[governance] The seeds of change in the IGF

[Ralf Bendrath]

Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
> I don't know what others thought, but I found yesterday's consultations 
> to mark potentially a bit of a watershed moment. 
It was certainly interesting.

> * This is the first time that governments (such as France,
>   Australia, and Germany for the EU) have effectively acknowledged
>   Dynamic Coalitions as the de-facto working groups 
Some anecdotal evidence: The Privacy Coalition had a smaller meeting on 
Monday to prepare the report for the Tuesday consultations, and Markus 
Kummer was kind enough to get us a room at the UN. When I picked up my 
badge at the gate, it actually said "UN-DESA, IGF Dynamic Coalition on 
Privacy" as the event I was registered for.

> * This also seems to be the first time *ever* that Nitin Desai has
>   publicly acknowledged that "there is language in paragraph 72 which
>   talks of recommendations as appropriate, and we still do not have a
>   process for figuring out how to get to those recommendations,"
>   rather than (well, as well as) repeating his "the IGF has no
>   membership" mantra.  
He started with the "no membership" mantra in his closing remarks (which 
he surprisingly started already before 17:00), but then a few of us 
intervened. It was only then that he acknowledged the possibility of 
recommendations.

What I find really fascinating is the way the secretariat is trying to 
write history here, and by this itself is moving a bit towards IGF 
outcomes procedures.
Look at http://www.intgovforum.org, it says (IIRC for the first time 
ever): "the Chairman's closing remarks can be downloaded separately for 
easy access", and they open in an extra rtf document. These closing 
remarks look like they were done in one piece, while in fact there were 
the above mentioned interventions by Brazil, Charles Geiger, Jeremy Beale, 
myself, Carlos Alfonso, Louis Pouzin, Karen Banks, Riaz Tayob (Third World 
Network), Wolfgang Kleinwächter, Jean-Francois Morfin, and Adam Peake in 
the middle of the closing remarks by Nitin Desai.
So you could argue that
- the practice of publishing the chair's closing remarks in an extra 
document is a step towards formal outcomes,
- the debate that took place after his first round of closing remarks was 
some kind of "informal negotiation / rough consensus-building" on what 
these outcomes should say.

Another interesting thing I noticed: Nitin Desai was completely shying 
away from saying anything on the "enhanced cooperation", in fact hiding 
behind the new Secretary-General.

Ralf
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