[CS Bureau] Fwd: Internet Governance working group

[Adam Peake]

Jeanette may not be a member of the bureau list, email below does not 
seem to have got through.

Important, we need your response please.

Thanks,

Adam


>Delivered-To: ajp at glocom.ac.jp
>Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 12:25:12 +0200
>From: Jeanette Hofmann <jeanette at wz-berlin.de>
>X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
>To:  bureau at wsis-cs.org
>CC:  rbloem at iprolink.ch, Adam Peake <ajp at glocom.ac.jp>
>Subject: Internet Governance working group
>Sender: jeanette at athene.wz-berlin.de
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>X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
>Importance: Normal
>Priority: normal
>
>Hi, there. I write to you in my capacity as the co-coordinator of 
>the Internet Governance caucus. I know, many people are on vacation 
>right now. Nonetheless we need some advise as to how to proceed with 
>regard to working group on Internet Governance. As you probably 
>know, procedure and composition of the UN working group are seen to 
>be of high importance for all stakeholders involved. Markus Kummer, 
>who runs the secretariat of the working group is open for 
>suggestions from all parties. It is therefore crucial that we as 
>civil society get our act together and come up with two things:
>1. a statement that outlines our ideas about process and working 
>method of the working group
>2. a list of candidates, a slate if you will, we ask Kummer and the 
>prospective chair of the wg to consider as members for the working 
>group.
>
>What the Internet Governance caucus has done so far is to discuss 
>criteria for selecting people we think would be good for the UN 
>working group. What turns out to be much more difficult is to come 
>up with an uncontroversial, pragmatic method to actually select 
>people. There are already several people who have put there names 
>forward in private mails to Adam and me. It comes as no surprise 
>that all of them are men and most of them are from either Europe or 
>the US. So, self selection is obviously not the way to go!
>
>One obvious way to proceed would be to put together a nomination 
>committee consisting of people who are well known and trusted in the 
>WSIS world and who are not interested to be considered for our list 
>of candidates. There are two problems with this approach. The first 
>is that
>it is not clear how to select people for the nomcom. There is no 
>clean process to put together either a list of candidates or a list 
>of nomcom members that cannot be questioned by people who feel 
>marginalized.
>
>The second problem is time. Adam, the co-coordinator of the Internet 
>Governance caucus, is on vacation right now. I go on vacation next 
>week.  Both of us are thus unable to initiate a time consuming 
>process of putting together a committee and running it.
>
>Another much more pragmatic idea would be to put together a first 
>list of names and ask the community to make further suggestions or 
>endorse the list. Such a procedure is risky. It might cause lots of 
>harm as Adam
>fears.
>Another more specific problem I'd like to mention is the lack of 
>people from the south. The caucus itself is dominiated by Europeans 
>and Americans. I wouldn't even know how to find people from the 
>developing world who would be good candidates for the UN working 
>group. It is worth
>keeping in mind that participation in the working group is expected 
>to be real time consuming. Hence, we need people who are willing and 
>able to commit themselves for at least 7, 8 months beginning in 
>autumn.
>
>Personally, I find it really important that we make use of this 
>opportunity to suggest some people for the working group. Moreover, 
>I think the caucus would be the right body to put together a list of 
>people on the basis of what we regard as due process. This is why I 
>ask for your advise.
>
>Thank you, jeanette