[bestbits] IMPORTANT: World Economic Forum and The-Initiative-Formerly-Known-As-NETmundial

[Jeremy Malcolm]

This morning, the members of the Internet Governance Civil Society Coordination Group who are present in Istanbul (Deirdre Williams standing in for Mawaki Chango from the IGC, myself from Best Bits, Norbert Bollow from JNC, Chat Garcia from APC and YJ Park as an observer; the others could not make it) met with Alan Marcus, Danil Kerimi and Alexandra Shaw from the World Economic Forum about our potential role in nominating representatives to the transitional steering committee of what we had all known as the NETmundial Initiative.  This followed on from a phone call that the chair of our group, Ian Peter had had with them yesterday Istanbul time.

Very interestingly one of the first points that was made in the meeting the WEF pointed out that they do not regard "NETmundial Initiative" as the name of the initiative, although some of their early champions (notably ICANN of course) have been calling it this.  So it seems that they will be willing to call it by another name from now on, and suggested "Global Net" which is an anglicised version of NETmundial.  I believe that many of us will warmly welcome this news.

Their description of their vision of the initiative was otherwise mostly consistent with earlier accounts, though they did stress that the formation of a new institution to house the initiative now seems unlikely since they have been listening to pushback about this.  They see the initiative as a platform for working groups to execute projects that the community has identified as important, and the first four projects that were unveiled at the Geneva meeting were merely intended as examples of four such projects that had been identified by the Ilves Panel, on which some "quick wins" might be achieved.

The value add of the WEF, they explained, as to bring in high-level participation from companies and governments that are otherwise not part of Internet governance discussions.  The steering committee would include all stakeholders so ensure that all perspectives have a voice about shaping the Initiative including its projects.  They are looking for a committee maximum size of about 15 people. – the other members would be 3-4 business people (including at least two representatives at CEO level), government, intergovernmental organisations, tech community (notably ISOC and ICANN) and academics (yes they confirmed an intention to treat academic community separately to Civil society or technical community or any other grouping – as per NetMundial and 1net patterns.

The original conception of WEF was that they would appoint half of the civil society representatives on the transitional steering committee because they are project partners that WEF has worked with before.  Several members of our Coordination Group suggested that there constituencies would probably push back against this, and that if the purpose of the steering committee was in part to draw on the legitimacy that civil society participation provides, it would make sense that we be empowered to self-appoint all of our own representatives.  WEF seemed to accept this counsel, with the result that we would be asked to make four appointments.

They were unclear about exactly what the time commitment for transitional steering committee representatives would be, or exactly what the responsibilities would entail, though forming an accountable permanent steering committee structure for launch around the next Davos meeting (if possible) was one of the responsibilities envisaged.  They did assure us that if travel to meetings was required, expenses would be paid for those who required this.

Criteria for appointment are still to be discussed by the Coordination Group, but from WEF's perspective, they agreed that they would not insist on a previous working relationship with WEF as a criterion, but they would require that the participants are able to be constructive and can work towards the formation of consensus.  They said that they would value people who can be bridge makers between the culture of the WEF and that of our constituencies, because they acknowledged that they would probably make (more) mistakes and would need help in correcting these. 

Examples of previous multi-stakeholder initiatives that they pointed to as being analogous to The-Initiative-Formerly-Known-as-NETmundial included Grow Africa (http://growafrica.com/) and their climate change work (http://www.weforum.org/issues/climate-change-and-green-growth).

WEF, after our pleading, have extended our deadline to submit names till September 21 – and there are still some details to finalise. The timetable CSCG is discussing would see us begin a call for nominations no earlier than Friday – the last day of IGF – to allow discussion and further clarification before we commence any such process.
 
I am posting this to begin such a discussion – others present at the meeting may want to add comments of their own and discussions will also occur on other lists. 

-- 
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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