[governance] individuals

[Bram Dov Abramson]

Hello,

I hope you'll forgive the intrusion -- I'm a subscriber but one who
allowed the digests to pile up, recently took the plunge to delete all
the unread ones, and am now occasionally delving into this very involved
organisational discussion.

With regard to representing NGOs/CSOs rather than simply acting as a
self-selected group of experts with the time and cultural fit to hold a
conversation, though, I think that Carlos Afonso's is probably a good
point...

>One thing for certain: they do represent people (or ensembles
>of organizations), be them their own members, or the
>constituencies they work with and who have legitimized them as
>such. They represent and have the right to do so by that
>legitimacy 

... as are Meryem Merzouki's re accountability.  Which, I suspect, goes
also to an organisation's nature as a thing formed for a specific
purpose, unlike people who are, one hopes, eclectic.  The mission of an
NGO does surely impose *some* discipline on its representatives to speak
in its best interests, and its failure to do so surely speaks to its
credibility generally.  An example:

>I work for the CNRS (the French public scientific research center).  
>It has about 26000 employees, among them approximately 12000  
>researchers like me, in all scientifc fields, from physics to social  
>sciences: how could I ever think that I represent this structure,  
>which purpose, in addition, has nothing to do with the topic. How  
>could even the CNRS president, or board, claim he/it has a position  
>on Internet governance?

But the CNRS' leadership must nonetheless feel that it must steer it
some direction as opposed to another, and that certain policy directions
help and hurt those directions.  The wide availability of Internet
connectivity to research institutions, perhaps.  Opposition to any
policy which significantly hindered the use of the Internet as a
research tool, probably.

And so forth.  Here in Quebec universities are neutral and certainly do
not ascribe particular views to their professors -- but their
administrations are nonetheless very active in the policy process,
lobbying for increased university funding and so forth.  Perhaps there
is an analogy there.

Michael Gurstein writes:
>As an example, and as for the significance of some of those
>responsibilities, I certainly don't claim to "represent" the Global
>Telecentre Alliance (GTA) but also I could if appropriate (and as I've
>been asked to do) pass along information concerning Internet Governance
>issues through the various tiers of the various internetworked
>organizations that form the GTA and probably get a pretty good sense of
>what some at least of the folks working in Internet issues on the
>ground in "developmental" contexts are thinking

To be an effective representative, though, is surely at least in part to
understand clearly what the GTA's interests are, and to advocate on
behalf of them?

>What I also know, is that proceeding to present oneself as THE
>CS-IGC in the absence of including the opportunity for real
>participation by those folks and the others working in Civil
>Society and ICTs on the ground as and where they might feel it
>useful/necessary is an act of significant misrepresentation.

Well, to state the obvious, one way in which people delegate authority
is by electing representatives.  Perhaps this was addressed in one of
those e-mails I deleted?

But in case not.  Imagine if some definition was agreed upon for "civil
society organisation"; if any such CSO could submit to the IGF an
any-length list of voters; if any voter could appear on, I don't know,
zero to two voters' lists; if an election was so convened to represent
civil society.

The process itself is no doubt clunky and subject to streamlining and
tamper-proofing and so forth -- you'd want rules in place that avoided
CSOs which simply signed people up in order to give them a vote (or
would you?), and there are lots of ways to do that, too -- but that's
hardly the point, I think.

>So, if, as I think would be broadly desirable, the IGC would like to
>remain known as the IGC rather than simply Bill, Wolfgang, Vittorio,
>Avri, Janette, Milton and friends then there are certain prices to be
>paid which includes a serious attempt at outreach and a broad strategy
>of inclusion whether or not that outreach or inclusion has any short
>term or immediate significance in terms of numbers of participants on
>the email list! 

Elections are not necessarily antithetical to reasoned thought from a
disinterested or thoughtful standpoint, I would add.  That's why
parliaments have ministries in which live civil servants who do the
grunt work.  And why organisations often have secretariats.  Elections,
on the one hand; a staff, on the other.  I suspect I'm treading heavily
into ICANN territory here -- but, as an non-initiate: why not?

cheers
Bram

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