[WSIS CS-Plenary] Strategic priorities for WGIG

[Vittorio Bertola]

All,

the time all of a sudden has come when the Secretariat has asked WGIG
members to list the issues they consider as priorities.

It is likely that the WGIG will ultimately deal with the governance
systems of no more than 5-7 of the issues originally listed.

While many things are not clear yet - for example, whether the decision
on priorities will be taken now or in Geneva, whether public comment
will be specifically asked on that, whether it will focus on issues or
on other aggregations or maybe on organizations to be reformed - it is
time that civil society as an aggregate starts to think at what it aims
to get from the WGIG.

I think that the WGIG offers a unique possibility, as it is very rare
that a group of people in which civil society is present as peer is
tasked to suggest which global governance regimes and institutions need
reform. Such a chance might not come again for many years.

As such, I think we have to consider which, of the organizations whose
policies affect the Internet, we deem to be the key ones whose missions
and structures should be revised.

ICANN is in the list by default, given what happened at WSIS-I.

Of course, you can imagine that my personal take is at WIPO and the
intellectual property regime - and of course, private sector
representatives are going to oppose this, and possibly to get the WGIG
state that WIPO needs no reform, or that such reform is not as urgent as
the ICANN one; so if we want to follow this way, we need a strong push
from this plenary and from caucuses.

Anyway, I think that you should browse through the list of issues at
http://www.wgig.org/docs/inventory-issues.html and try to pick the 5-7
most important ones to you and your groups.

You can give for granted that "root servers" and "names/IP
administration" will be there; my personal choice for the rest would
possibly be "intellectual property", "privacy/consumer rights", "spam",
"interconnection costs" and perhaps "trade/liberalization".

Caucus connectors should possibly raise the issue with their caucuses
and prepare to submit statements to the WGIG by February 14, both on the
priorities and on the content of the issue papers that will be released
next week.

It would be a great thing if there could be a collective civil society
statement, but I imagine there's not enough time for it.

Thanks,
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...