[governance] Summary Report of IGF MAG available

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Let me expand on that a bit.  And on the mistakes in this process that led
to what I would describe as having some positive outcomes but several that
are decidedly less than optimal

 

Ignoring “reachable” goals and getting fired up with a zeal to overturn an
existing system and substitute your own – especially where that existing
system is much more multistakeholder than you imagine it is, was not the way
to go about this at all.  

 

What all went wrong?  Plenty.

 

1.       Expecting any incumbent stakeholders, especially governments, to
marginalize or dilute their own stakes was  naïve – the “Reconstituting MAG”
part of this discussion

a.       Even worse were the attempts to alienate and exclude of your
natural allies – the “technical community” that some of you continue to deny
even exists as a stakeholder group.

b.      A certain lack of familiarity with technical issues – for which that
bridge course between policy and tech that Izumi san and I were discussing,
would certainly help as well

 

2.       An even worse mistake was allowing a larger theme of Internet
governance to get compressed into a demand of governance and oversight (even
soft oversight) over ICANN (and I think, implied, over the RIRs) was a huge
blunder

a.       Especially when there are ample opportunities for change, and for
consensus development, within ICANN, and even more so within the RIRs –
which are entirely member driven in terms of operations and governance.  

b.      You’d have been much better served actively participating in ICANN’s
NCUC (as well as the various other ICANN constituencies that other people
here belong to), and in the RIR public comment and consensus processes.

c.       A major problem – at least in my view - is that a substantial part
of this ended up getting based on the IGP paper, and its associated baggage
of petty politics and rivalries spread over the best part of a decade now.
At least, some of the ideas there got weeded out (thanks, Bill Drake, Adam
Peake etc)

 

In short, civil society just barely escaped shooting themselves in the foot
out there at the IGF.   Now, after having pointed this out all along, I will
resist the temptation to simply sit back and say “I told you so”.  Please,
repeat please, participate in the very processes you’re trying to supplant.
And please please remember that “the technical community” is on your side.  

 

Right now, instead of shooting yourself in the foot, you do have a foot in
the door, a foot that you need to supplement with another foot in the place
where the real work will actually take place – the current structure (ICANN,
RIRs, etc).

 

                suresh

 

From: Suresh Ramasubramanian [mailto:suresh at hserus.net] 
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 1:01 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; 'Parminder'; 'Robin Gross'; 'Ian Peter'
Subject: RE: [governance] Summary Report of IGF MAG available

 

.. and did you by any chance expect anything different even if you had
noisily and stridently demanded it?

 

From: Parminder [mailto:parminder at itforchange.net] 
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 12:56 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; 'Robin Gross'; 'Ian Peter'
Subject: RE: [governance] Summary Report of IGF MAG available

 

An unnecessary semantics of what would a bureau mean took away all the
energy though those who called for a self-empowered MAG said a few times
that there is no insistence on the name ‘bureau’ and whatever goes with it

So now you have your MAG which is government loaded because we ourselves
colluded in handing over all powers to the UN SG office
 No point ruing it.


 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20080301/7d0a6408/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance