Fwd: I Geneva (from the CTO newsletter)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 08:06:00 -0500
From: Michael Gurstein <mgurst () vcn bc ca>
Subject: ITU News Release on : Workshop on Internet Governance,
 Geneva (from the CTO newsletter)
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>

An "official" newsrelease on the recent Internet Governance Workshop.

Mike Gurstein

-----------------------------------------------------

http://www.ictdevagenda.org/frame.php?dir=07&sd=10&sid=1&id=580
ITU : Workshop on Internet Governance, Geneva (Switzerland) Switzerland
17 March 2004

The workshop on Internet Governance organized by the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) was held in Geneva from 26 - 27 February.
The workshop was attended by some 140 participants from government,
industry, international organizations and civil society including root
server operators, Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), and ICANN staff
and former board members and those responsible for country code
top-level domain names (ccTLDs).

In his background paper prepared for the workshop, Don Maclean - an
independent consultant and former head of the ITU's strategic planning
and external affairs unit - encapsulates the inherent complexities of
the issues involved. Called 'Herding Schrödingers Cats: Some Conceptual
Tools for Thinking About Internet Governance', the paper 'refers to a
task that is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to accomplish - the
expression 'Herding Cats' is a good description of the challenge of
coordinating the Internet-related interests and activities of
governments, the private sector, civil society, and international
organizations. "Schrodinger's cat" was the subject of a famous thought
experiment by an Austrian physicist, which can be read as demonstrating
that absurd results can follow if principles that make sense in one
context are applied to very different kinds of problems.'

At the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
held in Geneva (Switzerland) during December 2003, governments asked
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to set up a
multi-stakeholder working group on Internet governance to investigate
and make proposals for action by the Summit's second phase (Tunis, 16-18
November 2005). That working group is to include governments,
intergovernmental and international organizations, as well as the
private sector and civil society, from both developed and developing
countries. The workshop inputs from a number of experts and
organizations, among them the issues paper on Internet Governance
published by the ICC in January 2004 (see Regional Roundup: ICC
Publishes Issues Paper on Internet Governance). The task of the working
group is to develop a working definition of Internet governance, to
identify public policy issues that are relevant to Internet governance,
and to develop a common understanding of the roles and responsibilities
of the different stakeholders.

According to an ITU press release, key outcomes of the workshop were
that:

    * Definitions of 'Internet Governance'. Participants expressed a
broad range of opinions, but also a willingness to find common ground
and to stress the complementarities of efforts. Several speakers
stressed the problem of articulating the character and scope of
governance activities in a neutral, non-ideological and systematic way.
In formulating a common understanding of what constitutes governance,
some made the case for differentiating between "hard" forms of
governance, which involve laws, regulations or standards, and "soft"
forms, which include cooperation and coordination. These definitions
would map across big-picture issues such as development of technology
for equitable and sustainable global development, to narrow-focus issues
such as the use of common resources and the exchange of specific
services and products between nations.

    * 'Form should follow function'. There was significant support for
the architectural maxim that "form should follow function". In other
words, the governance tools chosen to address a particular issue, and
the decision-making structures designed to apply these tools to specific
problems, should reflect and fully represent the balance of interests,
capabilities and needs that exist in the 'real world' - there should be
sufficient flexibility to adapt as this balance changes.

    * Inclusive decision-making. The history of global ICT governance
has demonstrated that some things are best left to the private sector,
some are best left to governments, and that satisfactory arrangements
have yet to be devised for including developing countries and civil
society in either the public or private domains of governance. This
experience has also shown that it is difficult, if not impossible, to
become truly inclusive without fundamental recognition of the separate
and complementary functions of public and private governance structures,
the legitimate roles of different actors, and the need to create dynamic
linkages between them.

    * One-stop-shop, or multiple fora. To address current gaps in
governance, some speakers said, many developing countries would like to
see a "one stop shop" like ITU to help them adjust to the new governance
universe, since they lacked the financial, technical and policy
resources to pursue their interests effectively across multiple forums.
Others felt that multiple forums allowed faster adaptation to
technological changes and more flexibility.

* Modalities for reaching consensus were also discussed. The chairman of
the workshop, Shyamal Ghosh, of India's Ministry of Communications and
Information Technology, said that after the first phase of the Summit
many felt that drafting in big plenary meetings was not the best way to
forge consensus, but also that small committees were too exclusive and
did not adequately reflect the views of many Member States. One
recommendation was thus to hold open-ended meetings for all
stakeholders, which would still be intergovernmental in character but
more inclusive. The workshop sounded out ideas that would feed into the
efforts of the various bodies involved in the process.

Resources:

This article based on a press release issued by ITU.

    * ITU http://www.itu.int

* Workshop on Internet Governance
http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/forum/intgov04/index.html

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