[governance] Re: "Oversight"

[parminder]

On Sunday 03 June 2012 03:52 PM, William Drake wrote:
> Hi Parminder
>
> On Jun 2, 2012, at 7:20 PM, parminder wrote:
>>
>>>  In a similar vein, the IT4C statement for the CSTD meeting also 
>>> spoke of transferring oversight  from the USG to 
>>> an intergovernmental body.
>>
>> This is a misleading reading of ITfCs statement, but I dont want to 
>> divert from the basic discussion here. (I will comment on it later)
>
> My apologies for using short hand, let me quote in full: "On the 
> technical governance side, the oversight of the Internet's critical 
> technical and logical infrastructure, at present with the US 
> government, should be transferred to an appropriate, democratic and 
> participative multilateral body, without disturbing the existing 
> distributed architecture of technical governance of the Internet in 
> any significant way (However, improvements in the technical governance 
> systems are certainly needed.)

Lets then get this out of the way, although if you were unclear about 
certain terms in our joint CS statement if would be best if you asked us 
what we meant by them rather than 'unilaterally' - and we will have to 
occasion to comment on the meaning and implication of this term a little 
later - ascribing them very definitive meaning of your own.

You may notice that, first of all, we have separated the institutional 
model for CIR/tech oversight from that for larger Internet related 
public policies (aka the work OECDs CCICP does). For the later we 
propose something within the UN but not for the former, ie not for CIR 
/tech oversight. This has a clear purpose, and the purpose is elaborated 
in the tentative proposals we have since been trying to develop at the 
CSTD meeting and in the last few days in our discussions in the IGC.

This separation also takes note of the concerns that Insituto Nupef 
(carlos' organisation) had with a mixed model within the UN, as proposed 
by India's CIRP proposal (which you should realise was never ITfC's 
proposal). In fact, and as I have mentioned in an email a day or two 
back, the CIR management oversight model suggested by Carlos during the 
WSIS was clearly in our mind as we drafted these sentences that you quote.

BTW, you must not fail to notice that the statement you quote from is 
co-sponsored by Nupef, along with ITfC and 3 other organisations. And 
you must give the credit to all these organisations that they know what 
they are doing.  The sentence that you quote was deliberately worded to 
prepare the way for the kind of proposals that I am putting forward now, 
where CIR oversight is internationalised through a non UN mechanism, 
that has larger than inter-gov participative-ness, ie has non gov members.

    "So ok, you said multilateral rather than intergovernmental, but we
    know these are synonyms. And since improvements are needed,
    presumably said body would provide them, which means broader
    negotiated decision making than just what the NTIA does". (Bill)


Multilateralism, strictly speaking, is the inverse of unilateralism, 
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateralism ) and not of 
multistakeholderism. A few people involved with limited dialogue on 
global IG cannot themselves completely redefine categories of political 
philosophy. It is against the 'unilateralism of US' - the principle 
issue vis a vis CIR oversight - that the term multi-lateral is used in 
our statement. It means equal involvement of all countries.  Yes, that 
is what we demand. And remember this campaign was primarily aimed at the 
rather much larger civil society outside the IG realm, where, you would 
perhaps have noticed, it received huge support in a very short time. The 
words in the statement were primarily aimed at the understanding of this 
larger CS ecology, and uses political categories as they use and 
understand. You would perhaps like to dismiss the 'democratic and 
participative' part of the statement as of no worthy consequence here. 
However, we use it to mean the most appropriate participation of 
stakeholders as relevant to the issue and governance space, and in the 
case of CIR management we do think that it is appropriate that we dont 
follow the typical UN membership based model, and the membership of the 
concerned body has non gov participants, and is perhaps generally made 
of people who have backing of a larger constituency from the societies 
they come. (Details and specific to come :) )

Of course you are bristling to ask, but why not use that IG magic word, 
multistakeholderism. We think what we are proposing is multistakeholder 
(MS). The last sentence of the relevant para from our joint statement 
speaks of 'being fully participative of all stakeholders'. For instance, 
we have always expressed great appreciation for the MS model of 
Brazilian Internet Steering Committee. However, as I have often said on 
this list, I continue to be apprehensive of what you and other MS 
adherents on this list, and generally, in the IG space, mean by MSism. 
For us, for instance, the manner of selecting stakeholder reps is very 
important, and we have been pushing for clear principles and guidelines 
for this (for instance at the WG on IGF improvements). We become more 
than a bit confused when some people ask for equal footing for 
'everyone' in 'each and every context', and on being questioned what 
models are these, how do they work etc, we do not get any clear 
response. (Remember the recent big discussion on IETF and public policy 
making on this list.) MSism is the right model for us, if we can ensure 
specific and strong measures against capture, especially by big 
business. Despite our best efforts we have not been able to get a 
discussion on this most important issue vis a vis MSism. It is in this 
background, that a very large number of global and sub-global NGOs want 
specific clarifications before they can unconditionally endorse 
multistakeholder global governance models, especially as they , quite 
suspiciously, hear discussed in IG spaces. They would like to know what 
exactly is meant here - what would be the role of, and the interplay 
among, different actors. (For instance, I would never be able to get a 
health or 'access to knowledge' NGO to go with an gov arrangement where 
the rep of a multinational drug company will have the same status as a 
gov rep. It would simply not work.)

  This was the context of our joint statement that sought to catch the 
Interest of global civil society not typically involved with IG but 
increasingly conscious of, and also concerned about, what is happening 
in this area.

> And since improvements are needed, presumably said body would provide 
> them, which means broader negotiated decision making than just what 
> the NTIA does.

No, that is not at all what we mean and want. Since the part on needed 
improvements directly follows one on preserving the present 
decentralised nature of tech governance, we meant, and, I stress, we 
mean, that the required improvements would largely come from the 
existing distributed and bottom up processes. I hope that makes things 
clear.

>>
>>>  Am I reading correctly that for you, oversight now just means 
>>> ensuring adherence to international law established by a treaty?
>>
>> Yes, that is what oversight is to me. And this doesnt represent a 
>> recent change in position. It was always so for me/ ITfC.
>
> I'm having trouble squaring the two.  NTIA functions + broader global 
> policy making through a multilateral institutions sounds significantly 
> broader than just ensuring adherence to international law...

I have gone to great lengths to stress that with oversight I mean 
largely NTIA functions, and the + you put there is not there in my mind 
and assertion, nor, clearly, is it meant in the joint CS statement. So 
can we now go ahead with this.

parminder

>>
>>>  If so, there might be a few seeds of convergence that could be 
>>> watered.
>>
>> That is really welcome.
>
> No kidding…we've been arguing about this for 8 years now...


>>>  I'm not terribly optimistic about a treaty negotiation, but there 
>>> could be alternatives, e.g. an independent ICANN & global 
>>> Affirmation of Commitments on zone file authorizations...
>>
>> I do not understand what affirmation of commitments is. Can you 
>> please explain.
>
> Do you mean this in some rhetorical way?  I'm sure you're familiar 
> with the AoC and the work that's been done to monitor and increase 
> compliance with it...http://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/aoc
>
>> Among whom would these AoCs  be made? Are these unilateral 
>> declarations of good intentions that have no legal basis. I dont see 
>> how that would do. But ready to discuss.
>
> While in legal form it's an agreement between ICANN and NTIA, the 
> commitments are to the whole range of actors involved (I won't say 
> "the community" to avoid annoying you ;-).  Imagine an ICANN in which 
> the NTIA role evolves toward progressively greater 
> minimalism--and if/when things are clearly be done properly and 
> jitters can be overcome—diminishes entirely and ICANN becomes fully 
> independent, with a host country agreement somewhere "appropriate." 
>  And it enters into AoCs with the global community, perhaps including 
> actors that don't choose to participate in ICANN.  For example, it 
> swears to never attempt to remove countries from the zone file even in 
> times of conflict (who knows what root zone operators outside the US 
> would do even now...).  And so on.
>>
>> (Why are we so bothered about short or even medium terms chance of 
>> success in laying out what we think is the right thing to do. If a 
>> treaty is the right thing to do, lets just say that. Lets not take 
>> the cover of pragmatism. After all what is the near/ medium term 
>> chance of all countries adhering to human rights, or of eradication 
>> of poverty. However we do make our positions about which way the 
>> world and its insitutions should go independent of such assessment. 
>> Our constitution writers wrote those lofty ideals and built 
>> institutional designs looking far ahead, didnt they.)
>
> I'm not bothered, I'm just unconvinced it's the least bad option.
>
> My point is, whether it's zone file changes or FaceBook policies on 
> nudity, why can't we think a bit more expansively about institutional 
> options than just defaulting to centralized UN bodies negotiating 
> intergovernmental agreements?  Why not focus first on what needs to be 
> done, and consider the range of possible forms that might help do it, 
> especially if some are less likely to meet immediate political 
> resistance?  Why not do campaigns around specific issues, and make 
> better use of the IGF?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Bill
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20120604/c9a9ec49/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