[governance] IGF Review process - comments: IGC statement?

Wed Jul 8 11:48:48 EDT 2009

Hello,

3. What has the impact of the IGF been in direct or indirect terms? Has it
impacted you or your stakeholder group/institution/government? Has it acted
as a catalyst for change?

IGF, irrespective of its direct impact on the policy making process of
Governments, is changing the way Government's perceive Civil Socity
involvement in the policy making process. During the preparatory pahase as
also during the last three IGFs, Governments had an opportunityh to
experience the mutli-stakholder participatory process of the IGF and are
becoming comfortable with the process of consultation. This 'roundtable'
equality is largely an IGF achievement.

As for the direct impact, it has been minimal. The policy making process has
not sufficiently paid attention to the deliberations at the IGF. A point
that I raised at the IGF session at the ICANN meeting may be relevant:

(from the meeting transcript)

IGF does not have powers to decide, not have the powers to recommend.
But at the same time, 2,000 or 3,000 brilliant minds to get together.
These are people committed to Internet and they spend three days
deliberating on various issues and there could be a way by which
session reports could be generated and positions of each stakeholder
could be classified and identified, grouped.  And that could become
some kind of a reference paper.  It could become a reference document
for governments which could -- when it makes decisions, it could refer
to that paper, "This is the idea of paper on privacy.  This is the idea
of paper on security and what we want to do is in conflict with this or
in agreement with this."  And that could guide them and may not comfort
them, but it could be a very good reference paper that could give an
idea of what is happening in the real world.

Right now the decisions are taken by government, by businesses in
complete isolation of what is happening at the IGF and does not reflect
the mood of the IGF.

So this is something that can be proactively done by the IGF
Secretariat to prepare summaries, prepare position papers and report on
the mood of IGF.  Thank you.

 Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
 Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
Blog: http://isocmadras.blogspot.com

facebook: http://is.gd/x8Sh
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On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 7:32 PM, Jeanette Hofmann <jeanette at wzb.eu> wrote:

> Hi, I support Bill's approach but would prefer if we didn't start with all
> questions at the same time. Perhaps an amended version of Ginger's text
> could be used for question 6?
> jeanette
>
> William Drake wrote:
>
>
>> Hi Ginger
>> On Jul 8, 2009, at 3:20 PM, Ginger Paque wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Below is a combined proposal, mostly of Michael Gurstein's and Garth
>>> Graham's previous suggestions:
>>>
>>>
>> My recollection is that about a half dozen of us expressed significant
>> concerns about that text and you then withdrew it, so it's not obvious why
>> we'd put it back on the table as a starting point.  In any event it was not
>> formulated as responses to the secretariat's specific questions, so one
>> could not readily set it next to the questionnaire responses by other
>> stakeholders for comparison and contrast and development of the synthesis
>> paper.  Why not just do it the way they're asking us to?
>>
>> Since we don't have a wiki to compile structured responses, an ugly but
>> workable option would be to start a separate thread for each of the
>> questions below, let any caucus members who are so inclined respond to
>> taste, then aggregate the responses by Sunday and then we can try to boil
>> them down into a few coherent paragraphs per Monday-Wednesday?
>>
>> There might be more elegant procedures imaginable, but this might
>> stimulate some low barrier to entry engagement; I doubt anyone's got the
>> time to draft a complete text covering all points, but people might pick and
>> choose the bits of particular interest to them.  And the result would be
>> more reflective of the various views here and more responsive to the points
>> the secretariat needs to address.
>>
>> Just a thought,
>>
>> Bill
>>
>> PS: you are using a very old email address for me that is no longer
>> forwarded.
>>
>>
>>> 1. To what extent has the IGF addressed the mandate set out for it in the
>>> Tunis Agenda?
>>> 2. To what extent has the IGF embodied the WSIS principles?
>>> 3. What has the impact of the IGF been in direct or indirect terms? Has
>>> it impacted you or your stakeholder group/institution/government? Has it
>>> acted as a catalyst for change?
>>> 4. How effective are IGF processes in addressing the tasks set out for
>>> it, including the functioning of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG),
>>> Secretariat and open consultations?
>>> 5. Is it desirable to continue the IGF past its initial five-year
>>> mandate, and why/why not?
>>> 6. If the continuation of the Forum is recommended, what improvements
>>> would you suggest in terms of its working methods, functioning and
>>> processes?
>>> 7. Do you have any other comments?
>>>
>>>
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