US embassy cable - 05CAIRO3180

UNCLAS CAIRO 003180 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FOR RM/IRP DAVID MCKEE AND EDIPLOMACY GERALD GALLUCCI 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: AINF, EG, SIPRNET, Website 
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. 
 
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Initial Feedback on Net-Centric Software 
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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 
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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. 
 
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Comment 
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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