[governance] Re: Need for strategic planning (was Re: Why Cell Phones Went Dead...)

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

The IGF was never really meant to accomplish "action" - everybody I've talked to considers that it is, to put it impolitely, a talk shop - and to put it much more politely (and accurately), a place where a rather wider variety of stakeholders can meet stakeholders from outside the circles they usually move in, and possibly find common cause on something they're working on.

If you start off a conference with as vague and generic a goal as "sustainable [x], [y] and [z]" and, what is much more important, no action items for future work identified, little or no funding except for the next conference at the next exotic venue, no permanent staff / secretariat to keep the logistics moving .. what else do you expect, other than more presentations?

--srs (iPad)

On 20-Nov-2012, at 17:09, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:

> Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh at hserus.net> wrote:
> 
>> Some organizations (MAAWG, the RIRs / NRO, APWG, EPIC ..) have active
>> policy + tech programs in place, Diplo also does a substantial amount
>> of on the ground work in training .. could you please highlight
>> specific areas where you see a gap?
> 
> I see the gap not primarily in regard to any specific areas, but in
> regard to the big picture objectives, around which we in fact have broad
> consensus at the level of making nice-sounding speeches and the "realm
> of word docs and powerpoint", but nevertheless lack of effective
> strategic planning for translation those supposed insights into
> concrete effective actions.
> 
> As exhibit A let me point to the recent IGF, which according to its
> official theme was about the goal "Sustainable Human, Economic and
> Social Development". But was it really about that topic? None of the
> sessions that I attended were truly about that goal. I organized a
> workshop and tried to make the conversation relevant to the objective
> that was supposed to be the IGF's theme. But it didn't work out since
> too many of my panelists turned out to be unwilling to truly engage
> with that. The IGF community is wonderful in many ways, but
> at this IGF, willingness to truly engage with the goal "Sustainable
> Human, Economic and Social Development" has not been one of them.
> 
> In my opinion, lack of knowledge of effective tools for strategic
> planning in complex systemic context (with lots of self-interested
> actors that can be influenced in some ways, which can not be
> controlled) is a main cause of this shortcoming. The good news is that
> such tools actually exist, what I know is the "logical thinking
> process" tools of the Theory of Constraints. I also consider it
> possible that there may be other good tools that I don't know about yet.
> 
> Greetings,
> Norbert

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