[Mmwg] adopting reports

[William Drake]

Hi,

Where possible, more descriptive subject lines would make it easier for
people suffering multitasking fatigue to keep track of the specific issues
being discussed.

One element of the discussion leaps out at me over my morning coffee,
concerning the anticipated outputs of deliberations.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mmwg-bounces+drake=hei.unige.ch at wsis-cs.org
> [mailto:mmwg-bounces+drake=hei.unige.ch at wsis-cs.org]On Behalf Of Milton
> Mueller
> Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 8:26 PM

> One thing you persistently seem to forget is that the Forum does
> not adopt standards or in any other way set policy. Indeed, in
> one of your earlier postings you came out and said that the Forum
> would "agree on policies." It won't. It will issue reports. The
> reports MAY contain recommendations, but in most cases probably
> will not. Those reports can be ignored. Unlike the IETF
> standards, it does not even have any real coordinative authority.
> Therefore the bar for approving reports need not be bumped up to
> a higher authority. The real value of the Forum is the
> deliberative process, the results of which can spill over into
> other institutions and perhaps lead to authoritative actions.
> Your concept of an all-powerful Council will eviscerate the
> deliberative aspect.

In general I agree with Milton regarding Council/Plenary authority but want
to understand more clearly what people are envisioning with respect to
'adopting reports,' which has been repeatedly mentioned.  If we are talking
about adopting research reports (and whether there will in fact be a serious
analytical component, as the caucus and members have variously proposed, is
one of the great unknowns), it would not be viable for the plenary to do
that.  Look at the OECD experience and multiple by > 1000 participants.  If
instead you mean short statements of recommendations, principles, and common
understanding, the sort of language adopted in PrepComs, that would seem
necessary, although it could eat up tons of time and make serious debate
difficult unless the IGF sessions become week long affairs.

I think a likely model will be the ITU's World Telecom Policy Forums
www.itu.int/osg/spu/wtpf/.  ITU did three of these between 1996 and 2001,
they adopted short reports containing shared recs, principles, etc., and we
did the painstaking line by line on the screen negotiation thing (I was on
the US delegations).  But in addition, the ITU secretariat prepared
background reports/materials that did not have to be vetted and voted on by
all members.  It's of course unknowable now whether the IGF secretariat will
ever have an internal research capacity, or even a budget and mandate to
outsource research tasks to external scholars/stakeholders/networks.  The
lower cost option would be for unpaid/stakeholder supported working groups
(if there will such) to carry the load and generate such materials, which
could be 'for information' and as such not negotiated/approved docs.

Best,

Bill