing the other. The FCO cannot – just cannot – speak truth to power, because it is power. But it can transparently and authentically try to influence.

The bigger question of whether there is anyone left who has the legitimacy to speak truth rather than simply seek influence is a big question for our time.

Not sure I quite understand ‘speaking truth to power’ – as if they are invariably different. I prefer speaking truth to lies, myself. And why does one need ‘legitimacy’ to speak truth? That thought may indeed be a big question of our time – but isn’t it also really … creepy?

How does one get on the guest-list for such events, I wonder.

And how much were a ‘global PR firm’ paid to set it up? How were they selected?

An FOI question coming on?