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

[William Drake]

Hi Parminder,

Thanks for taking the first step, it advances the conversation.  It seems
though the text below is all about the need to talk about global public
policies as a general matter, rather than what global public policies in
particular need to be talked about.  I suspect that the mAG would need more
to go on in thinking about the viability of such a session.  Anyway, this
shouldn't be a bilateral conversation, let's hear what others would want to
have in a caucus input doc.

Re: your other message on the discussion process, no worries, on the same
page.

Cheers,

BD


On 4/27/07 11:33 AM, "Parminder" <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:

>> 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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***********************************************************
William J. Drake  drake at hei.unige.ch
Director, Project on the Information
  Revolution and Global Governance/PSIO
  Graduate Institute for International Studies
  Geneva, Switzerland
http://hei.unige.ch/psio/researchprojects/Drake.html
***********************************************************



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