[governance] Caucus Statement: another proposal

[Milton Mueller]

A few quick points.

1. This statement has come together surprisingly fast. Few people have
contributed to it and, I suspect, read it. I know that numerous messages
about it have been posted in the last four days. However, based on past
experience I initially viewed this as yet another futile attempt of the
caucus to pull together something at the last minute, which rarely
works. 
Therefore , being extremely busy with Athen prep, I did not read most
of them thinking that the efforts would not gel. 

2. Having finally been prompted to read it, the statement itself is not
bad. I agree however with Jeanette's warnings about the tone and intent.
This is not WSIS, this is not an intervention into an intergovernmental
negotiation, and therefore the "appeal to authority" aspect is
misplaced. I think we need a far more positive and constructive sense of
what we want to come out of the forum, what are the results. IGP is
about to release a short paper about that, by the way. My suggestion is
that those who agree with the statement as it stands post it somewhere,
copy it and distribute it at the Forum, and do one of the videos. 

3. I do agree with the "term limits" for MAG members, even knowing that
we have very good people on there. Rotation in that office will still
allow us to capture that learning.  


>>> jeanette at wz-berlin.de 10/26/2006 10:06 AM >>>


Avri Doria wrote:
> 
> On 26 okt 2006, at 10.19, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> 
>> We could make a 48-hours consensus call as stated in the Charter,
and 
>> if no one objects we could release the statement as a caucus
document.
> 
> Ok.  I have put a copy of draft sent in by Bill Drake at: 
> http://www.igcaucus.org/draft-Athens-stmt.html 
> 
> 
> since a few people have written in to say they agree with having a 
> statement and with support for this statement, lets try for a
consensus 
> call - not rough consensus (i do not fee that i or anyone else is in
a 
> position to call rough consensus).
> 
> Over the next 48 hours - by the end of Saturday 28 October, no one 
> objects to using this statement (not counting minor non-substantive 
> edits), then we can call it a IGC statement.

Hi,
I had planned to not comment on this statement but now that silence 
could be interpreted as consent I feel I should speak up.
I have two issues with the statement. The first is about style, the 
second is about the content of issue No 2.

Regarding the style of the statement: The statement reminds me very
much 
of the interventions the caucus made throughout the WSIS prepcoms. We 
wrote a text, we edited it, we gave copies to the chair and the 
translators and we finally read it.

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.

As both Avri and Laina pointed out, we are  speaking on equal footing 
with the other groups assembled in Athens. This is why we should not 
complain about something that hasn't taken place yet and list demands
to 
an imaginary chair in control of the whole thing.
Such a statement with suggestions of how to proceed in the next years 
would be very good at the lessons learned meeting after the forum.

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 
are at least two reasons why this doesn't make sense to me. The first
is 
that appointing new members is a very time consuming effort the
swallows 
a lot of the secretariat's capacity. The second is reason is that at 
least some of us (not necessarily all) should have a second term to
make 
good use of what they learned during their first term. Have we had any

discussion about the pro's and con's of one versus two terms? My view
on 
this issue is based on my experience in ICANN's NomCom. I was much more

efficient at my job in the second year.

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. It is really a matter of designing it carefully
and 
finding a good balance. Ralf's window metaphor from a few days ago is 
just wrong. It is neither possible nor desirable to communicate 
everything in the open. Unless we really spell out what we mean by 
transparency and accountability I suggest we rather not demand more of

it any longer.

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. Markus took always great care to take into
account 
the preferences from the various groups.
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. Likewise, if all the selections are made
in 
a decentral manner by the respective stakeholder groupings, some 
countries might be overrepresented and some regions not represented at

all. So, I don't agree with this demand.

I don't want to veto the statement if there is a sufficient amount of 
support for it. But I don't want my silence be confused with consent.

Sorry for the length, jeanette



> 
> thanks.
> a.
> 
> 
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