[governance] IGF Review Question 6 start

[Ginger Paque]

Sylvia and Erik, thanks for your comments.

Erik, did you have any specific requests, or just positive feedback for 
Jeremy's addition? If there was a change implied, I did not get it.

Sylvia, I like your points. Would you please post a possible addition to 
the text to reflect your new suggestions about timing and location, 
while others opine? We can leave it to Shiva to re-phrase funding to 
reflect the group's (including Sylvia's) comments on that section.

"6. If the continuation of the Forum is recommended, what improvements 
would you suggest in terms of its working methods, functioning and 
processes?"

Since the value and effectiveness of the IGF are obvious, with 
near-unanimous response that it should continue, we believe that the 
review  should focus on addressing the issue of more inclusive 
participation.   More importantly, the energy not needed in a review of 
the current process could be spent in the search for ways to foster more 
active inclusion of rarely heard and developing country voices through, 
but not limited to, remote participation.

And here we include for example, Indigenous peoples worldwide, people 
with disabilities, rural people and particularly those who are the 
poorest of the poor and often landless or migrants, those concerned with 
promoting peer to peer and open access governance structures built on an 
electronic platform, those looking to alternative modes of Internet 
governance as ways of responding to specific localized opportunities and 
limitations, and those working as practitioners and activists in 
implementing the Internet as a primary resource in support of broad 
based economic and social development.

This requires a willingness to consider the inherent limitations of 
structures and processes that may have seemed natural or inevitable in 
2005, in the wake of a somewhat traditional intergovernmental summit. 
For example, it may not be most inclusive and appropriate for the 
"forum" of the Internet Governance Forum to be conceived as an isolated 
face-to-face meeting held in a far-flung city.  Rather, perhaps the IGF 
should take a leaf out of the book of other Internet governance 
institutions such as the IETF and ICANN, in which most work and 
engagement takes place between meetings in online and regional fora, and 
for which global face-to-face meetings are more of a capstone for the 
work done elsewhere.

Similarly, we must no longer avoid considering the need for new 
structures and processes for the IGF that would allow it to produce more 
tangible outputs through a process of reasoned deliberation.  In the 
past various such innovations have been considered - including speed 
dialogues, moderated debates, and roundtable discussions - but always 
the MAG has demurred from going through with these reforms due to the 
reticence of some stakeholder representatives.  Although it may be 
palatable to all - change never is - the IGC contends that the IGF as a 
whole will suffer in the long term it it does not prove its value to the 
international community by adopting mechanisms for the production of 
non-binding statements on Internet public policy issues.

[Text to be re-written by Shiva]
suggest to IGF to work on ways of getting the IGF better funded to 
extend unconditional travel support (as opposed to travel support from a 
Business Trust which may have implied conditions) at least for 
panelists. To begin with IGF may have to set up a fund to extend 
comfortable assistance to about 200 lead participants (panel speakers, 
team organizers etc.) which may have to cover standard class airfare for 
distances up to 4 hours and business class fare for distances in excess 
of 4 hours, and hotel rooms for 5 days in one of the top two recommended 
hotels with incidentals considering the fact that most of the panel 
speakers invited would be high profile individuals who are required to 
be well treated, This would require the IGF to find between $500,000 - 
$700,000 as unconditional support from Business, Government, well-funded 
NGOs and International Organizations and from the UN. Such a fund would 
enable the IGF to bring in really diverse opinion to the IGF from 
Experts who are not the usual IGF participants. It would also help those 
participants who have a keen interest in contributing to panels but have 
difficulty in traveling to the IGF.




Sylvia Caras wrote:
> I agree with the points in Ginger's post that started this thread, and
> appreciate this beginning.
>
> I'd emphasize live remote participation, and archiving for later access.
>
> I agree that a Secretariat should be adequately funded.
>
> I have concerns about funding beyond that.  The more central are
> scholarships and funding, the more centralization, and I think the
> less level the field.  I do realize one could make the same argument
> of a non-level field about individuals and groups and countries that
> can manage their own funding, but in my experience central funding
> skews a gathering.
>
> I'd rather lean towards 1) hosting meetings with 360 days notice so
> that those of us with airline miles can try for awards and those who
> need to be included in annual travel budgets for their groups can
> apply, 2) hosting meetings at sites where there is airline competition
> and routing choices so that airfares are lower, and 3) hosting
> meetings at locations that are less costly (in the US, there are
> retreat and conference centers that are less urban).  I've found
> Geneva, Tunis, Athens, Rio sites remote, convenient accommodations
> expensive, inexpensive food hard to find.  I've paid for these trips
> myself and I'm not sure how many others self-pay - perhaps this isn't
> representative.
>
> Sylvia
>
>   
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