[Mmwg] IGF Input

[William Drake]

Hi,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mmwg-bounces at wsis-cs.org [mailto:mmwg-bounces at wsis-cs.org]On
> Behalf Of Milton Mueller

> I agree with Vittorio on this, and would propose that it be
> called a "multistakeholder council" rather than a "program
> committee" or a "steering committee." Our language does need to

To government types used to working in international institutions, a Council
may imply a big, heavy, political, authoritative decision making body, sort
of a politburo.  That's certainly what it means in ITU, WTO, etc.  Given
that intersubjective context, a Committee seems better; doesn't it sound
more like a group of people who sit down to get something done, rather than
ruling from on high or whatever?

I wouldn't use titles that describe participants, it's unnecessary since the
IGF is MS, period.  Rather than putting MS in the title, I'd go functional:
Coordination Committee.  This is pretty clear on what the thing does: it's
not the politburo, it doesn't steer/command/control, and it's not designed
to plan one-off annual events.  It's to coordinate various activities
occurring under the IGF rubric.

>
> Wolfgang: In general, this language gives the ms council too much
> power. I would prefer to see the ideas for themes come from WGs
> (which I renamed "email-based preparatory groups" to avoid
> misunderstandings by governments) and the council limited to

Sorry Milton, but methinks this be ugly and misleading.  On the first part,
of course any groups would use email, but they might use web pages, wikis,
telephones, F2F meetings as necessary, etc, so why define them in terms of a
single technique, particularly the one that governmentals will be least
excited about committing to at the outset.  Ease them into it.  On the
second, I would not want to imply that the defining function here is
"preparatory," which again makes it sound like the big annual hoo-hah is
what the IGF is all about and everything else just leads up to and feeds
into it.  We have insisted that IGF be seen as a process and an umbrella
under which various types of initiatives might take shape in accordance with
the needs and interests of various participants, and that could include
groups that sustain dialogue and collective analysis around a topic  (e.g.,
a group focused on application of the WSIS principles in other gov
mechanisms might have to be ongoing), rather than developing a one-off input
into a given annual event.

If "working group" makes governments think bureaucratic (it's not entirely
clear why this would be, since in the IGOs I can think of, they either don't
exist or are ad hoc, task-specific, and sunset-able), maybe the best thing
would be not to specify a single org form and rubric?  We could instead
suggest that variation, based on the interests and objectives of the
participants, be allowed, e.g. WGs or e-working groups, study groups,
networks, whatever.  All that matters is that they be focused on work
relevant to the IGF and meet some criteria for recognition and operations,
to be specified by the Coordination Committee (exactly what these might be
is a key issue).

Two cents,

Bill