[Mmwg] Creating spaces for civil society (and ICT enabledcommunities) (post) WSIS

[Avri Doria]

On 10 jan 2006, at 13.55, Luc Faubert wrote:

> 1. Scope of MMWG
> Interesting opinions by Gurstein and Currie, Jacqueline, but they  
> concern mostly civil society's role in the MSH approach. From what  
> I understand of our charter, our job is to come up with a global  
> mechanism for all relevant parties to participate in IGF and other  
> WSIS-related fora and to make recommendations to the UN secretariat.


well i think that certainly civil society is a prime concern, but  
yes, as the charter is currently written, we are setup to make  
general recommendations about how this can all be set up

>
> 2. Timeline and deliverables
> Our charter mentions the MMWG is created for two years. When are  
> our recommendations due? Wouldn't it be useful to establish a  
> timeline and a clear definition of our deliverables that we all  
> agree on?

well for one milestone.  it seems (according to latest rumors)  that  
the first consulations for IGF  will occur during Febraury.  it would  
be good if we had some idea by then.

>
> 3. Mechanism
> What's a mechanism? To me, it's a way of building things. A grammar  
> and a vocabulary. It may be helpful for us to think of our job as  
> coming up with the rules to build and operate a MSH decisional body  
> rather than try to design the body ourselves. After that the  
> different fora (IGF et al.) could use our mechanism to build and  
> operate the MSH decisional body they require.


i think this is a good approach, but formulating some sample  
scenarios within that syntax might also be useful.

>
> 4. Representation
> This brings us to the challenging issue of legitimacy and  
> representation in the MSH process:
> a) Who must be represented? (We already have some propositions from  
> the list for this)
> b) Who can legitimately represent groups who wish to be represented?
> c) Can individuals represent themselves? In the affirmative, what  
> is their relative importance vs. other individuals representing  
> thousands or millions of individuals?
> d) Who exactly do governments represent if the very people they are  
> supposed to represent are represented by CS entities?
> e) What does "equal participation" mean in the MSH context?

good questions.  perhaps these could be the seed for a wiki  
exercise.  certainly they seem like good things to explore in greater  
depth.

>
> 5. Post MMWG
> What happens after we make our recommendations? Who makes the final  
> decision on the MSH mechanism that will be used in IGF?

in the best of all possible worlds, we will recommend something  
perfect and it will be adopted perfectly and the group could blink  
out of existence.

however, as far as can tell neither the recommendations nor the  
deployment will be perfect, so it may take a bunch of rethinking as  
things develop and i hope advocacy for the the things we propose.   
this could take a while.

a.
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