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

[Shcherbovich Andrey]

Dear colleagues!

is there any hope for deadline 14 Feb. extention? because we are also preparing contributions for the Open Consultations.

With kind regards, Andrey Shcherbovich
HSE (Moscow)

13.02.2013, 19:26, "Norbert Bollow" <nb at bollow.ch>:
> 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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