Who will be Obama's top diplomat?

Setting up shop
With so much facing the new secretary, a smooth transition is all the more crucial.

The first points of contact for the transition team will be about two-dozen administrative staff from the State Department sitting in 5,300 square feet of space on the agency’s first floor.

Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, Undersecretary for Management, is one of three career service foreign officers running this transition. Kennedy is no stranger to the process, having worked on six previous presidential transitions.

His motto, "be organized, be flexible," means that his team was in place and ready to work even before Election Day.

In a pre-Election Day interview, Kennedy told NBC News, "the space is ready now."

A week after the election, the office remains empty, and Kennedy has yet to receive any official notification of the leaders' names. But NBC News has learned that Clinton-era State Department officials Wendy Sherman and Tom Donilon are working with the incoming Obama Transition team.

Kennedy's own transition staff consists of everyone from human resources personnel to technical support staff, and serves to facilitate the incoming team's every immediate need.

Kennedy described it as "one-stop shopping to roll everyone through, from getting them a blackberry or a cell phone, to how to log onto the computer system."

"And all of this of course is done after we make sure that they have a security clearance," he added.

Plus there is the paper work. Even the best-laid plans won’t prevent a months-long transition process, according to Kennedy.

"Literally, everybody's got to fill out paper," said Kennedy. "You could be talking about July, August before all the individuals who turned over are replaced."

Hitting the ground running
All of this preparation, according to Kennedy, will lay the foundation for the next team to hit the ground running as early as they wish. For an agency that regularly deals with sensitive files, accessible only to those with security clearances, any information handoff is as crucial as any other.

Interactive Analyzing the vote Look at key voting trends across the nation during the presidential election. msnbc.com

"The Department of State will do everything that we can, and I personally will do everything...that I can, to make sure that this is a smooth transition," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the morning after Obama's victory.

Briefing materials for the incoming team are already back from the printers in the form of a policy book, budget book, and personnel book. "It's sort of the past and the present [of State Department policy]," said Kennedy. "We're not directing the future, but we're just saying the future could be such and such."

It’s all about conveying information — and doing so diplomatically.

“They have to be brought up to speed on the issues and the challenges that we face,” Kennedy said, “so there is literally a seamless handoff at 12 noon on the 20^th.”

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