[governance] 2013 Preparations for MAG

[William Drake]

On Nov 25, 2012, at 1:15 PM, Fouad Bajwa wrote:

> Clarity, clarity, clarity. This is my input and I did not ask for
> justifications or clarifications.

Oh, sorry.  I'd assumed you were opening a conversation, not issuing a declaration.
> 
> Disappointed….

That people replied to you?  Gee, sorry.
> 
> On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 3:35 PM, William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch> wrote:
>> Hi
>> 
>> Replies in line, sorry for the length, there's a lot to talk about.
>> 
>> On Nov 25, 2012, at 6:02 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
>> 
>> Let me add some below, in line with Fouad, tagged [srs]
>> 
>> These are entirely my opinion, from being on the management committee (till
>> 2009) and fellowship committee (till now) of an asiapac wide network
>> operators conference (APRICOT) for several years.
>> 
>> On 25-Nov-2012, at 9:58, Fouad Bajwa <fouadbajwa at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> To throw in some starters:
>> 
>> 
>> 1. Should the IGF continue to hold meetings in countries with
>> 
>> authoritative regimes and repressed political environments? People
>> 
>> from certain neighboring countries were not able to participate while
>> 
>> the fear factor of participating in an IGF where the host country was
>> 
>> authoritarian was high.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [srs] Should the IGF hold meetings in comparatively remote locations
>> compared to major airline hubs with liberal visa regimes and excellent
>> conference facilities?  The point here is that such locations are more
>> expensive to fly to than other locations on the same continent that are
>> major airline hubs, with direct flights from more places around the world.
>> They may, in most cases, have more suitable conference venues so we'd get
>> far less issues with remote participation, wifi based collaboration in the
>> venue, acoustics in the auditorium …
>> 
>> 
>> As long as IGF's linked to the UN system, you get what you get.  It's not
>> like ICANN's site selection process.  If a government stands up and says
>> we'd like to host (either out of commitment to the process or to make use of
>> a new convention center, fill hotels, tell locals that IGF is a UN seal of
>> approval for its policies, etc) it's politically pretty difficult to say no,
>> not to mention that hosting costs money that's in short supply and the line
>> of suitors doesn't stretch down the block.  On a separate note, one could
>> debate whether holding meetings in such countries doesn't do some trickle
>> down good; I tend to think it's a net plus, but others may calculate
>> differently.  That said, wherever we go, one would certainly like nicer
>> venues with better amenities that are easier to get to.
>> 
>> 
>> 2. IGF should put out a call for hosts country expression of interest
>> 
>> instead of expecting someone will bid with clearly laid out principles
>> 
>> and process for selection.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [srs] Fully concur.  Something on the lines of an RFP with clearly defined
>> requirements for the host country, in terms of logistics as well as based on
>> an evaluation of free speech rights in the country.
>> 
>> 
>> I strongly agree that conditions and requirements need to be laid down and
>> there has to be a means to deal in real time and afterwards with
>> nonconformance, or it's just paper.  But depending on the circumstance,
>> making that work might require more than sotto voce discussions with the
>> secretariat, e.g. interventions from supportive governments and
>> stakeholders.  Could be dicey, merits thought.
>> 
>> Either way, I think there is interest among some in the MAG in setting out
>> such requirements, and it'd help them to sell it to peers if there were good
>> stakeholder inputs on the point.  So it would be useful if the IGC and
>> others would take a crack at setting something out.
>> 
>> 
>> 3. When do the MAG improvements actually happen with reference to the
>> 
>> CSTD IGF improvements and when will they be reflected i.e. in future
>> 
>> IGFs?
>> 
>> 
>> [srs] In other words, can we have some metrics on improvements already
>> suggested and/or future improvements that are actually implemented, and make
>> the leap from powerpoint / pdf to "ground realities"?
>> 
>> 
>> The UN process has to work its way through, but in the meanwhile people in
>> the MAG are definitely expressing interest in getting more proactive.
>> 
>> 
>> 4. Logistical support interms of visa acquisition to attend open
>> 
>> consultations or observe MAG meetings remains a challenge for people
>> 
>> from developing countries and attention to detail is needed from the
>> 
>> IGF secretariat. People from developed regions do have considerable
>> 
>> advantage over this issue but do not represent the views and insights
>> 
>> of developing country issues and inputs to the IGF.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [srs] In the first (Athens) IGF, as I recall, the visa process was very
>> smooth, even expedited, so that a Schengen visa was issued with far less
>> paperwork than I have experienced on business or vacation travel to other
>> Schengen countries.   For the rest, please see my response to point 1 above.
>> A location like Hong Kong, that requires prior visas from I think three
>> countries in the entire world and extends a free visa on arrival to all
>> other countries, and moreover has direct flights from most regions of the
>> world, would be much more suitable than either Athens, Hyderabad or Baku, to
>> pick a few past venues.
>> 
>> 
>> The UN can't force changes in national immigration policies but the above
>> mentioned conditions and requirement could strongly urge the view that
>> offering to host entails responsibilities etc.
>> 
>> 
>> 5. The time allocated to Main Session should be significantly reduced
>> 
>> to half and the majority of Main Sessions should be restricted to one
>> 
>> day otherwise this is negatively impacting audience division and the
>> 
>> numbers in Workshop participation.
>> 
>> 
>> [srs] I wouldn't go that far   However it makes sense to identify a
>> specified time slot for the plenary / main session events every day, and
>> structure workshops so that they feed into the main sessions.   We also need
>> to structure these main sessions so that not all of them become over-long
>> panels by themselves, and have a significant number of rapporteur driven
>> sessions which provide feedback from the workshops to the broader audience.
>> 
>> 
>> I strongly disagree with cutting the time for main sessions and think we
>> should instead make them more useful to more people.  I hope we can finally
>> come to agreement that after seven years we don't have to be bound to the
>> same old tired standardized generic session topics.  MS should be able to
>> vary per year to address truly "hot topics" that are on the tips of tongues
>> everywhere.  I proposed this at the Feb. 2012 meeting in the context of
>> calling for a MS on human rights, and was immediately shot down by the
>> "nothing can be changed" Greek chorus.  But after the rather uneven
>> performance of the MS this time, I sensed in the spontaneous partial MAG
>> meeting at Baku greater openness to tinkering.  Why shouldn't we be able to
>> have a MS on enhanced cooperation and any gaps in the governance ecosystem,
>> patterns of private sector governance, the role of online campaign
>> mobilizations like we've seen around WCIT, the contestable boundary lines
>> between telecom and Internet and their global governance, territoriality and
>> jurisdiction, and so on—even if the "messages" coming out of the sessions
>> were "views differed sharply" that would be ok.  And why not vary the
>> formats, e.g. by having some debates on juicy topics (could even do it with
>> teams and audience show of hands on motions).
>> 
>> If others agree that innovation in the MS would be desirable, an IGC input
>> on this too would be a really helpful for CS participants to bring into the
>> MAG discussion.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 6. Workshop planing detail should continue to receive more attention
>> 
>> especially interms of quality and issue. The issue around achieving
>> 
>> gender balance, multistakeholder balance and regional coverage are
>> 
>> really not working.
>> 
>> 
>> I tend toward the seemingly unpopular view that while there was much
>> satisfied feedback on numerous Baku WS, the fact remains there were simply
>> too many (running 11 tracks of 44 WS parallel to the days MS was nuts) and
>> some were clearly less solid, well thought out, and properly personed (in
>> terms of the above criteria, and others).  I found it very frustrating that
>> the MAG went through this whole exercise of ranking WS proposals, which in
>> the first cut resulted in 2/3rd of applications being below the acceptance
>> threshold and needing more work, and yet a great many of these ultimately
>> made their way into the program seemingly irrespective of the extent to
>> which they were revised and improved in accordance with MAG feedback.  If we
>> want a high quality and right sized program, sometimes we have to have the
>> courage to say sorry no please try next year.
>> 
>> We also had the curious phenomenon of people submitting late WS proposals
>> purporting to be open forums.  The OFs are supposed to be a specific thing,
>> organizational show and tell, not a category to be used by late movers to
>> smuggle in WS proposals.  When the divergence between the OF format and the
>> proposals was pointed out in MAG, some anyway got approved somehow as "side
>> sessions," a category for which there are apparently no rules.  We should
>> nip that in the bud.
>> 
>> Of course, the challenge here is that some attendees need to have their own
>> event in order to get funding to come and participate, and obviously we
>> don't want to suppress the numbers.  On the other hand, many individuals and
>> organizations habitually propose a large number of events.  At a minimum,
>> one would think we could adopt a rule that nobody can lead organize more
>> than say two-three workshops.  That ought to be sufficient to deal with any
>> travel funding needs and visibility urges.
>> 
>> In parallel, there seems to be some interest in MAG in the idea that no
>> single person should appear on more than [x] WS and MS panels.  There a
>> cohort of usual suspects who ritualistically speak at 7, 10, 12 events. In
>> part, this is fueled by the difficulty of identifying "new blood" that has
>> committed to attend and would be perfect fits, so when someone's organizing
>> a session and thinks oh I need a person from xyz region or SG the easy
>> default is to turn to known and easily available folks.  So we need to make
>> a proactive effort to entice new and qualified attendees, particularly from
>> the government side, and to tell the usual suspects to please accept only
>> the [3-4] appearances you think most appropriate.  Self regulation can play
>> a role in the latter if the MAG can't manage to establish or enforce a rule.
>> I know I'll be doing that.
>> 
>> 
>> The IGF pre-events have to be revisited and should
>> 
>> receive more attention in terms of planning and projection as  these
>> 
>> are receiving a lot of attention by participants.
>> 
>> 
>> I think the explosion in pre-events is indicative of the need for more
>> flexibility in formatting, including the main sessions.  If you want to have
>> a serious in depth discussion of a topic and the MS are all locked down with
>> ye ole SOP etc, what other option is there?  Although even if we reform the
>> MS format some people will still want to do their own things their own
>> ways...  Maybe we should admit this is a feature not a bug and that the IGF
>> really runs five days rather than four, and if there are more bottom up
>> proposals than can be accommodated they should go through the MAG process…?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [srs] Fully agree.
>> 
>> 7.  The visa issue despite being well managed by the host country
>> 
>> remained one of them most unclear aspects of the IGF and the IGF
>> 
>> secretariat should give more emphasis on detailing out these issues
>> 
>> with future host countries in the very beginning.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [srs] This goes back to my point about picking venues with liberal visa
>> regimes, and/or venues that promise to expedite visas for bonafide
>> conference delegates.   However, from the host country's standpoint, I can
>> say that there will be a significant threat of misuse of these visas by a
>> small number of people (for example, I have personally seen, in that network
>> operators conference, fellowship applications from what are obviously
>> "advance fee fraud" scam artists looking for a free ticket to the event - if
>> we grant such a fellowship, once in the country they simply "disappear" and
>> overstay their visa, then our local hosts face some heat for this).  So,
>> nothing in this process should compromise on due diligence carried out by
>> the country's visa authorities.
>> 
>> 8. The venue planning needs to be carefully done as having venues
>> 
>> outside the cities causes both stress and challenges to accessibility.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [srs] Fully agree, covered above
>> 
>> 
>> See 2 above
>> 
>> 
>> 9. An Internet Connectivity Team should be assembled by the IGF
>> 
>> Secretariat that should work beforehand on the ground to manage
>> 
>> internet connectivity to cover remote participation, connectivity for
>> 
>> over 2000 participants keeping in view that this may mean planning and
>> 
>> connecting 2000 people x 6000 devices (laptops, cell phones, wi-fi
>> 
>> enable cameras, tables etc).
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [srs] It actually makes sense to hire and retain a professional vendor of
>> conference networking services, such as Verilan, to provide the same (high,
>> bound by SLA) standard of networking across events.   Funding for this will
>> remain an open question though, with the current model of the IGF.
>> 
>> 10. The sudden shift of Open Consultations and MAG meetings from
>> 
>> Geneva to France for February 2013 without open consultation and
>> 
>> comments from the community puts a severe logistical pressure on
>> 
>> participation for those that find it a challenge to already
>> 
>> participate in such meetings. This shift enables only certain
>> 
>> 
>> [srs] This might have been true earlier, but Switzerland and France are both
>> Schengen countries.  So if you have already acquired a Swiss Schengen visa,
>> you should certainly be able to use it for your travel to France.
>> 
>> I do agree that if the venue had been shifted from, say, Washington DC to
>> Toronto, I would have fully agreed with you, but in this case, it is moot.
>> 
>> We are having a related debate-lette in the MAG now on May.  At present, the
>> IGF consultation and MAG are scheduled in the same week (13-17 May) as not
>> on only the WSIS Forum, per usual, but also the ITU's World Telecom Policy
>> Forum on global Internet governance.  I think it would be a disaster if
>> stakeholders with an interest in IG were precluded from attending the WTPF
>> by this scheduling.  If the WCIT debates have shown anything, it is that
>> it's really important that ITU member governments not be negotiating
>> documents (even non-binding opinions, which set agendas and create mandates
>> for future organizational action) without civil society, business and the
>> technical community at least being in the room.  The WTPF page
>> http://www.itu.int/en/wtpf-13/Pages/participation.aspx says that
>> participation will be open to the public as observers.  It's not clear yet
>> whether this will be on the same terms and conditions as the 2009 forum in
>> Lisbon, when members of the public had to submit to a staff beauty context
>> and demonstrate their qualifications to attend, and if accepted were unable
>> to speak; this has been asked of ITU but not answered.  But either way, we
>> should be there.  If you look at the preparatory docs and national
>> submissions (all freely accessible on the website) it is clear they will be
>> getting into many of the most contentious issues of interest to us, so there
>> will be a need to mobilize and weigh in somehow.
>> 
>> Accordingly, a few of us have proposed that the IGF meetings be moved to the
>> week before or after the WTPF, or else to the week before or after the CSTD
>> (which, next year is inconveniently scheduled for 3-7 June…which not only
>> means interested parties will have to come to Geneva twice, but conflicts
>> with the EuroDIG too).  The responses on the MAG list have been pretty
>> scattered, with a couple expressions of support for moving, and others
>> saying we should keep it as is in the name of travel cost savings—even if
>> this means IG people can't go to an open ITU event on IG.  One may speculate
>> on the thinking behind the latter.
>> 
>> Bottom line, here too it would be useful for the IGC to weigh in, quickly,
>> if in fact people agree that the WTPF is a priority.
>> 
>> A final point not mentioned so far—the outstanding issue of working groups
>> and ongoing activities on matters of key concern.  From the outset the IGC
>> has maintained that IGF should be able to convene groups that include good
>> government representation that are designed to undertake focused
>> explorations of topics and have their outputs—even if it's some feel this,
>> others feel that messages—feed into the MS.  There's been much discussion of
>> doing something around Enhanced Cooperation in this manner, although some
>> forces have argued for focusing on the CSTD instead, which has inherent
>> limitations with respect to multistakeholderism and governmental
>> representation.  Part of what makes this insoluble is the lack of a clearly
>> laid out model of how WGs convened under the IGF could function.  If the IGC
>> could put forward a concrete proposal, preferably in coordination with
>> business and the TC, that would be very helpful too.
>> 
>> So in short, if IGC and other CS formations give the CS members of the MAG
>> something to work with that we can point to and say our community strongly
>> feels xyz, that could be really useful in moving some balls down field.
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Bill
>> 


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