[governance] IGF Review process - Question 3 (impact)

Wed Jul 8 13:02:08 EDT 2009

After a day? I am right now going through a program with the Diplo
foundation where my course instructor has assigned me two essay questions to
be answered by noon tomorrow ! If I don't do that I will be ranked useless.

Sivasubramanian Muthusamy

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 10:27 PM, Ginger Paque <gpaque at gmail.com> wrote:

> Shiva, great that you are addressing this question. Could you please
> synthesize your thoughts into a proposed text to answer Question 3? Thanks.
>
> Sivasubramanian Muthusamy wrote:
>
>> 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
>> LinkedIn: http://is.gd/x8U6
>> Twitter: http://is.gd/x8Vz
>>      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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>>
>>
>
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