Secretary Clinton Announces State Department Use of Chrome

Posted by Chris Bronk, Senior Advisor, IRM’s Office of eDiplomacy, U.S. Department of State

Editors note: We were excited to hear that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself announced to State employees that they would be getting the Chrome browser. Now that they have it, we invited Chris to share some more details.

The State Department gave our employees around the world a special Valentine’s Day gift as we made the Google Chrome browser available to all employees on February 14. This makes us the first U.S. cabinet department to make Chrome available department-wide.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the announcement to a town hall meeting of State Department employees, where it was greeted with rousing applause:

State’s historical approach to browsers is to test compatibility with all corporate, enterprise-level applications and remediate any issues prior to full release. We’ve taken a different approach with Chrome. Offering Chrome as a browser option allows us to take full advantage of Chrome’s speed -- from quick startup to rapid website loading -- plus the ability to access the full range of modern websites, and will allow our employees to be more productive in their work. When a new release of Chrome is made available with enhanced functionality or added security, we can release it into production immediately, bypassing cumbersome testing.

With Chrome for Business, our Information Resources Management (IRM) team was able to deploy Chrome quickly and securely. After two weeks, it has been installed on over 58,000 PCs around the world or around 60% of our enterprise. The administrative capabilities of Chrome for Business will allow IRM to manage the browser going forward, making sure that all employees are on the same version and can take advantage of new features that are regularly made available in new Chrome releases.

We’re enthusiastic to be leading the charge to bring an enhanced web browsing experience to State employees executing the critical U.S. diplomatic mission around the world!