The unit was formed in response to recommendations from the 1999 Overseas Presence Advisory Panel that the State Department improve its ability to communicate and share knowledge.
Following the recommendations of a Blue Ribbon panel created in the aftermath of the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombing, in 2002, Ambassador James Holmes started the eDiplomacy Task Force.
Currently, eDiplomacy falls under the Deputy Chief Information Officer for Business, Management, and Planning.
[citation needed] Virtual Work Environments were initiated by the Office of eDiplomacy with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), and used in many units at State.
The State Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolset (SMART) program leads the WSS deployment effort.