<h3>
<a href="http://www.circleid.com/posts/20110322_cstd_wg_on_igf_multi_stakeholderism_and_short_deadlines/" class="blue">http://www.circleid.com/posts/20110322_cstd_wg_on_igf_multi_stakeholderism_and_short_deadlines/</a></h3>
<h3><a href="http://www.circleid.com/posts/20110322_cstd_wg_on_igf_multi_stakeholderism_and_short_deadlines/" class="blue">The CSTD WG on IGF, Multi-Stakeholderism, and Short Deadlines</a>
</h3>By <a href="http://www.circleid.com/members/5044/" class="blue"><strong>Sam Dickinson</strong></a><div class="byline"> </div>
<p>One of the many Internet governance discussions currently
taking place is at the CSTD Working Group on improvements to the IGF,
which is due to have its second and final meeting on 24 and 25 March
2011. Despite an unpromising beginning, with only governments on the
Working Group (WG), it is now a multi-stakeholder environment, with the
technical, business and civil society represented at the WG and
genuinely welcomed by governments to participate in the WG's
deliberations. The resulting discussions have been, and will continue to
be messy, but equal participation of all stakeholders is a positive
sign of the recognition that Internet governance is now firmly
established as a multi-stakeholder process.
</p>
<p>
<strong>The birth of the CSTD WG</strong>
</p>
<p>
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) created the Internet
Governance Forum (IGF) as an open space where different stakeholders
could meet to develop a comprehensive agenda of Internet governance. The
IGF was initially given a mandate for five years, after which, the
possible continuation of the IGF was to be reviewed by UN Member States.
</p>
<p>
The five-year mandate ended in 2010 with the September meeting in
Vilnius, Lithuania. Since IGF 2009, feedback on IGF's continuation has
been sought in many ways, culminating in the July 2010 formation of a
special CSTD (Commission on Science and Technology for Development)
Working Group (WG) on improvements to the IGF. This WG is to report to
the CSTD at its 14th session meeting in May 2011.
</p>
<p>
<strong>The evolution of the CSTD WG</strong>
</p>
<p>
Open consultations for the WG were held at the IGF 2010 in Vilnius,
Lithuania, and in Geneva on 24 November. On 6 December, the Vice Chair
of the CSTD met with CSTD Member States to decide on the composition of
the WG. At that time, given that the meeting was only attended by
government representatives, it is unsurprising that they decided that
the WG would be composed only of government representatives from 15 CSTD
member states, as well as the five host countries of the first five
IGFs.
</p>
<p>
Given the IGF was created as a multi-stakeholder forum, where all
stakeholders are equal, when news got out about the WG, there was strong
criticism from non-government stakeholders about its purely
governmental composition. In response, at a second meeting in December
2010, after what was reportedly significant discussion about the
composition of the WG, there was at last consensus amongst the member
states to include five representatives from the technical and academic
community, the business community and civil society, as well as five
representatives from intergovernmental organizations. These groups of
five representatives from various stakeholder groups are not members of
the WG, but were invited to "participate interactively" with the WG in
its deliberations. The full list of representatives can be found in the <a href="http://www.unctad.org/sections/un_cstd/docs/UN_WGIGF2011d04_en.pdf">summary report of the February 2011 meeting</a>.
</p>
<p>
Traditionally, if a non-member state wishes to speak in a UN meeting,
the member states must first agree to let non-member states speak. In
addition, being allowed to speak is not the same as having an equal say
in the contents of the report. An early positive sign was the Chair of
the WG involving the non-government representatives in the WG's initial
work, requesting feedback on the draft outline of the report. The
technical and academic community contributed and <a href="http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/wsis/docs/cstd_20110131.pdf">published the submission on the ISOC website</a>, as there was no general publication of submissions on the CSTD website.
</p>
<p>
But despite the invitation to submit a response to the draft report
outline, given the uncertainties of how non-government can participate
in the room of a UN meeting, the non-government representatives to the
CSTD WG entered the first meeting of the expanded multi-stakeholder CSTD
WG in Montreux last month with a small degree of apprehension. I was
one of the five representatives of the technical and academic community
to the CSTD WG. What follows is my personal account of the CSTD's work
since February.
</p>
<p>
<strong>Montreux: a pleasant surprise mixed with a dash of frustrating politics and lack of knowledge of IGF</strong>
</p>
<p>
The Montreux meeting, held on 24 and 25 February 2011, was a pleasant
surprise to all of the non-government representatives I spoke to. There
was no separation of government from non-government representatives.
Instead, it was a case of "pick your own seat" from the large
rectangular formation of tables in the room. Even our name badges
weren't separated by a colour-coded scheme. (Although I did notice that
the governments had laminated "flags" — UN-speak for what ordinary folk
would call "name tents" — while we non-government representatives had
plain cardboard ones). A number of the governments, including those not
normally associated with supporting multi-stakeholder participation in
Internet governance, formally welcomed the participation of
non-government stakeholders in the WG. There was no "governments speak
first, then others can speak afterward" procedure in place. There was no
separation of government and non-government input into the compilation
document of responses to the draft outline of the report. There was also
agreement that the IGF should adhere to the Tunis Agenda and remain a
non-decision making forum.
</p>
<p>
However, the fact that there were only 10 contributions to the draft
report from a total of 20 governments and 20 representatives from
intergovernmental organizations, business, technical and civil society
flagged that all was not well. Of the 10 submissions received by the
CSTD WG, only four came from governments: Finland, Portugal, Sri Lanka
and the USA. Five submissions came from the multistakeholder groups
(three from civil society, who had a harder time coming up with a single
view on the issues under discussion) and the tenth submission came from
an intergovernmental organization, UNESCO (United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization). The reason for the lack of
submissions, from some governments at least, was an objection to the
outline of the draft report. Given the outline of the draft report was
also the proposed agenda for the two-day meeting in Montreux, the
day-and-a-bit-long agenda bashing debate was ultimately about what
issues should be in the WG's report. It was also a sign of distrust
amongst participants, as some government representatives believed that
the Chair of the WG, and even the CSTD Secretariat staff, were working
behind the scenes with some governments prior to the February meeting.
The feeling of being left out of negotiations meant that some government
representatives' behaviour, while seeming at first to be downright
disruptive, was in fact a plea to have equal participation by all.
</p>
<p>
An additional barrier to discussion of the IGF was the fact that a
significant number of the government representatives in the room were
from the local missions in Geneva, had never attended an IGF, and were
relying on briefings from others, who also may have never attended an
IGF. This became apparent through the suggestions made by a number of
member states: it was clear they had little or no idea of how the IGF
open consultations worked, how the MAG worked, and what the discussion
in IGF main sessions and workshops was about.
</p>
<p>
In addition, informal feedback from an informal discussion held between a
couple of member states showed that even the fundamentals of Internet
governance are misunderstood. Many of the government participants still
believe a lot of the old myths about Internet management that were
circulating in the early days of WSIS. (For example, the myth that all
Internet traffic passes through the root servers.) This was a wake up
call for me, and for other technical and business community
representatives at the WG: although for people like us — who are in the
thick of Internet management and governance every day — these myths seem
well and truly busted, for governments — who may have a high staff
turnover, or who have a rotational system that means staff only work on
one particular portfolio for a limited period of time — it is much
harder to understand how the distributed environment of the Internet
works. The technical community, in particular, has to continue its
program of capacity building, with a focus on improving governments'
understanding of the issues.
</p>
<p>
What is disappointing, but not unique to the CSTD WG, is the fact that
the views presented by a number of the government representatives in the
Montreux meeting and in their submissions to the first and second
questionnaires are contrary to the views of other representatives from
the governments of the same countries in other Internet governance
spheres. As I noted in an <a href="http://www.circleid.com/posts/20101129_itu_the_internet_and_a_very_contentious_footnote/">earlier article on the ITU Plenipotentiary</a>,
the government representatives sent to meetings like the ITU, or other
UN meetings that touch on Internet matter, are often not the same
government representatives who actively participate in Internet
governance and management activities at ICANN, IETF, the RIRs or ISOC.
Those who are regularly involved in Internet governance discussions need
to help close the gap between these two opposing camps within the same
member state(s). The technical, business and civil society communities
can help here by playing matchmaker between the contacts in various
departments who do not talk to each other before attending separate
Internet-related discussions. In this way, accurate knowledge can be
distributed more widely amongst government bureaucrats and result in
more informed discussions at meetings like the CSTD WG and ITU.
</p>
<p>
<strong>CSTD Mark II: The Geneva phase</strong>
</p>
<p>
The second and final meeting of the WG is being held on 24 and 25 March
2011 in Geneva. The final agreement to a changed agenda and associated
list of non-hierarchical issues to be included in the final report in
Montreux seems to have increased active participation in the WG's
deliberations. There are currently <a href="http://www.unctad.info/en/CstdWG/WGIGF_Contributions/">26 contributions published</a>,
including a number of contributions from stakeholders who are not
representatives to the WG. There are now nine contributions from
governments, with additional contributions from intergovernmental
organizations too.
</p>
<p>
We have already lost one of two days of the first meeting to procedural
arguments, leaving very little time to state positions and negotiate on
what are the best ways to improve the IGF. Because of the need to allow
time to respond to the revised issues list agreed to in Montreux, there
is now very little time for representatives to read all 26 submissions,
digest them before the upcoming second meeting. Therefore, I have
absolutely no idea how we are going to reach agreement on a draft report
during the two days of this upcoming March meeting. I have even less
idea how we will all agree to a final report by the 1 April deadline
imposed by the need to have the report available in the six UN languages
in time for its presentation at the May ECOSOC intersessional meeting.
Whatever goes into the report has to have the consensus of everyone in
the CSTD WG. Given some widely varying views on what the IGF should be,
and the very limited time we have to reach consensus, it is possible
that any report suffers from the same problems that many of the ITU
Plenipotentiary resolutions suffered from: a reduction to the lowest
common denominator contents that are so bland that nobody can object to
them, while also containing vague enough language to allow the debate
about what the report means to continue long into the future.
</p>
<p>
Multi-stakeholder deliberations are difficult. But so are
government-only deliberations. What was clear from the first CSTD WG
meeting was that it was often the non-government representatives who
were actively moving between representatives on the WG trying to find
common ground. In many ways, the non-government representatives have it
easier than the government representatives, who on the whole have to
stick to the position statement given to their superiors in the
government hierarchy. But this flexibility that non-government
stakeholders in the WG possess can hopefully be used in this second CSTD
WG meeting to try and bridge these positions in ways that perhaps would
not be possible between governments who traditionally distrust each
other. We'll soon know if this is possible or not, with only a couple of
days until this second and last CSTD WG meeting.
</p>
<p>
<strong>Interested in following developments in Geneva this week?</strong>
</p>
<p>
Members of the technical community tweeted throughout the Montreux
meeting using the hashtags #CSTDWG and #IGF and will continue to do so
at the upcoming Geneva meeting. To read updates in real time, follow <a href="http://twitter.com/baheresmat">@baheresmat</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/nnimpuno">@nnimpuno</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/oscarrobles">@oscarrobles</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/patrikhson">@patrikhson</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/sgdickinson">@sgdickinson</a>, and <a href="http://twitter.com/tswinehart">@tswinehart</a>.
</p>
<p><strong>By <a href="http://www.circleid.com/members/5044/" class="blue">Sam Dickinson</a>, Senior Policy Specialist at APNIC</strong></p>