[governance] Re: IGC statement/questionnaire Q3

[Sivasubramanian Muthusamy]

On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 2:22 AM, Sivasubramanian Muthusamy <
isolatedn at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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,
>
>
( statement further fine-tuned. Finer changes are inlaid into the following
text)

>
>
> The Internet Governance Caucus notices an improvement in the level of
>> discussions 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 there is far less confrontation. It could also be
>> said that as IGF progresses into its fourth year there is increasing
>> constructive collaboration. ( 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 could be seen on a deeper level rather than
>> superficially. 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, the participants have gained from the flow of knowledge at
>> the IGF which in turn gets shared and influences the respective stakeholder
>> groups and others.Variant questions such as "Has your involvement in IGF
>> increased your knowledge of internet governance? , "Has your involvement led
>> to meaningful contact with other peers who have 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 and
>> they are becoming comfortable with the idea and process of consultation.
>> This 'roundtable' equality is largely an IGF achievement. (The IGF process
>> promotes faith in the functionality of the participatory governance process
>> and could inspire National Governments to emulate the participatory 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 stakeholder groups from various geographic
>> regions around the world, who deliberate on Internet Governance issues but
>> these valuable and meaningful deliberations have not been systematically
>> channeled 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 could be
>> released under different topic headings and could become Reference Documents
>> to contribute to the National / Regional policy making process.
>>
>> Governments could adopt it as a convention to draw resources from the IGF
>> Reference 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 comprehensively and readily understand the
>> "mood" of the IGF on a topic on which a certain legislation/ directive/
>> guideline is being considered. At present decisions are taken by governments
>> and by business corporations largely in isolation of the IGF deliberations,
>> without  taking into consideration the concerns of the IGF, nor consider 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 thoroughly record as
>> audio-visuals collated with text transcripts and presentations to be
>> archives as source records of each panel discussion, workshop, roundtable,
>> open forum, or in any other format, in every room. In addition the
>> Secretariat may also assign neutral staff with synthesing skills to prepare
>> consensus/ stakeholder position reports on issues/sessions. The IGF
>> Secretariat may also proactively reach out to Governments to urge 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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