[governance] IGF Review Question 6 start

[Ginger Paque]

Thanks, Silvia!

I have added Silvia's proposed text below. Please comment, add, 
suggest... opine, on this or any other question, as soon as possible.

Best, Ginger

"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.

Selection of the host country for any IGF meeting is a complex
decision. The IGC considers that the location for meetings should more
clearly support participation by individuals and organizations with
few resources. Accessible (perhaps even not urban) but less popular
sites should be chosen, where airline competition and routing options
make lower costs possible. City/country cost of hotels and food should
be taken into consideration as well. Final meeting dates and sites
should be announced 360 days in advance to allow for budgeting and
advanced planning, and to ensure that transport, food and lodging is
competitive and convenient.

[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:
> With considerable help from Ginger, I'd like to have added:
>
>
> Selection of the host country for any IGF meeting is a complex
> decision. The IGC considers that the location for meetings should more
> clearly support participation by individuals and organizations with
> few resources. Accessible (perhaps even not urban) but less popular
> sites should be chosen, where airline competition and routing options
> make lower costs possible. City/country cost of hotels and food should
> be taken into consideration as well. Final meeting dates and sites
> should be announced 360 days in advance to allow for budgeting and
> advanced planning, and to ensure that transport, food and lodging is
> competitive and convenient.
>
>
> Sylvia
>
>   
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