IETF WAS Re: [governance] Enhanced Cooperation (was Re: reality check on economics)

Fri May 25 06:47:14 EDT 2012

Andrea Glorioso <andrea at digitalpolicy.it> wrote:
> On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 7:46 PM, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:
> > In my view, if those specific criteria (which are really a short list
> > of topics on which IETF has tried and IMO failed to create good
> > solutions) are adopted, as criteria for evaluating "whether the IETF
> > is succesful or not", the result of the evaluation must necessarily be
> > "IETF is not successful". Which would in my eyes be a ridiculous
> > result since IETF has in fact very successfully contributed to making
> > the Internet the success that it is today. I would suggest that any
> > proposal "to evaluate whether the IETF is succesful or not" is
> > fundamentally flawed because it's based on a false dichotomy. In the
> > same way, "whether it should be taken as the universal model for
> > decisions concerning the Internet, including besides its rather
> > technological remit" is IMO a false dichotomy. We can learn from what
> > what works in IETF without ideologically taking it as "the universal
> > model".
> >
> 
> First of all, I'm happy we agree the IETF is not and cannot be a "universal
> model" for everything under the sun.
> 
> Secondly, I disagree with your evaluation of the criteria being proposed,
> one of which is the "rate of adoption of IETF standards", if I may
> simplify. This is a rather objective criterion, which is very different
> from the criterion "rate of adoption of IPv6" (which I agree would be a
> clearly biased one). I note there is at least one person in the discussion,
> i.e. McTim, who doesn't seem to agree that "adoption of standards" should
> be a measure of success of a standards-setting organisation.

Ok, I certainly agree that the "rate of adoption of IETF standards"
is certainly highly relevant to any in-depth effort aimed at
evaluating IETF's success as a standards-setting organization.

Of course, one could also ask about IETF's success as a social
movement, and in the context of that question, it could be argued that
"adoption of standards" is not relevant as a primary measure of success.
But in the context of my assertion that IETF's way of doing things
should be taken into consideration when designing new Internet
Governance processes and instituions, including in particular in the
context of the "Enhanced Cooperation" debate, it is not relevant
whatever success IETF may have, as a social movement, beyond the
contribution to Internet Governance.

How then should IETF's success as an organization or movement that
contributes to Internet Governance be measured?

I would propose that what we are interested in the *value* of IETF's
contribution in some sense that is not a monetary sense.

I hope that you have enough patience with me that I may try to give a
rough explanation of the notion of value that I have in mind
here. Let's call the "b-value", for "benefit value", as opposed to the
"m-value" which is "monetary or market value".

With "b-value" I mean the value of something in the sense of its
benefit in regard to meeting the needs of humanity.

A banana for example has a positive b-value if it is in my kitchen
(when I am hungry I can eat it, so it can make a contribution to
meeting the needs of a small part of humanity) but it has a much
larger b-value in the hands of someone who is in danger of dying
from starvation. This assertion is true even if the person who is
in danger of starvation is in a country where the m-value of a
banana is much lower than there in Switzerland where bananas don't
grow natively, and expensive and scarce resouces have to be used
on bringing the bananas here if we want some.

Clean drinking water, in the quantity that a person needs, and air
that is suitable for breathing, again in the quantity that a person
needs, each have roughly the same b-value as a quantity and selection
of food that are again suitable for meetings the needs of one person.
Nevertheless the price that we pay for drinking water should be lower
than the price that we have to pay for healthy food, and as long as
we're on the surface of the earth (i.e. not diving in the deep seas
or traveling into space) we're appropriately used to not having to
pay individually for air to breathe at all (even though of course
measures against air polution have a cost).

Now let's try to apply this to the Internet. Despite all its
imperfections (IPv4 address exhaustion, spam, etc.) the Internet as it
has come into existence has an immensely great b-value. I wouldn't
assert that the b-value of the Internet is as great as it could
potentially have been if it had been designed optimally, or that it is
greater than the b-value of everything else (for example the b-value
of the air that we are breathing, and the b-value of the institutions
of civic and political rights are IMO clearly greater) but the b-value
of the Internet is still immensely great.

Now I would argue that IETF has contributed significantly to the
process through which this value has been created. Now I would
guesstimate that IETF's contribution to this creation of b-value
was at least 1%, perhaps as much as 5% or even more.

Therefore, IMO the success of IETF has been huge, quite independently
of whether the rate of adoption of IETF standards is greater or lower
than benchmarks like corresponding figures for e.g. W3C, ISO, IEC, ITU,
CEN, ETSI.

Of course, if a standardization organization were to create only
standards that don't get adopted at all, and that also don't get used
as sources of inspiration for further work by others, the b-value and
therefore the success would be zero. But "rate of adoption of standards"
isn't the only measure that matters, or even the one that matters most,
as long as the important standards get adopted eventually.

> First of all, what is "my government"? I'm a EU citizen living
> > outside the EU, in Switzerland. Maybe "my government" is the
> > Swiss government because this is the government that has
> > jurisdiction here.
> >
> 
> As an Italian citizen living in Belgium and partly subject to special rules
> due to my status as a EU officer, I sympathise with the question. But there
> are rules in place which define who your representatives are in a
> particular situation. These rules have nothing to do with Internet
> (governance).

Andrea, I'm not sure that I understand you correctly here, but from
my perspective I would say that these rules are highly relevant to
my desire that the rules that govern my varous actual and potential
uses of the Internet should be reasonable, and to my desire to
influence Internet governance with that objective.

> > On the Internet governance issues that I care about, the Swiss
> > government doesn't currently seem to have anyone with expert-level
> > knowledge of the technical, economic and socio-economic aspects.
> > They seem to have only experts on the legal and diplomatic aspects.
> 
> This is rather surprising to me, as (to name one example) the Swiss
> Education and Research Network does have plenty of technical experts and I
> know the Swiss government engages in constructive dialogue with them (among
> others).

Sure. And in some of the areas that I particularly care about, I also
serve as a technical expert for some Swiss government institutions -
the problem is not lack of existence of technical experts or lack of
willingness of the Swiss government to engage in constructive dialogue
with them. The problem arises when some of the people who are experts
or pretend to be experts are paid directly or indirectly (for example
through research financing) by a powerful company with a strong
financial interest in muddying the waters in order to prevent the
government from having a clear understanding of some matters.

In those situations the government would need to have, within the
staff of the ministry, the necessary technical understanding and
willingness to distinguish between arguments that make sense and
arguments that don't.

> My personal experience with large bureaucracies is that more often than not
> the right persons/expertise is there, it's simply not that easy to identify
> them - even for insiders!

You're probably right that to a large extent, that is the problem.
But from the perspective of an outsider, there is no practical
difference whether either the government simply does not have anyone
on-staff with the right skills or if such a person is employed by
the government but practically impossible to identify.

But anyway, regardless of whether the problem is that the government
doesn't have people on staff with the necessary technical
understanding and willingness to distinguish between arguments that
make sense and arguments that don't, or whether the problem is that
I'm just unable to locate those people when I would need them, it is
a problem that wouldn't be occurring in the context of an IETF-like
environment.

> Perhaps another good effect of any "mapping project" could also be to
> highlight where the expertise lies in each administration, and in this way
> facilitate exchanges/dialogue.

If this statement is in reference to the http://idgovmap.org Internet
Governance Mapping initiative, then I think I'll probably need to
disappoint you - in order to keep the scope of that manageable, I
don't think that it will be possible to go down to that level of
detail.

> I do not know enough the Swiss situation to make any assessment.
> Half-truths and lies (as well as statistics :) are a fact of life. You can
> either conclude that their influence is so strong that any involvement in
> political life is useless, and therefore focus your participation in other
> settings where (in your opinion) you will find only Truth, Honesty and
> Goodwill - the risk being that this new setting is in fact discussing
> different stuff and therefore the decisions you care about are still taken
> elsewhere.
> 
> Or you can accept that this is not a "la-la world" and become a "de facto"
> lobbyist yourself (you can even call yourself a "lobbyist in the public
> interest" if that makes you feel better). There are many examples at the EU
> level of "public service NGOs", such as BEUC (the Bureau of European
> Consumer Organisations) and EDRi (the European Digital Rights initiative)
> which manage to influence rather succesfully, in my view, EU
> decision-making.

Sure... and I have spent a significant amount of time on this kind of
thing, with also some personal successes.

But I believe that it would be possible to significantly reduce the
need for this kind of activity, and increase the effectiveness of the
"lobbying in the public interest" (or "public interest advocacy" as I
call it in my recent paper) that will still need to be done, by
creating the institutions and processes of "Enhanced Cooperation" in a
way that is inspired in an appropriate way by what works in IETF.

> > I would envision the body that is modeled on the IETF to not make the
> > final decisions, but develop a set of models of potential regulations on
> > these topics, with documentation of advantages and drawbacks of each,
> > and leave it to the relevant parliaments to make the choice between
> > them.
>
> Then I must wonder, noting that the European Commission does not have an
> official position on this: if the mandate Committe for Internet Related
> Policies was modified to take out the "oversight" of standards-setting
> bodies (an unfortunate term in my opinion) and the "crisis management"
> (which can mean everything and the contrary of everything) would it then be
> such a horrible solution to make these pesky governments a bit happier?

Sorry I simply don't understand this question.

I'm not familiar with a "Committee for Internet Related Policies" or
what its mandate might be.

Is this something that all stakeholders from anywhere in the world
would be welcome to be involved in? Are participating experts who
are not already on a governmental payroll paid for the work they do?
If the answers to these two questions are "yes" for what you propose,
then I probably wouldn't view it as a "horrible solution".

> > Choices that involve seeking the balance between significant legitimate
> > conflicting interests cannot be made by the rough consensus method.
> 
> We are in very strong agreement on this point. Which however raises the
> issue: can the multi-stakeholder model, which in my view (and I'm happy to
> stand corrected, perhaps with an agreed definition of what
> "multi-stakeholder" actually means) is based on the "rough consensus"
> method, ever be used to "seek the balance between significant legitimate
> conflicting interests"? (Which, unfortunately, happens to be the daily
> bread and butter of governments/public authorities).

My view is that the objective of multi-stakeholder processes should be
seen mainly in the area of building mutual understanding of the issues
and the advantages and disadvantages of various proposals for
addressing the problems.

I do not see any possibility of multi-stakeholder processes actually
taking over the roles of governments and public authorities in seeking
that balance.

But the existing multi-stakeholder processes need to be reformed and
supplemented to make them more effective (i.e. successful) in regard
to supporting the roles of governments and public authorities. That
is in my opinion what "Enhanced Cooperation" should be understood to
be all about.

Greetings,
Norbert

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