[governance] Fwd: Answers to the CSTD Questionnaire on improvements to the IGF

Fri Nov 19 10:42:03 EST 2010

Just sent to the CSTD Secretariat and received the confirmation of their
receipt.

Jeremy, please put it to our website when you have time to work.

Thanks all,

izumi

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Izumi AIZU <iza at anr.org>
Date: 2010/11/20
Subject: Answers to the CSTD Questionnaire on improvements to the IGF
To: cstdwg-igf at unctad.org
Cc: Mongi Hamdi <Mongi.Hamdi at unctad.org>,
Thomas.Schneider at bakom.admin.ch, frederic.riehl at bakom.admin.ch,
Franziska Klopfer <Franziska.Klopfer at unctad.org>, Anne Miroux
<Anne.Miroux at unctad.org>, Dong Wu <Dong.Wu at unctad.org>, Malou Pasinos
<Malou.Pasinos at unctad.org>, Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org>

Nov 19 2010

Dear CSTD,

Here attached and following is the Answers to the CSTD Questionnaire
on improvements to the IGF.

On behalf of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus, we submit them
for the input to the coming consultation process.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to participate in the process
and we look forward to working with you in the coming consultation
meeting on Nov 24 in Geneva and beyond.

Sincerely,

Izumi Aizu
Jeremy Malcolm

Co-coordinators,
Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC)

-----------------

Answers to the CSTD Questionnaire on improvements to the IGF

Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus
Nov 19 2010

1. What do you consider the most important achievements of the first
five IGF meetings?

IGF created the space for dialogue by all stakeholders in an open,
inclusive manner. These emergence and development of the
multistakeholder principle and practice are perhaps the biggest
contribution IGF has achieved so far. It helped many participants to
understand the issues of their interest, as well as to understand how
other actors understand, act and accept their issues. Emergence of
Regional and National IGF with multistakeholder approach is another
achievement.

2. How satisfied are you with the delivery of the results of
discussions at the IGF and the impact they have had on developments in
national, regional or international Internet governance?

IGF has made a reasonable advancement of the understanding of the
issues. Yet, at national, regional and international levels, we have
mixed assessment for the impact it brought.

3. Which, if any, new mechanisms would you propose to improve the
impact of the IGF discussions, in particular as regards the
interaction between the IGF and other stakeholders? Please specify the
kind of mechanism (e.g. reporting, exchanges, recommendations,
concrete advice, etc.) and the stakeholders (e.g. intergovernmental
bodies, other fora dealing with Internet Governance, etc.).

a) One mechanism we can suggest is to come up with some form of
recommendations or messages where all stakeholders have [rough]
consensus. They will not be binding, but could still function as
model, reference or common framework. Working process towards
achieving these rough consensus will create better and deeper
understandings amongst different stakeholders.

b) The Secretariat and MAG should be strongly encouraged to directly
foster discussion and debate of difficult issues in main sessions,
instead of avoiding them.

4. In your view, what important new issues or themes concerning
Internet governance have emerged or become important since the Tunis
phase of the Summit, which deserve more attention in the next five
years?

IGC feels that attention to the development agenda, issues concerning
the marginalized groups or actors, have yet gained sufficient level of
work at IGF and its outcome. These may not be the “new” issues, but we
strongly feel they are very important.

Besides them, emergence of new technologies, tools and services, such
as cloud computing; user-generated, SNS and online sharing services
such as wiki, YouTube, Ustream, twitter and Facebook; DPI and
behavioral targeting advertisements; wide deployment of mobile
services including smart phones and tablet computers pose all kind of
new challenges for governance.

5. What do you think should be the priority themes and areas of work
of the IGF during the next five years?

Followings will be the areas of themes and works that have priorities we think.

a) Enhancing multi-stakeholder framework within IGF.
b) Promote capacity building for developmental agenda of governance
c) Balancing the interests – to empower those of marginalized and
under-developed in all organizations and fora dealing with Internet
governance – such as ICANN, W3C, IETF, RIRs, ITU, WIPO, CoE, OECD,
UNCTAD/CSTD and United Nations itself.

6. How can the capacity of those groups that are not yet well
represented at the IGF be improved? In particular, what could be done
to improve the capacity of representatives from developing countries?

a) Establish special funding mechanism by IGF itself to help actors
from developing countries to continuously engage in IGF and related
organizations and meetings. Fellowship works carried out by
DiploFoundation, dDotAsia Oorganizsation, Interne Society [other
reference, please] and other institutions offer good reference for
this, but they should be expanded in larger scale. Targeting youth
groups or younger generation in profession, will have, in the long
run, effective impact.

b) Providing technical training to policy makers and policy training
to engineers will also help close the gap(s) within the
under-represented and also even well-represented.

7. How do you think more awareness of Internet governance issues and
the IGF process can be raised amongst groups whose lives are affected
by Internet governance but who are not yet part of the IGF process?

a) Giving more weight to regional and national IGF meetings, making
more direct “links” to the main IGF meeting will help outreach to
those who have not yet involved in IGF process. Securing the same
level of working framework of IGF, such as multi-stakeholder
composition and inclusion of civil society groups (where such practice
is relatively new or scarce) should be maintained.

b) Ensuring a plurality of civil society voices be heard in Internet
governance processes will also be effective in reaching out to those
yet to participate.

c) Online meetings are most effective when provision is made for
participation both synchronously (ie. in real time) and
asynchronously. The remote hubs and moderators at the Vilnius IGF made
good progress towards this direction. Using such tools as blogs,
Twitter, mailing lists, Facebook and so on over an extended period may
also increase the awareness.

d) Organizing some sessions completely online will create “level
playing field” among all participants, and may also demonstrate the
effectiveness of these tools/technologies, and may also improve the
quality of services in turn.

e) Increase linguistic diversity. Using UN major languages other than
English at certain meetings and occasions as main working language
(translated into other UN languages) will increase the outreach to
non-English speaking population of the globe and will give more sense
of ownership. Currently, English is the only default working language,
but we think it does not have to be so.

8. How, if at all, do you think that the IGF process (including the
format of the meeting, the preparatory process, the development of the
agenda, etc.) needs to change to meet changing circumstances and
priorities?

As we replied to the MAG questionnaire, the organizing work of IGF
primarily by MAG should be improved. More outcome oriented direction
might improve the quality and value of IGF, but this should be
carefully exercised so as not to lose the open and free spirit of IGF
which contributed a great deal.

9. Do you have any other comments?

Since we are still in the early stage of the consultation process, our
comments include some tentative ideas. We will closely follow the WG
process and will provide more comments and suggestions accordingly.

-----------------
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