<incom> Internet Governance Needs You - By Aug 2

[Soenke Zehle]

iCommons (cc umbrella org) is entering the multistakeholder fray, maybe 
time to get involved? See the blog entry by Heather Ford (cc SA), Soenke

The Internet Governance Forum: A story in its beginning, middle or end?
<http://icommons.org/2006/07/31/the-internet-governance-forum-a-story-in-its-beginning-middle-or-end/>

I was in Geneva last week at an ‘Experts Meeting on the Internet 
Governance Forum’. The meeting was organised by the Consumer Project on 
Technology, the South Centre and the Third World Network to discuss the 
possibility of taking issues such as the Access to Knowledge Treaty to 
the newly formed ‘Internet Governance Forum’ (IGF).

Remember the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)? Well, at 
the final session of WSIS, the delegates came out with the ‘Tunis 
Agenda’ asking the Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, to convene a 
‘new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue’. Some say that the IGF 
was just a way for the US representatives to draw attention away from 
the impasse over critical aspects of the WSIS Declaration (including 
issues around intellectual property alternatives). But James Love from 
CPTech is determined that this isn’t just another talk shop – which is 
why he brought us together in Geneva to talk strategy with regards to 
the upcoming conference in Athens in November.

Love is excited by the fact that this is a multi-stakeholder forum that 
will give equal voice – not just to governments and the private sector, 
but to members of civil society and technicians too. Others are positive 
about the open mandate of the IGF which includes the exchange of 
information and best practices, and capacity building for internet 
governance in developing countries.

The most interesting thing about this planning meeting for me personally 
were the debates around a) strategy and b) governance of the IGF – 
especially because of the current discussions we’ve been having at 
iCommons about these two topics.

There were heated debates about what strategy civil society groupings 
like those who propose alternatives to the current ICANN structure 
should employ when trying to make maximum impact on governments at the 
IGF. Should they propose workshops that point out the undemocratic 
nature of the current structure? Or should they spend the majority of 
their time talking about alternative models that have been proposed, and 
the benefits of each model?

It seems as though the IGF has already decided what format the workshops 
should take. According to the Secretariat, workshops that represent the 
multi-stakeholder approach of the forum (i.e. with representatives from 
government, private sector, civil society etc) will most probably be 
chosen over those that represent only one perspective. For example, if 
Creative Commons wanted to propose a workshop on ‘Open Content Licences 
and Collecting Societies’, they would probably have to involve 
representatives from collecting societies in order for the workshop to 
be accepted.

Then, says the IGF, if there is some consensus between participants 
around an issue, groups are able to form what the IGF is calling 
‘dynamic coalitions’ which will then be represented in the final report.

I’m happy to say that iCommons gave the secretariat some advice when 
participants from the workshop asked whether the IGF will put these 
‘dynamic coalitions’ on their website, thereby ‘sanctioning’ them. I 
showed them what we had started to do with nodes on the iCommons wiki – 
providing a space and, in the future, tools for nodes to grow and 
develop under the iCommons banner, suited their purposes well. So, we 
may just have the UN employing a derivative of our own strategy!

With regards to governance, expert, Milton Mueller (who wrote a book 
called ‘Ruling the Root’) talked about the suggestions that his 
organisation, ‘The Internet Governance Project’ had made to the IGF on 
governance structures. ‘Building an Internet Governance Forum’ is an 
interesting piece on what they believe are the most important design 
‘criteria’ for such a global, UN forum:

a) It must be as open as possible and give all stakeholders equal 
participation rights;

b) Its deliberations must be wide-ranging and resist politically 
motivated barriers to discussion; and

c) Its products must feed into other, more authoritative internet 
governance forums.

[http://icommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/Picture%201.png]
Above: The proposed structure of the IGF.
With permission from the Internet Governance Project.

This thoughtful paper made me reflect on the discussions that we’ve been 
having about governance within iCommons.

iCommons is far from the UN. We have very different goals and thus, we 
should have very different processes. But iCommons could be 
complimentary to the IGF because we are the practical expression, often, 
of the multi-stakeholder alliances the IGF wants to showcase. They want 
members from governments, the private sector and civil society to stand 
together on the same platform to show how they can gain the kind of 
consensus that gets things done. Or to stand on the same platform to 
debate how things should be done better, together.

The IGF Secretariat didn’t end up taking the Internet Governance 
Project’s advice about how they should structure the forum. Perhaps it 
was too daunting for a Secretariat of just 2 people. They did, however, 
decide to form an Advisory Group of 46 people (20 of whom are government 
representatives) who are guiding the IGF in its first steps.

Many people at the planning meeting have already written the middle and 
the end to the IGF story, but the forum hasn’t yet begun. Robin Gross 
and Jeanette Hoffman, two amazing stalwarts of the WSIS process, also on 
the IGF Advisory Group, are encouraging people to submit workshops in 
the four broad agenda themes:

* Openness - Freedom of expression, free flow of information, ideas and 
knowledge

* Security - Creating trust and confidence through collaboration

* Diversity - Promoting multilingualism and local content

* Access - Internet Connectivity: Policy and Cost

Please let me know if you’re interested in getting involved. The 
deadline for workshop submissions is August 2, and this may just be a 
great opportunity to engage policy-makers in the kinds of solutions that 
the global commons community has been developing with great success over 
the past few years.

I, for one, am relieved to find that governance and strategy are 
challenges all communities face – that we learn by doing, by being 
humble and open to challenges, but, most importantly, by making choices 
and by taking action – even when the odds may be stacked up against us.