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For those who are not on the "summit" list, I started a thread there
with suggestions on online/offline deliberation processes for the
Brazil meeting. Adam Peake (one of the civil society
representatives on the Executive Multistakeholder Committee of the
meeting) replied and cross-posted his reply here, but in case the
context wasn't clear, I'm reposting in a new thread, with amendments
based on suggestions from the original thread (marked in italics).<br>
<br>
Whilst it isn't necessary in order to get the message across to the
Brazil committees, there is value in allowing people to endorse this
as a sign-on statement, so that's what I'm proposing we do. (After
a drought of months, we will have three new sign-on statements going
up at around the same time!) Please let us know of any further
suggestions for changes within the next few days:<br>
<br>
<blockquote>To: Executive Multistakeholder Committee, cc: Logistics
and Organizational Committee<br>
<br>
When the Brazil meeting was officially announced, it was stated
that "The purpose of that meeting is to pursue consensus about
universally accepted governance principles and to improve their
institutional framework." This objective will not be achieved
without adopting specific procedures that can facilitate both the
development of such consensus, and its accurate measurement.<br>
<br>
<i>The Brazil meeting's organisers are free to experiment with
such procedures, to a greater extent than the IGF which operates
within some of the constraints of the UN system. Indeed, Brazil
has an admirable track record in this regard, having proposed
innovative online collaboration mechanisms such as
edemocracia.camara.gov.br and culturadigital.br.</i><i></i><br>
<br>
In this spirit, we wish to offer some suggestions on the
procedures to be adopted by the meeting that can facilitate
purposeful deliberation and help to narrow down the meeting's
conclusions on both governance principles and on changes to the
institutional framework. In general these suggestions are
examples of mechanisms of deliberative democracy, which is a field
dedicated to producing decisions that reflect the informed
deliberations of a diverse group of affected stakeholders. Rather
than just consultation, we could call this "participation 2.0".</blockquote>
<blockquote>Whatever mechanisms are used to facilitate this should
work online and offline, or at least the online and offline
mechanisms should be mutually supportive and well integrated.</blockquote>
<blockquote>For online deliberation, the <a
href="http://edemocracia.camara.gov.br">edemocracia.camara.gov.br</a>
portal could be adapted for use in a multi-lingual version, that
would allow proposals to be opened for comment so that they could
be refined and improved in advance of the Brazil meeting.
Alternatively, there are other online tools that offer even more
flexibility in turning discussions into well-informed consensus
outcomes, such as AthenaBridge (<a href="http://athenabridge.com">athenabridge.com</a>).
This would be far more useful and a better use of resources than
merely allowing the upload of <i>static text</i>.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Similarly for the meeting in São Paulo, there should not
simply be a parade of speeches<strike><i> such as we are used to
hearing at IGF plenary sessions</i></strike>, but rather a
very actively facilitated process that is designed to distill the
ideas of those present into a manageable set of proposals, to
expose those proposals to reasoned deliberation, and to assess
their acceptability to a diverse group of stakeholders. Just one
of the techniques that can be used to accomplish this is called
Dotmocracy (<a href="http://dotmocracy.org">dotmocracy.org</a>).</blockquote>
<blockquote><i>Whilst some have e</i><i>xpressed doubt that the </i><i>Brazil
meeting will be able to provide solutions rather than merely </i><i>offering
an opportunity for discussion</i><i></i>, we believe that this
assumption should be challenged. In fact there is much evidence
from large scale deliberative democratic processes already carried
out around the world, that even a large meeting such as that
planned for Brazil can produce useful outcomes that reflect a
broad and well-informed consensus.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Such successful outcomes will require proper
facilitation <i>and the use of tools and techniques that although
successfully used elsewhere, have not yet entered wide use in
Internet governance.</i> We therefore encourage you to make
these tools and techniques a central feature of the Brazil meeting
and its preparatory processes. Experts in deliberative democratic
theory and practice, in both online and offline modes, could also
be consulted as necessary where gaps in the committee's own
expertise may exist.</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<p style="font-size:9.0pt;color:black"><b>Dr Jeremy Malcolm<br>
Senior Policy Officer<br>
Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for
consumers</b><br>
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