[WSIS CS-Plenary] recommendations for WGIG

[Jeanette Hofmann]

Ronald Koven wrote:

> Dear All --
> 
> So, who named this NomCom? 

Dear Ronald,

I did, on behalf of and in agreement with the Internet Governance Caucus.
In a message I sent to the plenary list on September 28 I explained the 
further procedure and invited everyone to subscribe to the Internet 
Governance Caucus list who wants to participate:

Regarding the further procedure:

The IG caucus is still in the process of discussing the further 
selection procedure. What has been more or less agreed upon so far is 
the following:

The IG caucus assumes responsibility for generating a final list of 
10-20 candidates.

The IG caucus invites all people who would like to participate in 
discussing the next steps to join the IG caucus mailing list. (The above 
mentioned website tells you how to subscribe.)

We plan to send to the IG working group's secretariat the list of 
proposed candidates plus the URL of the website that shows all 
originally nominated names together with their caucus affiliation. We 
also intend to inform the secretariat about the selection criteria we used.

Caucuses who are not satisfied with our selection may consider to send 
to Markus Kummer their own suggestions.

We are running out of time, which is why the next steps will presumably 
be decided upon very quickly.

We will send another mail to the plenary and the IG caucus list as soon 
as the website with the list of proposed names is published.

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

All further steps were decided on the IG caucus list. On September 30, I
send to the caucus list a message with suggestions regarding the 
selection procedure. Based on the supporting messages I got, the nomcom 
was put together and did its job.

> 
> This  belated, after-the-fact message is the first that I've seen of its
> very existence.

I am sorry, I don't think this is our mistake. We did communicate our 
ideas about selection processes, and we invited everybody to participate 
in the discussion. Besides, everybody was free to send her/his own 
suggestions to Markus Kummer, and at least one caucus did so.

> 
> The concept of democracy seems to be ill-understood in these civil society
> bodies. 

I don't think there is just one concept of democracy. Furthermore, the 
national concept of democracy cannot really applied to transnational 
networks of NGOs such as the WSIS crowd.
> 
> With all respect, most of the names picked seem to reflect a single, trendy
> political viewpoint -- not the range of opinions current in the wide world.

It was not our goal to represent the full range of opinions available 
but to select a slate of candidates from civil society based on a list 
of criteria, which the caucus agreed upon some months ago. "Trendy 
political viewpoint" was not among the criteria.
> 
> Is Mr. Kummer required to accept these recommendations, or can he make
> choices of his own?

Mr Kummer can make his own suggestions but he isn't the one who selects 
the working group members. Ultimately, it is Kofi Annan's 
responsibility. We can only hope that our proposals are taken into 
consideration.

Best regards, Jeanette
> 
> Rony Koven 
> 
> (Please note that I sign my full name. I wish others would do likewise,
> instead of forcing everyone to puzzle out who's doing the messaging.)
> _______________________________________________
> Plenary mailing list
> Plenary at wsis-cs.org
> http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/plenary