Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 28, 2011 - 11:00AM
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> PAUL RENDEK: Welcome to the workshop on Enhancing Understanding: Facilitating Internet Governance Through Openness and Transparency. My name is Paul Rendek, I'm one of the comoderators for this workshop.
>> MARIA HALL: Good morning, everybody. My name is Maria Hall and I'm working for the Swedish Government and I'm one of the cochairs, thank you.
>> PAUL RENDEK: I just wanted to start with a little bit of the administration of how we like to run workshops like this. This workshop is, of course, very open and inclusive and at any time if anyone has any comments about what any of the speakers have to say, we would appreciate you would raise your hand and we would like to give you the opportunity to hear what you have to say.
What I'm going to do is run through very quickly some of the outcomes and some of the decisions that came about in the workshop on enhancing transparency that we had last year in IGF that led us to forming this workshop on enhancing understanding, so if I can walk through some of the points, I'll do this very quickly and then we can start and roll into the agenda for enhancing understanding.
So in last year's IGF, when we talked about enhancing transparency in Internet governance, it was very clear that transparency is more than just providing information. It was stated that clarity and accountability and understanding there is needed and there was still a lot of work to be done in defining many of the concepts in Internet governance. This was brought forward and agreed to by everyone, really, participating.
And local issues were seen as very important whether they were from a legal or regulatory or industrial or economic standpoint and one of the big issues that came out underneath that is how do we bring the local to the global scene, this is very important. Because I think truly in having an open and inclusive Internet governance kind of structure you need to understand that local needs need to be brought forward globally so people can understand what they are and governance, of course, remains a misunderstood term or a term that means something different to different parties, and that was, again, supporting the whole idea of defining things such as Internet governance. It means things to many different stakeholders so this is the reason why the whole concept of understanding popped up in the transparency workshop that we had last year.
So that's just giving you a review of some of the things that were brought forward. What we'd like to do now is concentrate on enhancing understanding, and hearing from our delegates, I will ask all the delegates to introduce themselves very briefly and give the floor to Jonathan Zuck because he was one of the panelists last year that came forward with the concepts of having clarity, understanding and accountability and shows understanding as the area that we would concentrate on now. So if I can just start with Jonathan, if you could introduce yourself and walk around the table, thank you.
>> JONATHAN ZUCK: Yes, my name is Jonathan Zuck and I'm the President of the Association for Competitive Technology, Internet trade association representing small and medium‑sized IT companies.
>> DELE OLOJEDE: Dele Olojede, I'm the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Global Network Agency.
>> ATHINA FRAGKOUI: Hello, my name is Athina Fragkoui, I'm the legal council of the live NCC.
>> BERNADETTE LEWIS: Good morning, my name is Bernadette Lewis, I'm the secretary‑general of the Caribbean Union, we're charged with the responsibility of looking out for Internet governance on behalf of the Caribbean, thank you.
>> ROMULO NEVES: Good morning, Romulo Neves from the Brazilian organization of international relations, head of the Division for Information Society.
>> ANG PENG HWA: I'm Ang Peng Hwa from Singapore, I'm with the university.
>> BILL SMITH: I'm Bill Smith and I'm with Pay Pal.
>> PAUL RENDEK: Thank you to our delegates here. I would like to turn the floor over to Jonathan Zuck. Before I do that, when I look at enhancing understanding I think some of the things that were brought up, people have concerns, different positions, needs and even expectations and this is something that we want to point out so what we're going to do this session is being noted, we'll take some notes on this and we'll try to see the viewpoints that are brought forward on enhancing understanding and we'll wrap that up with a few points we hope we can bring forward to the stock taking session, we can see if we can find a slot we can bring concepts forward. Jonathan can you speak briefly about clarity, understanding?
>> JONATHAN ZUCK: Sure, I'll try to remember what I said last year. I think what motivated my comments last year was a notion being a means and not an end. Transparency is brought up as an end unto itself. That's rarely the case. Our motivation for trying to achieve some level of transparency is at the crux of multistakeholderism, democracy and brought participation in any ‑‑ ultimately our participation and accountability, and transparency and understanding and clarity become means to facilitate those things. If I have transparency that simply means that I'm overloading with information and acronyms and too much data for you to understand that you turn your head away from it and you don't participate in the system and don't understand that system well enough for that system to be accountable to your interests. The true end goals of participation and accountability are lost even in a world in which we attempt to be, quote, unquote, transparent. What he we need to do is keep in mind that our objectives are to facilitate broader accountability and participation to the participants in any particular institution of Internet governance and keep the goals in mind, it will help us to narrow and better define what transparency and understanding really ought to mean.
>> PAUL RENDEK: Thanks very much, Jonathan.
>> MARIA HÄLL: Thank you from the very good discussion we had last year. I'm going to give you a few examples or challenges or what do we say also some examples that I think that have been moved forward since last year and I think also it's pointed to point out that last year we talked about transparency and I think we've come quite a way, actually, since the discussions last year in several platforms. It's very much about understanding and, for instance, I'm working on participating as a member for the Swedish Government in the GAC for ICANN and having the understanding for the different roles and different entities is one of the key points for actually being an advisor like the GAC is for ICANN and I think we come away, actually, in that point, we have some steps ahead of us, of course, some challenges, I would like to talk about challenges and also about opportunities but it's also in other platforms, we have to understand how Government works. On the other hand, the governments always have to understand how other stakeholders or players are also working and that understanding it's very important to actually having been able to have a good dialogue and to be able to ‑‑ being able to use every knowledge and what do you say experience that different stakeholders have actually. And I think that is something that I really appreciate something from the ‑‑ not only from being my co‑Chair and having this workshop in particular but also the work they're doing in a way to try to understand how governments work. For instance, a couple times a year it's having this Government Round Table meetings which is kind of a close meeting for governments being able to understand what's happening in the technical community and it could be a lot of technical issues but, of course, it's articulating public policy that is of concern for the governments. And also I'm, together I'm cochairing the corporation working group, providing for us governments to be able to talk to the technical community on our issues and have some feedback so there are some very good ‑‑ good examples that are coming further and further every year that comes by but it's also ‑‑ it's another example of a challenge I think that we have in front of us and I think that it's of concern for us governments but it's also concern for the technical community and actually everybody and it's a little bit of a nonunderstanding and non ‑‑ well, nonunderstanding is maybe the right word actually, what roles we have in the Internet arena. For instance I listened to the head of the ITU in the opening session yesterday and it's an interesting point he didn't mention ICANN, ITF or some other entities that actually are working and, you know, responsible for actually a lot of ‑‑ help me with the words here. Yeah, exactly. So that is also the understanding that you have to understand the different roles that they play. And, of course, the Government has a lot of play with legislation and other things that we just do and are responsible for but you also have to understand that we have other players that we need to understand and we need to interact with to be able to achieve the multistakeholder environment that we talk about and maybe not all the time really understand. So I would like those words, tickle your mind a little bit and give thought to the panelists and I think that after, you not only have the next in line, so I will give you the floor to try to pick up where I left and try to give your views on what kind of challenges you see, opportunities and also experiences, thank you.
>> Okay, thank you, Maria. Well, it's a very appropriate discussion in my case especially because as you may know we have a very popular document means here. So I will start just with some points about transparency. First of all, the document, very transparency is a three‑Government document, just to clarify some confusions that have been made, has been made, that document is from the Government, not from civil society.
Well, having said that, I have to say also that the main task in this discussion is to work among other departments, primary, in order to enhance the understanding and acceptance of the stakeholder model. This is our task, why? Because the Brazilian internal Internet governance is a stakeholder so we are attached to this model and the Government supports it. But it's not a single task. Why? Because it involves both interests of governmental representatives and nongovernmental representatives. Then our problem starts. Have to negotiate a lot of people with a lot of governments, not negotiate for real concrete outcomes but just negotiate to understand what are our problems. There are a lot of policymakers that don't have the comprehension of the different roles, the different outcomes, the different evolutions, the different interests and expectations and the different, let's say, review causes of each body that are involved in Internet Governance. And there are not a few of them, there's a lot of them, at least let's say ITF, IGF, NRU, ITU and ICANN and we think each of them you have a lot of also subbodies working so you have a very completion framework so understand which role each one of them has in the process means how you will intervene in the discussion. And it's hard because we have the very first task is to clarify which role is of which body. And after that we start to discuss with you. But things don't work like that. We're not in a school, the teacher say that first we're going to do this and then second we are going to do this. Things happen in the real life, sometimes simultaneously. So we brought the idea to the IGF to hear, to discuss and to clarify. It's not easy, but it's necessary. It's necessary and useful.
Well, saying that, just to finish also on that, and give the time to the other panelists, I think a very important thing that we should evolve in this understanding would be the idea of enhancing cooperation. I know the play of words, enhancing understanding comes first but as I have said things happen in the real‑life sometimes simultaneously so maybe we need to understand what is cooperation and then we can then go back and see how each ‑‑ each body could help maybe the entire framework to work smoothly. Sometimes a body works very smooth, but maybe it has some rule, some road in a constructive review of other bodies. May be. It's just a thought to be discussed here. Thank you.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, row mule low. I would like to give the floor to Bernadette and please, panelists, and all the others, when you want to have a thought, please introduce yourself and say where you come from. That's very good. Thank you. I give you the floor, Bernadette.
>> BERNADETTE LEWIS: Thank you very much. I just wanted to step back a information in order to foster information and information should be forthcoming and readily available and comprehensive in the language that's understood by the stakeholders and you need to have this body of information and this is something that you need to promote transparency and openness and the information must be forthcoming and coming from the Caribbean what we have found at least when the Caribbean telecommunications union was charged with the responsibility of coordinating Internet governance our first challenge was the information that would help us do what we were charged to do. That caused a lot of education, self‑education to begin with. And we found that the information was there but not necessarily very visible because you've spoken about, for example, the right to Government, the things that are closed, what is the process, this sort of information is not regulation, the understanding of the mechanisms by which you participate, the understanding of the organizations and how the ‑‑ they interact with each other the synergies between the organizations, these things are not readily understood and if they're not out there available, right, how are we going to participate in a process that is not visible to us and these are some of the challenges that we had, but what we've learned to do over the course of the five years of our work in Internet governance is we bring the people from within the bodies of these organizations to speak to our various stakeholders. The CTU established the current Internet governance forum in 2005 and we have found it is absolutely necessary to speak just to the ‑‑ your many and diverse stakeholders but you also have to invest time in educating at the ministerial level, at the governmental level because there are many things they don't know about it, it's not in the public eye, they have not been participating and if you're going to be involved or engaged in a process, you need to have that very basic, fundamental information, and to understand why Internet governance is of importance, how does it impact on your plans for national and regional development, these are things that have to be brought to the fore. So we work at the level of the Government but we also work at the level of the private sector, the academic community, we also deal with civil society, we have programmes designed to go out into communities and provide that information that would enable for ordinary people, the users of the Internet to participate in this process.
It's wonderful if the mechanisms are there for anybody to participate but they need to know about it. And I think a lot more outreach, a lot more impartation of this information needs to be done and that will be my topic for the time being, thank you.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Bernadette. I would like to give the floor to the next panelist, which is Dele. Dele, could you please introduce yourself, thank you.
>> DELE OLOJEDE: Once again, Dele Olojede, Chair of the international advisory board of the global agency. Brings together very stakeholders to reach a common understanding of what the rules of the road are for transparency as well as privacy on the Internet. And it's quite clear that what happens when you bring various stakeholders together is that they serve as a restraint on behavior and that people think twice before they act and an understanding that for the most part the damage is done when governments act in the heat of the moment as nearly happened in London a couple of months ago during the riots, when the British Government wanted to shut down Facebook and Twitter on the suspicion that some of the rioters were using the social media to organize themselves. So the threat does not merely come from the usual suspects like China and Saudi Arabia and the UAE and so on but also quite clearly from governments and well‑established democracies. Many of us, of course, are old enough to remember that no enforcement agencies and well‑established democracies didn't used to have automatic rights to wiretap of telephones and so on but in the age of terrorism and the Internet, all of these things have been swept aside and this is almost carte blanche. When these are happening in secrecy unlike establishments you had before, you needed something to wiretap, a level of control, nowadays you don't have that ability, particularly on the web. The idea of transparency for us is what serves as constraint on the behavior of authorities and so the advantages of it seem pretty self‑evident.
The second thing to keep in mind about transparency, like sunshine, and therefore meaning that things cannot easily be hidden from view is that it is easier to be able to ‑‑ the damage that must be done. The pest Nix that I occasionally hear, perhaps because of my age is that Peter suggests that we'll not have a perfect world. But if we can find ways preventing damage from being done perhaps we can get things right subsequently in the near future. So the old basis of what we do together, in groupings whether they're quasi Government agencies, private sector players, whether they're society groups is to ensure that in coming together to agree on the rules of the road, that automatically injects a measure of transparency in our actions and so when somebody ‑‑ be there to raise Hall, shall we say and perhaps the possibility of those things being done.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Dele. So I will give the floor to Mr. Penning way from Singapore.
>> ANG PENG HWA: Okay, I have six slides to put up. Okay. Six slides and my goal is to be provocative, and I mention with Chris. What I want to talk about is kind of something to think about for more transparency, let me say at the outset that I believe in transparency. I was talking to Trovan, he asked what I was talking about next and he said what are you talking about and I said transparency and he said transparency or translucency? He said is the issue translucency or transparency? I think the question is how much transparency are we talking about. And I sense, in fact, I was surprised, sharing everyone sort of talking about the advantages of transparency, there are other disadvantages but one of my ‑‑ the expectations of people of what transparency can do and, again, my friend was saying that there's a term that he has encountered transparent corruption. Corruption is so bad, transparent, which means that transparency will not solve corruption that it's corrupt. So that can involve issue of corruption. I think we have expectations of transparency as a cureall. Let me begin about transparency. There is corruption, there is abuse, corruption, could be not just money corruption but also power corruption, right? And also mistakes. Once you see the process, there are mistakes. I think you create trust. I think there's transparency you do create, no doubt good things to be said for transparency. Okay, the downside, I think there is a down side, how you might work to overcome is internal. There is a British organization called Chatham house, it could be wrong, it could be a bit end but bring it out and talk about how this thing my or might not work, inputs before you even work for the, maybe you should try it, but it's so wrong you don't want to be seen, second point, we are asking dumb questions or so blatantly obvious that why are you even thinking about this or working on it. Somehow there should be a way for these wild little ideas to come out. And you get too transparent then somebody working on a system seen as something silly questions or thinking very far and therefore we don't have a system. And then there's one that I sort of met, reveal information to the Government that may be used to competitors, meaning that if you're transparent and then you want information, this is talking to the U.S. Government, yeah, so much and not beyond. Because my competitor knows the information if you're transparent. And then the third ‑‑ final point is this, I've been involved in some of these stakeholder kind of things, if you are transparent doesn't mean you as a stakeholder in a setting where you have vote, you have to vote in favor of your stakeholder. Let me give you an example. I'm working in regulation, we have advertisers, we have advertising agencies, and we have media owners. And we can talk and sometimes we vote against our own interests. The owner would say we should not run it ever. And sometimes we have the clients saying I'm an advisor but I think advisors with ‑‑ so sometimes the stakeholders seem to be their own association interest. What happens if you are transparent and these are revealed. Just take a means to the end. The fear is the stakeholder forced to vote in favor of your own organization so you become entrenched. One of deliberation, own stakeholder organization anyway. So I think transparency on the fact the black box and a fish bowl, corporation and, no, we can't live in a fish bowl and you cannot pick your nose in a fish bowl, transparency sometimes between a black box and a fish bowl.
>> DELE OLOJEDE: Can't overemphasize the importance of transparency. In Nigeria which was funded under the belief if we provided the public with adequate and relevant information then we make better decisions. Because we've exposed corruption and provided documentation and so on and there's that side of it. The transparency itself, corruption. Transparency itself is not the solution but as I think Richard ‑‑ Jonathan said, it's a means to an end, and I think we're all assuming that that's the only thing we do which is ‑‑ so I think it's important to bear in mind. But also to understand that that's the not the only thing.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you, thank you very much, Dele, for that comment. It's one of the reasons that we more want to kind of focus on understanding the transparency, thank you so much for that comment and thank you Ang Peng. Two panelists left before we open the floor for the rest of you in the room. So I give the floor to Athina.
>> ATHINA FRAGKOUI: Thank you, Maria, hello. My name is Athina Fragkoui and I'm legal counsel. We're one of the five original Internet registries, particularly we're the registry for Europe, central Asia and Middle East. All Internet registries have the same function but I'm going to talk about the IBCC. So the IBCC allocates and registers addresses and other resources and in general it operates according to certain policies, the right policies. However, the light policies are not made by IBCC, these are made by the ripe community which is quite broader. The ripe policy is where anyone can participate and take part in discussions that lead to the foundation of ripe policies. So what is our role within this forum? But the IBCC facilitates these discussions. It makes sure that the stakeholders are engaged and that their needs, the needs of the different stakeholders are mentioned and they are met. And this is a vital function for these discussions. It's also a big challenge. Because to try to identify the different stakeholders and their needs is, yeah, puts a lot of effort for that and a lot of resources if I might say because we, you know, we go to events organized by different stakeholders, we organize events ourselves, you know, targeted different stakeholders as Maria mentioned, this is something we do, for example, for the governments, for law enforcement authorities. We also, you know, provide training courses, you know, we make sure that the technical background is known to all these different stakeholders. So this is what we do, but what's the outcome of this effort? The outcome is this. We're pretty confident we understand the needs of the various technical groups. About the nontechnical groups, we're not that confident. We're not sure we have identified their needs. And we're struggling with that because, as a matter of fact, we're not sure we have identified all the stakeholders that exist in this arena. And sure, the IGF is an ideal place where we can meet each other, we can identify different stakeholders and so far but is this enough? Because what happens when the IGF is over? What happens until the next IGF? Are there any, you know, collaborating efforts out there where we can go and bring them in touch with the technical community? And this is actually a question to the audience. Because I think it would be very nice if we, you know, as an outcome from this workshop we can identify this collaborative efforts or we can, I don't know, create some of them. And we make sure that all these gaps are bridged and, yeah, only thing we can be really transparent and trustworthy. Thank you.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Athina. It's true everything you say about that. I will give the floor to the last speaker and maybe I have to come back to you so you have to get another chance, of course, even though Bill from Pay Pal, you're welcome.
>> BILL SMITH: I'm Bill Smith from Pay Pal. I want to talk sort of at a high level about transparency as a ‑‑ I think as it relates to the IGF but from my participate there are a number of technical standards by at the IGF, WTC, an organization called oasis, joined an organization oasis did with the United Nations and for me, I would classify transparency around clarity, lucidity and accountability and it's not an absolute as it was pointed out earlier there are things like Chatham House Rules. There are other things in organizations that confidentiality must be observed. If you work in any corporation or dot‑org and there are personnel issues that need to be decided or discussed at a board level within a company those needs to have them with confidentiality. You don't disclose those things. There are less times in these settings where we would like to have private organizations to discuss things and they should not be ‑‑ those discussions and those agreements should not be breached. By and large the organization should be as transparent as possible. Einstein said, you know, everything should be as simple as possible but simple applies to transparency. I think we want to be close to the fish bowl but aware at times we can draw a curtain down or something similar to that. In addition to transparency in organizations, it's related sometimes this term will be included in transparency, and that's openness. For me openness is around accessibility, availability and the ability to contribute. It's not enough to say we're transparent and open and everybody can see what goes on when only a limited number of entities or people can participate. That's not open. Inclusivity is another. What are the barriers to entry at the IGF at the ITF there are no, as an example, membership teams. You show up, you can participate at the ITF, you can join a mail list, you don't have to show up in person. The ability to participate is not, you know, what are the barriers to industry, will you allow anyone to participate, is it equitable.
(No audio, please stand by).
>> JONATHAN ZUCK: It's often a disaster, right, and when business tries to unnecessarily govern the practices of people, that sometimes is a disaster. And so I think if we're trying to really increase understanding among these three types of parties we ought to think of ourselves three parts of the system trying to decide a balance to the other but in the end serve the ultimate interests of the same contingency which is the individuals and I think if we do that then the determination of roles as we discussed a little bit earlier might not be an exercise with so many pitfalls but understanding of roles and greater role of these groups, if you will, play might lead to greater understanding and ultimately the best interesting being served. We talked at the very beginning about participation and accountability and each one of those groups, part of why we need to be a counterbalance for the other is to make sure that each one of those has brought participation and accountability to its contingency. When a company gets too big the Government comes in with antitrust enforcement. Why do they come in with antitrust enforcement? To make sure that those businesses remain accountable to their constituency, right, that their participation is ensured. The reason the NGOs become a part of a business process is to make sure that there's accountability to the individual and the enforcement of their rights so they're making informed and accurate decisions about the businesses in which they participate so I think that we all actually have the same goal and if we achieve that kind of understanding then we might make some progress in forums like this that's just today's theory.
>> PAUL RENDEK: Thank you very much, Jonathan. We'd like to open up the floor if anyone has comments to what the panelists have to say or introduce something new. Of course, of course.
>> We are all consumers, everyone here is a consumer, Bill is from Pay Pal but he is also a consumer. From that perspective, Bill Smith is a consumer and a business person. If he's seen as a consumer, then Pay Pal will never have any law in the interest of consumer. Pay Pal sometimes does, sorry, Bill, sometimes it does. He wears another hat sometimes as a businessman. So therefore although we are ultimately all consumers, we still have different roles that we play so sometimes it is possible, a lot of times it is possible to act against the interests of the larger, ultimate contingency which is the consumer.
>> JONATHAN ZUCK: And I think that's a terrific point, and that's why these checks and balances exist. But part of the disagreement that continues to persist is what is, in fact, are the interests of consumers. So I wasn't talking about Bill being empathetic as a fellow consumer, I was talking about the fact that Bill's business relies on operating in the interest of consumers in order to survive. My existence as a Government can't continue if I'm not operating in the interest of my citizens, ideally, my business can't continue and succeed if I'm not operating in the interest of consumers because they will go elsewhere and why we have checks and balances is when that accountability breaks down. So I don't think it's about empathy, I think it's ultimately about the fact that the systems that are in place rely on serving the interests of consumers.
>> DELE OLOJEDE: One of the problems that is ‑‑ this is a good thing, we assume good intentions on the part of governmental NGOs or businesses and in the real world this does not often happen. I think it's safe to say that more than half of the world if not more than 70% of the world lives in conditions where that presumption cannot readily be made in good intentions and therefore the nature of interaction between these three groups because of necessity different from where in the few societies where you can presume at least a minimal level of good will on the part of some of the participants. In some countries, and particularly in the one in which I currently live out of foolishness, the Government, actually, and objectively acts against the interests of the people. So if we cannot presume this then we have to temper what our expectations are of the nature of the relationships between these three groups.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Dele. I have Ramona on the floor.
>> Keiren, afterwards I'd like to talk to you. Sorry no, afterwards. No, afterwards I'd like to talk to you, sorry. I'd like to talk, first of all, to comment on two things and then I'd like to go back to understanding the issue of understanding. First of all, we don't need to play the role of all the stakeholders but maybe each stakeholder can facilitate the role of the other one, not blocking it. But it's not ‑‑ it's not a kind of understanding of knowledge, this kind of thing, I think that's belief. It's hard to prove that people can or cannot help other interests besides yours, it's a very well known battle in the economic science between are you only for your interests or are you for a commitment but I think it's a belief. We cannot prove.
About transparency, using the analogy of a fish bowl, transparency is not lack of privacy. We could say that. Maybe we can have a fish bowl with private rooms. And maybe private meeting rooms, but a public space should be transparency. This is the question. And moreover, we need to know who is in the private room and who is in the private meeting room and it would be better but I don't think it could be possible all of the time. We need to know what do you need to do to go into the privacy ‑‑ the private meeting room from the public to the privacy ‑‑ from the privacy to the public.
Okay but then I'd like to come back to the main issue of the ‑‑ in my understanding of the workshop, that is understanding, and in this issue I would like to congratulate Africanique, as I've heard carry out very good training programs on IPv6. These are the kinds of things that they were also talked about, understanding needs, training and information and I think the existing bodies and the existing organism should invest in this kind of thing, because then you need to provide information, you need to provide training, to allow the stakeholders to come back and maybe feed you with inputs that maybe you that give class, give training did not have in the beginning. This is a very hard thing to do because then you change places, sometimes you teach but then, with some different thoughts, some different inputs maybe you have other results, more or further than the imagined one in the beginning. So I think for understanding the existing ones have a very upon Roland, that's why I congratulate Africa ISC.
>> MARIA HALL: Floor to Bill.
>> BILL SMITH: Sure Bill Smith from Pay Pal. Bill as an individual, Bill has a business member I'd like to comment. I would also represent not necessarily a NGO or a dot org in the past and I do wear multiple hats and I will be ‑‑ I will represent each of the potentially divergent views but when it comes time for any decision manager, however, it's made I need to weigh all together. I am, in fact, wearing hats. I have taken principled votes against my company, not at Pay Pal yet, but I have done that in the past and I believe that's an obligation of people who ‑‑ when we come to these things we have to take ‑‑ take a look at view the bigger picture. As an employee of a corporation, I need to know that I'm not going to be fired for that action, necessarily, but ‑‑ unless I'm independently wealthy. But I believe what happens is we actually have a social contract in each of the organizations we may participate in. I have a formal contract with my employer but I also have a social contract and, in fact, we believe that people are generally good. When e‑bay started there was no ‑‑ you know, payment wasn't ‑‑ online payments weren't easy, in fact, they didn't happen and money was flowing and crazy things but people were shipping goods to others. That's certainly not the case around the world but that's one of our core beliefs is that people generally are good. So there are a number of social contracts that we have. I have a social contract with my Government, I have a social contract within an organization I may participate in, I believe I have a social contract here, we agree to operate on certain norms, types of behavior. I think we need, generally, to generally rise above our individual perceptions as a member of a contingency. I think the checks and balances, that's a good idea. I think, though, that having them less formal, more organ, more generative as the Internet is, that's a good thing, it builds on the architecture of the Internet, it allows for there to be a coherence of policy‑making or policy discussion and the way the technical architecture actually works and that's a good thing. I am concerned when we're talking about governance structures that are so radically different from the Internet itself that there will be an imposition and we will tend to say in certain technical circles we'll be expected to perform unnatural acts in order to conform somehow. And I believe we need ‑‑ we need to resist that at all costs. We don't want to do unnatural things. Let's do things that are good for Internet and all rise above sort of our individual perspectives when we can. And if we do that, if we all work together and understand each other, business will get what they generally need, NGOs and governments will get what they need and others but we'll do it in a balanced way and that's the important thing, not to be confrontational. And I see this ‑‑ I was amazed when I started some of these meetings and the number of private meetings that occur and sort of the confrontation that happens to me was very surprising coming from the technical field and how open it typically is and, you know, where we reach violent agreement on things. And I think, you know, that's a good thing, we have open discussions, very difficult discussions, but in the end somebody ‑‑ basically, everybody says, oh, I understand what you're talking about, I see, here's a solution we both get what we want. For me the IGF provides that opportunity with such diversity that I sincerely hope it continues as open as it is and inclusive as it is and encourage more participation.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you very much for those wise words and let's hope that that doesn't stop on Friday when the IGF is over that it continues until ‑‑ it never stops. I'm going to give the floor to Paul, please.
>> Those are wide words, Bill, build on that could and maybe other comments made around the room. Outreach becomes a very difficult word when we start talking about processes like this in this multistakeholder arena. I've been involving in these IGFs as a whole in this process as I'm sure many of you in this room has been and my experience has been in the last couple of years I have been running around playing a popularity contest, this is what I like to call it inside of our company. Everybody has been running around trying to find or carve out their niche on Internet governance and what does that mean to them. What does that mean? Everybody running around meeting as many people as they can and influencing as many medium as they can. What I see happening, and this is interesting, this is a question of time I suppose. I think we're now entering to a point when I come to an IGF meeting I look around and I see players and I can understand what I believe their role is or what their understanding is and it's made it accessible for me to actually speak to them and have them understand what the role of the technical community would be in this regard so what I think was just a huge scamper as a popularity contest is turning into fruitful results coming out. My feeling, though, is this takes a lot of time, right? So how do we distribute the successes for others to follow, I'm building on what Bernadette said how do we reach the stakeholders, the ministries for instance. This pulls together quite a few of us or people that are influential or part of influential or part of ministries. Is it happening fast enough, is it, that's the question I wanted to pose? And the other piece is what is happening outside of the IGF, this is very important. It's great to come here and see everybody and carve your niche out in this year of the IGF of what you believe your understanding is of any issues or your influence is of any issues but what are we doing outside of the IGF and where can we build on these successes. I would like to build on concrete points or hear concrete points from others in this room that we can bring forward, thank you.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Paul. I have three persons on the list now and I start with Bernadette. You have the floor.
>> BERNADETTE LEWIS: Thank you. Well, I think I can bring some of the experiences that we have within the Caribbean. We have participated in the IGF. Actually, the Caribbean has just staged their seventh Caribbean governance form August gone, so we've been doing these things a little longer than the global IGF but the whole process of impartation of information is not something that is ‑‑ it can't be ad hoc, it has to be systematic and you are building step‑by‑step communities that have the understanding and that have the insight and you're bringing them together to work on issues of mutual benefit and this sort of takes away all the different views and the different perspectives when we could work on something that is of interest and will be beneficial to all of us in the end so we're working towards win‑win‑win everybody is going to win and benefit from this. In between our formal Caribbean Internet governance forum that we have on an annual basis we have a lot of programs for building capacity, educating. Coming out of our Caribbean Internet governance forum, we have Internet English points in the English‑speaking Caribbean, these are projects and issues that we have pulled the community together to work on for mutual benefit and it is really to the community, we take the inputs from the community. The Caribbean Telecommunication Union acts as a facilitator for the work that the community needs to do and that mechanism ensures that things happen. We don't have oversight but we facilitate the process, the interactions, the ‑‑ the resources that need to be brought to the table, you need to do this and this, right, we will help you with this. And that is the approach, it's a very collaborative, cooperative approach. But the key is working on issues of mutual benefit that will van the Internet governance agenda and I really liked what Mr. Smith said, you know, it is we are working towards a common good, at the end of the day, we want to see societies that are really taking advantage of the technology, the potential of the Internet to advance and to progress. These are the ‑‑ these are the ideals that we put forward when we bring our Internet governance for a community together. I just wanted to add that, thank you.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you, thank you very much, Bernadette for sharing your experience. I think it's very important that ‑‑ I mean, we have these kind of meetings when you talk about transparency and openness and how to participate in other platforms and open up our floor ‑‑ our room to other stakeholders and that's something we need to do when we come home as well, we need to do it in the real world actually, when I actually have this issue on my table at the Government I need to use this multistakeholder environment, actually, to have this discussion in real life so to speak, that's very important. I'm going to give the floor to Mr ‑‑ over there.
>> John Kern.
>> MARIA HALL: Sorry.
>> That's okay, John Kern, presidency of ARIN. I want to touch on openness and transparency with respect to the management of curricular (phonetic) Internet resources because in particular that's the one aspect of Internet governance that shows up at the IGF and other forums that predominantly we're discussing the formation of policies that are used for the management of those resources. And openness and transparency takes on a very particular aspect. The openness and transparency that are necessary is transparency into the decisional process that's used to make the policies. That's what people need is they need to be able to see how is this going to get reviewed, commented on, where is my input paths, how will that happen, who is providing a review of the process by which it's occurring and if you look at some structures like the IETF, the IETF has a very open and transparent process by which a process for RNC for standards are developed are very clear, there are parts that are not fully open and that's a good thing meaning you're allowed to have a design team, three or four people go out and work on a document together. It's hard to have 100 people work on a document, three or four work on a document and maybe another three or four work on a different document and they come in to discuss them. So the importance is the transparency of the decisional process. The openness of being able to be part of the decisional process. That doesn't mean openness has to be in all cases because some of it's not directly part of the decisional process and you need people to have a meeting. Many times people of common affinity get together and they share their understanding of what's going on. You see it out in the halls out here. What are we talking out here, what is that document about? It's not that they're making a decision they're sharing their understanding. I'm a supporter of openness and transparency but I want people to understand I think it's most critical to understand that that's very visible and very protected for the decisional process that's used for setting policies, for setting standards. It isn't necessarily all aspects. And as long as the people who are meeting who are busy doing, for example, education and outreach, there's education and outreach going all over the globe, we don't have to sit in all of those sessions, but we have to make sure that a session that is going to lead to a policy decision is clearly known by anyone who is impacted and is very open to everyone who wants to participate.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you very much for that very ‑‑ very wise comment. I really agree with you actually. And what I feel sometimes when I listen to, well, for instance, the opening speeches we had yesterday, I would also like to see ‑‑ the good words that were said actually I would like to see that in their decision processes because all of us have different processes because of our ‑‑ we work for the Government, we work for some of the stakeholders and, of course, this openness has to be like all year around, 24/7, so to speak. And we also need to know that decide ‑‑ we don't make any decisions here, but for sure it's going to be the case that we have a lot of experience from us from these days that we're going to use in our decision processes at home that our governments or businesses or whatever it is. Anyway, do we have any more from the floor, some of the panelists, okay, you're welcome.
>> Yes, my name is Simon Peter from Uganda. When you talk of transparency which is part of the name of our organization, it hits me in a way that we want to see the Government as your society being transparency in everything we do in terms of ability and access of information. When it comes to Internet governance and we are using ‑‑ want to use Internet to see our people transparent, because they see Internet is a multiparty Government we need to make sure that societies and governments make information accessible to people in a way that it is more transparent, it's accessible in terms of ‑‑ we look at the example of budgets, governments, governments put their budgets on line for us to view. Can they be that open to make sure that whatever they're doing in procurement, online, can civil society make sure that everything that they do is quite transparent in terms of providing information for everyone to access, that makes sure that in everything that we do there's a lot of openness and everyone is equally accessed and information is free for everyone, thank you.
>> MARIA HALL: Thank you very much. Do we have anybody else to want to have the floor? Otherwise I think we have a few minutes, I don't know, Paul, do you want to wrap it up? Good luck.
>> PAUL RENDEK: Yes, I think I can. I've scribbled as much as I could on this piece of paper. I hope I will be able to round up all the points that everybody has made. I will go through some of the larger points, hearing what everyone's had to say. I think it's been a fantastic session and I just wanted to thank everybody, of course, for their input here and what I understand as some of the points raised is that openness is very important here. The ability to contribute and the ability to make sure that the inclusive processes there is very key for us to move forward in understanding, enhanced understanding, so to speak. We need to realize the expectations and the concerns and the needs of all the different parties. This is, of course, very important to openness and understanding. The level of transparency and the limitations need to be considered here as well. It was a very nice point brought up by our delegate from Singapore. Enhancing cooperation, how each body can help the framework, the awareness, raising awareness, this needs to be taken to the local level. It's very important. It's fine that we discuss things on the global level and for those who can't participate here, we do understand that this is broadcast to a larger audience but what does everybody take away to bring locally. That's the importance there, I know Bernadette also commented on that. And the synergies we need to realize that synergies may not always be available or visible to all, this needs attention as well. What will we do Nick? We need to continue to define the roles of each stakeholders and communicate them and let them to be open to constructive criticism and change if possible, you see. So even though everybody does try to define their role in Internet governance are you really open to hear the words of other stakeholders that may contribute to change in your position? This is very important, I think to ‑‑ for accountability and understanding. And then, of course, I think the other comments were made about mutual benefit, we're working for the common good and we are, in fact, parts of the same system I think once we realize that we might pull some of the barriers down and be open and willing to actually pull in some understanding from the different stakeholders. Those are the areas that I have as a wrap‑up of this workshop. I think that's great input. And I open the floor again if anyone would like to make any closing remarks based on what I've just mentioned.
>> I'm (saying name) from Nigeria. Along with capacity which has been mentioned in impartment to understand, it's when we have a clear value system, that's when we're able to stand and say what should be the right thing even if it affects their jobs or some other things. One important thing is it should be well defined a monitoring process of the progress so we can know this is where we are, this is where we'll be, what do we need to do to get to that place, thank you.
>> PAUL RENDEK: Yes.
>> I just want to add the ‑‑ in your wrap‑up synthesis that there's an important role of training, not only to include people but also to get inputs that maybe are not here in this moment.
>> PAUL RENDEK: Yes, very good point. Anyone else have anything to add. Chris?
>> Coming to that capacity building point, there's an workshop that is organized on IPv6 on the capacity element and the real results that we have seen from capacity ability efforts in that area, that's something that really needs to be explored.
>> PAUL RENDEK: Super. Any other comments there? Maria.
>> MARIA HALL: Yeah, I just have one comment, actually, that struck me that you said that we always find ourselves belong to one contingency, one community. That's sad when I think about it, is Maria working for the Government? Of course I have other values, I hope, than that. So that was very interesting I think that we need to talk more about that. Of course, coming to think about it we all belong to the Internet community including the governments, I think it's that's very important to point out also for myself I think thank you.
>> PAUL RENDEK: Very good point, thank you, Maria. Any final comments before we wrap up today's workshop? Okay, thank you very much. Before I let you go, though, I want to know that we're going to be doing something positive with the contributions that we have here. There were two people that are here that had to leave and they've excused themselves. But I can actually ‑‑ they've asked me to say a few words. The Council of Europe has worked with a code of practice together with APC and they're hoping that we will be giving them the outcome of their workshop here so they can include this in their next revision of their code of practice so your words are not just going into the abyss we're planning to bringing this forward and seeing how we can put this into their document. We'll also be looking for a slot in the slot taking session because I think we need to bring some of these points forward to a larger audience here in the IGF. The other thing I wanted to say before I let you all go is where are we going next with the workshop like this? Now...
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Please approach myself, Maria or Chris, we'll be more than happy for you to participate and be a panelist here. Thank you very much, everyone.
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