[Mmwg] adopting reports

[Milton Mueller]

>>> "William Drake" <drake at hei.unige.ch> 1/26/2006 5:34:17 AM >>>
>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.

It's very good that Bill flags this issue. It is critical, and I am not satisfied with any proposals on how this should be handled, including my own.

>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)

If there is not a serious analytical component, imho, the Forum lacks value. By the same token, real research takes $$$, as we academics know, and the Forum WGs will not be well-resourced. I suspect the Forum will therefore occupy a middle ground in policy analysis, between comprehensive research studies and the flabby generalities of a WSIS-type declaration. 

>Look at the OECD experience and multiple by 
> 1000 participants.  

I think what both Luc and I had in mind was a process whereby a WG plunks a report on the table, gets it on the agenda, and then Plenary reacts to it. They do not "edit" it, they do not go through it line by line, etc. They do not wordsmith. They deliberate. They discuss what is missing, what is agreeable and disagreeable, what is misinterpreted, etc. If there is no rough consensus on publication the WG has to make changes. And subsets of Plenary could submit proposals for specific changes to the WG. 

The obvious problem with this iterative process is the risk that nothing would ever come out of it; anything substantive would cycle endlessly. That's why I proposed a fairly powerful Chair calling rough consensus. Vittorio's model, running approval through the Bureau, if more "democratic" but also more easily manipulated, in the sense that any Bureau member is probably more likely to look out for their narrow sectoral interests than the whole picture. And the Bureau could not and would not resist taking on drafting powers. Luc's concept of suupermajority voting in the Plenary doesn't scale. 

None of these proposals are that good. 

>I think a likely model will be the ITU's World Telecom Policy Forums
>www.itu.int/osg/spu/wtpf/.  

But based on your description, this model seems to presupposed higher levels of funding than are realistic for the Forum.