[governance] TIME-SENSITIVE: World Economic Forum and their Initiative with Internet Governance

Tue Sep 2 04:30:49 EDT 2014

Dear All,

This Tuesday morning, in Istanbul, the members of the Internet Governance
Civil Society Coordination Group attending the IGF2014 (Deirdre Williams
standing in for Mawaki Chango from the IGC, Jeremy Malcolm from Best Bits,
Norbert Bollow from JNC, Chat Garcia from APC and YJ Park as an observer;
the others could not make it) met with Alan Marcus, Danil Kerimi and
Alexandra Shaw from the World Economic Forum about our potential role in
nominating representatives to the transitional steering committee of what
we had all known as the NETmundial Initiative.  This followed on from a
phone call that the chair of our group, Ian Peter had had with them
yesterday Istanbul time.

One of the first points that was made in the meeting was that at the WEF
they do not regard "NETmundial Initiative" as the name of the initiative,
although some of their early champions (notably ICANN of course) have been
calling it this.  So it seems that they will be willing to call it by
another name from now on, and suggested "Global Net" which is an anglicized
version of NETmundial.  Presumably, many of us will warmly welcome this
news.

Their description of their vision of the initiative was otherwise mostly
consistent with earlier accounts, though they did stress that the formation
of a new institution to house the initiative now seems unlikely since they
have been listening to pushback about this.  They see the initiative as a
platform for working groups to execute projects that the community has
identified as important, and the first four projects that were unveiled at
the Geneva meeting were merely intended as examples of four such projects
that had been identified by the Ilves Panel, on which some "quick wins"
might be achieved.

The value add of the WEF, they explained, is to bring in high-level
participation from companies and governments that are otherwise not part of
Internet governance discussions.  The steering committee would include all
stakeholders to ensure that all perspectives have a voice about shaping the
Initiative including its projects. They are looking for a committee maximum
size of about 15 people. The other members would be 3-4 from each one of
the following groups: business (including at least two representatives at
CEO level), government, intergovernmental organizations, tech
community (notably
ISOC and ICANN) and academics. Please note: they confirmed their intention
to treat academic community separately to Civil Society or technical
community or any other grouping - as per NetMundial and 1net patterns.

The original conception of WEF was that they would appoint half of the
civil society representatives on the transitional steering committee
because they are project partners that WEF has worked with before.  Several
members of our Coordination Group suggested that their constituencies would
probably push back against this, and that if the purpose of the steering
committee was in part to draw on the legitimacy that civil society
participation provides, it would make sense that we be empowered to
self-appoint all of our own representatives.  WEF seemed to accept this
counsel, with the result that we would be asked to make four appointments.

They were unclear about exactly what the time commitment for transitional
steering committee representatives would be, or exactly what the
responsibilities would entail, though forming an accountable permanent
steering committee structure for launch around the next Davos meeting (if
possible) was one of the responsibilities envisaged.  They did assure us
that if travel to meetings was required, expenses would be paid for those
who required this.

Criteria for appointment are still to be discussed by the Coordination
Group, but from WEF's perspective, they agreed that they would not insist
on a previous working relationship with WEF as a criterion, but they would
require that the participants are able to be constructive and can work
towards the formation of consensus.  They said that they would value people
who can be bridge makers between the culture of the WEF and that of our
constituencies, because they acknowledged that they would probably make
(more) mistakes and would need help in correcting these.

WEF, after our request, have extended our deadline to submit names
till September 21 - and there are still some details to finalize. The
timetable CSCG is discussing would see us begin a call for nominations
probably no later than Friday - the last day of IGF - to allow discussion
and further clarification before we commence any such process.

I am posting this to begin such a discussion - others present at the
meeting may want to add comments of their own and discussions will also
occur on other lists.

Examples of previous multi-stakeholder initiatives that they pointed to as
being analogous to The-Initiative-Formerly-Known-as-NETmundial included
Grow Africa (http://growafrica.com/) and their climate change work (
http://www.weforum.org/issues/climate-change-and-green-growth). The News
Release from the live event launching the initiative can be found here:
http://www.weforum.org/news/new-initiative-internet-governance-live-event?news=page

Warm regards,

 Mawaki

IGC Co-coordinator
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20140902/29d02c88/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