[governance] Online survey on reform of the IGF

Jeremy Malcolm jeremy at ciroap.org
Thu Dec 31 07:32:32 EST 2009


Thanks for the suggestions and comments that you and others have made.  
By way of brief response, the survey had been posted to the list in  
plain text form several weeks earlier (prior to my becoming co- 
coordinator), and no comments had been received.

But in any case I was in the difficult position of not having time to  
open it again for comments because I am travelling until 13 January  
and have very intermittent and expensive Internet access (I am sending  
this from my iPhone).

I wanted to leave our options open to release something by 15 January,  
the deadline mentioned by Ginger, which meant opening the survey  
immediately and closing it just before my return. Even so, the  
deadline may be too close - we'll see.

So I'm unable to modify the survey now, especially since we have a  
number of useful responses already. But I do encourage you to make  
full use of the "other" option, to ignore the explanations of the  
questions if they offend you, and to post any thoughts that don't fit  
into the survey to the list.

PS. You are correct that questions phrased like "Is such-and-such the  
case?" should be interpreted as "Should it be the case?" - we are  
imagining an ideal IGF.

On 27-Dec-2009, at 1:27 PM, Imran Ahmed Shah <ias_pk at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Dear Jeremy Malcolm,
> It is my first time to communicate with you.
> First of all please accept my heartily congratulation on becoming  
> coordinator.
> I am looking and reading different discussion regarding the IGF  
> reformation of IGF and objections on the On-line Survey.
> Some of them may be are good suggestions with in the discussion and  
> criticism.
>
> But what I understand that your survey is going to be criticised to  
> make it disputed and to declare that it has loose its importance at  
> the end of the day. I suggest you to remain as strong as you are  
> being reflected by replying following answers.
> You may declare to the members list that once we obtain the survey  
> results, we will continue discussion on it to finalise the opinions,  
> and if found necessary may conduct next step of the survey.
>
> Do not change the moto and theme of your initiative which you have  
> taken. {You can just make some minor corrections into the questions  
> for example if one member has objection on ....."How is the MAG  
> selected", instead of changing the basic theme of your question as  
> per her advise, just make the necessary changes like this "How  
> should the MAG selected".  (only replace "is" with "should").}
>
> By the may I ask one question, what the MAG is looking for? or Why  
> MAG is chasing to reform the IGF? This job of the reformation of the  
> IGF should be initiate through the founders of the IGF, who was the  
> Secretary-General of the United Nations. Advisory Group which is  
> known ad MAG now. has to follow the given the mandate of United  
> Nations instead of starting reformation of the IGF.
> Please guide me.
>
> Thanking you and Best Regards
>
> Imran Ahmed Shah
> [ICANNians since Seoul 36th ICANN Meeting]
> [+92-300-4130617]
> From: Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org>
> To: "governance at lists.cpsr.org" <governance at lists.cpsr.org>; Fouad  
> Bajwa <fouadbajwa at gmail.com>
> Cc: "governance at lists.cpsr.org" <governance at lists.cpsr.org>; Ginger  
> Paque <gpaque at gmail.com>
> Sent: Fri, 25 December, 2009 15:57:55
> Subject: Re: [governance] Online survey on reform of the IGF
>
> 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. :-)
> ____________________________________________________________
> 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
> ____________________________________________________________
> 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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20091231/eb5db8ab/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


More information about the Governance mailing list