[governance] Dynamic Coalition working methods

[Vittorio Bertola]

Ralf Bendrath ha scritto:
> First of all, the IGF at large is accountable to nobody. It is at the
> moment an "open house", as Niton Desai said, it can't (yet?) make
> decisions, and its composition is more or less random. So why should any 
> dynamic coalition be accountable to the IGF?

I think that there's something to earn from adding the IGF brand to a 
coalition of people - recognition, credibility, and possibly the chance 
to get the results "blessed" by the Forum itself, as a "brand of quality 
policy output" if you like, just like the IETF/IAB process does with 
technical standards... which doesn't imply that all RFCs get widely 
adopted or all widely adopted standards are RFCs, but, in practice, 
means that most of the widely adopted standards are RFCs and most RFCs 
are widely adopted.

In exchange for that, the Forum should ask coalitions to meet certain 
"quality standards" in term of process, and I agree that they should be 
about openness, free participation for all stakeholders, and transparent 
procedures (the opposite of privatized governance).

Moreover, there are situations you might want to prevent - for example, 
what if those stakeholders who value security over privacy started their 
own "security privacy coalition" which addressed the same things as your 
coalition, but getting to opposite results? I think we have to accept to 
engage each other in a discussion, rather than try to use the IGF for 
pushing each one's pet position, and so we need to ensure that you have 
only one coalition for a specific policy item.

> Bottom line: There seems to be a trade-off between openness and broad 
> participation. If we don't carefully address these issues, we will have 
> some nice NGO-Business dialogue, but no governments on board.

I agree, but exactly because there is a delicate balance at stake, I 
think you need shared guidelines that apply to all coalitions. It will 
help people not getting lost, and getting used to a uniform working 
method that can become part over time of a common procedural foundation.

The positive thing is that it's now up to us, basically, to work them out.

> What we will try in the privacy coalition is certainly to develop some 
> position paper / FAQ / draft recommendations to be "considered" by the 
> next IGF. If this works in an inclusive multi-stakeholder process, it 
> will be more than I hoped for.

Support :) Even if I'd like to get a way to move documents from the "for 
consideration" to the "rough IGF consensus" status. But we have to be 
careful not too ask for too much too soon.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...
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