[bestbits] [governance] Civil society transparency

[Ian Peter]

Hi Parminder,

Two issues in response to your suggestion.

Firstly, the suggestion that CSCG do this. CSCG consists of five people who are pretty busy co-ordinating coalitions of CS organisations (BB, JNC, IGC, APC, NCSG) and myself as an independent chair. The role of CSCG is to ensure a co-ordinated civil society response and conduit when it comes to making civil society appointments to outside organisations.  It has no staff, no funding, not even a formal charter.  In order to address some of the issues it faces I have suggested from time to time  that the membership be expanded to include say 3 more respected civil society people who are not formal representatives of coalitions of CS organisations. The last time I suggested this it was met with some strongly worded negative responses from JNC and I have not heard of any change of position on this. So for these reasons I don’t think CSCG is the right organisation to take on this task. Perhaps IGC?

Secondly, I wonder how it would work in CS which has so many people who are basically acting as individuals rather than representatives of organisations. Many if not most of us also have non CS affiliations (eg membership of ISOC, business or governmental employees if we are cs volunteers, academic postings etc) so the “pure” CS rep is probably a bit hard to find. I am not sure what we would gain by having a register of all our multiple affiliations which would need regular updating to be of any use.  I think we need to ensure our major coalitions (BB, JNC, IGC, APC, NCSG) act transparently, and by and large I think they do. But I am not sure of the value of extending this to what is probably tens of thousands of members or organisations affiliated with these larger groups. 

Over to others to discuss. I am not opposed to the suggestion that something be done in this area,  but I think we need to refine any such idea somewhat, and if the aim is somehow to enhance CS credibility and transparency in this space, perhaps we should also discuss what other measures might also assist this.

Ian Peter

From: parminder 
Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2015 3:31 PM
To: Ian Peter ; governance at lists.igcaucus.org ; BestBitsList ; mailto:forum at justnetcoalition.org ; A general information sharing space for the APC Community. 
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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