[bestbits] substantive proposals for Brazil summit - IG governance

[Jeremy Malcolm]

These are a lightly recycled version of my earlier comments which were given off-list.  I may have further comments to make based on others' responses.  Oh, and first up, great work on this!

On 13 Jan 2014, at 8:05 pm, Andrew Puddephatt <Andrew at gp-digital.org> wrote:

> Reviewing and building on the survey responses, the group identified the following criticisms of the current IG arrangements:
> ·         There is an imbalance of power with many people and groups, particularly from the global south, feeling marginalised.
> ·         There is insufficient diversity of voices, including gender and language.
> ·         Development issues, as set out in the original Tunis Agenda, have not been adequately tackled.

Careful here.  The Tunis Agenda sets out a separate process on ICTs for development, but this should not be confused with the parts of the Tunis Agenda on Internet governance arrangements.  In the WSIS+10 process the Internet governance aspects have been explicitly separated out and I think this was a good idea.

> ·         The IGF has not satisfactorily delivered on all elements of its mandate.
> ·         Multistakeholderism remains poorly defined which creates difficulty in its implementation and evaluation. The term is seen to be increasingly used as a cover by those resisting change.


My earlier feedback on this which has been partly addressed above, so I will restate my remarks with slightly more brevity.  Although the stakeholder groups and the roles assigned to them aren't perfect as currently practised, conceptually multi-stakeholderism serves an important function, where every stakeholder contributes its own legitimacy to the process.  This includes but goes beyond the benefits of transparency and accountability that openness and inclusiveness bring (and which are also found in other open processes like those of the IETF that are not truly multi-stakeholder).

Explicitly multi-stakeholder processes allow us to compensate for the power imbalances that exist between the stakeholder groups, which mere open processes do not do.  Separation between the stakeholder groups is also intrinsic to many of the concrete mechanisms that can be used for decision-making between groups who have widely divergent interests.  To the extent that we are tempted to blur the distinction between multi-stakeholderism and openness, I would caution against this and suggest that we need to better communicate the theoretical basis for multi-stakeholderism and how it adds to the legitimacy and effectiveness of the process in ways that mere openness does not.

Anyway this does not require any specific amendment to the text that you now have above.

·         There are jurisdictional issues which remain unresolved. This also often leaves powerful ICT companies to take important human rights/public interest decisions.
·         There is an absence of forums where jurisdictional issues or global public policies relating to the internet can be thrashed out. This means governments are falling back on different national laws and technical responses which encroach on the global and distributed functioning of the internet.
·         Furthermore because of the issues with the current regime, many governments are pursuing/establishing separate international initiatives to tackle important issues (such as cybersecurity) which are not sufficiently transparent, open, multi-stakeholder or global.
·         Some governments are increasingly asserting a doctrine of “state sovereignty” on the global internet.

If it were me, I would put these four points first.

The following mutually-supporting criteria were found necessary for the governance of complex global phenomena:
a) Processes
·         Transparent and comprehensible: it should be possible for anyone to understand how it works and how things happen/decisions are made;
·         Accountable: internal and external accountability process should exist, including a way of challenging decisions;
·         Effective: in that it can deliver whatever it is meant to deliver
·         Adaptable: so that it can take account of new innovations and developments in the field.
 
b) Participation
·         Inclusive and open: not be a small exclusive club, but open to many.

I have some reservations about "many".  Perhaps I would add one word at the end of this: "perspectives".  It is not necessarily helpful or practical to have many unaffiliated individuals around the table, though there should be mechanisms for their perspectives to be represented through whatever legitimate channels they can present them (eg. governments, civil society organisations, companies from markets in which they participate).  Some structure is important.  If governance mechanisms are too open, the result is dysfunction and/or capture.  Remember the criterion "effective" above.  See also my comments above on multi-stakeholderism.

·         ensure that all necessary points of view are included in order to arrive at good decisions/agreements

In other words, I agree with this more than with the first point.

·         Meaningful participation: anybody affected by decision should be able to impact upon decision-making processes. The group recognised that this would likely involve mechanisms for consensus based decision making. But where consensus was not possible there may need to be alternative supplementary frameworks, such as decision-making by majority vote

or decentralised collective action

The advantage of these reforms is that they provide greater clarity about how public policy issues are addressed - while potentially enabling pathways from the national through regional to global level discussion and back down.  By instituting separate processes for separate issues, issues are dealt as close as possible to people that are touched by them and who have expertise in particular field.  This model suggests that there is a need for specific and perhaps time limited groups bringing together governments, companies, engineers, users and civil society and which are co-ordinated by the most relevant international agency if appropriate (e.g. ITU or UNESCO).

Maybe you could add "or ICANN" here, so that this does not seem too intergovernmental?

A key decision is whether to endorse a single decision making space for internet policy or to support a  dispersed system whereby the right kind of expertise could be assembled  issue by issue.  A centralised system could be easier to navigate but a  dispersed system has, we believe, fewer risks  for political or corporate capture and could enable issue-based expertise (including from civil society) to engage on specific issues. On balance we felt a risk/benefit analysis of both approaches weighed more on the side of a dispersed model of governance.

I would like to add, "but coordinated through a reformed global IGF, as the limitations of the status quo demonstrate the lack of effectiveness of a fully dispersed model”.

Thanks again for your work on this so far.

-- 
Dr Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Policy Officer
Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers
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