[governance] Statements and Proposals from IGC [was Future of

[David Souter]

Ginger:

There are, I would expect, many different viewpoints on this list concerning
structural reform of the IGF, some of which are going to be incompatible.  I
would have thought that the IGC would want to capture their diversity and
reflect quite widely on them; certainly if it wants to move towards
consensus rather than a contest between competing visions.  This is
particularly important, I would have thought, given the quasi-recognition
which the IGC has as being representative of civil society within the IGF.

I would be interested to know whether others think it better to conduct a
discussion on this in a working group or on the whole list.  If a working
group is preferred, would it not be better for you as coordinator to ask
list participants to identify themselves if they would be interested in
participating?  Those who are interested could then choose their own working
methods and individual roles.  Either way, all-list or working group, might
it be a good idea to ask all list participants to respond to a series of
basic questions, covering both "ideal" and "pragmatic" contexts?


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-----Original Message-----
From: Ginger Paque [mailto:gpaque at gmail.com] 
Sent: 01 December 2009 14:01
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: [governance] Statements and Proposals from IGC [was Future of

"I will be happy to collaborate on developing proposals for structural 
reform of the IGF, under the leadership of the coordinators."

Hi Jeremy,
If you would like to undertake this project, I suggest you form a 
working group with interested people from the list, and then post your 
suggestions to the list for consideration. I think it might be more 
efficient than undertaking it on the whole list.

Best, Ginger





Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
> On 28/11/2009, at 10:04 PM, Parminder wrote:
>
>> After some very muted response to the 'enhanced cooperation' debate - 
>> which is the WSIS designated space for such public policy development 
>> - CS now once again seems content to see the whole IGF review issue 
>> from a status quo-ist lens - 'somehow block an ITU take over'  (we 
>> have, in very early parts of our statement, spoken strongly against 
>> making any such move). In such a reactive stance, any openness 
>> towards seeking genuine structural reform in the IGF for the purpose 
>> of achieving the real purpose of the IGF seems largely absent.
>
> Yes, I was disappointed with the blandness of the IGC statement which 
> was basically status-quoism: we support the continuation of the IGF, 
> we support multi-stakeholderism (and it should be deepened and 
> enlarged, but no suggestion of what this means), we underline the 
> importance of human rights, and we support the continuation of the 
> Secretariat in its present form.  Well, its present form is really 
> pretty lousy in a lot of ways, so I disagree with that - and 
> otherwise, the statement might as well have said that we support apple 
> pie and kittens.
>
>> We also think that MAG has to take on more substantial role/ power, 
>> of  distilling from the work of committed issue-based working groups 
>> as well proceedings of the wider IGF, and come out with non-binging 
>> advices and recommendations, or at least meaningful compilation of 
>> plausible views and options on important IG issues. The WGIG model 
>> ,which for some unknown reasons (the hegemony of dominant discourse, 
>> of course) has become untouchable, gives us good leads of what can be 
>> achieved if a mutlistakeholder group is given a definite task, where 
>> some kind of outcomes just have to be produced in a time bound 
>> manner. Why should that model not be used for important IG issues 
>> within the IGF framework?
>
> This should have been in the IGC statement.
>
>> Anyway, the burden of the argument here is that a model of structural 
>> changes to the IGF is what is most required urgently. Much of the 
>> negotiations in the next few months will take place around that. Does 
>> the IGC want to hammer out a concrete proposal on this, and its 
>> members try to advocate it with other actors? If we plan to do it, we 
>> need to do it in the next month or so. I propose that the 
>> co-coordinators take up this responsibility in the coming weeks.
>
> I agree.  I have, of course, written a great deal on this (the book 
> that came out of my PhD thesis is now available under Creative Commons 
> at http://press.terminus.net.au/igfbook, and for a more digestible 
> precis see last year's paper that the IGP put out at 
> http://www.internetgovernance.org/pdf/MalcolmIGFReview.pdf).  I will 
> be happy to collaborate on developing proposals for structural reform 
> of the IGF, under the leadership of the coordinators.
>
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