[governance] Proposal for the 23rd May IGF consultationand advisory group meeting please

[Parminder]

> You asked yesterday for more precise language on the mandate question, so
> I
> gave you a few sentences.  Milton's provided a few sentences on the access
> of disadvantaged people/groups.  I'm simply asking you to do the same for
> global public policy so people would know what we'd be proposing.  

This is my suggestion for the 'Global public policy on Internet - issues and
institutions' plenary theme for IGF

Internet as THE infrastructure of an emerging IS brings on both new
challenges for global public policy making, as well as new opportunities of
managing a global polity. What are these public policy issues, which are the
right/ legitimate avenues for dealing with them, and how existing global
public policy bodies may need to change and/or new ones take shape
constitute an important set of questions, for which IGF is the right forum
for discussion, and if possible moving towards a consensus. "Discussing
public policy issues" regarding IG is also the first point in the mandate
for IGF as per Tunis agenda'. TA deals at length with the question of new
global public policy issues regarding IG and the possibility of new
frameworks and structures (and/or reinforcing existing ones)(p 61, 69), and
there is a feeling/recognition that the task of both recognizing these
issues, and improvising global governance structures adequate to dealing
with them is an agenda that WSIS gave broad direction about, but left it to
post-WSIS processes to formalize. IGF was envisioned as a key forum to
enable/ assist this process (see for instance TA 72 b, that mandates IGF to
"facilitate discourse between bodies dealing with different cross-cutting
international public policies regarding the Internet"). This panel will
examine these key issues/questions as well as specific institutional
arrangements and processes like that of 'enhanced cooperation'.  


________________________________________________
Parminder Jeet Singh
IT for Change, Bangalore
Bridging Development Realities and Technological Possibilities 
Tel: (+91-80) 2665 4134, 2653 6890
Fax: (+91-80) 4146 1055
www.ITforChange.net 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Drake [mailto:drake at hei.unige.ch]
> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 12:04 PM
> To: Singh, Parminder; Governance
> Subject: Re: [governance] Proposal for the 23rd May IGF consultationand
> advisory group meeting please
> 
> Hi Parminder,
> 
> On 4/26/07 6:56 PM, "Parminder" <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
> 
> >> Sorry, I'm still not following.  On what specific issues & institutions
> >> within that more general space are these pressing and unresolved
> >> questions people should fly to Rio to address: "do we need it, who does
> >> it and what is it"?
> >
> > Bill, I have discussed in an earlier email that we need to take a
> position
> > somewhere in between 'access and openness' kind of issues, and asking
> for a
> > plenary exclusively on too narrow a topic/position like 'enhanced
> > cooperation' (is this, or such, your intention?). I have also mentioned
> > that, in my view, this may not be the stage for giving fully fleshed out
> > plenary proposals (there is no call for it) but to propose generally the
> > themes we may want to be taken up. In this session we can and should of
> > course discuss EC among other things. Details can be worked out later.
> 
> Given the variety and length of conversations here in recent weeks, I
> don't
> think you can realistically expect anyone to remember everything you said
> at
> some point along the way, particularly if it was pretty broadly framed. If
> however you proposed concrete language on something, that I'd save and
> look
> back at.  I've said several times I this is very broad, I don't know what
> you have in mind, please clarify, and as that hasn't happened you cannot
> expect that people with very diverse opinions are going to all agree that
> yes, the caucus should say we want a plenary on a topic that's framed like
> a
> cloud.
> 
> You asked yesterday for more precise language on the mandate question, so
> I
> gave you a few sentences.  Milton's provided a few sentences on the access
> of disadvantaged people/groups.  I'm simply asking you to do the same for
> global public policy so people would know what we'd be proposing.  I don't
> understand the resistance to doing so and how you expect to move the
> process
> absent this, and a long back and forth on whether it'd be useful to say
> what
> we mean is not a good use of anyone's time.
> 
> >> I also don't understand the formulation, "EC, FC and all such
> concepts;"
> >> "such" implies equivalence, but these seem like apples and oranges to
> >> me.  And the apples would presumably be on the table in a session about
> >> ICANN, whereas the oranges are nowhere near being ripe and ready for
> >> mass consumption in a plenary.
> >
> > When I speak of EC, FC and all such concepts' I mean various approaches
> that
> > have been spoken of to address the issue of global public policy
> (substance
> > and process) in IG arena. I am not sure I understand your apples and
> oranges
> > logic completely... but as I understand, the oranges logic is that EC is
> > only about public policy related to ICANN, but Tunis agenda doesn't seem
> to
> > suggest this (p 69 TA). Neither did I get this impression from majority
> of
> > discussions on this list....
> 
> I'm familiar with the TA, and am asking you to say what beyond names and
> numbers you would see as the global public policy issues/institutions on
> which the international community needs to discuss " do we need it, who
> does
> it and what is it," presumably because these questions are unresolved.  In
> reality, in a great many cases, they are not unresolved, they're known, so
> I
> can't imagine the mAG being enticed.  Again, if you can't identify what's
> in
> the set beyond names and numbers, people won't buy that it's worth doing,
> and if there's nothing and you're primarily thinking names and numbers,
> then
> I'd fold it in with your ICANN topic.
> 
> > And your oranges logic is even more difficult to understand. You seem to
> say
> > that there aren't any significant Internet related (non ICANN) public
> policy
> > issues at the global level, or at least not ripe enough to be discussed.
> We
> 
> No, I'm saying that a FC is not a ripe concept that people will agree to
> discuss.  Of course there are issues, but the number of people who think
> that it necessarily follows that we need to start with a FC, which as
> described thus far sounds qualitatively different from EC, seems rather
> small.
> 
> > spent a lot of time at WSIS to get such public policy issue recognized
> and
> > for the documents to make note of at least some space/ process for
> > addressing these issues (for instance p 61). Why are we now shy to speak
> of
> > them?? As I said, I am not able to get a good grip on your position.
> 
> My position is please be clear, full stop.  Please don't misread anything
> else into it beyond that.
> 
> > In any case, to pose a direct question, since at this stage we are more
> > interested in developing a common IG position - Do you NOT want a
> plenary on
> > IG related public policy issues/ mechanisms at IGF 2?
> 
> If I know what it's about and it sounds important and worth doing, of
> course.  I suspect others would like to know this first, too.
> 
> Best,
> 
> BD


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