AW: [Mmwg] IGF mechanism 5.0

[Luc Faubert]

> Let's stand back a bit and take a more objective look at what 
> is being proposed with respect to exclusion of people or 
> inclusion of "experts." 
> 
> This is a list composed of....who? Basically, to use Yulia's 
> phrase, this list is composed of "anyone off the street" who 
> expresses support for the goals of the WG. In other words, we 
> trust this group to be open, right?
> 
> Would someone explain to me where we get the moral authority 
> to  define criteria to exclude people?

The short answer is we don't have the moral authority--but we do it anyway.

Our charter, which everybody has agreed to, calls for agreeing on a working mechanism for IGF that could possibly be used by similar fora. The way we are discussing now, we've narrowed down our aim to making it work for IGF. Given our time restraints, that's fine with me.

We must agree on a workable mechanism for IGF that will hopefully stand a chance of being approved by all IGF stakeholders. These are, I think, our constraints. We can define categories of stakeholders and their inclusion/exclusion rules if we think this makes our mechanism more performant and increases its chances of being adopted by all. As we all know, this is a really tough issue to agree on, so my strategy has been to find a way to keep "branding" needs to a minimum.

Version 5.0 working groups are open to all. No stakeholder categories are needed. The Plenary's structure also eliminates the need to bother with stakeholder categories, except for the distinction between governments and all other entities. And finally, because there is no Bureau in version 5.0, we don't have to argue over stakeholder representation within it.

Really, when you look at it from the IGF perspective, who cares if you're CS or T&A or whatever? Isn't your contribution to the debate what really matters?

I thought this arrangement would simplify things and allow us to discuss other issues.


- Luc Faubert
ISOC Québec