[governance] Substantive discourse processes for the Brazil MSM (was Re: Meeting ... between the LOG and 1Net)

[Norbert Bollow]

Since the text below obviously wasn't provocative enough to get a
discussion started, let me ask a few questions...


These questions refer to “political tone” and “technical precision”.


With “political tone” I mean that when textual contributions are
invited from any source, some of them will express concerns about
actions or potential actions of other stakeholders; those texts will be
somewhere on the scale from

  unjustifiable verbal attacks and insults

over

  candid and direct expression of legitimate concerns

to

  traditional diplomatic language.


With “technical precision” I mean that contributions on topics
related tot he Internet will be somewhere on the scale from

  being based on explicit factually wrong assertions about the Internet

over

  expressions of legitimate concerns in layman terms which are not
  exactly wrong but difficult to interpret precisely in the context of
  how the Internet actually works

to

  precise and technically accurate problem statements and solution
  proposals. 


Now when inputs from stakeholders are intended to contribute to the
formulation of a reasonably consistent output document, there is a
need to apply some kind of uniform standard in regard to both of these
dimensions.


This leads to the following questions:

1. Which standards should be adopted in regard to political tone and
technical precision?

2. How is it decided whether proposed text fulfills the requirements
in regard to these two dimensions?

3. How to empower people to express their concerns in a way that
conforms to the expectations in regard to political tone and
technical precision?

4. How to prevent the standards on political tone and technical
precision from being abused to suppress inconvenient truths?


Greetings,
Norbert 



Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:

> In order to kick off the discussion, here's an initial, quite rough,
> draft of one possible idea:
> 
> Greetings,
> Norbert
> 
> --snip--------------------------------------------------------------
> This document aims to propose a set of broadly acceptable processes
> for handling substantive inputs to the Global Multistakeholder
> Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance.
> 
> According to the website http://brmeeting.br/ the meeting will “focus
> on crafting Internet governance principles and proposing a roadmap for
> the further evolution of the Internet governance ecosystem.”
> 
> Since the time for substantive preparatory processes is so short, it
> may be appropriate to further focus the planned meeting on gathering
> requirements and concerns in regard to Internet governance principles
> and the further evolution of the Internet governance ecosystem, from
> various perspectives, and to build a shared understanding of what the
> various perspectives on this are.
> 
> If this objective is adopted, appropriate processes for handling
> substantive inputs could include the following:
> 
>  *  Communicate (as early as possible) an invitation to provide input
>     documents on gathering requirements and concerns, from various
>     perspectives.
> 
>  *  Assemble a working group tasked with compiling these substantive
>     inputs into a comprehensiove report.
> 
>  *  After March 1, the deadline for submitting substantive
>     contributions. the working group will draft a report on
>     requirements and concerns, noting which points require further
>     clarification.
> 
>  *  Each contributor is given the opportunity to double-check that
>     their contribution is reflected appropriately.
> 
>  *  Requests for changes / corrections which contributors have
>     submitted are processed.
> 
>  *  The working group for the substantive report tries to identify
> what are the open points that need to be resolved before the report
> can be adopted as describing a shared understanding of what the
> various perspectives on this are.
> 
>  *  At the beginning of the MSM itself, the list of “open points that
>     need to be resolved” can be added to by any participant.
> 
>  *  The rest of the first day of the MSM is used for breakout sessions
>     attempting to achieve consensus resolutions for the various open
>     points.
> 
>  *  The second day is used for plenary sessions in which resolution
>     proposals are presented and hopefully consensus is achieved.
> 
> --snap--------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> Am Thu, 16 Jan 2014 15:00:10 +0100
> schrieb Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>:
> 
> > Dear all
> > 
> > After a bit more delay than I had hoped, I'm now ready to start
> > woking on a proposal document on substantive discourse processes
> > for the Brazil MSM...
> > 
> > I have set up a wiki as a workspace for this, please be bold in
> > editing
> > http://digital-age.info/wiki/Brazil_2014_proposal_on_substantive_processes
> > and pages that you create, linking them from there.
> > 
> > Hopefully we will be able to identify at least one reasonable way in
> > which substantive inputs can be handled, a way that will be seen as
> > acceptable from a broad variety of perspectives (not limited to
> > civil society perspectives).
> > 
> > I think that what ways for handling substantive inputs are
> > reasonable will depend to a significant extent on assumptions about
> > the objectives of the MSM, which haven't been decided yet. It might
> > be the best approach to make several proposals on the basis of
> > several possibilities for how the objectives of the meeting can be
> > defined.
> > 
> > In any case, let's get going!
> > 
> > The following three people (who are not subscribers to the IGC
> > mailing list) have requested to be Cc'd:
> >  
> > Richard Hill <rhill at hill-a.ch>
> > Daniel Iga Mwesigwa <daniel.igamwesigwa2003 at gmail.com>
> > Birgitta Jónsdóttir <birgitta at this.is>
> > 
> > Please keep them listed in Cc over the course of this discussion.
> > 
> > Greetings,
> > Norbert

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