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Cablegate: Improving Our Siprnet Website

This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS CAIRO 003180

SIPDIS

FOR RM/IRP DAVID MCKEE AND EDIPLOMACY GERALD GALLUCCI

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: AINF EG SIPRNET
SUBJECT: IMPROVING OUR SIPRNET WEBSITE

1. Post is committed to classified web-publishing as a way to
provide end-users with easy access to cables, biographies,
and other post reporting. As part of our ongoing effort to
improve our SIPRNET website, post is beta-testing two new
applications from the Net-Centric Diplomacy group. These
applications will fit nicely into our existing PortalX
website. On their April 10-11 visit, the Net-Centric
Diplomacy team provided quick and efficient training on these
new applications, which substantially upgrade post's ability
to load and organize its web content.

----------------------------------------
Initial Feedback on Net-Centric Software
----------------------------------------

2. Post is working to integrate the Net-Centric applications
with its PortalX webpage. The Net-Centric applications
already save time for post's content uploaders, allowing post
to focus more on the website's content than on the mechanics
of updating the website. Post would recommend three changes
to the CableCapture software. First, post would appreciate
the ability to add terms and tags to uploaded cables without
having to delete and reload them. This capability will be
especially important with the introduction of the SIPDIS
caption. With cables being loaded to the website
automatically, post will need an easy way to define "hot
topics" for the website. Second, uploaded cables under a
given tag and/or term appear on the website in the order in
which they were posted. Post believes it would be more
useful for them to appear by cable date, with the most recent
cables for each tag or term first. Third, apostrophes turn
into quotation marks in uploaded cables. The only way post
can fix this problem at present is to manually edit each
cable.

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Streamlining PortalX
--------------------

3. With the streamlined CableCapture function (and the
expected release of SIPDIS), cable uploading is no longer the
primary time-consumer for website management. The biggest
obstacle to increasing and expanding our web-content is the
upload function of PortalX's daily report. Post currently
uploads the daily report as a word document and adds the
pictures within PortalX. The uploading process drops most of
the document's formatting, and pictures are very time
consuming to upload. Post suggests that the daily report
uploading feature be modified to enable a word document that
is fully formatted and that includes pictures to be uploaded
as an html page. We are currently able to do this in other
portlets, such as the Egypt at Street Level portlet. We have
considered simply changing the daily report portlet into a
content portlet, but this would eliminate the daily report
archive feature.

4. Post also experiences difficulties with PortalX's search
engine. For example, after loading four cables on a recent
CODEL, a search on the name of that CODEL (included in the
subject line of each cable) only returned two results instead
of the expected four.

-------
Comment
-------

5. Post appreciates the support of the PortalX and
Net-Centric Diplomacy teams. We look forward to
participating in the SIPDIS pilot in the near future. End
comment.


Visit Embassy Cairo's Classified Website:
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/cairo

You can also access this site through the
State Department's Classified SIPRNET website.

CORBIN

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