[governance] Caucus Statement: another proposal

[Vittorio Bertola]

Jeanette Hofmann ha scritto:
> The forum is not meant to accommodate that kind of prepared 
> interventions/statements, it is about dialogue. Because the forum should 
> not repeat prepcom style interventions, the secretariat offers the 
> opportunity to contribute videos to the forum. Whoever feels like giving 
> a statement should use this opportunity.
> 
> While it is easy to predict that some people will nonetheless prepare 
> written statements, I don't understand why the IG caucus of all groups 
> sticks to this pretty non-interactive mode of communication.

The problem is that, per our years of discussions, as a caucus we can't 
just pop up there and say whatever we think on the spot. We need to 
follow a formal process and agree in advance on something. We might 
present what we agreed upon in a less formal manner - for example, 
someone could just take the floor and explain our consensus, rather than 
reading a prearranged document. But we do need to agree on (and approve) 
something quite precise before the meeting, if we are to speak as a 
caucus at the Forum.

(Governments have a similar problem, but since they are hierarchical 
structures, the topmost officer may just show up and speak. We are not 
hierarchical, so we cannot do the same.)

> Regarding issue No 2: I know it sounds odd for a member of the Advisory 
> Committee to say this but I would like to get an explanation why members 
> of the IGF's advisory group should only be appointed for one year.

There was no intention to send you away if you want to continue - 
actually, the points you make about continuing are valid (though there 
are others against - for example, since there can be so few civil 
society members of the AG, perhaps it would be fairer to rotate as 
quickly as possible). It just seemed logical to assume that AG members 
would not stick to their chairs forever, but needed reappointment every 
year, without implying that we couldn't reappoint the existing ones.

> There are aspects I don't agree with in issue No 2. The demand that the 
> AG should make decisions in a transparent, accountable and timely manner 
> I find just empty. There is a lot of literature on the problem of 
> accountability and transparency. After having read only a fraction of it 
> I've come to the conclusion that both accountability and transparency 
> are not good per se.

I understand, but I think that the demand for accountability and 
transparency comes from the fact that many of us are quite dissatisfied 
with the way this IGF has been designed. I don't think anyone ever asked 
the caucus whether there should be panels or not, whether we agreed not 
to have working groups, whether we agreed with such a strong theming of 
the event and so on. It's not a demand for accountability per se, it's 
that we need accountability to get our voices heard in the future, 
since, not blaming anyone, the feeling of many people is this didn't 
happen enough this year.

> Finally an objection to the provision that all AG members should be 
> selected by the stakeholder groups. First, the caucus did to a 
> considerable degree select its own representatives but the statement 
> doesn't reflect that.

This is factually incorrect - it was true for the WGIG, but not for the 
IGF AG. This caucus put forward 15 names:

https://ssl.cpsr.org/pipermail/governance/2006-April/006088.html

of which only three were taken; another couple of CS persons who were 
not in our list were picked (so we picked only 60% of our reps). Ok, we 
didn't hope to have 15 people in the AG, but 5 over 46, of which only 3 
from the caucus, is not even near to balanced representation of civil 
society, let it be 1/3 or 1/4 of the AG. Especially if you compare it 
with the representation of the "Internet technical community", which 
sums up to 12 members.

And again, no one would care about chairs, if the resulting Forum didn't 
come fundamentally short of its mission, especially in the points that 
were most important to us.

> Yet, the secretariat does need some latitude to meet another concern 
> mentioned in this section of the statement. If the stakeholder groups 
> don't propose a sufficient number of representatives from developing 
> countries, or if they propose only very few women, the secretariat must 
> be able to make adjustments.

Catering for diversity and adjustments is different from saying that 
civil society representatives should be picked from the top rather than 
appointed from the bottom, which is what we are complaining against.

Incidentally, you say that you need freedom for the Secretariat to take 
care of diversity, and yet the only three people that the Secretariat 
picked from our list were you, Adam and Robin - completely ignoring the 
developing world... Our suggestions were much more diverse than the 
final choice!
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...
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