[governance] national vs international (was Re: Program for IGC at IGF)

[Norbert Bollow]

George Sadowsky <george.sadowsky at attglobal.net> wrote:

> What I am reacting to is what I observe is the
> conventional wisdom that I find faulty: that
> Internet governance and related Internet issues
> are essentially international in character, and
> that national issues are secondary.  In almost
> all developing countries that I have worked in
> (and I've worked in over 50, although many before
> the Internet), national government policies have
> been the determining factor regarding the health
> of the ICT industry, the ability of people to
> gain access to computers and, of importance to us
> here, the ability of the Internet to spread in an
> accessible and affordable manner.

This phenomenon is not just limited to developing
countries.  The example that I know something about
is that here in Switzerland, the Equality for People
with Disabilities Act (a federal law which requires,
among other matters, that all websites of government
institutions must be made accessible to persons
with disabilities) has inspired significant work in
the area of websites accessibility for persons with
disabilities, not limited to government websites.

Do you have a reference for what you have observed
in developing countries, something suitable for citing
in a scientific paper?

> Yet all of those countries implicitly or
> explicitly agreed with both the vision statement
> and the plan of action, both international
> documents created during WSIS-1.  Talk is cheap;
> action is definitive.

Yes, absolutely.  The IGF is based on a broad consensus
that talking with other stakeholders is important.  But
the actual work of making things happen always has to
be done by a coalition of the willing.  If such a
coalition of stakeholders (who can agree on reasonable
principles for addressing some set of important issues,
and who are genuinely willing to take corresponding
action) can emerge from the IGF, then I will consider
the IGF to be a great success.

> The global arena is an important policy arena, but for
> those issues that can be influenced by global action.

I believe that due to the international nature of the
internet, this includes all internet-related issues.

For those issues that can be significantly impacted,
for better or worse, by national policy decisions, the
global action that I feel should be done is to create
an accountable and transparent international
multistakeholder process for recognizing and coordinating
good national efforts concerning these issues.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                       http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG        http://SIUG.ch
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