[governance] IGC questionnaire response to date

Parminder parminder at itforchange.net
Mon Jul 13 04:53:38 EDT 2009


the following is my first shot at question i.

*To what extent has the IGF addressed the mandate set out for it in the 
Tunis Agenda?*

IGF's mandate given by TA is specifically set in its para 72, while the 
imperatives that led to its creation are contained in preceding paras of 
TA dealing with Internet governance, and specifically about public 
policy making in this area.

In terms of its principal mandate, IGF seems largely to be on its way to 
become a unique global forum for multistakeholder dialogue on IG. 
However it is important, for this purpose, to keep up evolutionary 
innovations that each successive IGF meeting has tried out. To keep up 
the interest and engagement of stakeholders it is important that IGF 
takes up the most pressing global IG issues and seek a policy dialogue 
on them, with the objective of such a dialogue helping processes of real 
policy making in these areas. Overall, IGF's success will be judged from 
how much did it manage to influence these real policy making processes. 
If this is taken as the central criterion of success, one can say that 
IGF is moving towards it but not quite yet there. It needs to continue 
to pursue structural evolutions that (1) enables 'effective and 
purposeful policy dialogue' on 'issues that require most urgent 
resolution' and (2) strengthen links with institutions and processes of 
real policy making.

In this connection IGF is still to achieve any clear success in the area 
of 'facilitating discourse between bodies dealing with different 
cross-cutting international public policies regarding the Internet' ( 
section 72 b) and 'interfacing with appropriate inter-governmental 
organisations and other institutions on matters under their purview' (72 
c).

IGF has also not been able to make any progress towards fulfilling its 
mandate under section 72 e of 'advising all stakeholders in proposing 
ways and means to accelerate the availability and affordability of the 
Internet in the developing world', and section 72 g of 'identifying 
emerging issues, ... and, where appropriate, making recommendations'.

It must however be said that IGF has had considerable success in at 
least three areas

   1.

      Getting stakeholders with very different worldviews to begin
      talking with each other, and at least start to see the others
      point of view if not accept it. This is a very important initial
      step because it is widely recognized that IG requires new and
      different governance and policy models than exclusively statist ones.

   2.

      Building the capacity on a range of IG issues among many newer
      participants, especially from developing countries with
      under-developed institutional and expertise systems in IG arena.

   3.

      Triggering regional and national initiatives for multi-stakeholder
      dialogue on IG, and forming loops of possible interactively
      between the global IGF and these national and regional initiatives
      (IGF-4 is trying this innovation in a relatively formal way).



Ginger Paque wrote:
> Thanks Parminder. I appreciate your taking the time to work on this.
>
> Please do take over the text for Q1.
>
> I went through the previous IGC statements, and included them where I 
> thought appropriate. In fact, that is where most of this text is from. 
> However, if there is any other statement we can add, please do suggest 
> it, Parminder, or anyone else.
>
> Best, Ginger
>
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