[governance] Re: IGC statement/questionnaire Q3

[Sivasubramanian Muthusamy]

Hello All,

The following is a more complete response to Q3:

On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 1:58 AM, Sivasubramanian Muthusamy <
isolatedn at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello All,



The Internet Governance Caucus notices an improvement in the level of
> discussion between stakeholders since the WSIS process. It is observed that
> there is greater collaboration during the IGF phase than during WSIS, and it
> could also be said that far less confrontation. It could also be said that
> as IGF progresses into its fourth year there is more and more improvement on
> these aspects. ( For instance, In the 2009 workshop proposals, due to the
> request by the IGF Secretariat to merge proposals, there are panels that
> include business, government, academia and civil society working together. -
> should we say this ?)



> The impact of the IGF is seen on a deeper level. If the question is posed
> differently to examine the impact of the IGF on participants, it can be seen
> that the participants as individuals or organizations have gained from the
> flow of knowledge at the IGF which in turn gets shared and influences the
> respective stakeholder groups. To different questions such as "Has your
> involvement in IGF increased your knowledge of internet governance? , "Has
> your involvement led to meaningful contact with other peers that has
> assisted in your work? and "Has your participation in the  multi-stakeholder
> process changed or affected your perspective on any particular governance
> issues?" etc.may elicit a positive response.



> Also, the Internet Governance Forum, irrespective of its direct impact on
> the policy making process of Governments, is changing the way Government's
> perceive Civil Society participation in the policy making process. During
> the preparatory phase as also during the last three IGFs, Governments had an
> opportunity 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. (The IGF process
> promotes faith in the functionality of the particiaptory governance process
> and could inspire National Governments to emulate the particiaptory process)
>
> As for the direct impact, it has been minimal. IGF does not have powers to
> decide, not have the powers to recommend. This is a "design" aspect of the
> IGF which may be largely preserved. At the same time it is observed that due
> to this status of the IGF, the policy making process of National Governments
> and Regional Governments have not sufficiently paid attention to the
> deliberations at the IGF. The IGF brings together participants with
> different expertise from various staekholder groups from various geographic
> regions around the world, who deliberate on Internet Governance issues to
> contribute to the actual policy making process .IGF could devise a system by
> which Session/Topic Reports could be generated to summarize the positions of
> stakeholder groups on issues deliberated during the IGF. Though this may not
> constitute to be a "recommendation" or a "formal statement" from the IGF,
> such Session/Topic Reports that could be released under different topic
> headings and could become Reference Documents that could contribute to the
> National / Regional policy making process.
>
> Governments could adopt it as a convention to draw resources from the IGF
> Referece Papers on the relevant issues/topics while framing proposals for a
> new policy / change of an existing policy related to Internet. The proposed
> Reference documents could be on broad topics such as Security or Freedom of
> Expression to outline the overall IGF position with sub-sections on
> stakeholder positions, and also on sub-topics such as a topic on Cloud
> Computing or Social Networking. Such Documents would enable the National /
> Regional Policy making process to compreshnsively and readily understand the
> "mood" of the IGF on a topic on which legislations are to be enacted. At
> present decisions are taken by governments and by business corporations
> largely in isolation of the IGF deliberations so the decision taken often do
> not take into consideration the concerns of the IGF, nor the solutions
> proposed by the IGF.
>
> The Internet Governance Caucus proposes that the IGF Secretariat considers
> this as an action item and introduce a mechanism to throughly record all
> sessions by text transcripts and collated audio visual records as source
> records, as also assign neutral personnel to prepare consensus/ stakeholder
> position reports on issues/sessions. The IGF Secreatriat may also
> proactively reach out to Governments to uge them to adopt it as a convention
> to call for IGF Position papers and related documents to be used as inputs
> in their policy making process.
>
> Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 8:51 PM, Ginger Paque <gpaque at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Shiva is actively working on Q3.
>>
>> I would like to see some recognition of the improvement in the level of
>> discussion between stakeholders since the WSIS process in the impact. I
>> think there is much more collaboration (in general) than during WSIS, and
>> far less confrontation. In the 2009 workshop proposals in particular, due to
>> the request by the IGF Secretariat to merge proposals, there are panels that
>> include business, government, academia and civil society working together.
>>
>> We might also look at Ian's response to the questionnaire for ideas as
>> well:
>>
>> *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?*
>> You will probably have to probe a lot deeper to discover impact, and a lot
>> of this would be at a personal level, which is not directly covered by the
>> way that question is posed. Where individuals are impacted or have learnt,
>> eventually that will flow though to stakeholder groups. But to get
>> meaningful feedback on impact, you may have to ask a few questions along the
>> lines of “has you involvement in IGF increased your knowledge of internet
>> governance? “ “has your involvement led to meaningful contact with other
>> peers that has assisted your work” , “has multistakeholder involvement
>> changed or affected your perspective on any particular governance issues”
>> etc. These sort of questions would assist in getting a fuller understanding
>> of what the impact might have been.
>>
>
>
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