[governance] Report from the IGF Open Consultations in Paris

[Anriette Esterhuysen]

Dear all

I have been traveling and am in another meeting (in Mexico City) so have 
not had time to follow up.Let me try to explain the backgroundto my 
comments in theMAG meeting.

The proposal to finalise the theme based on interest and proposals from 
the IGF community is not new.Proposals to delay deciding the final theme 
until after workshop proposals have been received was madeand discussed 
at the MAG meeting in 2012. It wasalso raised and discussed on the MAG 
listin February 2013 before we convened in Paris for the MAG meeting. 
Positions varied, with some people supporting the idea, and others not. 
Someproposed a combination approach.

My proposal was that we start with general policy questions based on OC 
input and then wait for workshop proposals before finalising the overall 
'theme'. My reasons:

a) Therecommendation of the CSTD WG on IGF improvements is to build the 
IGF around policy questions. The idea is that we frame the IGF based on 
these policy questions identified at thebeginning of the process. This 
is more or less what we did at last week's MAG meeting. Here is the 
relevant text from the report:
"The IGF Secretariat and the MAG should reach out and continue to invite all
stakeholders to be more actively involved in the preparation of the IGF, 
including by
identifying pertinent key policy questions around which main sessions 
for the IGF
will be structured. In order to enhance the bottom-up process and to 
facilitate the
identification of key policy questions, the Secretariat could also issue 
the call for
workshop proposals before the first open consultation."

b) Much time is wasted by MAG members trying to synthesise an overall 
theme and main themes. The format of MAG meetings does not lend itself 
to finalising themes, or any other kind of 'text editing'. In the 
process I have seen threedisappointing trends time and time again (I 
have observed at MAG meetings prior to my appointment last year): (1) 
the discussion stops focusing on the inputs received from the IGF 
community (2) new themes are put on the table(3) the decision becomes 
politicised and even more time is wasted, with the inevitable resolution 
being to come up with a very vacuous 'contentless' theme.

In this process the excellent ideas that came up during the OC, and in 
written submissions, and during the MAG meeting, is lost.

In 2012 1.5 days were spent debating the overall theme.

You just have to look at the overall themes to see howgeneral they 
usually are, and how little real relationship they have with the content 
of the workshops.

As for finalising the 'main themes'. We had some consensus themes, but 
they were being diffused as the discussion was continuing and people 
tried to 'tidy' them up by combining them.The secretariat was battling 
to make accurate notes of the inputs.If we had broken into smaller 
groups we probably could have come up with the policy questions around 
which we can build main themes, but we did not, and I felt that keeping 
the full list receivedfrom the IGF community was a better option than 
continuing to find final agreement.

c) In general I feel that the primary role of the MAG is to process 
inputs from the IGF community. Synthesising an overall theme based on 
actual workshop proposals is quite a good way of doing this in my view. 
And it is easier for a MAG discussion, or a political debateto be 
grounded byworkshop proposals than inputs made during an OC process. I 
had also suggested that workshop proposers should be asked what policy 
questions they are addressing.

As for the outcome of the MAG meeting on 1 March.The report is not 
terribly detailed, and I think MAG membersshould help the secretariat to 
clarify next steps.

Nevertheless, my understanding is that the 'key-words'listed below will 
be used in the call for workshop proposals. Your point about the SG's 
call is taken Parminder. I think we should clarifythe list in the MAG 
report (copied below), and try to get as close to a few core policy 
questions as we can prior to the call going out. I think having this 
list is better than having an overall theme (and we were heading that 
way) which is so general that it saysnothing at all. I do think we can 
come up with good main theme questions quite easily.There was strong 
support for 'internet governance principles','human rights' and 
'cooperation- multi-stakeholder processes etc.'. This is quite an odd 
mix of issues.. and does needclustering.

-Science and Technology (In Internet) for Development

-Human Rights

-Internet Principles

-Enhanced Cooperation

-Multi-stakeholder Principles an Practices

-Internet as an Engine for Growth and Advancement

-Enhancing Multi-stakeholder collaboration for growth, development and 
human rights. (Social and Economic Growth)

-Spam

-Cyber-security

- Internet Cooperation

- Building Bridges

- Enhanced Cooperation

- Transforming Internet to Equinet

- How to achieve an equal multi-stakeholder model

- Youth (internet for kids, child safety, etc.)

- Cooperation for growth, development, and human rights, best practices 
for sustainable knowledge societies.

- Internet Exchange Points

- Cyber-crime

- Public Access


I hope this helps clarify my inputs during the meeting. I will respond 
to Norbert's 'integrity' points in another message.

Best regards

Anriette

On 04/03/2013 05:05, parminder wrote:
>
> Also important in this regard is that the UN Secretary General is 
> expected to give a call for beginning to prepare for the next IGF 
> before MAG meets in May, and this call has always (as far as I 
> remember) included the overall theme of the next IGF.  Which means 
> that perhaps UN SG will simply pick up the theme suggested by the host 
> country or something like that; whereby the MAG, and through it the 
> larger community, may have effectively excluded itself from this very 
> important part of IGF preparation and program. Pl correct me if I am 
> wrong.
> .. parminder
>
>
> On Monday 04 March 2013 03:47 AM, Norbert Bollow 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".
>>
>> 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 ???
>>
>> 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".
>>
>> 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").
>>
>> (2) The "Effective Participation of All Stakeholders in Internet
>> Governance" overall subtheme suggestion from IGC.
>>
>> (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."
>>
>> (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").
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> Greetings,
>> Norbert
>>
>
>

-- 
------------------------------------------------------
anriette esterhuysen anriette at apc.org
executive director, association for progressive communications
www.apc.org
po box 29755, melville 2109
south africa
tel/fax +27 11 726 1692

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20130304/44a53399/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t