[WSIS CS-Plenary] Building foundations for legitimate common work

[Vittorio Bertola]

Liss Jeffrey ha scritto:
> These are transitional times.
> Francis I am not alone in thanking you for taking action during this 
> transition, when some of us are not so active,
> and I look forward to further discussion of the substance of CS positions.
> Of course we need to reveiew the legitimacy of the CS decision making. 
> This is not new.
> 
> But the tone of RG's email is suspect and troubling.

I do not want to enter into this somewhat disturbing exchange of 
personal "compliments", though it is the reason for this message.

Instead, I would like to bring back the discussion to the issue of 
defining what kind of organization civil society needs for the WSIS 
follow up.

In the Internet Governance Caucus there was general agreement that, if 
we were to continue after the WSIS, we needed an agreed formal 
structure: a Charter that could define a mission for the Caucus, rights 
and duties of the members, and basic operational principles.

We asked one well respected person, Avri Doria, to lead the process of 
collecting all views, drafting a charter, and getting it ratified. 
People opted in as members in the new "formalized" caucus, and they 
approved the Charter with an overwhelming majority. You can now find it 
at http://www.igcaucus.org/IGC-charter_final-061014.html .

While we are in the middle of the process (we still have to conclude it 
by electing the new internal roles), not having yet agreed on our basic 
rules, we refrained from making substantive contributions as a caucus, 
and resorted to releasing "sign-on" statements instead, with individual 
signatories. We might do the same at the IGF.

When you turn to the Plenary, this exchange of emails proves that there 
is ample disagreement on the most basic points that must be shared to 
enable collective action, such as, who we are, how do we act, what do we 
want to do, who can speak for us. There is the need to agree and write 
down once for all who qualifies as a member of this plenary, which 
representative organs - such as the CSB - should exist, how they should 
be composed, and what should they do.

So my personal view is that, while I welcome the efforts of Francis and 
others, they don't represent anyone but themselves and their 
organizations unless a similar process is completed. If they are to 
continue in their work as civil society delegates, we first need to 
engage in a much necessary work of laying small but solid foundations 
that can allow us to work together for many more years. Some work was 
already done in the now-defunct Working Methods WG. We from the IGC 
would be happy to contribute the experience of our own effort, too. This 
can be done in a few months, if we stop attacking each other and start 
working together in good faith.

Otherwise, we'll just go round and round challenging each other's 
legitimacy and motives, up to the point where all the other stakeholders 
will consider us ridiculous.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...