[Mmwg] RE: My critique of Luc's proposal

Tue Jan 24 17:17:50 GMT 2006

Thanks for your input, Milton. Much appreciated. Please allow me to add a few comments on your points:

First, I'd like to correct myself for using "my" in front of the word "model" in a previous post. I should have used *our* model when referring to V 5.0 because I put it together borrowing liberally from your model and from the ideas circulating on the list, to which I added a few things. This doesn't mean I think it will gather de facto unanimous approval--only that it's an attempt to sum things up, albeit imperfectly.

One important thing to mention is that I don't associate the Plenary with physical meetings only. The Plenary and the Working Group are just two partially overlapping groups of people:

   Plenary =  governements + accredited orgs.
   Working groups = Plenary + everybody else (org or individual) who wishes to participate.

The Plenary meets once a year physically and the Working Groups never do.
Both groups do most of their business online, including voting.

More specifically now, on your points:

1) Secretariat
Its responsibilities are (many of which, you'll notice, have been lifted from your model):
- Prepares Proceedings report.
- Administers web site and public communications of IGF.
- Handles logistics of IGF online and physical meetings.
- Receives nominations.
- Receives applications for accreditation by orgs and proceeds to pre-evaluation.
- Receives applications for the creation of working groups.

So the Secretariat handles housekeeping mostly.

The only real decisional power it has--and in order to use it, it must act with the Chair--is the ability to veto the creation of work groups for very specific reasons (irrelevant to IGF mandate, unrealistic scope, scope overlap with existing WGs). Otherwise, I think the only potentially controversial thing it can do is provide a pre-evaluation of applications for accreditation. This is meant to alleviate the need for members of the Plenary to do all the preliminary analysis of accreditations. We can always take this responsibility out of the Secretariat's scope if is problematic and let the Working Group on procedural issues decide.

2) Individual participation in the Plenary
One way to look at this is to ask ourselves if this is really necessary, keeping in my that most of the work in the model is done by Working Groups, where I expect everybody from the Plenary will (or should participate), since this is where final text is drafted and the Plenary cannot change it.

This way, all of the discussion and most of the work accomplished in the WSIS Plenary are actually shifted to the Working Groups, IETF-style.

The only discussion that would happen in the Plenary, really, would be to gather clarifications on a resolution so that Plenary members understand the resolution they are going to vote on. I expect this to be minimal, since Plenary members (or other members of their "delegation") should have participated in the Working Group that drafted the resolution.

Having said this, I realize some of us would still prefer individuals to be able to vote in the Plenary. In order to allow this, I think we must rethink the representation within V 5.0's ORGs group, since allowing an unlimited number of individuals to vote in there would offset negatively the "representational quality" of organizations that may represent thousands or millions of people while having only one vote in the Plenary. This is certainly shaky ground because the way V 5.0 works, orgs all have one vote, whether they have 2 or 2 million members.

This is definitely an unresolved issue and we have to work on this. I don't know how to accomodate everybody. One idea I suggested in an earlier post was to put a cap on the individual/org ratio to avoid individual capture of the org vote, but that doesn't solve the issue of 2 vs 2 million-member orgs having both one vote. Help!

3) Plenary voting
The way I see it, all voting must be done using an online tool. All voting (on resolutions or on accreditations) should also be done in discreet events at periodic intervals, without waiting for the physical meetings, because I think it's unrealistic to think we'll get government reps to vote electronically in a physical Plenary (maybe I underestimate them). The physical meetings could thus be used more as a gathering and a chance for people to get to know each other.

This way of working relieves the physical Plenary from much of what it did in WSIS and would certainly require a cultural change but hey, all this is about the Internet, so shouldn't we use it?

You have a good point on the negative sentiment on voting in some UN bodies, but remember that voting *is* used in the General Assembly, as well as in the Security Council (although in there it is subject to veto).

I imagine some people could find voting to be overkill just to agree on policy issues, but I think that from a Working Group's perspective, the fact that they will have to agree on resolutions that will be voted upon may encourage contributors to auto-moderation.

4) Language
One caveat about online collaboration, as opposed to physical UN-style meetings, is that you loose all multilingualism by requiring that everybody communicate in English. This is another type of barrier to entry and could be unacceptable to some.

Hope this helps move things forward,

- Luc Faubert
ISOC Québec

________________________________

From: Milton Mueller [mailto:Mueller at syr.edu]
Sent: Tue 2006-01-24 10:05
To: Luc Faubert; mmwg at wsis-cs.org
Subject: My critique of Luc's proposal

Here is my analysis and critique of Luc's proposal. In a subsequent message, I will try to modify the proposal I sent in ways that might accommodate the two.

There are, in my opinion, three major flaws in Faubert's proposal.

1) It concentrates too much power in the Secretariat, which is just an appointed individual with no direct representation of stakeholders.
2) It prevents individuals from participating in the Plenary.
3) Its heavy reliance on Plenary voting. This is the biggest problem. This would be too cumbersome administratively, and simply would not work in a UN context, where voting is considered a sign of failure and is strenuously avoided. In particular, the idea that organizational accreditations would have to be ALL voted on by the Plenary is just not viable; it would eat up all its time and focus all its energies on attempts to control who can participate. It is a really bad idea to have Plenary votes determine who gets accredited. Keep in mind the precedent of the WSIS Plenary vote on Human Rights in China's accreditation. That was ONE organization. Want to multiply that by 100?

In effect, in order to get rid of the Bureau, Luc has loaded the both the Plenary and the Secretariat with too much voting and administrative action. This would destroy the ability of the Plenary to serve as a deliberative, discussion forum. The Plenary would become more like a legislature, with organized factions striving for a 2/3 majority rather than listening and discussing.

I have to say I don't much like the idea of having a Bureau myself, but it is the best solution to the need for some kind of "representative" decision making.

Also, let me agree with and echo these thoughts of Luc:

>>> "Luc Faubert" <LFaubert at conceptum.ca> 1/20/2006 1:47 PM >>>
>There are many people here who have not posted yet and our process would benefit from their input.

--MM

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