[governance] Online survey on reform of the IGF

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 24-Dec-2009, at 10:46 PM, Fouad Bajwa <fouadbajwa at gmail.com> wrote:

> 1. My initial suggestion is that the answers should not be restricted
> to a drop down list, there should be a text box to allow the surveyed
> to fill in their thoughts and reflections instead of being bound to a
> specific set of answers, freedom to express thoughts shouldn't be
> restricted to pre-defined answers.

If you choose "other" then a text box to do that will magically  
appear. If your thoughts are too extensive for the text box, please  
post them to the list.

> 2. Next, there are absolute un-referenced statements following a ?
> sign at the bottom of the answers for each question. I can't seem to
> find direct sources of these statements and their authenticity in
> general apart from the IGF structure.

They are just my opinions. You can feel free to ignore them. They are  
just intended to clarify the questions but they are not part of the  
questions.

> 3. Finally, some statements need to be reviewed again. The issue of
> MAG is one of the major issues but a whole statement isn't
> representative of all the issues that IGC needs to raise with mutual
> consensus to the IGF secretariat.

Please raise any additional issues here. The survey is just a tool,  
but not meant to replace list discussion.

> Also regarding the MAG selection process, my understanding and the
> process that I witnessed was that the Secretariat issues a call for
> renewal of the MAG in accordance with the IGF mandate to all three
> member bodies of the multistakeholders. The multistakeholder groups
> than run a nomination process through their own determined procedures
> after which the names are forwarded to the secretariat that then
> forwards those names to the UN headquarters for the Secretary General
> to select

However, arguably this works better for governments - whose every  
nomination is accepted - and less well for civil society. If you want  
to be considered at all, you have to go through the IGC or ISOC, and  
even then not all such nominations are accepted. What criteria are  
used to decide which are accepted and which rejected? We don't know.

So, in answering the survey, you might decide that a more open,  
transparent and democratic process would be a good idea. Or you might  
decide the current "black box" process works just fine.

> Also the MAG from my perspective should represent its nominating
> multistakeholder group and deliberate and intervene with the interests
> of that multistakeholder group.

I agree. That's not how it is at present. The option "represent their  
stakeholder group" in the survey covers this (or if you think it  
doesn't, choose "Other" and write your preferred wording).

> These are just initial thoughts and I also suggest that we should
> first float the idea to the IGC list and with consensus build a survey
> to reflect our thoughts for devising statements.  In the last few
> weeks we had several threads on the issue of IGF improvement and IGC
> statements and those should be brought forward as they had a detailed
> amount of input from IGC members and my initial understanding was that
> we would devise the IGC statement based on those discussions to which
> you had also extensively contributed.

It will be based on discussions on this list too; the raw output from  
the survey will not be sent outside the IGC. However, it is a more  
efficient way to get a broad outline of the group's views. Until now,  
nobody had responded to the 20 questions I had posted to the list.  
Now, we are well on the way to getting a good number of responses. :-)
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