[Mmwg] outline of a structure for IGF

[Milton Mueller]

The idea here is to exploit the complementarities of open and closed structures while employing checks and balances among them. I'm not wedded to any detail, but am very strongly committed to the idea that WG proposals can come from anyone and, if created, must be voted on by open plenaries. 

There are three basic parts to the IGF: A Plenary (the open meetings), a Bureau (a small, closed quasi-representational decision making structure), a Secretariat with a Chair.

Chair and Secretariat
UN SG appoints an initial Chair (Desai), and a Secretariat (Kummer), and (with widespread consultation) the initial members of a Bureau. Chair presides over meetings. Agenda of meetings is not pulled out of the air via private discussions among the Chair & Secretariat, but is driven by WG proposals and products. 

Bureau 
The IGF Bureau is a Council of 11 people, with the following composition:
 - 4 representatives of governments
 - 2 Private Sector
 - 2 Civil Society
 - 2 Academic and Technical
 - The IGF Chair
Chief of Secretariat participates but is nonvoting. 

The Bureau makes the following decisions:
 - Elects IGF Chair (after end of term of initial appointment of chair by UN SG)
 - Sets agenda for Plenary meetings jointly with Secretariat, but has final authority
 - Reviews and approves Proceedings reports submitted by Secretariat
 - After a positive vote in the Plenary, votes up or down applications for forming working groups by simple majority.

The Plenary 
The Plenary is simply the people who show up for meetings. They have to be registered (perhaps we want to use a stronger word "accredited," but leave that issue aside for later). Physical meetings should always be supplemented by online tools that permit registered attendees to participate on the Internet. They all have the same status with respect to right to speak, etc. The Plenary has the following decisions:

- Deliberates and discusses guided by Agenda and Chair
- Reviews, discusses and approves/refuses to approve reports of working groups. Based on "rough consensus" called by Chair after sufficient deliberation

Secretariat decisions
 - Receives and processes applications for working groups
 - Sets agenda for Plenary meetings jointly with Bureau 
 - Prepares Proceedings report
 - Administers web site and public communications of IGF
 - Handles logistics of IGF online and physical meetings

Big question: How to get people on the Bureau after the initial appointment period? Suggestion: for CS, PS and Tech/Academic, use leftover WSIS structures. They are given an interval to formalize their procedures and their Bureau reps are selected by themselves. Governments can use the UN General Assembly or some other procedure.

Working Groups
Let's not forget the purpose of the forum. It is summarized in para 72 of the WSIS Agenda. The purpose is to foster deliberation and discussion of Internet policy problems. I suggest that this activity be driven by topical working groups and their reports. Any registered/accredited organization/individual can propose to create one. There could be different types, each with different approval hoops to jump through, but let's not get into that level of detail yet.  So the Secretariat develops a template setting out the requirements to create a WG on a topic or problem, people involved submit applications to create one, Applications must be approved by a Bureau vote. Majority? One third? Two thirds? If it approves, the Bureau appoints a facilitator (or 3, one from each stakeholder group?), and anyone can join it. When it comes up with a report, it goes before the plenary. Plenary debates and discusses it, Chair calls a rough consensus on it, or sends it back to the group to make changes. Eventually it is published (or not, if it never gets rough consensus.

Sounds like fun, eh? 

This structure was designed to balance the powers of the plenary, chair/secretariat and bureau. I may have overlooked some things (many things) so look forward to comments.

Dr. Milton Mueller
Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://www.digital-convergence.org
http://www.internetgovernance.org