[governance] Statement for the Feb 13 meeting

[Jeremy Malcolm]

Thanks for this Vittorio.

Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> The Internet Governance Caucus, as the main coordination framework for 
> civil society participation in Internet governance discussions at the 
> WSIS and then at the IGF, would like to provide feedback and opinions on 
> the subjects of this meeting.

At WSIS more so than the IGF, but anyway...

> Workshops were usually interesting, though some effort should be made to 
> better integrate them with the overall themes and flow of discussions of 
> the IGF. Specifically, it should be ensured that all workshops meet the 
> multi-stakeholder criteria, and that at least half of their duration is 
> allocated to open floor discussion rather than to panel presentations, 
> to prevent some workshops from becoming just a showcase for the 
> organizers, or a lobbying event for a single group of stakeholders. 

Suggest adding here: "Alternative formats for workshops should be 
facilitated to limit this tendency.  For example, one room should be 
laid out in table groups, to allow workshops held there to foster 
intensive deliberation on the issues under discussion, rather than 
encouraging the passive receipt of information.  Again, one room could 
be laid out with computer terminals allowing participants to directly 
engage with remote participants in the use or collaborative development 
of online tools and resources."

> About the Advisory Group, while supporting the concept, we express our 
> dissatisfaction for the very limited representation of civil society in 
> its first instance, which amounted to five or less members over about 
> forty.

It seems that the technical and academic communities may have been 
regarded as part of civil society (see 
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sga1006.doc.htm), but even 
accepting that they are a cross-cutting constituency (as per WGIG and 
Tunis Agenda para 36), this would mean that they include part of the 
quota of members from the private sector and civil society.  Since 
neither WGIG nor WSIS accepted the technical community as a stakeholder 
group on its own account, is it too late to effectively be arguing that now?

An alternative approach for the short-term would be to say:

"We are dissatisfied that the criteria for selection of Advisory Group 
members, and the composition of the Advisory Group including the 
proportionate representation of stakeholder groups and the cross-cutting 
technical and academic communities, were not openly and transparently 
discussed prior to the Advisory Group's appointment.  We further 
consider that if these criteria and the quotas for representation from 
each stakeholder group were openly established, it would be possible for 
the Secretary General to delegate the actual process of selection of 
Advisory Group members to the stakeholder groups themselves."

> We also reiterate the need for the IGF to be considered as a process, 
> rather than as an event. We support the concept of “dynamic coalitions” 
> and their activities; however, there needs to be a way to “bless” their 
> work and give some recognition, even if not binding, to their products.

Add here, "A transparent, multi-stakeholder and democratic process 
should be commenced to develop criteria for the recognition of Dynamic 
Coalitions by the IGF, whereby the output of Coalitions that satisfied 
those criteria could be formally received for discussion at a plenary 
session of the following IGF meeting."

Also suggest adding, but as a separate point, "We also consider that 
insufficient priority has been given to supporting the development of 
online fora for discussion and deliberation, not only to facilitate the 
participation of those who cannot afford to travel to IGF meetings, but 
also to enable those who do attend in person to continue their work in 
between meetings."

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm LLB (Hons) B Com
Internet and Open Source lawyer, IT consultant, actor
host -t NAPTR 1.0.8.0.3.1.2.9.8.1.6.e164.org|awk -F! '{print $3}'
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