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Following on from the previous thread (15 and 10 October) in which I
posted a draft contribution to the upcoming IGF open consultation
meeting, which takes stock of the Istanbul meeting and looks forward
to the future, the statement is now ready for endorsement.<br>
<br>
There was not any discussion on-list or any amendments on the pad
(many people are preoccupied with the ITU), but I did receive some
comments off-list. In any case, since it is consistent with our
previous statements (which it references) and since the deadline for
submission is Monday, now is the time to take the statement online.<br>
<br>
Please read and, if you agree, endorse here:<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://bestbits.net/igf-2014-taking-stock/">http://bestbits.net/igf-2014-taking-stock/</a><br>
<br>
Also, the final text is found below:<br>
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<p><b>Introduction</b></p>
<p>There is broad support within civil society for the continuation
of a reformed and strengthened IGF.[0] At the same time, it is
undeniable that the almost decade-long evolution of the IGF has
been very slow and cautious, in comparison to other fora and
events such as NETmundial.[1] This may have spurred the
development of a number of other meetings and initiatives which,
on some level, compete with the IGF.</p>
<p>Whilst this diversity of initiatives can be positive, there is
also the risk that too many of them may sap energy and attention
from the IGF itself, which has a particular impact on civil
society whose resources to participate in multiple initiatives is
the most constrained. This effect could be minimised if the IGF
would be more responsive to suggestions that stakeholders have
made, often repeatedly,[1] to address observed deficits in the
IGF’s structure and format.</p>
<p>One of the difficulties is that there is really no “IGF” to
effectively evaluate and implement these suggestions; there is a
Secretariat, with limited resources and a narrow self-assessed
mandate to effect structural changes to the IGF, and there is a
MAG which, overall, considers itself a programme committee only
and is similarly reluctant to depart from established structures
and formats.</p>
<p>The IGF would benefit from the appointment of a new, charismatic
and visionary Executive Coordinator, with multi-stakeholder
support, to personally evangelise for and drive the necessary
changes. But in the interim, it would also be possible for the
periodic open consultation meetings to be facilitated – perhaps by
an independent professional – in a way that is more open to
blue-sky thinking, rather than being limited to a narrow analysis
of the annual meeting themes and the like.</p>
<p>Even the present consultation, which is limited to “format”,
“schedule” and “themes”, reveals a certain narrowness of thinking
in this regard. It does not lend itself very well to suggestions
about the structural evolution of the IGF that might allow it to
more fully execute its mandate, such as significant changes to its
management structure,[1] the execution of a coordinating
function,[2] or the establishment of issue-specific
multistakeholder working groups[2].</p>
<p><b>Format</b></p>
<p>Perhaps the most significant departure from previous practice at
the Istanbul meeting was the new Best Practice Forum mechanism.
This was effectively a compromise between the call by many for
outputs from the IGF, and the reluctance of others for the IGF to
adopt processes that could produce such outputs by consensus. A
result of this compromise is that since the outcome documents
(once they are released) do not represent a consensus, they may
not be regarded as particularly persuasive or useful by external
governance bodies.</p>
<p>More effective use could have been made of the academic community
to contribute towards the development of the draft best practice
recommendations, rather than expecting a self-selected
multi-stakeholder group (and in practice, only a few individuals
within the group) to develop these. The most distinctive
contribution of a multi-stakeholder group is not its technical
expertise in developing policy options, but rather the legitimacy
that it provides by bringing multiple perspectives to bear on the
task of deciding between those options.</p>
<p>Another relatively new practice, first adopted for the Bali
meeting and repeated at the Istanbul meeting, was the call to the
community for suggestions of policy questions to be addressed at
the meeting. All of these – 49 in Bali and 31 in Istanbul – were
simply collected and passed on to session organisers. This was
not effective in practice and should not be repeated. Instead, a
more collaborative process of developing a smaller list of
pressing policy problems (like the five selected for the Best
Practice Forums) should be used.</p>
<p>Despite various proposals made from time to time,[1] the IGF has
yet to experiment with any large-scale, participatory and
deliberative session format aimed towards the development of
consensus resolutions on policy issues, somewhat like the
NETmundial process, which was a combination of online and
face-to-face work utilising both small and large multi-stakeholder
groups. The IGF should draw on the services of a specialist in
participatory event organisation to experiment with this type of
session format.[3]</p>
<p><b>Schedule</b></p>
<p>The scheduling of the IGF should cover the full year, including
timelines for working groups to develop concrete proposals to be
taken further at the IGF. This would give it the capacity to
sustain a work programme between meetings. A step towards this can
be made very easily by offering IGF participants, when registering
for the meeting or following it remotely, the opportunity to join
an online collaborative platform for interacting with other
participants throughout the year on issues of shared concern.</p>
<p>Such a reform would add much value for online participants,
essentially providing an online and intersessional equivalent of
the annual IGF meeting. Currently, online participants have little
incentive to invest in the IGF, because they are not granted the
same status as those who attend the face-to-face meetings.[1]</p>
<p>The workshop proposal review process remains flawed. Workshops
are partly scored based on whether panelists are confirmed to
attend, but in many cases panelists’ attendance is contingent on
the workshop being approved, which creates a vicious circle, and
also provides an incentive for workshop organisers to misstate
whether panelists are confirmed. Workshop proponents are given no
feedback on why their workshops were not approved, and overall the
process is not conducted transparently.</p>
<p>The face to face Best Practice Forums in Istanbul were not helped
by being scheduled alongside workshops, with the result that most
IGF participants did not take part in them. If the IGF is to
develop outputs with the chance of gaining the broadest possible
consensus and input from outside a small group of “usual
suspects”, as the Best Practice Forums aimed to do, then there
should be some focussed time allocated for this, free of the
distraction of other simultaneous meetings.[1]</p>
<p><b>Themes</b></p>
<p>In general, the IGF should address policy questions that are
controversial and/or time-critical, and that currently lack any
other multi-stakeholder mechanism for global coordination. It
should avoid themes that are too broadly framed like “openness”
and “security” that are not grounded in any specific real-life
context. The national IGFs should feed issues into the regional
IGFs which should in turn feed issues into the Global IGF so that
the the issues at the global level in part reflect the concerns
and challenges raised by the national and regional IGFs – a
reporting in session by IGFs (as is currently the case) is
inadequate.[1]</p>
<p>We propose that the overall theme of the 2015 IGF meeting should
be “Internet governance for sustainable development and promotion
of human rights”. We are conscious that some governments do not
approve of an explicit mention of human rights in the IGF’s
overall theme. As the IGF is not a conventional multilateral body
but a multi-stakeholder one, we do not believe that a few
governments should be able to exercise a veto in this case. As the
NETmundial Principles amply demonstrate, there is rough consensus
around the centrality of human rights to Internet governance, and
this ought to be reflected in the overall theme for the 2015
meeting.</p>
<p><b>Conclusion</b></p>
<p>The IGF is in a unique position to democratise participation in
Internet governance, by acting as both a coordinating mechanism to
connect stakeholders to external Internet governance processes,
and also as a policy venue in its own right where emerging or
orphan issues can be addressed and consensus-based solutions found
and documented. But the IGF has been hampered in fulfilling its
potential by its lack of structures and processes appropriate to
the execution of these tasks.</p>
<p>To change this will require both bold leadership to drive the
required reforms to the IGF (most of which have been well
documented by the UN CSTD Working Group on IGF Improvements as
well as in the NETmundial Statement.[4]), along with a stronger
resource base to implement those reforms. The IGF’s present lack
of either of these presents it with a chicken-and-egg dilemma.
However as a first step, we strongly encourage UNDESA to forthwith
appoint a new high-level Executive Coordinator to the IGF who can
prioritise the implementation of the necessary reforms.</p>
<p>[0] <a href="http://bestbits.net/igf-statement-2014/">http://bestbits.net/igf-statement-2014/</a><br>
[1] <a href="http://bestbits.net/igf-2014-submission/">http://bestbits.net/igf-2014-submission/</a><br>
[2] <a href="http://bestbits.net/netmundial-roadmap/">http://bestbits.net/netmundial-roadmap/</a><br>
[3] <a href="http://bestbits.net/igf-opinions/">http://bestbits.net/igf-opinions/</a><br>
[4] <a
href="http://netmundial.br/netmundial-multistakeholder-statement/">http://netmundial.br/netmundial-multistakeholder-statement/</a></p>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://eff.org">https://eff.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:jmalcolm@eff.org">jmalcolm@eff.org</a>
Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161
:: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::</pre>
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