[A2k] Blog on open standards at Internet Governance Forum Next Week

[Manon Ress]

http://offzroad.blogspot.com/

What's up regarding open standards and the Internet Governance Forum
(IGF)?

The first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is next week
in Athens, Greece (Oct 30-Nov 2). The IGF is a product of the WSIS-
Tunis Agenda and was given an open-ended and ambiguous mandate. It
operates with the support of the Secretary-General of the UN, who has
asked for a "process aimed at enhancing cooperation on international
public policy issues related to the Internet."

The IGF is a new paradigm as it is a "multi-stakeholder policy
dialogue," where civil society NGOs, business interests,
international organizations, and governments will interact in
contours that as yet have to be clearly defined.

A good example of this multi-stakeholder policy dialogue is the Open
Standards workshop (Nov 2) sponsored by CPTech, Sun Microsystems, the
W3C and the Yale Information Society Project. The purpose of the
workshop is to promote understanding of the value of open ICT
standards to economic development and social welfare and to
collectively discuss related problems and solutions, including the
role of government policies and procurement.

The sponsors believe that the IGF should proactively address issues
of openness and interoperability in the Information Society by paying
particular attention to ICT standards as outlined in paragraph 44 of
the WSIS Declaration of Principles. To help frame this requested
action, the sponsors are proposing two statements of principles: one
on open IT standards and requested IGF action and the other specific
to government policies and procurement.

The intent is to create a "dynamic coalition" in IGF around these
principles. This coalition will work to refine these principles and
suggested solutions with the intent of spurring collective action in
WSIS/IGF and relevant fora.

We invite you to review these statements at (http://www.cptech.org/
a2k/igf/athens110206/) and participate in this "dynamic coalition."

We have created a mailing list for this purpose. Details on how to
sign up are at: http://mailman.ctyme.com/listinfo/openstds

More detail: contact Thiru Balasubramaniam (CPTech) email thiru at
cptech.org or Susy Struble (SUN) email susy at sun.com

More news on this after the IGF meeting.




************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

Consumer Project on Technology
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