[WSIS CS-Plenary] FW: [governance] Speakers at the September 20-21 consultation[strategic considerations]

[William Drake]

Perhaps of wider interest

-----Original Message-----
From: William Drake [mailto:wdrake at ictsd.ch]
Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2004 11:52 AM
To: Adam Peake; governance at lists.cpsr.org
Cc: karenb at gn.apc.org; jeanette at wz-berlin.de
Subject: RE: [governance] Speakers at the September 20-21
consultation[strategic considerations]


Hi,

Glad to have Karen aboard. We all might want to coordinate a little here.
The first panel will map out the range of IG mechanisms, different ways of
listing/typologizing.  Believe this is me, Jovan, and Milton, giving
personal perspectives.  We will sort of say, here's different ways of
thinking about the menu of governance arrangements that should be kept in
mind when discussing IG, and the next step is to pick from that menu which
issues require priority attention and hence should be taken up in depth by
the WG.   The panel to follow will be government, industry, and CS
spokespeople (Karen) saying ok given those suggested menus and other ways of
visualizing the terrain, here from our perspective are the top priority
issues that the WG should consider. Following that panel, the plenary debate
will be a chance for the all assembled to weigh in on which are the
priorities.

The government and industry speakers will presumably get up and say we
should all focus on this, not that.  On the basis of the debates thus far,
e.g. in ITU and in the WSIS working group sessions held during the prepcoms,
it is reasonable to guess that the government and industry speakers'
preferences may or may not align with ours. You will recall for example the
often invoked notions that 1) issues being "handled" (by implication,
handled well) elsewhere need not be revisited, such as trade and e-commerce
(WTO has it together, nothing to worry about), intellectual property (WIPO
and WTO have it together, nothing to worry about), privacy (OECD/COE/EU have
it together, nothing to worry about), etc etc., and 2) other items some of
us think of as governance or as requiring collective rules where there are
none really are not governance and should not be treated as such, e.g.
technical standardization, interconnection pricing, spam, competition
policy/industry concentration, cultural and linguistic diversity, etc. Refer
back to the brief discussion we had about Mike Nelson's INET presentation,
which was of this character.

So this is about what gets taken off the table as not being IG and an
appropriate topic for consideration by the WG, and what gets left on.  The
WG will not be bound per se by what the consultation identifies as
priorities or not priorities, but it will certainly have to take this into
account.  Hence, it might be helpful if CS had some broadly shared sense of
what are the top five or so topics we think are most pressing and deserving
of WG attention, and for our interventions to push that agenda.  We should
play this as strategically as the other parties, or the consultation could
end up like the UNICT TF forum, with everyone walking around saying either
we need ITU to take over from ICANN or at least GAC (some developing
countries)  and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" (industry) and everything
else falling away.  That would be sort of a missed opportunity to start a
more coherent dialogue about democratizing global governance.

Best,

Bill

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Peake [mailto:ajp at glocom.ac.jp]
> Sent: Friday, September 03, 2004 11:43 PM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Cc: karenb at gn.apc.org; jeanette at wz-berlin.de
> Subject: [governance] Speakers at the September 20-21 consultation
>
>
> Markus Kummer needs to complete the program for his meeting on
> September 20-21.
>
> As mentioned, he wrote to Jeanette and me asking us to speak.  Me on
> the first day, and Jeanette on the second.  We thought it a bit of a
> problem to have both of us speak, partly because that's not why we
> wanted to be coordinators, and partly because we wanted to try for a
> little diversity in the panels and CS presence.
>
> So we have asked Karen Banks to speak in the slot on Monday Sept 20.
> She has kindly agreed. The theme for the first day is "nature and
> scope of Internet governance and on setting priorities", and Karen
> will provide a civil society perspective.  Karen and APC have done
> work on this, it's a good fit.  It's 10 minute (max) presentation.
>
> Jeanette will speak on the second day on a panel discussing the
> multi-stakeholder character of WGIG.
>
> I've sent email to Markus.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Adam (and Jeanette, who should be on a beach and not reading email !)
>
>