[governance] Reconstituting MAG

[Guru]

Friends,

The debate on the inclusion of the fourth group of the 'technical community'
is quite interesting. I thought Parminder made a simple and straight
proposition, excerpt below:

"On the issue of representation of technical community it is important to
appreciate that the above three way division is as per political
representation based on interests of, or representation of different
interests through, these three sectors. Technical community's presence on
the other hand is based on the requirement of necessary expertise, and
therefore is of a different nature .... The expertise provided by this
community should be appropriately divided between all the three sectors
...". 

This proposition is based on a strong principle - viz political
representation determines membership of a public structure as MAG. The
'technical community' just does not fit in, on this ground. The refutations
of this principle have not come from any ground of principle, but simply of
expediency or strategy ... 'this idea wont work' or 'it was tried and it
failed' ... 

As I understand, the role of CS in every arena, has been to push the
envelope on political possibilities, in this specific case it would be on
"promoting global public interest objectives in IG policy making." As
Wolfgang suggests from time to time, innovations are the need of the hour,
since what we face is new and changing. Simply sticking to what we believe
'will work' and refusing to raise issues or agendas that bring in newer
progressive possibilities is not playing the CS role. And especially in the
IG space, where CS has a much larger role than it gets in other global
spaces as WTO/WIPO etc. CS actors will appreciate that even if proposals
fail / are ahead of their time, the ideas have will some impact and make a
difference over time. This is perhaps better than just keeping mum over
issues we know are critical, just because some of us feel they will not
succeed. 

Why the issue is critical, is simply the political question of 'who benefits
from status quo and who would benefit from the proposed change' .... This
aspect has been hinted in the postings of Ian, Meryem, Milton, Drake  ....
So I won't delve into it.

So I see no reason to accept 'the idea will fail' as the reason why CS
should not propose removing the amorphous 'technical community' group and
replacing it with a more interest defined 'current IG dispensation' group.
This way we are acknowledging the important role of ICANN, ITU et al in the
current IG and giving it a front door entry into the MAG. 

Regards,
Guru 

Ps - if the rationale on including the 'technical community' is expertise,
here is my two cents on 'expertise':

I agree that technical expertise need not be the monopoly of any 'technical
community' group and can be brought to the table by any or all of the three
groups. 

Secondly, we are already seeing and will see more of the fact that political
/ policy and socio-economic expertises will become more and more important
than 'technical expertise' in IG, as the Internet itself grows into an
infrastructure affecting these aspects of our lives, from being an
altruistic pursuit of some great academic and technical folks. The
innovations we need are increasingly more in the policy and political spaces
than in the wires and numbers spaces (relatively) which will also define the
nature of the challenges that MAG members will face in executing their
roles.

-----Original Message-----
From: McTim [mailto:dogwallah at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 6:10 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Parminder
Subject: Re: [governance] Reconstituting MAG

Parminder,

I'm not going to refute each of your points, as I can't really understand
them (I understand each word separately, but the way you've strung them
together makes them indecipherable to me) NB this is not a personal insult,
it's just that our perspectives are so opposed that we are talking past each
other.

so to save further agony to the other 300+ people on the list, I will just
state:

1)  I doubt you will get consensus on this list for removing the 4th
stakeholder group from the MAG (or reducing it).

2) If the IGC does recommend to the MAG to remove the 4th stakeholder group,
they will ignore this recommendation (and laugh at us).

3) If we do #2, we risk alienating the "Internet technical community"
(this is not my term BTW). If they have so much "power", why won't they just
"take their ball and go home".  They don't need the IGF/IGC, but the IGF
certainly needs them.

If we want enhanced cooperation, we as CS IGC have to start approaching the
level of cooperation shown by the Inet community.

/McTim
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