[governance] Report from the IGF Open Consultations in Paris

[William Drake]

Hi Norbert

On Mar 3, 2013, at 11:17 PM, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:

> William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch> wrote:
> 
>>> 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.
>> 
>> Sorry you felt unpleasantly surprised, but this was proposed by
>> APC/IGC members and enjoyed broad support.
> 
> Since this was not suggested in either APC's written contribution nor
> in IGC's written contribution, I'm assuming that "this was proposed by
> APC/IGC members and enjoyed broad support" refers to a MAG-internal
> process".

Not that I recall.   My guess would be that 80-90% of what gets said in open consultations is not written down in formal input docs, so it's not unusual.  The model is brainstorming, not treaty negotiations.
> 
> So in the MAG internally there is broad support for the idea of not

> choosing an overall IGF theme until the workshop proposals have come in,
> but at the same time those outside the MAG are asked to make written
> contributions with "suggestions on themes" being part of what is being
> explicitly asked for, and "Discussions on the possible main theme and
> sub-themes of IGF 2013" was a main agenda item for the open
> consultations ???

False binary, Anriette made a suggestion in the flow of the discussion and most people who spoke to the point seemed to agree, that's all.  

FWIW my view was different.  I think the EuroDIG does very well with crowd sourcing main themes because they solicit inputs on these, get a lot of replies, and then aggregate them into clusters to talk through.  This is rather different from trying to arrive at themes inductively based on 100+ disparate workshop proposals.  Since we may end up picking some generic conference theme per usual anyway, I'd have preferred we just got on with it based on ideas already in circulation.  So I suggested Freedom of Connection, Freedom of Expression as an overarching with main sessions on principles, enhanced cooperation, human rights, and telecom/Internet convergence.  But there was clearly no appetite for focusing on narrowing and deciding yet, so we stuck to free form ideating. 
> 
> Nota bene, there was no agenda item like "Discuss whether the choice
> of main theme should be left often until after the workshop proposals
> have been received".

Best not to expect such a formalized process and to look at how we've been doing things for eight years.
> 
> In comparison to the other integrity related concerns that I raised,
> this is a very minor point, but I still think that it is one that
> should not be simply glossed over.
> 
>>> 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.
>> 
>> Here I really don't know what you mean.  There was two days of robust
>> participation by many people who I believe favor integrity, including
>> your CS colleagues.  In what sense were you a lonely voice in the
>> wilderness for integrity?
>> 
>> Just wondering,
> 
> The relatively major integrity related points that I raised were:
> 
> (1) The theme for the 2012 IGF was wonderfully wordsmithed, but it did
> not match the actual substantive content of that IGF meeting (that is
> the context in which I explicitly used the word "integrity").

Sorry, I was reading the above in relation to more standard definitions of the word.  Anyway, the overarching theme of the meetings has never matched their substantive content.  For example, you may recall that we had several early meetings where the theme was nominally development but there was precious little discussion thereof, a point I subsequently belabored in arguing for the addition of an IG4D main session.  So I don't know why you'd feel like this is some new departure from "integrity." 
> 
> (2) The "Effective Participation of All Stakeholders in Internet
> Governance" overall subtheme suggestion from IGC.

So because the room didn't rise up as one and say eureka, Norbert has mentioned the perfect theme, you were therefore the only proponent of integrity?
> 
> (3) "And I would like to note that there is a very strong tradition at
> the IGF, especially in recent years, of emphasizing human rights, and
> it would be very valuable to take that forward in a more
> outcome-oriented and implementation-oriented way, moving it from the
> 'talking about it' to the 'actually getting it done' stage, and I would
> very much appreciate if the program for the IGF specifically encourages
> this kind of practical side to it, to move the IGF from being very much
> a talk and social event to something that has a very strong practical
> policy impact."

You wanted the open consultation to agree that the IGF is the appropriate venue in which get human rights "done"?   If so, you set yourself up for disappointment.
> 
> (4) I quoted the recommendations of the WG on Internet Improvements
> which are asking for explicit outcomes, and pointed out that if such
> outcomes are supposed to emerge from the discussions at the IGF, then
> that needs to be taken into account in the design of the main sessions
> so that what will be written in the outcome document will have
> actually emerged from the discussions at the IGF meeting (the
> transcript has this as "the structure of the main sessions in the sense
> of the sessions that have interpretation should really reflect that the
> structure should be chosen so that these outcomes are actually outcomes
> of those sessions, so that there should be a deliberative process of the
> community of participants in the IGF leading to this outcome").

Sure
> 
> If any of these points were picked up by other speakers, or if any
> other speakers made any similarly specifically integrity oriented
> comments, I have missed those comments.

There may be lots of reasons people don't pick up on a comment.  For example, if they understand and agree with it, they may feel ok that's been said and concentrate on another concern.  Conversely, when you said the caucus supported making "the Internet for kids" a main theme some of us were rather puzzled, but we didn't bother to jump up and disagree.  It's probably best not to expect the room to move with one's every utterance, or to decide others don't favor integrity if this doesn't happen.

> Especially with regard to point (4) I find it worrying that there was
> so much discussion about main sessions formats without (as far as I
> noticed) anyone besides myself looking at that topic in relation to
> the need to having integrity in the process that produces the outcome
> documents.

> I find this particularly worrying because in view of what went wrong in
> the process for producing the WSIS+10 outcome document, it should have
> been rather obvious that it is important to pay attention to making
> sure that the process for producing the IGF outcome documents will have
> integrity.

Ok, I'm sorry to hear all this worries you and suspect you have many more worries to come.

Best

Bill


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