[governance] Government involvement in Internet governance on November 4

[Roland Perry]

In message <4FC42968-FC35-4DA5-B73A-B389E65F0C4C at istaff.org>, at 
22:50:59 on Wed, 26 Oct 2011, John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org> writes
>> From my perspective, the key problem with involving governments in
>> core technical Internet governance and management is that they don't
>> understand the technical and architectural concerns nor the processes
>> for building technical consensus. I'd very much like to see government
>> representatives with this important background knowledge becoming
>> involved in all the various Internet governance institutions.
>
>Full agreement.

Also mindful that one of the reasons the GAC needs time to digest 
documents and produce responses is because the people sat round the 
table are only representatives. They have to consult with colleagues in 
the public service, and with their ministers (and other local 
stakeholders) for policy matters.

In the UK there a was count recently of the ministries with some sort of 
remit over issues were the Internet was a factor, it came to about a 
dozen. Each with their respective subject experts. Who is the person to 
send to the meetings - the expert in telecoms and competition law, 
copyright and trademarks, freedom of expression and privacy, law 
enforcement and fraud, the Internet's role in their critical national 
infrastructure, how BGP and DNSSEC works, or perhaps a capable diplomat 
and advocate?

>> In fact, with the exception of ICANN where the government representatives
>> are fenced into their own little walled garden called GAC, in all the
>> other core Internet governance fora there's nothing to hinder the
>> effective participation of government representatives besides their
>> lack of knowledge and capacity, i.e. the goverments' failure to hire
>> people as their representatives who are able to interact in these fora
>> competently and effectively.
>
>While ICANN does have GAC, I believe that government participation within
>ICANN is not "fenced in" solely to that committee, i.e. participants from
>government are free to comment throughout the policy development process
>(aside from being Director) and are hindered only by their own constraints.

This is a more difficult issue. With a limited number of exceptions, the 
representatives on the GAC, and their immediate departmental colleagues, 
are also likely to be involved in matters being discussed at the ITU, at 
their regional intergovernmental fora such as OECD and Council of 
Europe, not to mention UN committees such as CSTD.

Then there's the IGF (and its prep meetings and national offshoots), RIR 
policy development meetings, IETF, and various NOGs.

You can't be everywhere at once (although some people try, and I used to 
follow them around the world).

Similarly you can't be everywhere at an ICANN meeting - and although the 
board tries to do this, that's acknowledged to be at least half a 
full-time job these days, so they aren't trying to cram a year's work 
into three disjoint weeks.

One of the big steps forward made by the GAC in recent years is to deal 
with intersessional business. In other words, they pay some attention to 
ICANN matters in between ICANN meetings, and you get less of the 
unfortunate circumstance that by the time the GAC has met and reached 
its own consensus on current issues, everyone else is heading home.

Nevertheless, when attending an ICANN meeting, much of their time still 
has to be spent in their own series of meetings, although once again the 
GAC does increasingly make time out of its own schedule to visit other 
constituencies, as well as having it's various, and necessarily short, 
"GAC meets SO" sessions.

Perhaps some stakeholders can afford to send enough attendees to an 
ICANN meeting to follow the GBSO, ccNSO, GAC and several others in 
parallel. And to have enough manpower to dedicate time to ICANN matters 
separate from ITU(etc). Governments don't tend to do that, quoting 
resource issues. That's something citizens might perhaps usefully engage 
their respective governments about.

-- 
Roland Perry
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