[governance] Remote Participation

Thu Mar 1 09:11:01 EST 2012

Tim,

(Sorry that this got caught up in my recent e-travails...

My comments were to try to put the IGF's interest in RP into some broader
context (which is where it should be seen IMHO...

You queried specifically my comments on "writings on RP"... I wasn't
thinking specifically in the area of Community Informatics although there is
a large research literature on participating in virtual
communities/processes (the current Videocom project here in Canada being
one) ... Rather I was pointing to the research on remote conferencing
(focusing specifically on videoconferencing in the MIS and IS literatures
going back dare I say it, some 30 years now including some very early
attempts by the UN and others to include formal videoconferencing processes
as part of their on-going operations.

If one includes things like technical and social/organizational research on
remote work/virtual engagement there is a huge literature in the area and a
very strong linkage into various kinds of technical/commercial developments
to support the virtualization of work and remote practice/participation.

There really is no reason to repeat mistakes, not use low cost state of the
art technologies (including social/management practices), build on previous
experiences, and provide various of the commercial players in this sphere
(and all the majors and no end of start-ups are involved) in a high profile,
reasonably controlled environment for doing their beta implementations... To
do this all that is really needed I would expect, is a relatively small
amount of professional time from someone (they even exist in the UN system
and certainly within every national bureaucracy) who actually knows
something about RP beyond the attempts to re-create something that has been
around for decades (in one form or another) on an ad hoc, semi-emergency,
resourceless basis, every year.

(Among the things that can be learned from even a very casual acquaintance
with the research literature and experience from the broad field of current
practice are the opportunities and particularly the limitations on "remote
participation" and that is where I think our discussions particularly
concerning RP policy should begin. 

Derrick Cogburn from the U. of Syracuse seems no longer to be part of these
discussions but he has been working on this area as his main research
interest (including launching this stuff within WSIS/IGF) for years and
re-engaging with him and some of his grad students would probably be a
worthwhile exercise.

M

 -----Original Message-----
From: tim.g.davies at gmail.com [mailto:tim.g.davies at gmail.com] On Behalf Of
Tim Davies
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2012 10:46 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Roland Perry
Subject: Re: [governance] Remote Participation

Hey all, 

A few thoughts:

. ... 

- Michael: you've mentioned various CI writings on RP. Is there a good
resource list on experiences of RP anywhere? Would putting together a small
collection of resources and papers also be useful for advocacy for better RP
platforms and processes?

All the best

Tim

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Roland Perry
<roland at internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:

In message <CALCecM9a5M0kAtC1LF9Ak=BuMhBP
<mailto:BuMhBPdA7nJTFyVqAt345ZtNZEpw at mail.gmail.com>
dA7nJTFyVqAt345ZtNZEpw at mail.gmail.com>, at 06:35:00 on Sat, 18 Feb 2012,
Ginger Paque <gpaque at gmail.com> writes 

Why have we, as civil society and the IGC, been so ineffective at
developing and achieving implementation of inclusion and effective
remote participation? After several years, why is RP not now an
integral part of all IG and IGF policy processes?

For the inter-sessional planning meetings, because they are still primarily
institutionalised into the Geneva landscape (which for Europeans is at least
better than having to go through the same exercise in New York).

The only way this can be broken is for such meetings (and indeed similar
non-UN meetings, this is not a criticism aimed particularly at DESA) to
grind to a halt whenever there's a glitch in the remote participation, and
not continue until the remote participation has been fixed.

Of course, that results in an extreme waste of the resources of the people
who *have* managed to get the funds to travel to the venue, so it's not an
easy decision.

But until such a rule is applied, then remote participants will always have
an inherent second class status, and not just because of the greater
difficulty of following and contributing to a meeting from 5,000 miles and
12hrs timezone away.

The problem is that the world is largely organised around the idea of
representative democracy, and this assume your representatives are able to
get to the meetings.

I've also got something to say about substitutes, for example in the MAG.
I'm not sure it's very common for elected representatives to send
substitutes to national Parliaments etc, or in the private sector to appoint
a proxy who isn't already invited to the meeting.

But in both cases it's entirely possible to arrange for an assistant to
follow all the proceedings on mailing lists, and to brief the representative
so that the latter's work is restricted to not much more than actually
attending the physical meetings.
-- 
Roland Perry

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@timdavies

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