[Mmwg] IGF mechanism 5.0

[William Drake]

Hi,

> Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 08:22:19 +0100
> From: Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu.org>

> He was talking about the WGIG report, I think, not about the official
> WSIS agreements, which are the following (Tunis Agenda):
>
> "36. We recognise the valuable contribution by the academic and
> technical communities within those stakeholder groups mentioned in para
> 35 to the evolution, functioning and development of the Internet."

> So it is very clear that the "fourth stakeholder" idea is unacceptable,
> but an "expert" category inside civil society might be accepted.

We actually had a rather long debate about the academic and technical
category in WGIG and on the caucus list precisely because of this.  While
nobody doubts that A&T is a important cross-cutting social formation, a
large chunk of it rests in the non-profit sector, CS.  As such, some of us
felt that treating it as a separate, 4th stand-alone constituency could
dilute what influence CS has.  Moreover, the category has been strategically
appropriated and deployed, most by ISOC and the ICC (a choir in constant
harmony), to suggest that A&T is a core part of an "Internet community" that
was supposedly all opposed to even talking about something called "Internet
governance" in the UN, dismissive of developing country concerns or public
interest-based arguments about reforming extant arrangements, opposed to
creating the IGF and continuing the dialogue, etc.  And in this usage,
"academic" is sort of construed to mean technical people who agree this
line, not, inter alia, social science types who might favor progressive
reforms.  However, others did not see these concerns as that problematic.

After much debate, the compromise language in WGIG acknowledged A&T peoples'
contributions and then stopped there, without elevating them to a fourth
category with an implied defined set of interests and positions favoring the
status quo and ending the debate or at odds with the main thrust of CS
interventions.  I think revisiting this terrain in the IGF context would not
be helpful for all the same reasons.  Either we'd debate it without
resolution or end up fudging the differences in a way that could be
interpreted by government, industry, and IO types as diluting CS' potential
influence.

In parallel, I think the "experts" formulation is problematic.  This is the
standard practice in restrictive international organizations like the ITU
and OECD.  CS has no standing right to participate in those bodies, but
individual CS people can occasionally get invited to selected meetings if
they are deemed by the secretariat to be "experts" with skills and a record
of involvement that is directly relevant to the issue.  I was recently told
that to attend ITU's forthcoming meeting on NGN policy I'd have to get
classified as an expert and invited by the secretariat, or else talk my way
onto the US delegation, which is not all that CS-friendly.  Bringing this
approach into the IGF or other new MS processes would invite discussion and
decisions about criteria and their application in ways that could limit CS
participation.  CS people should have a standing right to participate as
concerned citizens, period.  Of course, one might want to select people for
certain tasks based on their expertise, but you don't need to fetishize a
category to facilitate that.

Two cents,

Bill