#m17m

The survey follows a disastrous launch in November, where the three co-organizers – ICANN, NIC.br and the World Economic Forum – attempted to impose their vision of a multi-stakeholder internet governance body, and were repeatedly rejected by the technical community, business world and civil society. Regardless, the organizers and in particular ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade pushed ahead in an effort to meet a planned launch of the initiative at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month. That push resulted in the creation of a coordination council, but in the process caused a big loss of goodwill and trust in the process and organizers. The survey will attempt to rebuild trust and do what the organizers should have done in the first place: ask what gap the initiative can fill.

Everything I've seen and heard makes me think Namecoin is critical.  These centralisations of money and power are just magnets to those who would rule.  Even at the country code level, there's politics and platitudes that merely mask the enjoyment of the smarm and swagger of power.

Rumors are flying that ICANN wants to move away from the bottom-up meme that has become its badge of legitimacy.  This is not a good thing.

I have been researching the definition and roots of the term bottom-up for a while now, and it has a mixed background of definition and usage ranging from financial analysis and protein instrumentation to computer science.  IETF, a group whose decision making practices evolved from engineering and research practice, uses it to refer to the rough consensus process. In On consensus and humming in the IETF

we strive to make our decisions by the consent of all participants, though allowing for some dissent (rough consensus), and to have the actual products of engineering (running code) trump theoretical designs. [RFC7282]

I recommend RFC7282 to anyone interested in the meaning of rough consensus as it includes a very fine discussion of both the practice and of things that can be misunderstood about the process. There are three important elements in the IETF definition:

consent of all participants is the goal

some dissent on issues can occur

fact and experience based decision making

ICANN also has its practice of bottom-up decision making though it is not described anywhere with the elegance of RFC7282. It is reflected in gory detail, however, in the policy development practices of groups like the GNSO. A review of these procedures will show that they are:

consent of all participants is the goal

some dissent on issues can occur

fact and experience based decision making

For many years now ICANN has been referring to its private sector led methods as the multistakeholder bottom-up process. This has referred to the structures, both formal and in practice, that define the trust model for ICANN activities between the Stakeholder community and ICANN as a corporate entity composed of Board and Staff. 

The threat referred to in the title of this blog comes from a misunderstanding of bottom-up. ICANN is currently engaged in a tussle between the community and the corporation. The root of this tussle is  a confounding of:

consent of all participants is the goal

with

fact and experience based decision making

The fact that all participants must consent to decisions, does not mean that all facts and experience, or ideas, must originate among the participants.  In the IETF  a protocol can come from anywhere, as an idea from the leadership, a university paper, or a corporate r&d development prototype. But while it may not matter where the idea for something comes from, it matters whether all participants come to a rough consensus on the protocol.  Beyond that, once the participants accept a protocol, it comes under their change control.  They can then twist it, fix it and render it completely unrecognizable according to the dictates of rough consensus.

Similarly, in ICANN policy development process (PDP) the idea for a policy or practice can originate anywhere.  Most PDPs start with a staff analysis of the issues.  Most practices start with a staff rough proposal. Once presented though, what the community does with these raw materials is under the control of the various ICANN consensus processes.  Once they complete their work they send it on to the corporation, i.e the Board and staff, as a recommendation.

But the process does not end there.  It continues. If the Board and staff have difficulty with the recommendation they must be sent back to the community for more work, they can't just change it on it own, though they can offer suggestions. The process of ICANN consensus involves a cycle where any ICANN outcome must first achieve balance of the community and corporate concerns.

A couple of rules in this process emerge:

No matter where a suggestion, experience or fact comes from, it is the participants who must come to consensus on the outcome.

Once a consensus is reached the corporation must review and it may even make further recommendations to improve the outcome.

Whenever an outcome is changed by the corporation, it must go back to the community.

This cycle of ICANN community and corporate, the ICANN consensus, continues until the outcome is stable. When the ICANN system works, it reaches a homeostasis.  Those are the good times at ICANN when everyone is in harmony with trust abounding.

With the sensitive and pressing nature of the work being done on new gTLDS, IANA Stewardship, ICANN accountability, and the pressures of the global Internet environment, the ICANN cycle of community and corporation has started wobbling.  As any cyclist knows, once a wheel starts to wobble, trust in the bike begins to ebb. Trust only returns once the wheel is trued.

Recently the ICANN corporation has been worrying about the trust of the community. As is often the case in social dynamics, this has been understood in emotional terms.  Sometimes when people are emotional,  they start to look for radical solutions.  For example some might decide that the bottom-up processes no longer work, are not obligatory and can be circumvented.  Others decide that the corporation is no longer fit for purpose.

And the wheel starts to wobble even more.

And the emotional content increases.

Perhaps what is needed is to stop, look at the wheel and take the time to true it.  At ICANN this means allowing that the community and corporation to cooperate in the upcoming accountability process. We need to review our structures and strengthen them so that the ICANN corporation can fulfill its commitments, so that the ICANN Community can again believe that ICANN is fit for purpose and so that we can convince the global Internet environment that ICANN deserves its role in the governance of critical Internet resources.

Eight  (8) months after the Affirmation of Commitments (AOC) Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT2) report on ICANN was released, and five (5) months after the NTIA offered to transition its stewardship responsibilities for key Internet domain name functions over to a yet to be named multistakeholder entity, ICANN has produced a blueprint for building the plan for improving ICANN Accountability and Governance.

Before getting critical about elements of the plan, I must say that given everything, including the mix of comments, it seems to be a workable plan that took a great number of considerations into account.  But in saying that I know I am being optimistic and using the best possible interpretation.

  The organizational plan creates three sub-groups:

Cross Community Group (CCG)  an aggregate of all of the ICANN stakeholders who want to take part in the process. This group is responsible for:

                * Identifying issues for discussion or improvement;                 * Appointing 10 participants to the Coordination Group                 * Providing ongoing community input to the                    Coordination Group

Public Experts Group (PEG): a Nominating Committee like body composed of four experts in expertise whose job it is to pick 7 experts for the Coordination Group.

Accountability and Governance Coordination Group (AGCG):  composed of those appointed by the CCG and PEG as well as one from staff, one expert in ATRT folklore and one liaison from the IANA Stewardship Transition coordination Group and one from the ICANN Board.  This is the group of 21 that will make the recommendations to the Board in consultation with the Cross Community group.

As with all recommendations to the Board, there will be open community comment periods before any decisions are made.

While I think this is a structure and plan we can work with, I have concerns and there are issues of concern in the community.  But as a sometime system architect, I think they did a decent job of designing a structure for getting the work done. While it has some complexity, it does not have more than is needed to deal with the issues that need to faced.

The Issues with the plan

A staff member as a full member of the coordination group? Outrageous! Or is it?

Many are outraged at this possibility. I am not so outraged, but I realize I am being optimistic in my outlook.

To some, staff should never, never ever, be involved in making policy recommendations. Well typified by one board member I once heard say something like: In my last job if I ever caught a staff member making policy, they were fired.  People argue that staff are paid to serve and they have other interests so can't be trusted.  Some argue that they can't be trusted to serve the public interest because they will be serving the corporate interest, or else.

I tend to argue that they are stakeholders too. The working definition I use for multistakeholderism refers to all stakeholders:

Multistakeholderism is the study and practice of forms of participatory democracy that allow for all those who have a stake and who have the inclination, to participate on equal footing in the deliberation of issues and the recommendation of solutions. While final decisions and implementation may be assigned to a single stakeholder group, these decision makers are always accountable to all of the stakeholders for their decisions and the implementations.

Certainly they are stakeholders with different roles and responsibilities, and with behavioral constraints, but stakeholders nonetheless.  They are users of the same Internet resources and like the workers in any enterprise are subject to the conditions of the organization for their very livelihood.  They have a stake in what happens.  I see including staff in a group like this, very much like the inclusion we have begun to see in many countries' industries, of workers on boards and on special committees. As volunteers we sometime forget that the staff of ICANN are also workers for ICANN and care about its well-being, just like the rest of us.

In fact one of the pending work items from the ATRT2 work, which I assume will be done under this Accountability and Governance improvement plan, is a review of the ICANN whistle-blower policy and the protections given to employees that make problems known.  After all, without transparency there is no accountability in governance. Who better than a staff member to represent such interests?

As for Staff getting paid, Board members are also paid, and Board members can set their own salaries and they can give themselves raises.  Board members are the final deciders in all ICANN processes, yet their finances are affected by the decisions they make.  In comparison, allowing one staff member a seat at the table does not seem so extreme. 

As for having other interests, we have recognized at ICANN that having other driving interests is in the nature of multistakeholder decision making. Some of our interests include maximizing profit for our company.  Some of our interests include advocacy for a point of view. Some us participate to fight for human rights. Some of our interests are status in our chosen field or career progress. Some of us want to travel the world and some just want to be needed and feel like they are still useful.  Everyone at ICANN has multiple interests, and that is why we require Statements of Interest (SOI) that make these interests available for all to inspect.  Well, the fact that a staff member is a staff member won't be a secret, it will be a known interest - and that is all we require from the rest of us.

But I realize I am, perhaps, being utopian in the way I look at the role of this staff member.  I am looking at this as a situation where a representative of workers' interests will be included in the coordination group.  I have a fear, however, that we may get a Senior Special Poo Bah, or some-such, who is primarily interested in executive row and their own position in the hierarchy, and not in the workers' well being.  I can only hope my fears are unworthy and my optimism prevails; I can think of staff who could both provide the required knowledge on ICANN's accountability programs and at the same time look out for the well being of their fellow staff members. In looking at this sort of situation, I prefer to support the optimistic interpretation, so I hope they pick the right sort of person. Time will tell. It might happen.

The Board is going to decide on the charters for the groups?  What about bottom-up charter making?

Again, I am being optimistic.  ICANN is learning how to work together in  creating cross-community WG charters. The drafting team that just produced the Cross-community charter for the IANA Stewardship Transition Working Group (CWG) has done a very good job in creating a balanced cross-community charter.

(I am on that drafting team, but I would admit if I thought we were producing junk). 

But even in that group, we did not manage to bring all of the Supporting Organizations (SO) and Advisory Committees (AC) into the process.  Perhaps this effort does need to be chartered by the Board, as the SO and AC themselves are. I am assuming, however, that as a chartering organization, the Board knows better than to produce such a charter without consulting the groups for whom it is a charter, and with the community at large, before finalizing the charter.  If the Board believed it could just produce a charter without having it vetted by the community, they would not have been paying attention.  But I am sure they have been paying attention, so I interpret the fact that the Board is going to develop the charters to mean they are going to do the right thing as the chartering organization for these groups, and that they will be working with the community.  There is a lot of experience to draw on on when creating cross-community groups. This Board, will know how to include the community in the process and will know how to build on the community's experience. At least that is what I hope happens.

Experts to pick the experts? The community should pick them! And they get to be full members of the group?

When a draft version of the plan was made available, the Board took responsibility for choosing the experts on the coordination group.  This was objectionable because it gave the Board 7 voices on a panel of 21. Having the ability to choose one third of the recommendation group was an excessive control of  process, especially one in which they were both subject and final decider.

The released plan creates the PEG, a group of experts who would pick the experts.  While this improved things somewhat, for some people this is not good enough; they demand that the bottom-up processes of ICANN pick these experts.  Some also question whether it is appropriate for experts to have a voice in deciding on recommendations to be made.  While I have sympathy for this argument a few things lead me to a different conclusion.

Whether it is the /1Net picking its steering committee, or the GNSO's Non Contracted Parties House selecting a Board member, we have not shown that we can pick people easily.  Only in Nomcom structures have we shown any ability to come to conclusions on multistakeholder picks in a bottom-up, predictable, and reliable way.  And that takes nine months or more. 

The blueprint for improving accountability and governance, includes a small nomcom-like group of 4 experts on expertise.  I think this a fine solution. Others ask why community members are not responsible for picking the outside experts.  Perhaps we could set up a Nomcom to do this, or even ask the current Nomcom to do it. But that might not meet a necessary condition for these experts - that they be outside experts.  The experts on the coordination group (AGCG) need to represent a variety of expertise in issues that are larger than the ICANN bubble and that are meant to represent the interests of the global multistakeholder community.  Perhaps, had /1net reached a point of stability and maturity in the last year, it might have been called on to help in this process.  But none of us who have been on that list for the last year believe it is ready for that (though the recent rebirth of the list does show some reason to hope for the future).

Creating a small group of experts on expertise, seems like a good compromise to the need to get experts on the interests of the global community without handing the Board control over the choices or taking a year to do it. Of course in picking the members of the PEG, the Board will be subject to vox populi, and their picks will be judged by the community and should they fail the giggle test, will be the subject of noisy public outrage and/or ridicule.  I can only hope that the Board makes wise decisions in picking this group.

I do, however, have some concern with the set of skills the plan lists as needed in the experts on the coordination group.  The current list includes the following:

 Internet Technical Operations

International Organizational Reviews

Global Accountability Tools and Metrics

Jurisprudence / Accountability Mechanisms

Internet Consumer Protection (including privacy, human rights and property rights concerns

Economics (Marketplace and Competition)

Global Ethics Frameworks

Operational, Finance and Process

Board Governance

Transparency

Risk Management

Governmental Engagement and Relations

Multistakeholder Governance

A pretty good list, but lacking in my view.  For example, it does not include any expertise on community dynamics or on achieving effective diversity. I am also dismayed that human rights has been subordinated as a sub category of consumer rights.  These are two different, albeit related areas of expertise.  Finally, they have not required that the experts have some knowledge of how ICANN works.  We have seen what happens in advisory groups when they don't understand ICANN at all.  Some of them came up with solutions that couldn't be implemented due to ICANN multistakeholder organizational structure. Hopefully the PEG, among its experts and expertise, will include some ICANN knowledge among the external experts.

I hope the PEG, as specialists in expertise, will be able to review their task and augment the set of skills that they need to consider.  After all, they, not the Board or staff, will be the experts on experts.

And in conclusion, at least for the moment.

There is now a plan and it is time to figure out how this plan can be implemented in the best manner possible.  From my point of view, it could work out quite well, or it could end up a difficult and painful experience.  The manner in which it is implemented over the next weeks, between now and the LA meeting in October, will tell us a lot about the degree to which this plan will be implemented in an appropriately multistakeholder manner.

I have my fears.

Last week I was given an award.  Something I never expected until I received it.  Even though Fadi  told me a week before that it was scheduled to happen, a part of me never believes something is going to happen until it does because things change; that is just the way things go.

But it did happen and since then I have been thinking about it on and off.  Thinking about how nice it felt to be recognized by people I would never have expected it from. A novel sort of feeling that was impossible for my natural cynicism to repress.  It is a rather pleasant feeling.

And I started thinking about what it meant.  The first thoughts that blurted from my mouth after being directed to the lectern to say something, another event I had not expected, were short and contained a mixed metaphor.  Some people have thanked me for making an appropriate length speech and some have questioned why I did not say more. Only a few pointed at the mixed metaphor. I said:

It is very pretty.

I am really quite amazed. Truly quite amazed.

"Ethos," what does that mean? Character? Attitude?

I have certainly had a lot of that.

But "multistakeholder," I truly am devoted to that and I found ICANN to be one of the best crucibles for hammering it out.

So, thank you very much.

What did I mean? What is behind these few words?  I have since spent a few days thinking about what I said and this is what I come up with.

It is very pretty.

Indeed it is. The facets are cut in such a way as to let the light play.  It has found a space in a dinning room cabinet with other valued things where the light can hit it and the cat can't.

"Ethos," what does that mean?

On being told I had won an Ethos award I starting thinking about the word and what it meant, and what it had meant throughout the history of philosophy.  Yes, I remembered that it was one of the triad of Pathos, Logos and Ethos of Rhetoric.  And that its basic meaning was character and attitude as I had said in my brief remarks.

Aside: In my 'speech' I meant I had lots of attitude, not that I had lots of character and attitude. Seems pretentious to say I have lots of character, though I know I am often identified as a character, and characters do generally have lots of character. Oh, well.

I started with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the first reference I found was the use in pragmatism.  Seemed a good place to go to understand Ethos in a practical context such as ICANN.  What I found was satisfying and gave me a deeper working understanding:

The radical and unconventional character of Dewey's conception of democracy and his political philosophy generally derives from its boldness, which some readers find hard to stomach. The abstract character of conception of democracy is as far from a common and ‘realist’ view of democracy as the name of a set of specific political procedures and institutions as it is possible to find. Participation may not be a good, or appreciated as one, by every individual, such as those who are too shy or busy. Furthermore, it is a bold assumption to hope, as Dewey does, that complex industrial societies can be characterised by a high level of harmony among the interests of their members, to be secured through public discussion and communication. Of course, this very boldness is appealing to others, for whom the connection Dewey makes between an ethos of flexible openness and democratic self-government stands as an enduring critical challenge to a circumscribed democratic pessimism.

Yes, this seemed to explain a meaning of the word and a proper use quite well, a definition fit for purpose.  It has been a while since I read Dewey, but I have downloaded some free Dewey content to my Kindle to compensate. Over the course of the next months, I will continue to research the word Ethos to see what else I can learn about the word and the expectations of those who use it.

Multistakeholderism

I spoke of being dedicated to the multistakeholder model.  I am.  I write about it, and I work on it most days.   I am proud to associate with multistakeholderism (m17m for the spelling challenged) as a theory and as practice.  I even go so far as to think I can define it:

Multistakeholderism

The study and practice of forms of participatory democracy that allow for all those who have a stake and who have the inclination, to participate on equal footing in the deliberation of issues and the recommendation of solutions. While final decisions and implementation may be assigned to a single stakeholder group, these decision makers are always accountable to all of the stakeholders for their decisions and the implementations.

I believe in democracy and while I see representative democracy as necessary, I do not see it as sufficient for society's or individuals' needs.  While I have romanticized the idea of direct democracy at times in my life, I still don't see it as scaling very well. I also do not see most people as interested in getting involved in many of the nitty gritty policy decisions that society needs to make on a continuing basis.  The forms of participatory democracy, including a variety of multistakeholder architectures and models occupy a point between representation by bureaucrats picked by national leaders, some of whom were elected at some point somewhere, and the ideal of direct democracy.  All those who want to participate, those who bring their stake to table, should be able to participate in determining the path forward.

I believe that multistakeholderism is a form of participatory democracy that is absolutely necessary in today's inter-jurisdictional world and that inter-governmental decisions can measure their legitimacy in terms of the depth and breadth of the multistakeholder process that led to the decisions.  Incidentally, I also believe that forms of participatory democracy, such as the variety of multistakeholder models, are as important at the national level, but issues of citizenship modify the discussion and result in a different sort of citizen-stakeholder model.

In terms of the inter-jurisdictional issues I am involved in, whether Internet governance or Human Rights on the Internet and for threatened peoples such as the LGBTQI community (aka the global gay community) most everywhere, yes, I believe that full legitimacy demands full and open multistakeholder participation on an equal footing in making recommendations and decisions.  And I believe that those who are given the privilege of making 'treaties' should participate and should craft their agreements based on the results of the recommendations that emerge from those processes. In terms of inter-jurisdictional areas I am not involved in, I expect that something similar is the case.  Time, study and experience will tell the extent to which these considerations are generalizable.

People argue that multistakeholderism (m17m) should not be an end in itself. I disagree.  Yes, the issues at ICANN are indeed important in themselves, regardless of what methods are used to resolve them.  Solving those problems is the primary goal of the work in ICANN.  But developing new democratic methods is necessary in a world that cannot make just decisions.  The quest for Democracy, as an ideal and as practice, still has long way to go, and the work on multistakeholderism is work on Democracy, a goal that is most important in itself.  ICANN has declared itself a center for multistakeholder action, and that is a good thing, a necessary thing, a thing I am proud to be part of.

Hammering and the Crucible

Definitely a mixed metaphor.  One that sent me scurrying to the web to see if it could help me wiggle out of it. In the attempt, I read about crucible steel and read about the importance of hammering before something went into the crucible and hammering again after it came out of the crucible.  While it is true that one does not hammer in a crucible, things are made strong by the hammer and the crucible used together.

ICANN provides an excellent crucible where all stakeholders can come to work their concerns into the mixture. And then, after the application of heat (sometimes a lot of heat), these same stakeholders work to hammer out solutions from the consensus mix that is produced.  I find excellent parallels between the making of crucible steel, and the forging of multistakeholder solutions at ICANN.

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Then again, perhaps as one friend told me, I should drink champagne and dance on the beach in celebration  Well, while respecting the concerns of the GAC on .vin and & .wine,  I had lots of wonderful Prosecco and I did dance about my room - close enough. 

I really am tickled, pleased, and honored by this award.

NETmundial contributed toward the progressive view that the enhanced cooperation of all Stakeholders is necessary for Internet Public Policy.

CSTD (the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development) contributed toward the regressive view that the States should be in control of Internet Public Policy.

I spent a good part of the last week trying to get some crumbs of information on what was happening at the CSTD meeting being held in Geneva.  What information I managed to get was through the kindness of those who tweeted the meeting (when they were not being abused by some governments and business representatives for doing so) and who sent updates to various lists and chats. This meeting was held in relative darkness, without audio-cast and without even the pretense of remote participation. While some stakeholders other than state government representatives were allowed in the room, and some stakeholders were occasionally given a diminished opportunity to speak, it was not a multistakeholder meeting.  It was a UN Intergovernmental meeting.  The only thing multistakeholder about the meeting was that they were sitting in judgement of the multistakeholder process of Internet governance and were trying to impose  states' viewpoint on who and what was permitted to make public policy with regard to the Internet: the choice is between the States, represented largely by Geneva bureaucrats or the world's people, whose interests were represented by the multistakeholder mix that attended Netmundial 2014. Some of these Geneva bureaucrats are lovely people and I count many as my friends in other venues, in multistakeholder venues.  But in Geneva in the relative darkness of the CSTD meeting, they were the judge and jury on the viability of the multistakeholder model for Internet governance. 

This was not appropriate.

One irony is that among the topics they discussed was the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation (WGEC), a multistakeholder group assembled by the CSTD by direction of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Setting up a multistakeholder working group had been progress for the CSTD. But many of the CSTD member states were unhappy and wanted to show that the model did not work and appeared to do their best to disrupt the processes of that multistakeholder working group, no matter how hard the chair of the group worked in vain to get them to cooperate.  As a member of the working group I heard the gleeful refrain: 'see the multistakeholder model doesn't work' from a few rejectionist state members and from their allies in the group. In the CSTD meeting, the states, including the rejectionist states among them, had a discussion about the fate of a multistakeholder group, in a venue that excluded the other stakeholders from equal participation. 

This was not appropriate.

They were also discussing the perennial issue, the issue assigned to the WGEC, on the meaning of Enhanced Cooperation?  Does it mean among all stakeholders?  Or are governments the only ones that may participate in Enhanced Cooperation.  As they have done since 2005, some of the member states insisted on a model of Enhanced Cooperation that rejects the principles of participatory democracy as expressed by multistakeholderism (m17m), and gave preference to the idea that it was all about governments. This despite words that they echoed  from the Tunis Agenda in 2005 about the participation of all stakeholders:

71. The process towards enhanced cooperation, to be started by the UN Secretary-General, involving all relevant organizations by the end of the first quarter of 2006, will involve all stakeholders in their respective roles

In terms of "all stakeholders in their respective roles,"  these governments unfortunately once again reaffirmed Tunis Agenda paragraphs 35 - 37, which inaccurately define the roles and responsibilities of actors in Internet governance from a state-centric point of view; a view where states and intergovernmental organizations control the Internet. In doing so the member states of the CSTD once again reaffirmed the government statement from 2003 that gives some states all the reason they need to put themselves, via some UN system organization, in control of the Internet.

This was not appropriate.

At NETmundial on the other hand, everyone had a equal opportunity to participate.  Stakeholders and stakeholder groups, beyond those even imagined at CSTD meetings, were included and treated on an equal footing.  Within this equal footing at the global level, the governmental actors and the non-governmental actors were treated equally.  The states that participated were able to go off and discuss things among themselves on an equal footing, as were the actors and stakeholder groups that made up the non-governmental side of the process.  And they came together at the end on an equal footing, in multistakeholder groups, to hammer out a rough consensus Multistakeholder Statement.

This was appropriate.

Some of us, myself included, are unhappy we did not get all we wanted in the outcome.  I think some of us, myself included, could have done a better job organizing and making sure we had written the words that could be used in the final statement. But we can learn how to function better in these multistakeholder environments. This does not diminish the achievement of NETmundial.

Some of us, myself included, are dismayed at the fact that some of the corporations used their wealth based power to sway the outcome document at the very end of the discussion, but that happens in the multilateral world as well, just less visibly and without any chance for other stakeholders to do anything to counter it.  

Aside to those non-governmental actors who disparage participatory democracy as expressed in multistakeholderism -  in the multilateral system the big corporations still have access, it is the rest of us, including academics, activists, civil society, internet technical community, and small businesses who are shut out.

NETmundial produced Enhanced Cooperation.  While not billed that way, it joins the IGF in terms of being a venue for Enhanced Cooperation on a global multistakeholder scale. And it was the first multistakeholder group to produce an outcome on Internet Public Policy on an equal footing. That is Enhanced Cooperation of the first order, which shows that productive Enhanced Cooperation by all stakeholders on a equal footing is indeed possible.

That is very appropriate.

Over the course of nearly a week, many hours were spent at the CSTD meeting trying to decide whether the NETmundial could even be mentioned in the report.  These were not hours spent trying to understand the Enhanced Cooperation achievement of NETmundial, or how it could be carried forward or even to find the perfect words of praise, but rather it was the churlish fight of some states to repress any congratulatory message to Brazil for convening NETmundial or for its achievements.  The argument raged on the last day of the meeting until well past 11:00 PM. For some states and their allies, NETmundial is the name that must be not spoken.

Can this possibly be appropriate?

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