[governance] Report from the IGF Open Consultations in Paris

[Norbert Bollow]

Dear all

Here is my brief report from yesterday's IGF Open Consultations in
Paris. (I'm not on the MAG, and I have not attended the MAG meeting,
hence there's not going to be any report from me on that.)

Clearly a significant number of the participants of the WSIS+10
review conference were interested in contributing to shaping the
direction of the IGF, and have therefore also participated in the
consultations. There was also a significant number of interventions
from remote participants. It was unfortunate however that the audio
streams for the simultaneous interpretation into the five other UN
languages besides English were available only in the room in Paris,
and not to remote participants. Although I pointed this issue out
already in the morning shortly after the consultations started, I
was told that the necessary technical set-up for addressing this
was not possible to do right away. I have been assured though that
it will be possible to set this up right for the next IGF
consultations.

The consultations were expertly chaired by Markus Kummer.

For several reasons there is no need to describe in detail what was
said. On one hand the transcript has already been posted. On the
other hand, in many of the interventions what was purposefully not
addressed was more significant than what was actually said. This was
most obvious in China's long intervention shortly before the lunch
break; given the Chinese government's lack of actual engagement at
the IGF, that intervention was truly remarkable in its absurdity.
However many of the interventions from Western cultural perspectives
were in my view essentially of the same type, likewise aiming at
distracting the IGF from any effective work towards substantive
outcome documents on important Internet-related policy questions.
This is particularly significant at the current point in time when
it would have really been appropriate to focus a significant part
of the discussion on how to best implement this key recommendation
of the WG on IGF Improvements.

On the topic of choosing the overall theme for the Bali IGF, a
somewhat unpleasant surprise was sprung on us in the form of Markus
starting the discussion of this topic by asking whether or not to
leave this choice open until after the workshop proposals have come
in. I do not object to this kind of idea being discussed at the IGF
consultations, but I really think that this type of question should
have been mentioned in the agenda for the consultations, so that we
would have had a chance to discuss this in the Caucus in advance.
(Unless the practice is continued to have a wonderfully wordsmithed
theme which is however effectively totally ignored for all practical
purposes related to the IGF's substantive content-- a practice which
is IMO absolutely devoid of integrity-- it is of profound importance
whether the overall theme is chosen to guide workshop proposers, or
to summarize what the workshop proposers are interested in discussing
in the absence of such guidance.)

The suggestions of our caucus to have a human rights oriented overall
theme and a subtheme on principles have resonated strongly with many
other interventions in the debate on themes, so I think that there is
a good chance of success in that area. However there was also a
significant mass of interventions also that favored more techno-
enthusiast theme ideas.

In total I made three interventions, drawing on different parts of
our consensus document, and each time mentioning an aspect of
integrity. For example, our proposal for an overall subtheme of
"effective participation of all stakeholders in Internet governance"
points to one of the essential integrity challenges of multistakeholder
governance.

In trying to put in this way a bit of emphasis on aspects of integrity,
I felt rather alone; it felt like during these consultations, points on
the need for integrity were not getting support from anyone else.

As the resource challenges of the IGF secretariat were mentioned, Imran
suggested on our mailing list that volunteers from civil society might
be able to help out a bit. Therefore I approached Chengetai and asked
him about this idea. He expressed interest, saying that there are indeed
tasks that remote volunteers would be able to help out with. So I
offered my services as a coordinator of the Caucus, so that he can email
me when he has such tasks and I'll then ask on our list for volunteers.

Greetings,
Norbert

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