[WSIS CS-Plenary] UN at odds over internet's future

[Vittorio Bertola]

Bertrand de La Chapelle ha scritto:
> Cher Jean-Louis,  (english below)
>  
> Il y a clairement des choses à critiquer sur le fonctionnement ou les 
> résultats du WGIG.

And, by the way, I think we should separately assess the process and the 
results. For example, we might decide we liked the former but not the 
latter, or vice versa.

> Personnellement, je vois au moins trois aspects :
> - les mécanismes insuffisants de communication durant la phase de 
> travail entre les membres à l'intérieur et ceux qui étaient à l'extérieur

You are right in the sense that there are no established guidelines. I, 
for example, did not know whether to interpret my role as that of an 
advocate (appointed for effectiveness, so my main focus should have been 
on being effective and responsive inside the group) or as that of a 
facilitator (appointed for inclusiveness, so my main focus should have 
been in communicating with the rest of civil society and collecting input).

Some of us sincerely tried to share text and doubts with caucuses, 
mostly the IG one, but others as well when relevant. However, in some 
cases (as usual) you just had to react in zero time. The problem of how 
to balance these needs has just come up over and over in heated 
discussions among CS groups (last one, on the IG Caucus two days ago), 
and I think we should sort it out once for all, so that people that are 
not in the middle of the action don't feel unduly excluded and people 
that are in the middle of the action don't feel obstacled by the request 
for broader discussion.

However, I think that there also is a content-related dimension, not 
just the procedural one. In some cases we had disagreements among 
different CS members on whether the text that one of us was pushing 
actually reflected CS consensus and values or not. In (fortunately, very 
few) cases, I personally felt that some of my CS colleagues were pushing 
text that was clearly *against* our values and our former Declaration, 
and maybe more similar to typical private sector views, but of course I 
did not know whether that was just my interpretation or a fact. Reality 
is, by the way, that even in the small group of civil society people 
that participate in WSIS there are profound differences on values and 
viewpoints.

> - le caractère pas assez itératif des rédactions

Well... if you stricly talk about text, you are right, but please 
remember that practically no text of the Report was available even to us 
before we entered Bossey. More generally speaking, I think there were 
lots of documents published for comment and open consultation 
opportunities, and comments were taken into account.

> - le manque de précision sur les roles et responsabilités des différents acteurs.

See above.

> Il y en a surement d'autres et je ne parle pas de la substance, 
> seulement du process. Mais globalement, je persiste à penser qu'à ce 
> jour, le WGIG a été, au sein du WSIS, ce qui va le plus dans la 
> direction de ce que l'on peut souhaiter :
> - en temes de participation et de modalités de représentation
> - en termes de procédures de concertation et de méthodes de travail
> - en termes de substance même

I agree.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
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