[governance] Workshop Report: Toward a Development Agenda for Internet Governance

[William Drake]

Perhaps of interest to someone not on the GigaNet list...


------ Forwarded Message
From: William Drake <drake at hei.unige.ch>
Reply-To: William Drake <drake at hei.unige.ch>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 15:06:54 +0100
To: <GIGANET-MEMBERS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
Conversation: Workshop Report: Toward a Development Agenda for Internet
Governance
Subject: [GIGANET-MEMBERS] Workshop Report: Toward a Development Agenda for
Internet Governance

Hello,

Last week I decided to take advantage of the fact that people were in Geneva
for the IGF consultation and organized a little workshop on development
issues in Internet governance.  I wrote up a little summary for the web, but
as we¹re presently without a webmaster it might not get posted for awhile,
so I¹m passing along the text in case anyone¹s interested.  I¹d like to
propose this as a possible focus for the Rio symposium.  There¹s not been a
lot of systematic academic research on the matter, and at least some
developing country government people (at the workshop and elsewhere) have
expressed a desire for scholars to step up and provide some food for thought
and debate.  Given that 1) it¹s rare for earthlings to actually express an
interest in academic scribblings; 2) development aspects really haven¹t been
analyzed seriously in the IG debates to date; and 3) we¹ll be in Rio, which
presumably increases the chances of involving some scholars from the global
South, I would think this is a good thematic for the symposium.  If we got a
solid set of papers, there could even be a noteworthy book here.

Any thoughts on this possibility?

Best,

Bill

-----

Workshop Report


Toward a Development Agenda for Internet Governance

Wednesday 14 February 2007, 14:00-17:00


Project on the Information Revolution and Global Governance
Program for the Study of International Organization(s)
Graduate Institute for International Studies
Geneva
http://hei.unige.ch/psio/researchprojects/projectDrake.html


Background & Objectives

    In recent years, developing countries, civil society organizations, and
concerned academics have sought to promote broad development agendas in the
international institutions and policy debates dealing with such issues as
trade, debt, and intellectual property.   But in the field of Internet
governance, no parallel initiative has taken shape.  Development concerns
were raised during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
process, but they were not systematically explored as elements of a coherent
development agenda.  Moreover, in the post-WSIS environment, discussions of
development have tended to focus on capacity building, rather than on the
substantive policies and institutional measures that may be needed.

    Accordingly, the purpose of this workshop was to begin a
multistakeholder dialogue on the nature of a possible development agenda in
Internet governance.  Leaving aside the challenges of capacity building, the
workshop explored such questions as: 1) Which of the many issues involved in
Internet governance should be given priority in the near-term?  2) Would any
substantive changes in the governance of these issues be both desirable and
realistically achievable in the current environment?  3) Could new
approaches to these individual issues collectively constitute a holistic and
coherent development agenda, and what would be the benefits and risks of
pursuing such a framework?  4) How can these concerns best be taken forward
within the distributed array of governmental, intergovernmental, private
sector, and multistakeholder governance mechanisms? The workshop considered
these and related questions both generally and with respect to the two main
initiatives launched by WSIS---enhanced cooperation, and the Internet
Governance Forum (IGF).


Program
 
14:00-15:00    Enhanced Cooperation and Internet Core Resources

15:00-16:00    Other Priority Issues from a Development Perspective

16:00-17:00    Advancing Development Concerns in the IGF and Other Forums
 
17:00-18:00    Reception at the Villa Barton


Summary of the Discussion

    The workshop began with a discussion of the notion of a Development
Agenda.  There was broad agreement that development should be viewed in a
holistic manner and as a transversal issue of relevance to all Internet
governance mechanisms.  One participant suggested that the Tunis Agenda for
the Information Society embodies this view and provides a foundation for a
Development Agenda.  This is particularly true of Paragraph 65, which states
that, ³We underline the need to maximise the participation of developing
countries in decisions regarding Internet Governance, which should reflect
their interests, as well as in development and capacity-building.  Clearly
though, much more analysis and dialogue would be needed to determine
precisely what such broad normative prescriptions might actually mean in
practice within any given governance mechanism.

    It was suggested that an overarching principle of a Development Agenda
should be something akin to developing countries¹ right to ³special and
differential² (S&D) treatment under international trade rules.  In the World
Trade Organization, S&D treatment includes: giving longer time periods for
implementing agreements and commitments; measures designed to enhance
developing countries¹ trading opportunities; requirements that all member
countries safeguard developing country interests; technical support to help
developing countries build the skills and institutional infrastructure for
negotiations, dispute management, and the implementation of standards; and
special provisions to assist the Least Developed Countries.  Participants
expressed interest in the concept, and one noted by way of example that the
regional registries do have a special program for developing countries with
respect to the distribution of IP addresses.  But more generally, it was as
yet unclear whether a similar principle could be relevant across the board
in the Internet governance context.  In a number of cases, the functional
issues and collective action problems involved are qualitatively different
in ways that might render inapplicable at least some elements of S&D
treatment as it understood in the trade environment.

    The group pointed to several obstacles that would need to be overcome in
order to elaborate a meaningful framework.  One developing country
participant noted that there is very little scholarly literature on the
developmental implications of Internet governance, and argued that concerned
governments and stakeholders would benefit by having systematic research at
their disposal when considering the issues. Another person averred that
there is a ³paradigm gap² between experts in development policy and experts
in global information and communication technology (ICT) policy, including
those working on Internet governance issues.  As the differing analytical
and programmatic orientations of these two communities could impede efforts
to mainstream development concerns into Internet governance processes, he
suggested that it would be useful to organize meetings and other dialogues
between them.  At the same time, several participants added that care should
be taken to avoid excessively blurring the boundary line between general ICT
for development (or ICT4D) issues and the narrower realm of Internet
governance for development issues. As has already been demonstrated in the
post-WSIS context, it can be difficult to keep focused on governance per se,
and addressing relatively distinct ICT4D matters that are being worked on
elsewhere could dilute the discussion and impede progress.

    Not surprisingly, there was a rather lively discussion about the
governance of core resources.  One thread of the conversation pertained to
another boundary question, namely the criteria for selecting issues for
inclusion in a possible Development Agenda.  A participant argued that
anything developing countries deem to be a development issue is by
definition a development issue.  Others saw a distinction between political
issues, such as some countries¹ calls for intergovernmental ³oversight,² and
cases in which governance mechanisms could be clearly demonstrated to
functionally constrain development opportunities.  A number of participants
maintained that there is no concrete evidence that the existing frameworks
for root servers, names and numbers, and protocols actually limit
development, and no reason to believe that institutional changes would
promote development more effectively.  In response, it was suggested that
the experiences of Cuba and Iran indicated that the root server system was
open to abuse, which would imply that political and functional issues cannot
always be easily delineated.  But another developing country participant
took a different view, stating bluntly that most of the problems are at the
national level, where the requisite skills, flexible and multistakeholder
policy processes, and mobilized business and civil society constituents are
often in short supply.  Given these capacity problems, developing country
governments have taken the easier route of issuing political demands for
intergovernmental control in order to obtain an equal seat at the table for
possible future use.

    In a similar vein, a participant argued that the existing arrangements
inhibit participation by governments and other stakeholders from developing
countries. A second agreed, stating that the transfer of skills has been
limited by the extant structures.  Others felt the arrangements were in fact
quite open to developing countries¹ participation, but acknowledged that
more could be done to facilitate their productive engagement.  In this
context, there also was discussion of the cultural barriers to participation
in some of the relevant forums.  For example, one person noted that in the
Internet Engineering Task Force, the vigorous exchange of ideas in the
course of problem solving means a participant ³has to be prepared to be told
you¹re stupid;² such a prospect might not be enticing to people from some
cultural and professional backgrounds.  This would seem to be a generalized
problem; the style and mechanics of interaction within other technical and
operational organizations as well may be off-putting to people who are
accustomed to the more formal and procedural environment of
intergovernmental organizations.  In sum, all participants were in agreement
that there is a pressing need to enhance the participation of developing
country stakeholders, whether through capacity building or the reduction of
any informal barriers.

    Per usual, the extended discussion of core resources left less time for
focused consideration of other governance issues, such as those concerning
infrastructure and the Internet¹s use for information, communication, and
commerce.  This was ironic, since it would seem easier to reach agreement on
a Development Agenda encompassing issues.  That is, in cases like
international interconnection, security, intellectual property, networked
trade and global electronic commerce, consumer protection, spam, cultural
diversity, and privacy, it may be easier to demonstrate the existing
governance arrangements, or at times the weakness or lack thereof, inhibit
development opportunities in identifiable ways.  Moreover, in some of these
cases, such as intellectual property and networked trade, the S&D principle
as defined in the WTO could be directly applicable.  Participants variously
took note of these and related issues and indicated that further
consideration of them would be merited.

    There were two concrete suggestions on how the notion of a Development
Agenda could be taken forward.  One participant suggested that to avoid
reinventing the wheel, there could be a stock taking exercise to cull
insights from prior analyses and dialogues on the developmental aspects of
Internet governance.  Another idea was to explore the issues in more depth
at the next annual symposium of the Global Internet Governance Academic
Network (GigaNet), to be held on the eve of the November 2007 Internet
Governance Forum (IGF) meeting in Rio de Janeiro. A discussion based on a
good set of papers by academics from around the world would at least
partially redress the abovementioned shortage of usable scholarly research,
and could help to facilitate multistakeholder dialogue in the IGF and
elsewhere on the potential utility and substance of a Development Agenda.
The members of the GigaNet Start Up Group in attendance agreed to explore
this possibility with their colleagues in the period to follow.


Participants 

Amr Aljowaily
First Secretary, Permanent Mission of Egypt; Geneva

Qusai Al-Shatti
Deputy Chairman, Kuwait Information Technology Society; Kuwait

Karen Banks    
Network Development Manager, Association for Progressive Communications;
United Kingdom

Ralf Bendrath    
Researcher, University of Bremen; Germany

Philippe Dam 
Program Officer, Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the
United Nations; Geneva

Avri Doria    
Research Consultant, Luleå University of Technology; Sweden

William J. Drake
Director, Project on the Information Revolution and Global Governance,
PSIO/HEI; Geneva

Geneviève Féraud
Head, ICT and E-Business Branch, UN Conference on Trade and Development;
Geneva

Ingrid Martinez Galindo
First Secretary, Permanent Mission of Guatemala; Geneva

Charles Geiger 
Special Adviser, UN Conference on Trade and Development and former Executive
Director, 
World Summit on the Information Society; Geneva

Gonzalo Jordan
Secretary of Embassy, Permanent Mission of Argentina; Geneva

Jean W. Kimani
First Counsellor (political), Permanent Mission of Kenya; Geneva

Wolfgang Kleinwächter
Professor of International Communications, University of Aarhus; Denmark

Markus Kummer 
Executive Coordinator, Internet Governance Forum; Geneva

Christopher Marsden
Senior Analyst, Information Society, RAND Europe; United Kingdom

Chengetai Masango
Consultant, Internet Governance Forum; Geneva

Boyke Nurdin
Second Secretary, Permanent Mission of Indonesia; Geneva

Adam Peake 
Senior Research Fellow, GLOCOM; Japan

Alejandro Pisanty
Professor of Chemistry and Director of Computing Academic Services, National
University of Mexico, and former Vice-Chairman of the Board, ICANN; Mexico

David Souter    
Managing Director, ict Development Associates, and former CEO, Commonwealth
Telecommunications Organization; United Kingdom

Riaz K. Tayob
Representative, Third World Network; Geneva

Vicente Paolo Yu
Coordinator, Global Governance for Development Programme, South Centre;
Geneva

*******************************************************
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://www.cpsr.org/Members/wdrake
*******************************************************



------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20070223/f7956d18/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: message-footer.txt
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20070223/f7956d18/attachment.txt>