[Ecommerce] FromGeneva: Conclusion of open consultations on Internet Governance Forum

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

Conclusion of open consultations on Internet Governance Forum

19 February 2006
Thiru Balasubramaniam

The open consultations on the Internet Governance Forum concluded on 17
February 2006. Here are the official transcripts of the second day of
the morning
<http://www.intgovforum.org/contributions/UN-IGF-AM-2-17-06.txt> and
afternoon
<http://www.intgovforum.org/contributions/UN-IGF-PM-2-17-06.txt>
consultations.

Pakistan
<http://www.intgovforum.org/contributions/UN-IGF-AM-2-17-06.txt>, on
behalf of G-77 and China stated that the World Society on Information
Society (WSIS)

    belongs to the series of U.N. summits that focused on economic and
    social development issues.

    The primary objective of the summit in all its aspects, including
    Internet governance, was to create, and I quote, a people-centered,
    inclusive, and development-oriented information society.

    The group would like to reiterate that the Internet Governance Forum
    we intend to create must help realize this vision of a
    development-oriented information society.



Pakistan stressed the importance of having multi-stakeholder
participation in the IGF from governments, civil society, and business
from developing countries as well as international organizations.

According to the delegation of Pakistan, part of a development oriented
approach to internet governance would be by "providing users with choice
of different software models, including open source, free and
proprietary software".

Pakistan called upon the chair to reconvene open consultations in a
month to have more substantive deliberations.

The Chair noted there could be logistical problems in convening
consultations in Geneva in a month as there were many other conflicting
meetings.

Brazil supported Pakistan's call for an additional round open
consultations. Brazil suggested early April as set of dates )after the
ICANN GAC meeting in New Zealand at the end of March). Brazil's proposed
a format for the IGF comprised of three bureaus, a government bureau, a
private sector and a civil society bureau. Each bureau would have 15
representatives. The government bureau would have five regions with
three representatives each.

Markus Kummer, Executive Coordinator of the Secretariat of the Working
Group on Internet Governance, noted the possibilities of a "steering
committee" or a "programme committee" as potential bodies to determine
the agenda of the Athens Internet Governance Forum.

Pakistan (G-77 and China) noted that there was no agreement nor
discussion within the G-77 yet of a "steering committee or a program
committee". Pakistan requested to hold consultations in three to four
weeks to prevent clashing with the human rights commission.


Australia echoed Singapore's views that the IGF start small and evolve
as the IGF is proven. Australia highlighted the preference by many
delegations for so called "horizontal" or "cross-cutting" issues rather
than "vertical" issues. In the delegate's own words,


    Concerns has been expressed that issues are being put forward as
    priorities for discussion in the IGF which are not cross-cutting
    enough or are too readily being consigned to silos. I'm not quite
    sure that we would agree that Spam, security, and cybercrime, for
    example, are not cross cutting. They seem to raise implications in a
    range of areas and to warrant responses from a range of areas and
    institutions. But I do not really want to ponder on the meaning of
    cross cutting. I would observe that many issues lend themselves to
    be tackled in a cross-cutting manner from a multidimensional
    perspective, and we consider that is what is important. In addition,
    while there is a general statement that there are many cross-cutting
    issues, paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda also identifies particular
    functions and themes for the IGF which may not always be easily
    reconciled with this idea of cross-cutting issues.



The representative from the Worldwide Web Consortium noted their
involvement in the web accessibility initiative which helped to define
technology for people with disabilities. The representative urged the
IGF to present its outcomes, in what ever format they took, to be
presented in "open, non-proprietary formats that were used on the web
everywhere else like HTML".

William Drake <http://www.cpsr.org/board/drake.html> suggested that the
structure of the IGF be fairly decentralized with a small administrative
unit along the lines of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Chairman Desai concluded by stating that the IGF would be held either in
October or November and the organizers would ensure that it would not
conflict with major religious holidays. He indicated that under standard
practice, the Greek government (the hosts of the IGF) would be asked to
provide a chair for the Forum. The chair noted that the terms "program
committee" and "steering committee" to draft the agenda of the Forum had
caused confusion among certain delegations so for the time being the
term used would be "multistakeholder group". The Chair noted that how
this "multistakeholder group" would be constituted would need to be
decided relatively quickly in ten days. Chairmain Desai encouraged
participants to present their views directly to Markus Kummer who would
then convey them to the Secretary-General. The Chair hoped to have a
fully functioning "multistakeholder group" before the end of March. The
Chair noted that "nothing could be ruled out" as a discussion them in
Athens. He urged participants to present ideas for between three to five
priority discussion themes to the IGF. He reiterated that the program
committee not New York would set the Athen agenda.

Brazil offered to host the 2nd IGF in Rio de Janeiro in 2007.

The Chair reiterated that the IGF awaited comments on two key issues,

    the constitution of the -- possible constitution of the management
    -- multistakeholder management group, whatever it finally is called,
    and possible themes. I'm suggesting three simply because excluding
    the opening, there will be three plenary days available. But if
    three happens to become five, I'm sure there are ways one can be
    accommodated on that.

    So on these two issues, if within ten days you can communicate with
    Mr. Kummer or anybody here who feels they still would like to
    rethink -- many of you have already given your views on this, but
    those of you who feel they want to go back and think



On the first day, I raised the question as to whether the IGF could
consider open document formats in the context of government procurement
policies and a proposed treaty on access to knowledge which has been
raised by the friends of development countries at the world intellectual
property organization.

/posted by Thiru Balasubramaniam @ 4:15 PM
<http://fromgeneva.blogspot.com/2006/02/conclusion-of-open-consult_114038420374392290.html>/