[governance] APC - Forum draft?

[Lee McKnight]

Hi,

I think we attach the APC doc as an appendix and point of referenece,
to a very short IGC statement. Specifically, I suggest transposing
Vittorio's 'we agree' hallelujah chorus email message as the IG caucus
statement, leaving out everything we don't agree on. 

It's exactly around these membership-type old-world processes that I
don;t think we can just say we agree 100% with APC, even if there is
inevitably some lightweight accreditation checking that happens
especially in face to face meetings.  Sends the wrong message in my
opinion.

In the couple page caucus statement we should applaud the APC for an
excellent report summarizing key issues and suggesting ways forward, and
attach it as an appendix. Likewise a suiable IGP paper could be
proferred, for appendix purposes only, but that might get long - you
call : )

The rest of us wish you Tunisians well trying to insert reasonable text
on the fly, just like everyone else : )

Lee


Prof. Lee W. McKnight
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
+1-315-443-6891office
+1-315-278-4392 mobile

>>> Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu.org> 11/10/2005 1:01 PM >>>
Il giorno gio, 10-11-2005 alle 19:23 +0200, Anriette Esterhuysen ha
scritto:
> Perhaps the term 'membership guidelines' would be better.
> 
> Having a transparent process with membership criteria and a
nomination 
> process will contribute to:
> 
> - diversity
> - relative representavity
> - legitimacy
> - transparency
> 
> In other words, it will help ensure compliance with the WSIS
principles you 
> mention above.

As I was saying, I agree if it is not a mechanism to exclude anyone,
but
just to verify applicants on a formal plan.

However, the fact that you mention "relative representativity" makes
me
think that you imagine a sort of "quotas", so that you can't accept
yet
another civil society group if you already have 100 NGOs and only 5
private businesses (random example). Am I right?

In general, I think you should be very careful about the fact that the
forum is open to anyone who meets some basic, formal, non-exclusionary
criteria. This is what is commonly expected from Internet governance
processes - mostly, people expect to find a mailing list and join,
period. The idea of "bottom-up" is exactly that - all those who are
interested gather and create a group at the above layer.

> > What should such "nomination process" be for - to nominate whom?
> 
> Member of the forum.

So it's like, there's APC and CPSR applying for forum membership and a
nominating committee deciding which of the two orgs becomes a member?
Just to understand.

If I'm right, then I disagree. It seems you have in mind something
more
like the UN ICT Task Force, rather than the IETF - am I correct?

I would suggest moving any kind of "relative weight for decision
making"
at the level of an executive group, rather than at the level of forum
membership in itself. A closed membership entity (from the UN, taking
over the Internet, etc) would be criticized and discredited on the
entire net in a minute.

> Personally I find the tripartite model of stakeholders very limiting,
and I 
> suspect it will be quite shortlived.  
> 
> To reduce the range of stakeholders involved in IG that are neither 
> government or private sector to 'civil society' is very problematic
and results 
> in insufficient voice, skill and diversity in what should be
processes in which 
> all affected groups (stake - holders) can participate.

Sure, but who decides that "the community of actors involved in
technical aspects of internet development and management" (whoever
that
be: does that include ICANN? W3C? ISOC? ITU?) is a fourth category
that
is more deserving than, say, the academics, or the engineers, or
individuals, or IGOs, or whatever else? That's why I'm wary - we might
not like the tripartite model, but at least there's decades of
practice
in understanding how to manage it, and how to tell between different
categories.

> > >   -  Drafting the member structure
> > >   -  Identifying scope of work and mission of the Forum
> 
> We felt a small group with a fixed term mandate would be  more
effective.

Again, on such a groundbreaking development, I think inclusiveness is
much more important than effectiveness. After all, if this Forum is
not
"bought in" from the bottom, it will never fly.

> Karen and Willie do not have access to email right now..expect to
hear 
> more from them later.

Sure.

On procedures, I share Bill's concern, and I would rather like the
caucus come up with something on its own, rather than adopt a proposal
from a specific organization - even if building over it.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a]
bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...

_______________________________________________
governance mailing list
governance at lists.cpsr.org 
https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance
_______________________________________________
governance mailing list
governance at lists.cpsr.org
https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance