[bestbits] Draft IGF contribution for comment

[Jeremy Malcolm]

As discussed in a previous thread (see 25 September, sorry for the
delay) I've started to put together a draft sign-on response to this
call on the IGF's website:

> All stakeholders are invited to submit by *27 October 2014* written
> contributions taking stock of the Istanbul IGF meeting and looking
> forward to the IGF 2015 meeting, including suggestions on the format,
> schedule and themes. The written contributions will be synthesized
> into a paper that will form an input into the Open Consultations and
> MAG meetings of 1-3 December. Please send all contributions  to
> takingstock2014 at intgovforum.org <mailto:takingstock2014 at intgovforum.org>.

It aims mostly just to collect together and reference some points from
previous submissions, but there are a few new points based on my
personal observations about the new innovations (mainly Best Practice
Forums) in Istanbul.  I have this text on a pad, but to avoid a
free-for-all where we lose track of edits, please contact me if you'd
like to join a fluid working group to work on the text.  Or you can just
reply on or off-list with your suggestions.

I propose we should aim to finalise the text within a week, ie. by 23
October, so that we have a few days to collect endorsements before
submitting to the IGF Secretariat.

Here's the current draft:

    *Introduction*

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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].

    *Format*

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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]

    *Schedule*

    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.

    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]

    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.

    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]

    *Themes*

    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]

    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.

    *Conclusion*

    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.

    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.

    [0] http://bestbits.net/igf-statement-2014/
    [1] http://bestbits.net/igf-2014-submission/
    [2] http://bestbits.net/netmundial-roadmap/
    [3] http://bestbits.net/igf-opinions/
    [4] http://netmundial.br/netmundial-multistakeholder-statement/


-- 
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://eff.org
jmalcolm at eff.org

Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161

:: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::

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