[governance] Re: ITU consultation and open access => IGF working groups

Sun Jul 15 19:55:54 EDT 2012

My 2 cents:

Since as far as I know noone can (now) stop us from proclaiming intent to launch a Dynamic Coalition on Open Internet Transparency or whatever name folks prefer, why not just do that and work to invite the government transparency folks, from government(s).

The IG specialists might then come along.

Instead, fighting a war to get to call something a 'working group'...well that's not the most inspiring battle cry.

And as to effectiveness, the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles came up with a draft Charter, and the 10 Punchy Principles, now available in over 20 languages, so all in all I would say there has been some degree of effectiveness, even working with the DC constraints.

Lee
________________________________
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] on behalf of Fouad Bajwa [fouadbajwa at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 1:48 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; William Drake
Cc: Avri Doria
Subject: Re: [governance] Re: ITU consultation and open access => IGF working groups

Hi Bill,

First of all I would Iike to share your concerns having been through the puddle of similar bumpy rides. My reason to incline towards exploring how the ICANN governance model functioned was partly  encouraged by  an incident that took place on the closed MAG list.

I had proposed a similar DC on Accountability and Transparency or more closely to the AoC inspired approach (but multistakelder led) of such International bodies. This happened after the EURODIG in Geneva and I was both bashed on the list and threatened offline by a MAG colleague from a different stakeholder group that such international bodies could hurt me and I was blindly following western CS agenda and this would never be my country's position. Interestingly everyone that bashed the idea were from the same stakeholder group....well anyways...

Simply said, having been part of the IG4D exercise and from what I shared above and as you detailed, such a dynamic coalition is necessary but the participation in it has to be monitored to exclude discriminating and threatening individuals that are trying to play as if they've got everything under control and in their grip, especially a number of them from my region.

Anyways, I am in support of this DC proposal.

Fouad Bajwa

On Jul 15, 2012 7:00 AM, "William Drake" <william.drake at uzh.ch<mailto:william.drake at uzh.ch>> wrote:
Hi

On Jul 15, 2012, at 9:52 AM, Avri Doria wrote:

Great idea.

We sort f did it in WGIG.  It would be a great recurring exercise for the IGF.

As for Dynamic Coalitions, do they work, or do we need some new mechanisms?

On 14 Jul 2012, at 12:41, Kleinwächter, Wolfgang wrote:

During the WGIG time some academics - as Alejandro will remember - started to call for a general becnhmnarking of all - intergovernmental and international - organisations according to criteria like openess, transparency, legitimacy, accountability, membership, acess, diversity, bottom up PDP etc. The analysis was never done. Would be a good subject for Baku or a new "Dynamic Coalition on Transparency and Accountybility of International Internet Organisations".

In 2006 I proposed a working group on this consistent with the TA mandate that IGF "Promote and assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment of WSIS principles in Internet Governance processes."  I was told in no uncertain terms that this was doubly a non-starter, since a) working groups are a radioactive construct that necessarily implies heavy UN bureaucratic machinery and negotiated outcomes (hence the subsequent DC construct as an anodyne alternative); and b) no private sector, multistakeholder, or intergovernmental institution/process involved in global IG would be happy to have outsiders in the IGF assessing what it does.  Some subsequent beating of the drum and the APC-UNECE-COE effort to devise a code of good practice http://www.apc.org/en/node/9507/ ultimately led to a Main Session on the WSIS principles in Sharm, at which org reps each got up to say that they fully embody the WSIS principles, full stop.  That session was deemed by some to have been less than successful and was hence dropped rather than added into the standard MS rotation like IG4D.

Things have moved on since then and one could argue that it is now time to make a serious effort to put working groups back on the table.  I know this didn't get consensus in the WGIGF but CS could nevertheless flesh out the case for WGs as flexibly configured non-bureaucratic processes that would study and report views (including divergent ones) on pressing issues on which progress cannot be achieved via DCs, particularly in light of generally limited governmental/IO participation.  My top candidates for WGs would be:

*Enhanced Cooperation, per some of the May CSTD interventions, including APC's http://www.apc.org/en/news/enhancing-cooperation-among-stakeholders-internet (much more likely to attract governments etc. than something under IETF, which carries additional internal burdens)

*Embodiment of the WSIS principles in global IG processes/"openess, transparency, legitimacy, accountability, membership, acess, diversity, bottom up PDP "

*IG4D (a similar cross-cutting criteria-based exercise, e.g. as proposed in my chapter in the Sharm book http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/images/2010/book/igf.sharm.book.final.pdf )

Putting the WG construct back on the table for discussion in the MAG and beyond (including at the IGC's Baku workshop) would be a concrete and useful contribution.  Do others here dis/agree?  If the latter, would anyone be willing to collaborate on a text of 3-5 pages laying out the rationale?

Best,

Bill

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org<mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20120715/ae859264/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t