[governance] Civil Society (was Re: caucus contribution, consultation and MAG meeting)

[Norbert Bollow]

Dear Nick,

in order to perhaps explain better where I'm coming from... what we're
doing in developing an IGC "written contribution", especially during
the consensus process phase, is part of what the IGC mission statement
calls "representation of civil society contributions in Internet
governance processes"... I would suggest that if you want to be part of
a group representing civil society in any topic area, you need to be
deeply immersed in civil society thinking in that topic area. Of course
it is possible to achieve this kind of immersion while having a
different (typically, non civil society) day job during which one works
in a different topic area. I don't believe that it is possible to be in
such a way immersed in civil society thinking in a topic area while at
the same time representing business interests in the same topic area.
(So, for example if a professional industry interests representative
in the area of Internet governance, like yourself, wants to gain
experience at being also a civil society representative, that would
be achieved by engaging as a civil society person in a totally
unrelated subject area, e.g. cyclists' rights.) 

In any case, your recent response to Parminder was to my ears very much
an expression of an industry perspective.

That is not a contradiction with your claim that you're "an advocate
for actual people". In fact, isn't it in a way the whole point of
industry is that it exists to meet needs of actual people? Any company
which doesn't do that is likely to go bankrupt quickly!

Also I think that it is great when industry representatives take pro
civil society positions. (With that I mean that if there is a good
civil society position, which is convincing on the merits of its
arguments, and then industry representatives decide to support that
position, that's great!) Conversely it also sometimes happens that
civil society representatives support some positions developed by
industry representatives.

We civil society people however need to be careful to maintain our
independence, and identity as civil society, and that we don't allow the
positions that are appropriate for civil society to take to be watered
down etc.

In fact civil society in the Internet governance area is in my opinion
to a significant extent in an identity crisis, in the sense that the
practical meaning of the term "civil society", and what the associated
value systems are, is today much less clear than it used to be say ten
years ago. That is in fact a significant part of the reason why I
jumped at this opportunity to establish at least some kind of boundary
marker.

Greetings,
Norbert


Nick Ashton-Hart <nashton at ccianet.org> wrote:

> Dear Norbert, FWIW:
> 
> 1) I'm signed up to the list with my @ccianet.org address rather than
> a private address
> 2) Given my ICANN past and track record there and continuing work
> on IG and other Internet policy issues, I suspect my name and what I
> do for a living isn't a mystery here.
> 3) My sig on my handheld is neutral (for some reason the iPad isn't
> sending different sigs based on what address I'm sending from), on my
> PCs it isn' (as you can see below).
> 4) I think the tone and content of my interventions here makes
> pretty clear that I'm a strong advocate for actual people. Just
> because someone works for one constituency doesn't mean that they are
> pushing the views of that constituency 24x7. Many people on this list
> probably work for the for-profit sector in their daily jobs, and many
> if not most of those companies probably have some commercial nexus
> with the Internet in one way or another, but that hardly makes
> everything they say here suspect.
> 5) I am not participating here on behalf of anyone but myself. I
> presume that's true of most of the rest of the list, as relatively
> few people can make a living representing CS groups (unfortunately,
> in my view).
> 
> I certainly understand that those who don't work for another
> stakeholder community for a day-job in policy like I do should decide
> things, but I hardly agree that anyone in my position is incapable of
> proposing people-centric and/or pro civil-society positions. Ideas
> should succeed or fall on their merits - even if some of the
> proposers such as myself don't have the vote.
> 
> We are all people first, and employees second.
> 
> On 13 Feb 2013, at 12:00, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:
> 
> > Nick Ashton-Hart <nashton at ccianet.org> [1] wrote:
> > 
> >> +1 to the thought extracted below. Thanks Norbert for trying to
> >> herd all the cats :)
> >> 
> >> 
> >> -- 
> >> Regards,
> >> 
> >> Nick
> >> Sent from my one of my handheld thingies, please excuse linguistic
> >> mangling.
> >> 
> >> On 12 Feb 2013, at 20:20, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:
> >> 
> >>> I do not think that there's anything fundamentally wrong with the
> >>> process that I've been trying to implement here, of having
> >>> relatively informal online editing followed by a formal call,
> >>> with a deadline, to raise any issues about the text that has
> >>> resulted from the informal process, and then having a
> >>> consensus-oriented process to resolve the issues that have been
> >>> raised  
> > 
> > 
> > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Ashton-Hart
> > 
> > 
> > [with IGC coordinator hat on]
> > 
> > Perhaps a clarification is needed here.
> > 
> > This is the _Civil_Society_ Internet Governance Caucus.
> > 
> > We welcome and value the participation of people from other
> > stakeholder groups in general discussions, but the official, formal
> > statements of the Caucus need to explicitly represent an aggregated
> > civil society perspective.
> > 
> > It also happens to follow logically from the text of our charter
> > that only civil society actors can participate in the formal
> > consensus process for the official, formal statements of the
> > Caucus. I'm willing to explain this if desired (it's not as
> > immediately clear as I'd like it to be, but it does follow
> > logically) -- but I really think that it shouldn't be necessary to
> > argue this explicitly.
> > 
> > The distinction between stakeholder groups is not always totally
> > clear, and I would suggest that when participating as a guest in
> > the Caucus of another stakeholder group, and in any boundary cases
> > (like when someone can be reasonably seen as being part of multiple
> > stakeholder categories at the same time), explicit disclosure is an
> > important step. One way to practice explicit disclosure is to use
> > a .sig that explicitly mentions the employer (or other stakeholder
> > group affiliation), possibly as part of a disclaimer that opinions
> > expressed are not to be taken as official positions of the employer.
> > 
> > Greetings,
> > Norbert
> 
> 


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