[governance] location

[Bertrand de La Chapelle]

Dear all, dear Jeanette,

I must not have been clear enough. And Avri's comments help clarify things.

There was NO idea whatsoever in my comment about a rotating secretariat. And
YES, I support an initial secretariat in Geneva. AND, I believe Greece
should put in place an organizing committee for logistical matters related
to the first meeting.

More precisely, what I meant is :
- there should be a small independent start-up secretariat established as
soon as possible around Markus and Geneva - as far as I am concerned - seems
the best location; this secretariat would deal with general initiation of
the process and particularly in the case of the first Athens meeting, with
organizing further consultations on its substantive agenda and format; these
consultations, facilitated by the secretariat, would constitute an informal
Program Committee for Athens 2006 (and maybe help produce a more formal one)
- Greece, around George and their existing national Steering Committee,
should organize the logistical aspects of the first meeting in Athens :
rooms, translation, remote communications, connectivity, ....; they could
for instance set up a IGF 2006 Organizing Committee

In SUBSEQUENT phases, for instance after the first meeting of the Forum in
Athens, the "support functions" of the various Forum activities would
develop along three dimensions :
- for each annual meeting, hopefully in a different country each year, the
host organization woould establish its own organizing (and possibly program)
committee(s)
- as thematic threads (and eventually working groups) emerge in the IGF
process, various actors could volunteer to support them from their
own location, with temporary thematic support teams (can be a single person
part time, actually)
- the initial secretariat would in parallel develop as needs arise and
possibly establish antennas in various regions to cater to specific needs,
progressively building a DISTRIBUTED (not rotating) virtual secretariat

Once again, please keep in mind in terms of location a clear distinction
between the Secretariat(s) and the activities of the Forum. The worst thing
would be to maintain the intellectual framework of a traditional
organization : one location, all activities there, etc... As a matter of
fact, we do not need to reinvent the wheel : this type of conference
organizing mechanisms are absolutely routine in many areas. And after all,
even traditional intergovernmental organizations organize meetings in
different parts of the world apart from their headquarters and they have
offices in various places. The only difference is we want to set that up in
a more organic way, without lengthy debates on diplomatic or international
civil servant status and heavy procedures.

Best

Bertrand


On 2/14/06, Avri Doria <avri at psg.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 14 feb 2006, at 18.02, Jeanette Hofmann wrote:
>
> >
> > I find the idea of a rotating secretariat dangerous because that makes
> > it vulnerable to the institutional competition between various UN
> > organizations.
>
> i don't actually remember discussing a rotating secretariat.  but it
> may have been a terminology difference.  what i was talking about was
> the idea that the logistics of setting up meetings could rotate among
> other organizations.  if one thinks about a secretariat as a group
> that does lots of stuff and also organizes the logistics of meetings,
> this one piece was conceived of as possibly rotating.  at least that
> is what i was thinking about.  this chunk can get large and
> cumbersome, so this was one possible way of keeping the secretariat
> lean and focused on the substance of the forum administration.
>
> a.
>
>
>
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