[governance] IGC questionnaire Q1 for review

[Ginger Paque]

Great text Parminder, Thanks!!! Updated Q1 with Parminder's text, for 
comment.

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

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

In terms of its principal mandate, the IGF seems largely to be on its 
way to becoming 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 the IGF 
take 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 it managed 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 fulfilling its mandate, but not quite yet there. It 
needs to continue to pursue structural evolutions that (1) enable 
'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).



Parminder wrote:
> Ginger,
>
> You had asked and I tried a draft of reply to question 1 too. You may 
> want to look at it as well. (I sent an email earlier today)
>
> As for the draft below I cant see how the sentence
>
> 'So much so that the forum has been described as “all talk”.'
>
> can be seen as a positive description of the IGF. The phrase ' all 
> talk' is never used in a positive sense as per my admittedly limited 
> knowledge of the language.
>
> also we need to comment on other subsections of para 72 detailing 
> IGF's mandate , other than 72 (a) as well.
>
> parminder
>
> Ginger Paque wrote:
>> I believe this is now adapted to resolve Jeremy and Ian's concerns:
>>
>> 1. To what extent has the IGF addressed the mandate set out for it in 
>> the Tunis Agenda?
>>
>> Paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda, (a), asks the IGF to: Discuss 
>> public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance 
>> in order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, 
>> stability and development of the Internet.
>>
>> There can be no doubt that this discussion is beginning to take 
>> place. So much so that the forum has been described as “all talk”. 
>> The participation, the increasing quantity and quality of workshops, 
>> even the controversies that arise, are proof that this discussion is 
>> taking place. The continued interest in workshops is indication that 
>> this process is still dynamically growing and needs to continue so 
>> that discussions may cover all aspects of the debate and include all 
>> actors, particularly areas such as rights, inclusion and others, 
>> which have not been adequately addressed.
>>
>> The Tunis agenda also calls for "development of multi-stakeholder 
>> processes at the national, regional… level" similar to the IGF. It is 
>> heartening to note that some such national and regional processes are 
>> already taking shape. IGF should further encourage such processes and 
>> seek to establish formal relationships with these initiatives, 
>> including the IGF Remote Hubs. Since the fear of governmental 
>> domination is considerably higher at national levels, IGF should use 
>> global civil society groups and processes to guide appropriate 
>> multistakeholderisation of emerging national IGF spaces. IGC again 
>> offers its assistance to the IGF in this regard.
>>
>> Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
>>> On 12/07/2009, at 10:30 PM, Ginger Paque wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jeremy, with these changes is it acceptable to you?
>>>
>>> What I was objecting to was "precisely what it was designed to be", 
>>> because it implies the IGF was never required to be anything more 
>>> than "all talk". So, lose those seven words and I am happy. :-)
>>>
>> ____________________________________________________________
>> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>>     governance at lists.cpsr.org
>> To be removed from the list, send any message to:
>>     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org
>>
>> For all list information and functions, see:
>>     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
>>
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance