A sort of conversation seem to be starting and I am not sure where it will take us. It seems that the Commission, or more precisely DG CONNECT, is working on a significant policy document, a Communication to Parliament and Council. You can get a flavour of some of their concerns here: "What is the situation we have decided to change: The current multi stakeholder approach to Internet governance is very complex and lacks both transparency and accountability in order for all actors to fully adhere to the way the internet is currently governed. We need to ensure that the global principles for Internet governance continue to develop in line with our internet COMPACT, through enhanced coordination with EU Member States and proactive presence in international fora. Furthermore, the Commission, in cooperation with the EEAS, will present an EU vision for Internet governance as part of the overall internet strategy. The current institutional set up needs to be strengthened and streamlined, including the functioning of the Governmental advisory Committee (GAC) to ICANN and an IGF better focused on main challenges in producing concrete deliverables. The complexity of the current multi stakeholder approach to Internet Governance has to be further developed in a comprehensible manner so as to ensure inclusiveness of all actors. The establishment of GIPO will contribute to this. ..." http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/connect/en/content/international-internet-governance... So they want to reform the multi-stakeholder set-up? And by the way I am intrigued by the mention of "enhanced coordination". That always had a special EU meaning and that was not what people, perhaps naively, thought. Meanwhile ICANN is also busy. Steve Crocker writes: "As anyone who has followed the global discourse on Internet governance knows, the multistakeholder model is under threat. Some governments have expressed a clear interest in putting multilateral organizations in charge of Internet policymaking. As the Internet has taken on a larger role in the economy and society, some governments have grown increasingly uncomfortable with their perceived lack of control. More recently, ICANN has received requests to expand its remit to address issues beyond the coordination of the Internet’s unique identifiers. This we will not do. The ICANN Board recognizes that the single, open, global, interoperable Internet is under threat of failing due to emerging pressures on multistakeholder governance. As a consequence, the Board gave the ICANN CEO a mandate to work with other key organizations and leaders to establish a coalition to evaluate and participate in the formation a movement or initiative for an Internet cooperation agenda. We are pleased with his initial engagement with the Internet organizations and the broader multistakeholder community. ..." http://blog.icann.org/2013/11/icanns-mandate-to-preserve-and-enhance-multist... Watch this space? Gordon
On 17/11/2013 17:23, Gordon Lennox wrote: re: DG CONNECT's statement:
The current institutional set up needs to be strengthened and streamlined, including the functioning of the Governmental advisory Committee (GAC) to ICANN and an IGF better focused on main challenges in producing concrete deliverables.
the RIPE NCC kindly sponsored travel/hotel expenses for me to go to the IGF meeting in Bali in October. I was initially puzzled that there was an explicit intention not to make any decisions there, but it quickly became clear that this was a very smart thing to do. The result was an unusually open atmosphere considering the attendee spread - civil society, lawmakers, regulatory people, politicians, etc. Pretty much everyone was on equal footing, and that made it easy to approach people or to be approached. Most importantly, the majority of people were enthusiastic about understanding other peoples' points of view. So although the IGF does not produce concrete deliverables - I assume this means anything ranging from policy documents to legal agreements - it produces something much more valuable, namely a better quality understanding of the issues surrounding internet governance from a variety of valid and important points of view. This allows the people who are tasked by our societies to create laws and regulations, to do so on a much more informed basis from a wider cross-section of opinions. There is no doubt in my mind that if the IFG meeting is changed to create a requirement for "concrete deliverables", this critical feature of the forum will be lost. Nick
On 17 nov 2013, at 19:01, Nick Hilliard wrote:
On 17/11/2013 17:23, Gordon Lennox wrote:
re: DG CONNECT's statement:
The current institutional set up needs to be strengthened and streamlined, including the functioning of the Governmental advisory Committee (GAC) to ICANN and an IGF better focused on main challenges in producing concrete deliverables.
the RIPE NCC kindly sponsored travel/hotel expenses for me to go to the IGF meeting in Bali in October.
I was initially puzzled that there was an explicit intention not to make any decisions there, but it quickly became clear that this was a very smart thing to do. The result was an unusually open atmosphere considering the attendee spread - civil society, lawmakers, regulatory people, politicians, etc. Pretty much everyone was on equal footing, and that made it easy to approach people or to be approached. Most importantly, the majority of people were enthusiastic about understanding other peoples' points of view.
So although the IGF does not produce concrete deliverables - I assume this means anything ranging from policy documents to legal agreements - it produces something much more valuable, namely a better quality understanding of the issues surrounding internet governance from a variety of valid and important points of view. This allows the people who are tasked by our societies to create laws and regulations, to do so on a much more informed basis from a wider cross-section of opinions.
There is no doubt in my mind that if the IFG meeting is changed to create a requirement for "concrete deliverables", this critical feature of the forum will be lost.
Hear hear. It would also mean that it puts governments in the position of negotiating the outcome of the IGF which has several implications. It takes away the open-ended nature of the discussions and the free and open exchange of ideas. Governments (and in part the rest of us too) will have to defend their positions as the outcomes of the IGF will have to be considered or even implemented in their countries. Once you have agreed text, a country can't just decide that they want to ignore it. It also moves the discussions away from focusing on real issues, to negotiating paragraphs and words. I have been in those types of UN meetings, and believe me, it is not a particularly satisfying process. (Anyone who is not a professional diplomat, who has been in meetings where a whole document ends up in *square brackets, shivers at the thought of such negotiations.) While I can see that in some international negotiations (say peace negotiations?), the slowness of that process can be a feature, I am certain that when it comes to the Internet, that slowness is a bug. Rough consensus and running code works a lot better and making things work on the Internet. Nurani *Square brackets are used in UN contexts to mark text that cannot be agreed on. When I was in the UN CSTD WG on IGF improvements, in the first round, we failed miserably as a group to agree on anything. Text was being thrown up on the screen, only to immediately be protested by someone, and consequently being put in square brackets. At the end of the meeting, the whole document was in square brackets...
Nick
participants (3)
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Gordon Lennox -
Nick Hilliard -
Nurani Nimpuno