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

[Norbert Bollow]

Avri Doria <avri at ella.com> wrote:

> On 18 Jul 2012, at 15:15, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> >> 
> >> But I also have to agree with Lee: the centerpiece of the campaign
> >> has to be something more inspiring and motivating than whether we
> >> call something a "working group." I would suggest that we find an
> >> issue that people really want to do something about, such as
> >> evaluating ICANN, ITU, etc. as Bill suggested, and try to gain
> >> commitments from a critical mass of stakeholders to support some
> >> long-term initiative around that.
> 
> > This is very very close to the ECTF proposal; as far as I can see
> > the only significant difference being that the proposed ECTF has
> > broader scope in that it is designed to be able to address, without
> > need for a new major battle for creating each additional
> > working-group, any number of such issues.
> 
> 
> On the contrary,
> I think at a certain point is that the ECTF proposal already
> presupposes too much:

It is true that the I-D goes into details with some specificy
greater than what needs to be decided at the present stage. On the
other hand, proposals that don't go into the details are also
problematic in their own way. In any case, I think that the I-D makes
very clear that these details are not intended to be finalized at the
present stage.

Anyone who would endorse the proposal would not endorse those parts of
the I-D as anything else than as starting points for the discussions of
the Preparatory Working-Group.

> For exampl is section 4.6
> 
> "
>  A Secretariat for the ECTF shall be established with seat in Zurich,
>    Switzerland.  
> "
> 
> Seems to be jumping the gun just wee bit.
> 
> Certainly a discussion about the need for a secretariat function that
> had ... functions, but to already be putting the secretariat in a
> particular place seems peculiar.  And if we thing that CH is the
> right place, why not Geneva or some pretty little town right outside
> Geneva.  Given you want to get governments there, having it in Geneva
> or at most  a short train ride away with nice scenery and bars along
> the way, would be more likely to get participation.

In the draft, ECTF face-to-face meetings are not intended to take place
at the seat of the Secretariat, but as IGF pre-events. The I-D talks
only about a single annual meeting per working group and about the
yearly global IGF event, leaving open what would be done if a
working-group desires to meet more than once per year, which may well
be the case for the Preparatory Working-Group. In that case it might
make a lot of sense to ride back-to-back with whatever another event(s)
that the greatest number of working-group members are interested in
attending anyway, and that may well turn out to be in Geneva. Or it
might be regional IGFs. On the other hand, Zurich is attractive in its
own ways, and it's also the best-reachable town in Switzerland for
people to fly in to.

In any case, the goal is not just to "get governments there", but to
have meaningful participation, and I'm pretty sure that that is a
different objective from making it easy, for government people
with strong ties to the ITU and/or other members of diplomatic staffs
who spend most of their time in Geneva, to sit in, or to try to exert
pressure. 

By the way, Geneva was my initial idea until one of the Internet
governance experts of the Swiss government suggested (quite informally)
that Zurich might be a better choice. The reason he gave was that
Zurich would be a good choice "if you don't to be too close to ITU but
not too far away either". (I don't know whether maybe an unspoken reason
for his suggestion might also have been that he knows where I live,
from where Zurich is significantly more convenient to reach than
Geneva.)

> This is just one place where the draft goes too far in imposing
> decisions that should not be made before the 
> 
> "
> >> issue that people really want to do something about, such as
> >> evaluating ICANN, ITU, etc. as Bill suggested, and try to gain
> >> commitments from a critical mass of stakeholders to support some
> >> long-term initiative
> "

I expect that the "issue that people really want to do something about"
will be different for different people.

Hence my suggestion to create something that is not single-issue
focused.

Greetings,
Norbert

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