[bestbits] Re: [summit] Stream 3: Deliberative democratic processes for the Brazil meeting

Wed Jan 29 11:29:05 EST 2014

Just speaking for myself, not in anyway for one of the committee you're considering sending this to. 

Don't worry too about signatures and process.  The list's open, I read it as do others.  Keep ideas coming.  Ask us to share with the exec committee and it will be.  And as the process for contributions opens up, send there again if it seems useful to do so.

I don't see much value in words about the IGF -- just more words that get in the way of the positive. 

The ideas about participation good, using new platforms (if we can, right now not very clear on the opportunities and potential limitations.)  

About "Whilst it has been claimed that it will be impossible..."  I don't remember anyone saying the meeting would be limited in such a way.  Example, Marilia's notes of the exec committee meeting:

> - It was also mentioned that it would be useful if a draft text on principles and draft text on frameworks were produced before the event. The drafts would be only a starting point to help discussions. Participants would decide what to do with it. These drafts should be done in a multistakeholder way. We did not have time to continue on this topic. Further discussion is needed.
> 

Looking at outcomes of various types.  Considering how the outcomes might be in some agreed form.  Don't think anyone at this time is trying to limit the meeting to only IGF-type talk.  Trying to find a purpose.  Advice on such things and how to reach agreed/shared outcomes would be helpful.

One question -- on one hand recommending the use of new tools.  On the other recommend the use of tried and tested tools and techniques.  What am I missing?

Adam (speaking for myself)

On Jan 29, 2014, at 11:51 PM, Gene Kimmelman wrote:

> I support this, well stated Jeremy.  My suggestion would be to get some initial agreement that reflects the diversity of our community -- it need not be a huge number of signatories; you could then send it and put it out to the BestBits list for additional signatories.  I believe we've used that approach successfully in the past.  Thanks for pulling this together!
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 9:37 AM, Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org> wrote:
> Thanks for the support and ideas on this.  As time is at a premium, can we agree to send a note such as this one below to our representatives on the EC for discussion there?  It incorporates the points made by Carolina and Joana, as well as my earlier points.
> 
> To: Executive Multistakeholder Committee, cc: Logistics and Organizational Committee
> 
> 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.
> 
> Whilst the IGF operates within certain constraints inherited from the UN system and has been reluctant to experiment with such procedures, there are no similar constraints on the Brazil meeting.  Indeed, Brazil has an admirable track record in this regard, having proposed innovative online collaboration mechanisms for the 2007 Rio IGF meeting (though these were never fully utilised), and more recently in the launch of the edemocracia.camara.gov.br portal that was utilised in the development of the Marco Civil.
> 
> 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".
> 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.
> For online deliberation, the edemocracia.camara.gov.br 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 (athenabridge.com).  This would be far more useful and a better use of resources than merely allowing the upload of static PDF files.
> Similarly for the meeting in São Paulo, there should not simply be a parade of speeches such as we are used to hearing at IGF plenary sessions, 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 (dotmocracy.org).
> Whilst it has been claimed that it will be impossible for the Brazil meeting to offer more than an opportunity for discussion rather than to provide solutions (and a similar claim has frequently been made about the IGF), 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.
> Such successful outcomes will require proper facilitation and the use of tried and tested tools and techniques.  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..
> 
> As it is just an informal note I don't think that this necessarily needs to be done as a Best Bits signon statement... but do people think it should be?  In any case, once we're happy with the note, I would copy it to the main Best Bits list.
> 
> On 29/01/14 12:06, Carolina wrote:
>> I strongly think we should pressure for participation "2.0". The platforms are there. If we do not want to reinvent the wheel, we could even open a special section from the edemocracia.camara.gov.br portal.
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> On Jan 28, 2014, at 9:43 PM, Joana Varon <joana at varonferraz.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> I think its very nice and that we need indeed to use technology to be able to have a more effective way to collect ideas and opinions about them. I was a bit disappointed that after the experience of the collaborative process for Marco Civil the website for the meeting asks for pdfs as collaboration o.0 I'm glad to see that they are still thinking about other                   forms too. 
>>> 
>>> In that sense, I think organization would welcome proposals from this stream about this and the moment is now, as they are setting the website. Plus, it would be much more difficult to try to propose the usage of tools like this on UN processes. 
>>> 
>>> I agree with Jeremy that democracy is not limited anymore by the issues that lead us to the "social contract" for representative democracy and that technology could help. 
>>> 
>>> Having said that, we should be aware about trolls... they will always be there to illegitimate these  tools. For instance, in our public consultation for the copyright reform, that used the same platform as marco civil, the copyright industry hired or fostered that people against it should be publishing comments trolling the reform. later we figured that a lots of comments in that sense came from the same IP (dumb troll). :)
>>> 
>>> we could propose to them to use tools like this as betta tests as well. What would you need to do so, Jeremy? Shall we start testing any of these considering, for instance, the outputs from our discussion on principles asap?
>>> 
>>> all the best.
>>> 
>>> joana
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 12:30 AM, Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org> wrote:
>>> On 29/01/14 10:15, genekimmelman at gmail.com wrote:
>>>> These may be fine ideas.  But I think our first priority ought to be to put good policy ideas forward for all stakeholders to embrace.  If we do that,  I'm confident many process and inclusiveness issues can be addressed. 
>>> 
>>> I don't think it's either-or.  We divided into there streams so that streams 1 and 2 could put forward the good policy ideas, and stream 3 could make recommendations on process.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Dr Jeremy Malcolm
> Senior Policy Officer
> Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers
> Office for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East
> Lot 5-1 Wisma WIM, 7 Jalan Abang Haji Openg, TTDI, 60000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
> Tel: +60 3 7726 1599
> 
> WCRD 2014 - Fix Our Phone Rights! | http://consint.info/fix-our-phone-rights
> 
> @Consumers_Int | www.consumersinternational.org | www.facebook.com/consumersinternational
> 
> Read our email confidentiality notice. Don't print this email unless necessary.
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