[governance] Speakers for IGF - ideas?

[Dan Krimm]

Kieren,

One rather gaping hole in the online public comment process is the lack of
effective promotion of open-comment periods.  There is little visibility of
this platform among the general public (and I would argue that the general
public has deep and systematic interests in these policy-making processes).

In the recent new gTLD policy comment period that closed on 30 August, the
Keep The Core Neutral campaign generated roughly 50 comments out of a total
of roughly 80 (note: we had another 13 that never showed up because the
confirmation messages from the ICANN system never got through to them --
quite possibly caught by spam filters -- that could mean that on the order
of 20% of public comments are typically not getting through anyway, which
is demoralizing to a member of the public who genuinely wishes to
participate), and that is in comparison to an average total volume of
comments much closer to 10 or so per topic.  It took pro-active work of a
fairly sustained nature to generate even that level of attention for new
gTLD policy.

If ICANN expects the public comments to be taken seriously as a channel for
"citizen voice" in the policy process, it must do a far better job in
outreach and public visibility.  Real human beings need to pick up the
phone and/or email and pro actively contact tech policy communities
(including both tech communities and policy communities both public and
private, and one-to-many media serving those communities as well as
interactive fora such as this list).  This needs to be done for each topic
in its own right.

Who are you targeting for your newsletter?  Who else are you partnering
with to build visibility?

And, can you clarify exactly what is done with public comments and exactly
how they can affect policy-making at ICANN?  How much of an impact can
these comments make, and what is structurally established in terms of
formal requirements to take into account such comments?

Where the rubber hits the road is: (a) who knows to participate, and (b)
what effect will participation have?  If these points cannot be clarified,
then the value of public participation must be questioned as a default.  It
would be a shame if such a system were set up mainly to provide a
smoke-screen to point to for political spin purposes rather than to create
a meaningful channel for public participation in policy-making.

Part of your outreach must also be to prime the public beforehand to
understand the issues as they are being developed, well before they are
made available to public comments toward the end.  And, why not
pro-actively seek to involve members of the public earlier in the process?
The effort it takes to track an issue through the arcane policy process at
ICANN is considerable, and even those who have strong informed opinions may
not have the time to wade through the email list archives, etc.  You need
to create a more effective portal to those public materials (e-lists,
teleconference recordings and transcripts, council votes, etc.) organized
by topic, on the ICANN web site, and it would also help to summarize those
materials to help provide quick overview to those without the time to spend
hours and hours codifying those public materials.

Please understand, I know this is a huge task and you are only one person
right now.  But I urge you to keep your eyes on the prize: the *proper* way
to do this requires tremendous human resources, and I don't know that ICANN
has allocated sufficient resources to do more than a surface attempt to
address meaningful public participation in its policy processes.

You need a team of a dozen (or several dozen) to put in place what really
deserves to be there if ICANN wants to be *serious* about public
participation.  Forgive me if I doubt that ICANN really has prioritized
this meaningfully.  You can't possibly do this job effectively by yourself
-- no one on the planet is that super-human.

Dan

PS -- Just to underscore this in a simple way: Putting up a web site does
not constitute promotion.

This is a mistake many businesses made in the past, and ICANN would do well
to learn from their mistakes.  The few hits that catch widespread public
attention are the minute exception to the rule, and frankly, ICANN is not
such a hit at present.  ICANN is entirely under the radar in the realm of
general public awareness, and if you do not contend with this lack of
recognition systematically you are not creating a meaningful channel for
public voice in ICANN policy-making, plain and simple.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make
a sound?  If ICANN opens a web site in the vastness of the Internet and no
one comes to view it, does it create a communication channel?  In both
cases, the answer is no.



At 11:21 AM +0100 9/6/07, Kieren McCarthy wrote:
>In relation to this comment from, I think, McTim:
>
>> In short, there is nothing "threatening the Internet Community",
>> that's rhetoric coming from folk unwilling to join the process that
>> they complain is "captured".  If CS feels strongly enough about this,
>> there is only one way to reverse this "capture", and that is to join
>> the Internet community fora.
>
>
>We're talking about ICANN of course.
>
>Can I just say from my position as general manager of public participation
>that ICANN is indeed open and I am doing all I can to make it so that
>participation by all is easy, simple and, most importantly, effective.
>
>I am beefing up the public comment process
>(http://www.icann.org/public_comment/); participation in meetings is
>possible in person or online; what ICANN is doing and will be doing is
>compiled and released in the form of newsletters (there will be a big, long
>and slightly boring newsletter out hopefully this week that covers each
>policy point in term, with full links).
>
>ICANN is increasingly using online surveys to improve and simplify feedback.
>I will run one very soon that asks the community what info they want and how
>they want it.
>
>There is an ICANN participation site (http://public.icann.org/) where you
>are actively encouraged to put up your thoughts - it is an open and highly
>interactive community site specially designed to raise and thrash out
>issues. Responses on the public participation site and to the ICANN blog are
>read and I always do my best to get answers to people that raise useful
>questions.
>
>The system is wide open for participation. And this is the most important
>part -- the decisions are made by those that turn up. If people do
>participate and then claim they are being ignored or dealt with unfairly, I
>will take that very seriously and sort the situation out. But I've not see
>even a whisper of that.
>
>At this very moment, three of the biggest areas of complaint have public
>comment periods open on them: domain tasting; changes to the RAA to sort out
>the domain registering system; and reform of the Nominating Committee.
>
>These are the mechanisms by which you can have real and lasting change on
>the way this part of the Internet works.
>
>Time spent arguing for a fantasy new body to be developed to deal with these
>issues, in the mistaken belief that somehow a new solution will work any
>better, is to my mind a waste of time and energy.
>
>Why not consider spending just a little of that time interacting in a
>meaningful way with the system that actually will make these decisions, with
>or without you?
>
>
>
>Incidentally, do we know if the MAG agreed to make minutes of its meetings
>public?
>
>
>
>
>Kieren
>
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