[governance] RE: [bestbits] Principles (warning - long)

Sat Nov 1 13:42:43 EDT 2014

Coming in late and agreeing with my JNC colleagues I'll add only a few
points 

1.       "Openness"-I've discussed "openness" and its enemies in a rather
lengthy series of blogposts and publications which I'm delighted to see
being paralleled in a range of academic discussions on these issues

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/are-the-open-data-warriors-fighting
-for-robin-hood-or-the-sheriff-some-reflections-on-okcon-2011-and-the-emergi
ng-data-divide/

The ideal that these nerdy revolutionaries are pursuing is not, as with
previous generations-justice, freedom, democracy-rather it is "openness" as
in Open Data, Open Information, Open Government. Precisely what is meant by
"openness" is never (at least certainly not in the context of this
conference) really defined in a form that an outsider could grapple with
(and perhaps critique).  Rather it was a pervasive and animating good
intention-a grail to be pursued by warriors off on a joust with various
governmental dragons. Their armaments in this instance (and to an outsider
many of them are magical indeed) are technical skills and zeal sufficient to
slay any bureaucrat or resistant politician's rationalizations and
resistances to being "open"-i.e. not turning their information treasure
chests into universally accessible nodes in a seamless global datascape.

If I seem a bit skeptical/cynical - less than true believing - its not
because I don't believe in this goal of "openness" (who could be churlish
enough to support things that are closed-closed systems, closed doors,
closed minds-you get the picture), its just that I see a huge disconnect
between the idealism and the passionate belief in the rightness of their
cause and the profound failure to have any clear idea of what precisely that
cause is and where it is likely to take them (and us) in the very near
future.

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/the-idrc-and-%E2%80%9Copen-developm
ent%E2%80%9D-ict4d-by-and-for-the-new-middle-class/

It is hard (from this paper) to see how a commitment to "open development"
or "open ICT4D" is much more than a commitment to further enabling the
(already) enabled and empowering the (already) empowered.

White Noise: On the Limits of Openness (Living Book Mix): Gary Hall 

http://www.livingbooksaboutlife.org/books/Open_science/Introduction

2.       Transparency

Thanks for your elaboration on the notion of "transparency and MSism", it is
quite useful both for what it includes but rather more interestingly for
what is not included.  

As I'm sure you know the notion of "transparency" is generally yoked with
the notion of "accountability".  This isn't simply for catch phrase
purposes.  "Transparency and accountability" are linked together because one
is necessary for and supportive of the other. 

To have accountability you need to have transparency and the primary
function of transparency is to lead to or enable accountability.  

The fact that you almost completely omit any reference to accountability in
your exposition and give no clear indication of how "transparency" as you
present it is actually linked to any structures of "accountability" is
fatally indicative of a fundamental flaw in the approach to MSism you are
presenting.  It is great if MS process are fully transparent.  But so what,
for whom or why does it matter if I or anyone knows how decisions are made
if they are being made by unaccountable (MS) elites/actors or through
unaccountable non-democratic (anti-democratic) processes. 

Democracy, at least according to any document I've ever seen, is
fundamentally about "accountability"-accountability of decision makers to
those on whose behalf decisions are being, accountability to the broad
public interest (rather than individual private interests-ever hear about
conflict of interest laws), accountability to laws determining formal
processes of decision making within democratic frameworks. "Transparency" is
one of the necessary tools for achieving this "accountability". a tool
towards accountability not an end in itself, which in practice would be and
is a pointless and wasteful exercise of attempting to hide in plain sight.

Transparency without accountability in a system of governance may quite
correctly describe your experience of MSism in ICANN (from many reports this
is quite accurate) and unfortunately may apply to many current formally
democratic systems of governance but is this a "principle" on which you want
to build your MSist governance sandcastle.

3.       Consensus 

My JNC colleagues have I think quite correctly pointed to the absurdity of
"consensus" as a governance principle.  As they have pointed out such
consensus is impossible in the real (policy) world and particularly where
allocative decisions need to be made (where there are winners and losers).
Rather than suggest what is in effect a procedural/technical aspect of
decision making (there are an almost infinite number of ways of arriving at
decisions including of course "consensus") I would have thought it perhaps
more appropriate to agree on the principle that the outcome of the decision
making processes should be decisions which optimize the public good.
Unfortunately your "consensus principle" is a clear attempt to hard wire
into Internet (and other?) decision making a process whose outcome
inevitably and necessarily must be the optimization of private (stakeholder)
interests.

M  

From: bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net
[mailto:bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net] On Behalf Of David Cake
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2014 3:22 AM
To: Best Bits
Subject: [bestbits] Principles (warning - long)

            So, Michael Gurstein challenges MSism proponents to describe its
principles (Michael and JNC having generally taken the opposite tack, having
principles aplenty but a lot of vagueness on practical/operational detail as
to how those principles might be made into a practical transnational
organisation). 

            And I think it is worth doing to make a few points that I think
clarify the debate. Sorry though, it is a long one. 

            So, I will have a first pass at starting a discussion on the
principles of MSism as we know it. These are just my thoughts, and I'm a
relative latecomer to MS processes (having only been involved since 2009),
and my experience is largely restricted to ICANN, so it is very likely that
many of my assumptions are wrong

            The first is, that I think multi-stakeholder is a poor name for
what we generally refer to as MS in the Internet governance context. Because
having multiple stakeholders is an important characteristic, but certainly
not the only, or perhaps primary, one. Multi-stakeholder of course serves
well to highlight the difference between MS governance and multi-lateral
forms (which really have only states as full participants, other
stakeholders playing secondary roles), but calling ICANN, RIRs, etc
multi-stakeholder obscures other significant factors, and so allows the
confusion (notable in much JNC rhetoric) between open MS forms such as ICANN
and closed forms such as WEF. 

            So, one principle of MS governance that I think most CS
participants in MS would agree on is openness to participation. ICANN, IGF,
etc are open to effectively anyone who wishes to participate. 

            I would argue that this principle of openness is more important
than multi-stakeholderism per se - MS governance fora with formal
stakeholders (like ICANN) would be regarded by many as the descendants of
fora like the IETF that have no formal multi-stakeholder commitments, but
that simply allow participation by anyone, regardless of their stakeholder
affiliation. And this distinguishes such fora sharply from fora like the
WEF, which are not open, and are rather strongly gatekeepered. I, for one,
feel that the MSism I support has far more in common with the IETF etc than
with WEF, because the broad openness of the process is an important
principle, essential for its legitimacy and proper functioning. And of
course it is not just private sector fora like WEF that have strict
gatekeeping on participation, it is also multi-lateral fora such as the ITU.
Whether the gatekeeper is government or private sector, both restrict the
ability of CS and the broader populace to participate in their processes. 

            I note that while the JNC certainly wants to broaden
participation, openness does not appear to be a principle - in fact, a large
proportion of JNC rhetoric is specifically critical of the inclusion of
commercial operators, so JNC would appear to be opposed to openness as a
principle per se. 

            There are, of course, barriers to entry such as time to master
the sometimes dense jargon, language barriers to non-English speakers, and
travel to physical meetings, but one principle I would hope that MS
proponents and JNC members can agree on is that while these practical
barriers are non-trivial to overcome, it should be a goal of all such
organisations to mitigate these effects. ICANN, for example, does
simultaneous translation of many sessions, offers remote participation for
almost all sessions, etc. 

            Transparency is another important principle. Those of us used to
operating in environments such as ICANN, IETF, etc are used to a quite high
degree of transparency in its day to day operation, and I certainly think
this is a principle most of us would agree on. This broadens access to
decision making by those who are not able to fully directly participate, and
serves as a vital part of the accountability mechanisms - as a participant,
any word I say is something I might be called on to justify, and the
positions I advocate are very open to those I claim to represent (in my
case, the members of the organisation I chair and represent). The vast
majority of ICANN related meetings I participate in are recorded,
transcribed, and made publicly available - some also translated into
multiple languages. This level of transparency should be the norm. 

            And, of course, this is one of the contrasting distinctions with
multli-lateral fora like the ITU, or multi-nation trade negotiations. The
ITU is at least gradually changing from its culture of secrecy and
restriction to a more open one, but this is a very recent and as yet fairly
tentative change. And trade negotiations like TTTA and TTIP are becoming
increasingly, obsessively, secretive and restricted, even between democratic
nations - indeed, this secrecy is such that it clearly undermines democracy,
for example in many nations elected legislators are not given access to
treaty negotiation text. 

            Now, I am sure that JNC members are opposed to the excesses of
non-transparency such as the TPPA, but it isn't clear to what extent this is
a high priority for the JNC, considering some members past support for the
ITU in its more closed era, etc. 

            It is, of course, worth noting that at times considerations such
as individual privacy and security must occasionally demand processes that
are less transparent (such as maintaining the privacy of individuals
involved in selection processes etc), but the principle is that privacy
should be a default. 

            It is also worth noting that these two principles, openness and
transparency, are closely tied. Admitting stakeholders with a strong
interest in the outcome of proceedings (such as commercial operators) is
acceptable (to me, anyway) if they must act in a transparent, on the record,
manner, advocating the value of their ideas openly, rather than privately
lobbying for them. History has shown very strongly that a process that is
both closed and secret is very amenable to indirect involvement of
commercial operators via lobbying. and that even when it is not so secret,
but closed to permit only government participation, this still happens. And
of course democratic nations are, if anything, often even more susceptible
to private lobbying than non-democratic ones. It is also the case that if
effectively anyone is able to participate in decision making, then opposing
transparency is somewhat of a losing proposition anyway (anyone who wants to
know can participate), but it is still important to commit to it as a
positive value. 

            And, of course, there is the principe of a commitment to
consensus decision making. This is an essential principle of MSism to me. A
commitment to consensus is a strong mechanism to encourage broad
consideration of a wide range of viewpoints and criticisms. Policy that
emerges from MS processes is certainly not perfect, but *absolutely
terrible* policy seldom makes it through the process, which does not seem to
be the case for IG related policy (or most policy, really) that makes it
through elected legislatures.

It is also worth noting that there are a great many subtleties in the exact
definition of consensus used (ICANN identifies at least 5 within its
processes, and there are several more  being used in the IG space), and some
may be more practical or desirable than others. 

            And the JNC seems relatively hostile to consensus, noting that
commercial entities have significant ability to hold back policy that they
dislike, etc. and advocating strongly for majority voting mechanisms. The
JNC would seem to strongly advocate majoritarianism over consensus - and
while JNC rhetoric does support the rights of minorities, it is unclear
what, if any, mechanisms would be used to prevent popular policies that
attract but a majority vote but are unfavourable to minorities, or if this
is considered desirable. 

            It is also notable that the use of a voting mechanism requires
identifying who gets to vote, and working out a voting mechanisms, and this
is a non-trivial problem - and may perhaps be the origins of the disdain for
voting in the IG space. The IETF does not vote in large part because there
is no membership of the IETF, or limits to who is involved in its processes,
so there is no obvious way to determine who is eligible to vote. The JNC is
strong on advocacy of voting as a principle, but I have yet to see an
explanation of how the considerable difficulties of determining franchise
would be dealt with. I am certainly among those who feel that the UN/ITU '1
state 1 vote' system, extending as it does equal votes to states of widely
varying size, and often wildly undemocratic themselves, does not really bear
any significant connection to the principle of democracy. It would certainly
be helpful if the JNC would make it clear whether they feel this sort of
multi-lateral voting mechanisms satisfies their commitment to democracy as a
principle or not. 

            So, there we are, three suggested principles for CS support of
MS processes. 

The TL:DR summary - 

Openness. Anyone who wishes to participate should be able to, without
gatekeeping and minimising barriers to participation. 

Transparency. Meetings and decision making processes should be public and
open to all who wish to participate by default. And 

Commitment to consensus. Not all issues may be resolvable by consensus,
other mechanisms may be required where irreconcilable differences occur. But
consensus processes should be pursued where possible, and are to be
preferred to majority voting procedures. 

And my impression is that the JNC position:

- does not favour full openness, wishing to broaden participation but
prevent commercial entities from full participation. 

- favours transparency, but does not have as strong a commitment to this
principle as MSism advocates. 

- favours majority voting (either direct or representative democracy) over
consensus based processes. 

I am not trying to 'straw man' the JNC here - I'd love to be told that, for
example, those JNC members who previously were OK with ITU restrictions on
document sharing are now willing to commit to a position of strong advocacy
for ITU transparency, or if some JNC members favour voting only in cases
where consensus decision making has clearly failed, etc. But I think it is
worth trying to highlight why those, like myself, who favour MSism are not
simply 'hostile to democracy', as Michael would like to paint us, but are
rather committed to a set of positive principles that is quite different to
a simple embrace of any process with multiple stakeholders, and disagreement
with JNC positions is based on a commitment to those broader principles. 

I'd also like to make it clear that, of course, advocacy of MS fora in
principle does not mean that we do not have strong criticisms of them in
actuality. I think ICANN, for example, has good rules on transparency - but
its lack of good accountability structures means that it can fail on
transparency at crucial points. And I believe that, while ICANN does try
hard to be inclusive of those who cannot attend physical meetings, it could
do a lot more and must constantly review its processes to see if they can be
improved. Working out where there is general consensus on principles for
improvement of existing fora would be useful. 

Regards

David

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