[bestbits] State of Things at WSIS This Year -- was Re: Comments and Recommendations for WSIS+10 Review Committee

[Seth Johnson]

FYI -- This is the framework I presented to the State Department at
the beginning of the year, describing my approach and concerns I will
address related to the Internet in the international
telecommunications context.


Seth

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Seth Johnson <seth.p.johnson at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 1:59 PM
Subject: For ITAC Call -- My Planned Contributions Following WSIS+10
To: "Zoller, Julie N" <ZollerJN at state.gov>
Cc: Paul Najarian <najarianpb at state.gov>, "Gordon, Marian R"
<GordonMR at state.gov>


Hello, the following is a template of concerns I will address
following the conclusion of the WSIS+10 Review.  They reflect my
comments on the last ITAC call, which focused chiefly on my concerns
regarding the WSIS+10 Review as connected to sustainable development
and the trade agenda.

The WSIS+10 outputs are generally stated, so are of little concern as
stated.  The issues brought on in the context established after 2015
are in the diverse intergovernmentally endorsed pieces being brought
together, where we may find how the WSIS processes are representing
the Internet.

So, these are areas that need attention:

ICTs for Development: the use of the term ICTs as an overgeneral
frame, with no recognition of the difference between a network of
autonomous networks and networks that support various specialized
functions by upholding policy across routers under their control

Sustainable Development: The Information Society proceedings paid
little attention sustainable development in the UN's full sense; this
means the project has not addressed sustainability in relation to
shared physical layer infrastructure

Trade Agenda:  This includes the globalization, partnerships and
interdependence themes of the 1996 UNCTAD 9, and the trade efficiency
framework of UNCTAD 10, as well as enhanced cooperation.  The trade
context is built on industry categories that do not distinguish the
open Internet from specialized service networks, and that place the
Internet in a vertically integrated telecom category (whether fully
private or simulated under Title II and "facilities-based
competition").  The trade context is also where copyright-related
concerns are being addressed.  This lays a foundation and develops
copyright-related policy that will affect the Internet, in processes
outside the Information Society's proceedings in which stakeholders
are not as effectively engaged.

Information Policy in General:  Public aspects of information policy
have been overlooked since the 1980's, under political thrusts for
privatization and deregulation that began in the US at about the same
time as the Vienna Program for Science and Technology for Development
in the international arena (around 1978).  This has affected
telecommunications policy, copyright, and technology transfer in ways
that need to be addressed before these areas can be satisfactorily
addressed in the international context.

These need to be addressed with a proper understanding of the nature
of the international arena.  Some of its most important impacts on the
stewardship context for the Internet, on rights we rely on at the
domestic level, and Internet governance and enhanced cooperation in
general.

The ITU Plenipotentiary conference asserted the relationship of the
Information society project to UN General Assembly initiatives in
overgeneral terms, declared the relationship of the ITU's activities
for the Information Society to sustainable development, articulate
sustainability in terms consistent with vertical integration and
managed service intranets, and act to establish the ITU's flawed
framework as underlying technical infrastructure to support the
Internet.  This connections need to be clarified with respect to the
difference between the open network of autonomous networks and other
types of IP-based networks.

The assessment of the WSIS Action Lines is not attentive to the
difference between the open Internet and other types of networks, so
doesn't capture the special strengths the Internet brings or the
effect of the Information Society on the Internet

The WSIS Review affirms an approach to Internet Governance based on
overgeneral terms such as IP-based networks and ICTs rather than a
proper understanding of the Internet, affirming a flwed representation
of the Internet, and the Information Society project's relationships
to sustainable development and the trade agenda as presently
articulated.

In the meantime, in the same period at the domestic level, shifts in
patterns of interconnection have taken place as the FCC's regulatory
oversight has implemented a vertically integrated telecommunications
environment (and maintained that structure even unde Title II), which
fundamentally alter the nature of the network of networks.

I will focus on these areas, including the WTSA's "merely technical"
outputs from the 2012 WTSA conference, as they address these areas
anew at the 2016 conference, while as they intersect with the present
affirmation of the UN's full conception of sustainable development,
last articulated in the UN's more technological and Information
Society-related processes with the 1997 Development Agenda, and as
they intersect with recent developments in the trade agenda as framed
since UNCTAD 9 and 10.

Three questions are key in relation to Internet governance and
enhanced cooperation in the international context now developing, and
I will focus on these



How do we address rights in the international arena, and how do we
assure the distinctive empowerment of network participants that the
Internet enables?

This includes considerations of the role of fundamental rights,
centralized and decentralized approaches to cybersecurity, the role of
diversity in sustaining the openness of the network of networks,
non-discrimination, and technology transfer.

How do we foster development of a telecom environment for open
internetworking, and how does the open network of autonomous networks
coexist with network environments that implement policy across routers
under their control to support specialized services?

This includes considerations related to the enabling environment and
ICT applications, inherent limits on the notion of convergence that
apply in a network of networks, as well as network neutrality,
specialized service concerns such as quality of service and
prioritization/"fast lanes," settlement-free peering and
interconnection policy, and right of way policy.

What roles should technical infrastructure and conformance assessment
play in relation to interoperability, security, policy, and relevant
aspects of international agendas -- including how the Internet should
converge with content-related policies such as copyright?

This includes considerations of conformance and interoperability
assessment and the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement, the use of
Internet-related identifiers, the role of connectivity in local
governance and local content, and the broadcaster's treaty and the
notion of retransmission consent.

Beyond the above, the WSIS+10 Review's flaws are methodological,.  I
will also offer recommendations for how to approach the UN's method of
review of implementation and followup, on which the WSIS+ 10 Review is
based.


Seth Johnson

On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Seth Johnson <seth.p.johnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Seth Johnson <seth.p.johnson at gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 2:01 PM
> Subject: Fwd: Comments and Recommendations for WSIS+10 Review
> Committee was:Re: Important Recommendations for CWG-WSIS -- was: Re:
> [ITAC] ITU Council Working Group on WSIS (October 2-3)/GVA
> To: itu-d <ITU-D at lmlist.state.gov>, itac at lmlist.state.gov
>
>
> FYI
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Seth Johnson <seth.p.johnson at gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 2:00 PM
> Subject: Comments and Recommendations for WSIS+10 Review Committee
> was:Re: Important Recommendations for CWG-WSIS -- was: Re: [ITAC] ITU
> Council Working Group on WSIS (October 2-3)/GVA
> To: "Gordon, Marian R" <GordonMR at state.gov>
> Cc: "ITAC at LMLIST.STATE.GOV" <ITAC at lmlist.state.gov>, "Zoller, Julie N"
> <ZollerJN at state.gov>, Paul Najarian <najarianpb at state.gov>
>
>
> Hi Marian, Julie, Paul:
>
> Sorry for the roughness of prose here, but believe me this is
> massively reduced and improved from earlier drafts.  It's also not
> quite streamlined to eliminate redundancy. The recommendations section
> at the end is very rough, as I try to get this in before today's ITAC
> call.
>
> The preceding text is important to organize conceptions, and I
> encourage you to review it.  It's much the same sort of stuff I've
> been saying, just related to various aspects.  But you can jump to the
> recommendations at the end to get the quickest sense of where this is
> driving.  I guess now I'll have to go back and improve it.
>
>
> Comments and Recommendations for WSIS+10 Review Committee:
>
> The Information Society project does not recognize key characteristics
> of the Internet or the unique ways it contributes to the project's
> goals, and is not designed to recognize how policy decisions and
> technological solutions may affect the Internet. Instead, the project
> encourages a confusion of the open Internet with IP-based networks in
> general, including specialized service networks and NGNs.
>
> We are presently proceeding to the culminating phases of the WSIS+10
> review despite this defect in the project.  Indeed, the WSIS+10 review
> is not effectively designed to capture or address this type of input,
> and has failed to recognize this problem during the 2014
> multistakeholder review phase.  As a result, the WSIS+10 Review will
> affirm an information society project after 2015 that does not
> recognize the nature of the Internet unless we compel the review
> process to recognize this concern before the intergovernmental
> negotiation phase begins in the UN General Assembly in the latter half
> of this year.
>
> In the following comments I will present recommendations regarding how
> to contribute to the WSIS+10 review in light of these problems, as
> well as how to correct the intergovernmental frame that UN and ITU
> have set up in their resolutions as well as in the outcomes of
> activities by other agencies in the UN System, including ECOSOC,
> UNCTAD and UNESCO.
>
> The ITU Council, ITU Resolutions and UN General assembly Resolution
> 68/302 articulate the modalities of the WSIS+10 Review with reference
> to the WSIS Tunis outcome document and its major section addressing
> implementation.  UN GA 68/302 cites only the WSIS outcomes and UN GA
> 68/198, so one might fairly suppose that the review process was
> developed purely as a sort of reading of the WSIS events in
> themselves.  However, UN GA 68/198, on ICTs for Development (now
> updated with UN GA 69/204), cites many other sources, including UN GA
> 57/270 B.  UN GA 57/270 B describes the UN system's developed approach
> to reviewing the implementation and follow-up of the outcomes of all
> major UN summits and conferences.
>
> We can better understand the role of the WSIS+10 Review and how it
> relates to the implementation section of the Tunis Agenda by examining
> this method of review, including its rationales and how the UN uses
> it.  57/270 B cites previous incarnations in 57/270 A and 50/227,
> which in turn cites 46/235.
>
> We might tend to think of the Information Society project as
> originating at the Geneva and Tunis WSIS events in 2003 and 2005, but
> it in fact traces to a G7 conference in 1995, followed by the
> Information Society and Development conference in South Africa in
> 1996.  The UN's method of review traces to 1977, in the Vienna Program
> for Science and Technology in Development, and the origin of the CSTD
> in 1978.  The UN has undergone an extensive process of restructuring
> throughout this period.
>
> The review of implementation and follow-up for the Information Society
> project is being undertaken in the present phase by the CSTD under the
> auspices of ECOSOC, with assistance from UNCTAD.  The 57/270 B system
> was modified recently with UN GA Resolutions 68/1, 68/210 and 69/214.
>
> I will reserve for later fuller comments on the overall schema of UN
> activities, represented by numerous other major conferences whose
> activities are converging this year and next.  Here I am simply
> referencing the UN's method to help address the WSIS+10 Review process
> properly as we enter its concluding phases and the UN General Assembly
> commences its intergovernmental review of the first 10 years of the
> project and negotiating of the post-2015 agenda in the latter half of
> this year. For reference, the UN Secretary-General has created a draft
> synthesis of inputs for the post-2015 agenda at
> (http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/69/700) that is one
> way to get good picture of the overall intergovernmental framework
> being developed.  The most notable recent developments relate to the
> sustainable development agenda, as well as the World Summit for Social
> Development, a 1995 conference that has recently been “activated” by
> initiating its own review of implementation and follow-up.  The UNCTAD
> agenda related to globalization, interdependence and partnerships in
> the arena of trade, initiated through UNCTAD’s 9th Session conference,
> which took place in South Africa in 1996, just prior to the
> Information Society and Development conference, and which was keynoted
> by Nelson Mandela.
>
>
>
> The notable feature of the outcomes of both of the Geneva and Tunis
> WSIS conferences is the fact that they are articulated almost entirely
> through the general terms ICTs or telecommunications/ICTs (and in a
> misleading use of the term "IP-based networks" in the resolutions the
> ITU has issued in support of the project).  The usage of the term
> Internet in the WSIS outcome documents is almost entirely confined to
> the term "Internet Governance."
>
> Implementing an international system of oversight for the Internet
> that is based on a general term like ICTs, without acknowledging the
> basic nature of the open Internet, will easily undermine the Internet
> by failing to understand it.  A project like the Information Society
> project also pursues purposes that the Internet uniquely supports
> through its special characterstics, and thus a review of the status of
> the project -- particularly as it contemplates systems for
> international governance and "enhanced cooperation" -- is best served
> by understanding what the Internet as such contributes to its goals.
>
> The upshot here is that a review of implementation and follow-up of
> ICTs can mislead us if we allow a review in those terms to be
> conflated with the Information Society's concern for "Internet
> Governance."
>
> By affirming the Information Society as currently framed, the WSIS
> Review process will have numerous effects on the Internet, and in
> various ways is already designed in ways that will supplant the
> Internet with other types of networks.  I have already elaborated how
> the universal general purpose technical interoperability of the
> Internet will be affected by a notion of interoperability that would
> treat it as conformance with policy, and how the project's design
> supports vertical integration without clearly recognizing the role of
> an open and competitive physical infrastructure layer in establishing
> the network of networks.
>
> The project fails to address the enabling environment, digital
> inclusivity, capacity building, or the digital divide and the
> standardization gap in terms of empowering both end users and
> independent providers.  Rather than emphasizing open and
> permissionless innovation based on a competitive, freely peering
> network of networks, its emphasis is more on interconnection.
>
> The project is examining numerous policy areas related to the Internet
> while encouraging the development of international forms of
> governance.  A number of these policy areas relate to the WSIS Action
> Lines, which were a key focus of the 2014 multistakeholder and
> high-level event portion of the WSIS+10 Review.  These and more policy
> areas are presently being examined in the CSTD along with ITU Council
> working groups on Enhanced Cooperation and Internet-Related Public
> Policy, as well as in the Internet Governance Forum and various
> proceedings of the ITU and other UN organs.  At the same time, core
> names, numbers, addressing and identifiers functions are being
> transitioned from their present relationship with the United States'
> NTIA, raising numerous issues regarding the implications of placing
> these areas into the international context.
>
> The WSIS+10 Review is built on an intergovernmentally-endorsed
> framework, a portion of which has been developed through the work of
> the ITU, including the outcomes of the 2012 ITU-T WTSA and 2014 WTDC
> events as well as the recent ITU Plenipotentiary Conference.  These
> ITU activities also contribute to a number of initiatives associated
> with the UN System and supported by acts of the UN General Assembly.
> The ITU's activities in support of the Information Society project
> similarly do not address the open Internet as distinct from more
> specialized types of networks.  As long as this distinction is not
> clear, the frame set up by the ITU leads to a broader
> intergovernmental frame for the Information Society in the UN that
> will become a basis for supplanting the open Internet with other types
> of networks.
>
> The ITU’s resolutions were updated to render explicit a number of
> these relationships to broader UN initiatives at the just-concluded
> ITU Plenipotentiary Conference.  They were also updated to endorse the
> outcomes of the 2014 multistakeholder phase of the WSIS+10 Review,
> directing the ITU to submit these outputs as the multistakeholder
> contribution to the final High Level conference at the conclusion of
> the WSIS+10 Review at the end of this year, which will produce the
> UN's final conclusions regarding the future of the Information Society
> project after 2015.
>
> The multistakeholder review process concluded during 2014 did not
> address the Action Lines in terms of how the Internet contributes to
> them, and for that matter it did not consider the question of how the
> Information Society project would affect the Internet.  The WSIS+10
> Review also uses performance measures that do not recognize the open
> Internet as a distinct category from other types of IP-based networks,
> such as those designed to support specialized services.
>
> These concerns were raised in the concluding months of the review, and
> reiterated in an open letter to various relevant agencies, but were
> not admitted into the materials on the basis of which the 2014 WSIS+10
> prepared their conclusions.  This letter listed concerns in the areas
> of empowerment, digital inclusion and capacity building; development,
> competition and the enabling environment (including the sustainability
> of the open Internet); openness, flexibility and innovation;
> governance and cybersecurity; and rights.  It also identified problems
> with the performance measures the Information Society project is using
> to assess its progress.
>
> Since the ITU has not clarified the distinction between open Internet
> and other types of networks, and the ITU's 2014 MPP review therefore
> does not reflect this concern, the present CSTD/ECOSOC phase of the
> WSIS+10 Review in the first half of 2015 is the remaining occasion to
> make clear that the way we approach the future of the WSIS project,
> including how enhanced cooperation and Internet Governance, needs to
> recognize the unique characteristics and strengths of the open
> Internet.
>
> In the US domestic context we see an approach to telecom policy that
> is focused on fast lanes in the limited context of a few incumbent
> providers, and on interconnection policy rather than on a competitive
> physical layer readily accessible by independent and autonomous
> providers.
>
>
> The methodology of the UN's WSIS+10 Review will have effects in all of
> the above areas, by serving to confirm the project's frame while
> overlooking the nature of the Internet.  The outcomes of the ITU's
> activities in these areas will be placed within a framework
> established by the activities of the UN system in general.  As the
> WSIS+10 review affirms WSIS goals by reporting progress in achieving
> the Action Lines, it overlooks how the unique strengths of the
> Internet contribute to the project's purposes, the effects that the
> project will have on the open Internet, and indeed how those effects
> will in turn affect the project's goals.  The WSIS+10 Review method
> can be traced to a general system of reviewing the outcomes of UN
> initiatives, articulated in UN General Assembly resolutions, that does
> not provide for effective examination of premises embedded in these
> initiatives.
>
> Recent revisions to the UN's system of review also establish new
> relationships of the Information Society project to an overall
> framework being articulated through the UN's other major initiatives.
>
> By confirming the project as framed at a time when oversight of the
> Internet is placed into the international arena, the intergovernmental
> context will have critical effects on the context within which the
> stewardship of the Internet has heretofore been conducted.
>
>
> Recommendations:
>
> 57/270 B says that the review and follow-up must focus on the progress
> made in the implementation of commitments.
>
> The review is also not to renegotiate the outcomes of the summits they
> are assessing
>
> This combination of features gives a clear suggestion of how the UN's
> process can tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy that serves to
> reaffirm the "process owners'" perspective rather than subject the
> review to examination of its underlying presumptions or potential
> contradictions contained in the use of overgeneral terms.  However,
> there is no reason why the process can't be open to examination of the
> presuppositions and internal conflicts that may be built in.  This is
> not renegotiating outcomes of summits, but providing for means to
> recognize that greater precision in terminology is necessary.  From
> the standard process excellence standpoint, the capture of the voice
> of the stakeholders serves as an independent criterion against which
> process owners (who apply themethod in earnest) hold themselves.  So
> the main thing is to capture the stakeholder voice as a separate
> phase, then transform that input , which is more likely to be frank
> and more fully attentive to real concerns, into a report by a second
> step that can appropriately be judged by observers in terms of its
> fidelity to that independent input.
>
> In the process excellence method, this second step often is to
> translate the stakeholder concerns into measures that assess the
> process by that independent criterion.
>
> Now, this can be rationalized clearly on the basis of un ga resolutions.
>
> 57/270 B calls for the format of the review process to address the
> "specific nature" of the issue.  Clearly the nature of the Internet is
> critical to Internet Governance.
>
> 57/270 A asked the working group developing the method to assure that
> the outcomes of major UN summits and conferences "re taken fully into
> account."
>
> 57/270 B notes the need for the process to identify constraints and
> obstacles in implementation, lessons learned, important measures, and
> new challenges ad emerging issues
>
> 68/302 and 68/198 reflect this call.
>
> Finally, the purpose of the UN's review process is to strengthen
> political will and political impetus.  This is usually construed in
> terms of energizing the activities in a way that doesn't necessarily
> examine premises, but clearly division can develop on the basis of
> contradictions that my arise in the implementation of generalized
> terms.
>
> This recommendation needs to be addressed to the UN General Assembly
> and cc'd to UNGIS, the CEB, and CSTD and ECOSOC.  It also contributes
> to "continuous overall improvement in the effectiveness, efficiency,
> management and impact of the United Nations system in delivering its
> development assistance"
>
>
> Seth
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Seth Johnson <seth.p.johnson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Below are my recommendations for the CWG on WSIS meeting.
>>
>> First, for reference, see the following letter to the UN GIS on the
>> WSIS+10 Review, sent this past June:
>> http://internetdistinction.com/wsisimpacts/statements/wsis-10-letter/
>>
>>
>> Next, what's happening at this juncture:
>>
>>     The WSIS+10 Review conducted this year, prior to the ITU
>> Plenipotentiary Conference, has articulated the status of the
>> Information Society project's Action Lines through a process that
>> combined the capture of inputs from diverse stakeholders with the
>> production of outcome documents for the HLE event this past June.
>>
>>     This review process has emphasized the Action Lines but has not
>> examined how they will be affected by the way the Information Society
>> project represents the Internet.  It has not considered how the
>> confusion regarding the distinction between the Internet and other
>> types of networks in the project's framing documents and resolutions,
>> as well as in its performance measures, may affect the project's
>> goals.
>>
>>     The CWG on WSIS recommends forwarding the outcomes of this review
>> process as the multistakeholder contribution to the intergovernmental
>> WSIS+10 review that will be conducted by the UN General Assembly next
>> year, along with outputs of a CSTD review to be conducted in the first
>> half of the year.
>>
>>     However, the important concern that arises for the CWG's
>> recommendations, in the context of the ITU's role in the Information
>> Society project, has to do with the need to correct the confused
>> representation of the Internet in the ITU's framing documents before
>> they are affirmed at the Plenipotentiary Conference as an
>> intergovernmentally endorsed framework.
>>
>>     As the US proceeds to remove US national agencies from their role
>> in the stewardship of the Internet, the ITU and its resolutions will
>> remain in place, serving as an intergovernmentally-endorsed foundation
>> for Internet-related concerns and activities in the international
>> arena.  The resolutions must therefore be corrected prior to the
>> conclusion of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, to assure that the
>> framework we are left with does not fail to recognize the Internet's
>> most important characteristics, does not undermine its unique
>> strengths, and does not undermine the unique contributions that the
>> Internet brings to the goals of the Information Society.  At that
>> point ITU Member States, including the US, will be able to appeal to
>> the ITU's framework as embodying an established intergovernmental
>> consensus that could only be reconsidered with considerable difficulty
>> after the fact.  The problems in the framework that are most pertinent
>> to this meeting of the CWG on WSIS have to do with how the ITU's
>> confused representation of the Internet will affect the Information
>> Society's goals.  This concern must be made a part of the 10-year
>> review of the Information Society project before the close of the
>> ITU's Plenipotentiary Conference next month.
>>
>>     Nothing in the frame of the CWG-WSIS's responsibilities as given
>> in Council Resolutions 1332 and 1334, or ITU Resolutions 102, 140,
>> 178, or UN GA Resolution 68/302 contradicts the above considerations.
>> They simply fail to recognize that the Information Society project's
>> framing documents, and the WSIS+10 Review, lead us to a new governance
>> context that will allow the nature of the Internet to be reshaped
>> under a new basis of authority, while the frame encourages confusion
>> between the Internet and other IP-based networks.
>>
>>
>> Recommendations
>>
>> (The latter recommendations are more concrete manifestations of the
>> first more abstract ones.)
>>
>> 1) Recognize the needs to address the ways in which the Internet
>> contributes to the Information Society's goals, and to clarify the
>> proper usage of the terms Internet, IP-based networks and
>> Next-generation networks in the ITU's framing resolutions, prior to
>> the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference and prior to transferring the
>> WSIS+10 Review to the CSTD and the UN General Assembly next year.
>>
>> 2) Recognize that unless the distinction between the Internet and
>> other types of networks is explicitly acknowledged and the question of
>> how the Internet contributes to the Action Lines is explicitly raised,
>> it is unlikely that the review will capture how well the project
>> brings the advantages of the Internet to the Action Lines.
>>
>> 3) Use a methodology that conducts the process of capturing the voice
>> of stakeholders independently from a process of articulating
>> forward-looking outcome documents.
>>
>>     Having stakeholders both voice comments on the status of the WSIS
>> Action Lines and prepare outcome statements to direct the future
>> course of the WSIS project, in the same process, can interfere with
>> frank and full commentary.
>>
>>     A better approach would be to break the review into a first phase
>> collecting comments and concerns on the Action Lines as voiced by
>> stakeholders, and then a separate phase by other participants
>> developing conclusions regarding what these inputs constitute.  Better
>> yet would be a second phase that translates the captured input into
>> quantifiable criteria for measuring progress in the future, in the
>> voice of stakeholders.
>>
>> 4) Issue a statement indicating that:
>>
>>    - the WSIS+10 HLE Outcomes do not address how well the project
>> employs the advantages of the Internet to serve the goals of the
>> Information Society
>>    - the Information Society's performance measures do not yet address
>> the distinction between the Internet and other types of networks
>>    - the unique contributions that the Internet brings to the goals of
>> the Information Society need to be clarified before the completion of
>> WSIS+10 Review
>>    - the question of recognizing how the Internet and policy and
>> development initiatives of the Information Society affect each other
>> should be identified as an area for continued focus
>>    - performance measures that distinguish between types of networks
>> will help clarify the relationship between Information Society goals
>> and the Internet
>>    - the relationship between the Action Lines and the nature of the
>> Internet are important global references for improving connectivity
>> and access in the use of ICTs in promoting the objectives of the Plan
>> of Action and of the endorsed WSIS+10 High Level Event Outcome
>> Documents
>>
>>     Issue this statement as a complement to the Report on the Outcomes
>> of the WG-WSIS meetings held since PP-10
>>
>> 5) Note for the benefit of CWG-WSIS some of the issues elaborated in
>> the analysis in my letter on how confusion regarding the nature of the
>> Internet can affect the Action Lines, particularly C2, C5 and C6.
>>
>> 6) Recommend that processes be initiated to develop our understanding
>> of this relationship between the Internet and the IS goals
>>
>> 7) Notify CWG-WSIS that
>>
>>    - the ITU Plenipotentiary Resolutions need to be revised to
>> incorporate recognition of the difference between Internet, IP-based
>> networks and Next-generation networks.
>>
>>         This will affect PP Resolutions 140, 178, 172 and 102, all of
>> which define the responsibilities of CWG-WSIS.
>>
>>         The revisions needed include the following:
>>
>>         The confusion of terms will need to be clarified in PP 101,
>> 102, 133, 137 and 180.
>>
>>         The activities of the ITU-T and ITU-D Sectors will need to be
>> defined with recognition of these distinctions in PP 178 and PP 140.
>> PP 122 and PP 135, which set parameters for PP 178 and PP 140
>> respectively, also will need to reflect these distinctions.
>>
>>     - the ITU's WSIS Performance Measures need to be revised to
>> distinguish between open Internet networks and specialized service
>> networks, and to track the difference between vertically integrated
>> telecommunications contexts and contexts that support competitive
>> access to shared physical infrastructure.
>>
>>         This will affect PP 172 and 131.
>>
>>
>> Seth
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 10:44 AM, Seth Johnson <seth.p.johnson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi, I'll likely make a few comments on these resolutions and your
>>> contribution to the CWG.  We need to note that any issues in terms of
>>> how the ITU's activities derive from 2010 PP Resolutions will need to
>>> be considered at the 2014 conference.  This relates to the ITU's role,
>>> but how to address it is a complex question that I'll be trying to
>>> sort out.
>>>
>>> The phone call drew to a close a bit too quickly for me to stick in my
>>> two cents, so noting this here.
>>>
>>>
>>> Seth
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Gordon, Marian R <GordonMR at state.gov> wrote:
>>>> The meeting will be held at ATT, 1120 20th Street, Conference Room 8-2 on
>>>> the 8th floor.  If you will be attending the meeting in person, please let
>>>> Amy Alvarez know, who I copy here for your convenience.   A conference
>>>> bridge will follow.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 8:28 AM, Gordon, Marian R <GordonMR at state.gov> wrote:
>>> For those of you who have not yet let Sally Gadsten know that you wish to be
>>> part of the US delegation to the ITU CWG/WSIS meeting on October 2-3, 2014,
>>> please do so no later than Monday, September 22nd.  Sally is copied on this
>>> email for you convenience.   Thanks, Marian