[bestbits] [governance] Civil society transparency

Sun Jun 7 01:49:58 EDT 2015

Ian, thanks for taking this discussion forward.

Firstly, on the matter of to whom the required transparency measures
should be applicable. I have said this before, this is supposed to be
voluntary, and individuals merely getting into discussions on civil
society lists are not important in this regard. It is the civil society
organisations as well as individuals who get selected as civil society
reps in various forms, or otherwise play significant roles in civil
society and multistakeholder spaces, that we mainly focus on. The major
organisations involved in this area must be subject to basic
transparency requirements whether or not they take a civil society rep
position because they in any case very often play very important role in
policy processes. As you would have seen, unfortunately, a lot of strong
civil society action is currently taking place away from the key
coalitions that you mention.

(On the other hand, I dont see why any individual just coming into some
IG discussion on civil society lists would be taking any IG related
funding at all - I mean what would s/he take it for - for spending time
on these lists!? (That btw would be most interesting - but then we know
that some big governments have paid people intervening in the cyber -
public sphere as a new form of public propaganda.) So, I fail to
understand why is this discussion focussing on individuals merely
participating in the list discussions - they can simply ignore the
proposed voluntary register, or enter that they take no IG activities
related funding from anyone, as one would expect to be true for most of
them. But then well, if individuals do take clear IG related funding,
say, as travel grants, occasional writings. and so on, I would think it
is necessary to declare that - perhaps even morethan in case of
organisations, who, unlike individuals, mostly - though not always -
have other forms of additional NGO governance checks. But to repeat, my
proposal has a greater primary focus on involved organisations as
against individuals. )

Next, about what kind of transparency measures are appropriate.
'Conflict of interest' is used more in corporate governance and we,
civil society people, would best stick to higher norms of public life
rather than go by corporate governance norms. The later are necessarily
limited and have a different nature. For instance, conflict of interest
will apply to someone who holds the shares of a company but then gets
involved in a governance decision that impacts the bottomline of that
company. Things really do not work like that in public life, where
transparency and accountability have a very different - much higher but
accordingly also diffuse  - meaning and implication. The 'public' part
of 'public life' is very important - and as civil society players we are
in public life, in fact in its rather powerful 'political life' part. In
stating a conflict of interest a person takes a private decision about
oneself and one's state of affair (of course, the decision can become
public in case of accusations, some future crisis, and so on).
Transparency of people in public life requires such judgements to made
/by the public/, and /at all times/. That is of essence. Sorry, that one
has to go into such basic canons of public life, which have a long
history and much better enunciations than I can attempt here.

It is or this reason that simple conflict of interest statement while it
may serve the limited scope of requirements of corporate governance,
does not satisfy the public requirements of public life, especially as
involving those actors who are involved in public governance, as IG
civil society certainly is.

To make this discussion more concrete; youd agree that we should get
into instituting a process only if it has any real meaning in terms of
practical implications. So I ask you, lets say that an organisation or
an individual were receiving funding from government of India or from
Google - and is involved in the typical IG related activities; please
provide me an instance of likely case in which that organisation/
individual will self declare a conflict of interest. I cant think of
many such possible instances - policy work is by its very nature diffuse
and almost everyone is, by the very nature of it being public policy,
impacted - some certainly more than the other, but private judgements of
such impact would hardly be useful. It is not that IGF or an IG
governance body is ever going to make a declaration specifically on govt
of India or google, in which kind of case perhaps one may jump to state
a funding conflict. In fact, one still may not, becuase typically any
org will accept funding only in the name of promoting public interest
and would not want to accept that pushing a public policy discussion or
process in one way or the other actually constitutes a 'conflict of
interest' - in that it would not want to admit that in accepting a
funding it had accepted taking on 'an interest'. That is a fundamental
difference in how a civil society org is constitutes, as against a
lobbying body. For all these reasons, conflict of interest is not a
concept suited for civil society transparency and accountability. Your
proposal for "require(ing) candidates to register any conflicts of
interest" would simply result in all candidates saying 'they have no
conflict of interest that they can recognise' and thus would serve no
purpose at all.

Lastly, while you keep on saying this is the most we can do ( 'conflict
of interest' declaration) you have not given any reason why transparency
standards often applied in other areas of civil society work should not
be applied in the IG space as well, and what exactly is wrong with a
basic voluntary register of transparency simply declaring 'interests,
objectives, and funding sources'. This even when I have been arguing
that it is even more important for IG civil society than in other civil
society areas, because the unique multistakeholder claim and approach in
this area puts civil society in more significant, even powerful, policy
positions than in other areas. Also, how basic documents on healthy
development of a multistakeholder approach like the UN report on IGF
improvements, NetMundial Statement, etc, all point to need for greater
transparency. I once again exhort you to read Luca Belli's this
excellent paper on multistakeholderism
<http://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/heterostakeholder-cooperation-sustainable-internet-policymaking>
  which argues why such basic transparency is essential to forwarding a
multistakeholder approach.

I cant see how IG civil society can keep pushing a multistakeholder
approach to policy making, and seek a greater role for itself in the
process, but then keep dragging its feet on accepting even basic
transparency norms. The world is watching of course, and will ask
questions. there is a cost to being in public life.

parminder

On Sunday 07 June 2015 03:32 AM, Ian Peter wrote:
> Hi Parminder,
>  
> Following from the discussion, here is what I think is possible and
> realistic in this space.
>  
> Firstly, I think the question of transparency and disclosure of
> conflicts of interest is important.
>  
> However, I don’t think people need to declare interests to involve
> themselves in discussion here or in any of our open mailing lists, and
> the real concerns start to arise only when people are seeking office
> as civil society representatives.
>  
> Here, most of the office bearing exists in the various coalitions –
> APC, Best Bits, JNC, NCSG, IGC. I would urge each of these groups,
> when holding elections, to require candidates to register any
> conflicts of interest. I know Best Bits is moving to elections for its
> Steering Committee again soon, perhaps it could formulate some sort of
> basic disclosure requirement for its purposes? And I guess JNC must be
> moving towards holding its first elections for SC replenishment soon? 
> And IGC could easily add such a requirement for its candidates for co
> cordinator elections (presumably late this year).
>  
> But these are requirements for individual groups, and the form of such
> is for each group to determine. I think however that such a
> requirement would be a good idea.
>  
> As regards CSCG – our calls for candidates are for appointments to
> outside bodies, and I agree that some form of disclosure of any
> conflicts of interest would be a good idea. Currently it would appear
> that our next task would be MAG replenishment (and a small one at
> that), probably early next year. I will suggest to the members that we
> should require some sort of basic disclosure statement. But that of
> course is up to the members (APC, BB, JNC, NCSG, IGC) to determine.
>  
> I’m not sure we can go much further. But if some work can be done on a
> simple model of a form of disclosure, that would be good.
>  
> Ian Peter
>  
> *From:* parminder <mailto:parminder at itforchange.net>
> *Sent:* Sunday, May 24, 2015 5:31 PM
> *To:* Ian Peter <mailto:ian.peter at ianpeter.com> ;
> governance at lists.igcaucus.org <mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org> ;
> BestBitsList <mailto:bestbits at lists.bestbits.net> ;
> mailto:forum at justnetcoalition.org ; A general information sharing
> space for the APC Community. <mailto:apc.forum at lists.apc.org>
> *Subject:* [governance] Civil society transparency
>  
> Ian, and reps of civil society networks on the Civil Society
> Coordination Group (CSCG) ,
>
> I propose that CSCG sets up a civil society transparency project,
> somewhat on the lines of the EU Transparency Register, pl see
> http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/homePage.do .
>
> It should in fact go beyond the EU initiative which is a general one
> for all lobbying groups, whereas we here are concerned with civil
> society which should set the highest example of transparency and
> accountability. The 'register' can have self filled information on
> objectives of an organisation, principles followed by it, if any, its
> funding, partners, and so on....
>
> This is at present just my proposal, but I hope one or more civil
> society networks in the IG space can own it and push it... CSCG would
> be well placed to run this project as a neutral space so that there is
> no accusation of bias that any such initiative is being employed for
> partisan purposes. In any case, a simple initiative for openness,
> transparency and accountability can hardly be partisan.
>
> The register can have optional higher level features whereby a group/
> org can declare its means of public accountability, whether and how
> its internal governance is done, how matters can be taken by with
> their oversight bodies, like board etc, and whether they have any
> means whereby they respond to public question on their work, etc.
>
> For such genuine cases where such transparency can harm an
> organisations work, or security, such organisations, and only such
> organisations, can be exempted employing a clear process and set of
> criteria.
>
> Remember, both the UN report on improvements to the IGF and the
> NetMundial Statement highlight the issue of transparency. I also
> recently read in these lists how we should make bridges with the
> OpenGov movement which is almost wholly about this one thing. Time we
> begin practising what we preach.
>
> I look forward to hear responses to this proposal..
>
> parminder
>
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