[governance] preparing for IGF 2008

[William Drake]

Hi Meryem,

Either I or the transcription was a bit garbled, so let me try to clarify
and expand a little.  Essentially, I was trying to suggest that we return to
the original idea of the IGF being a forum for open and participatory
debate--on IG per se, rather than general Internet issues.   Beyond the
obligatory opening ceremony, abandon the main session model of overstuffed
panels on general Internet issues that are painstakingly negotiated by the
AG up to the very last possible moment.  Replace them with structured (e.g.
actually moderated, per Amb. Khan in Tunis) discussions of bounded and
potentially tractable sets of issue concerning IG that are percolated up
from workshops and DCs.

One option might be to have afternoon plenary debates based on inputs from
morning events.  Obviously, it wouldn't be possible to take up inputs from
all of them, particularly if per Rio there are five tracks of meetings in
each time slot starting from 8:30.  But the AG could agree on 3-4 actual IG
issue-areas (taking into account inputs from online and at the open
consultations) and solicit thematic event proposals on them. The limited set
of selected events could run in the morning, with other workshops on general
Internet issues, open forums, and BPFs running in the afternoon parallel to
plenaries (yes that wouldn't be particularly advantageous for the
organizers, but they'd still get to do their thing while allowing the rest
of the program to be more value-adding).  Another option would be to do
alternating full days of thematic/other events and plenary debates, two days
of each.  In either case, the thematic events could put forward 1-3
principal points for debate (recommendations would probably be impossible,
except perhaps from some DCs) and the plenary chair would allocate and
manage debate time on each.  There'd be no presumption that the plenaries
have to result in consensus on any of the points, and the final chair's
report could reflect that on topic x, some people argued this, others argued
that, so going forward xyz needs further consideration including by decision
making bodies, etc.  Of course, if at least rough consensus were to be found
on anything, all the better.

Off the top of my head, the main advantages of something along these lines
would seem to be that it:
1.  Provides incentives to propose and participate in workshops and DCs that
are on key IG topics;
2.  Allows people to see their ideas taken up by the broader assemblage, as
envisioned by the WGIG report etc;
3.  Promotes a sense of engagement and open and robust debates among
different stakeholders/positions in a way that responding to talking heads'
prepared comments does not;
4.  Avoids all the perceptual stuff associated with the composition and
slant of panels (anyone else hear from developing country government reps on
this?), and lets everyone have their say on equal footing;
5.  Would probably lead toward more interesting "outcomes" in terms of the
chair's report, press coverage, messages to relevant bodies, etc.
6.  Comports more fully with the Tunis mandate in various respects;
7.  Frees up the AG to perform more useful institutional capacity building
functions instead of micromanaging panel line-ups;
8.  Other stuff that's not occurring to me at present.

In terms of possible themes, I agree with you that rights could be a good
one, although if we are true to the IG framing it'd be useful to start from
the baseline of assessing the applicability of existing instruments and
recognized rights.  Development would be another theme that presumably would
interest some attendees.  And of course, good governance procedures per the
WSIS principles and APC/COE would appeal to some of us (BTW I did a little
chapter for Wolgang's new book proposing a DC and main session on the WSIS
principles---a number of us here are in that volume, which was only released
in Rio and hasn't been mentioned on the list,
http://medienservice.land-der-ideen.de/MEDIA/65534,0.pdf if you're
interested).

Basta,

BD

On 11/28/07 3:18 PM, "Meryem Marzouki" <marzouki at ras.eu.org> wrote:

> Hi Adam,
> 
> Thanks for asking.. Some first suggestions from someone having not
> attended IGF 2007:
> 
> Le 27 nov. 07 à 11:00, Adam Peake a écrit :
> 
>> Are the themes right? Should any be dropped, should any be added?
>> Radical reform of the whole agenda will not happen, so incremental
>> changes may work. The caucus workshop on the mandate seems to have
>> been well received. We need to be realistic about what can be
>> changed (in my opinion.)
> 
> Unfortunately, there are no transcripts from workshops, but in the
> main sessions transcripts, I see from Bill's report on the IGC
> workshop (http://www.intgovforum.org/Rio_Meeting/IGF2-
> TakingStock-15NOV07.txt) a very useful proposal which seems still
> realistic to implement:
> 
> "[...] an option that some people thought was interesting was, what
> we could do is try to have essentially the dynamic coalitions and the
> workshops and so on able to percolate up from the bottom, from the
> edges of the network, as the chairman said, the -- some of the ideas,
> some of the key points that have come out of their work, bring that
> to the larger community for discussion in a plenary setting. [...]
> And if we could find a way to leverage what they [wokshop
> discussions] have generated and bring it into a wider debate, that
> would be helpful. That doesn't necessarily mean adopting the
> recommendations.  It means simply addressing the issues on a broader
> basis, giving more people a chance to respond to the ideas, and so on.
> [...]"
> 
> Obviously, it's not that easy to pick up 3-4 of these key points. But
> it would be worth give it a try. We can try to set up a first list,
> and then have it refined. Or we can ask all workshop organizers to
> provide ONE proposal/issue as a result from their workshop, that they
> think would fit a plenary session discussion, and this would form the
> initial list.
> 
> The proposal should be more than simply dropping a keyword, or an
> entirely open issue. It should come with a well prepared background,
> stating different views already expressed (as this is supposed to be
> an outcome from workshops, there have been previous discussions
> leading to such background).
> 
> Some ideas have already been proposed: the "Internet bill of rights"
> is one of them.
> I would like to propose another one, which is the result of a
> workshop organized by APC and Co. (see CoE & APC press release at:
> http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=5310569=): a proposal
> for a mechanism to foster participation, access to information and
> transparency in internet governance, based on the Aarhus Convention
> on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and
> Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.
> I'm sure there are many others.
> 
> On workshops, I support the already expressed idea, by Max and
> others, on prioritizing really global IG issues, with a fixed,
> manageable, number of parallel workshops (not simply based on the
> number of received proposals /  number of available slots). But the
> difficulty lies in the definition of what is a global IG issue:) As
> some messages already shown, an agreement on this seems hard to obtain.
> 
> Another suggestion, not related to content: the transcripts are
> really useful, much more than webcast or videos in my opinion.
> They're useful for people not attending and also as archives for
> everyone. I understand funding is limited, but I would favor putting
> the money on the transcripts, including the transcripts of workshop
> sessions, and on translation of these transcripts. This is very
> important for inclusion. Maybe the translation costs can be shared
> among participating countries and international organizations, so
> that many languages can be available.
> 
> Best,
> Meryem
> 
> 


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