This grant will support a planning process to refine the scope of a larger effort to be submitted to NSF later in 2003. The research discipline is social science,and the collaboration will be with the U.S. State Department. The focus of the work will be to explore how the data integration aspects of web portals can enhance the dialog between agency and public in the area of public diplomacy. Challenges in the long run are technical to some degree, but the areas of richest possibility for new knowledge are in the less quantitative areas related to organization and legal/political issues.
