FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
4 SEPTEMBER 2014
14:30
WS 96
ACCOUNTABILITY CHALLENGES FACING
INTERNET GOVERNANCE TODAY
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This is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. 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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>> MARIA FARRELL: Hello, everyone. We are going to get this session going. We will kick off in about 30 seconds.
Hello, everybody and welcome to workshop 96 accountability challenges facing Internet Governance today. I am not Samantha Dickinson. She is here with camera and since Samantha successfully proposed this workshop, she has been assumed up into the heavens of the IGF Secretariat where she has many, many responsibilities and she's asked me to take over moderation duties for this panel. I work for Internet communications of UK. I have been on the ICANN staff. I have been on ‑‑ I worked for World Bank. I don't think I've got any particularly unpopular employers in my back history. But I have been in this area for about 15 years now. So I hope I'll be able to pick up some themes and help move the discussion on in a really interesting way.
First off, I'm going to introduce some of our ‑‑ introduce all of our panelists who are here. But I also want to encourage everybody we're going to ask our panelists to speak for five or so minutes each about some particular themes, but I want to encourage everybody to put up your hand, press the red button on the microphone and get into this discussion. We're nice sized room, we've got a lovely round table going here. And I know from having reviewed both the attendances beforehand and looking around the table, we have a lot of people, a lot of experience and views which I think will be really fruitful and a lot of fun to share.
So, in terms of our panel today we have the first person is Anne‑Rachel Inne here. She is Vice President for Global Engagement ‑‑ oh, I'm sorry ‑‑ for Global Government. ICANN Vice President for Global Government. She works with Tarek Kamel in Geneva. Anne‑Rachel has been in this field for many years. She has been the Chief Officer of AFRINIC. We were actually colleagues when Regional Relations Manager for ICANN.
Also down towards the end we have Laura DeNardis who is also a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Internet Governance. She has a book out this year. What is it? Global War for Internet Governance. Which I only read the first couple chapters. It is a massive eye opener and great read and very much recommended.
Patrick Vande Walle sitting to Laura's left. Patrick is on the root server advisory committee of ICANN. No, have I got that wrong already? Patrick, maybe you should do your introduction.
>> PATRICK VANDE WALLE: Thank you very much. I'm chairing the Security and Stability Advisory Committee of ICANN and also ahead of research and development at that note at Stockholm.
>> MODERATOR: : Thank you very much, Patrick, and apology for that. Also a featured speaker who I hope will be able to contribute to the discussion is Rinalia Abdul Rahim from Malaysia who is here on our right and has agreed to present her thoughts and will have an opportunity to make a formal presentation.
First of all, I'd like to invite Laura to speak. We have a couple themes we want to cover today. A couple of days ago Laura, my apologies before you speak, I'm going to say a few more words. Vint Cerf talked about an ICANN accountability session, he said we have been perseverating about ICANN. He is the only person to say obsessively perseverating without putting air quotes around it. I think he was correct. What well try to do is to obsessively perseverate perhaps a little bit more of the Internet institutions that aren't ICANN. For example, regional Internet registries, country Top Level Domains, Telcos and all the kind of rich tapestry of organizations that actually build out and provide Internet.
Talk will accountability, some put together really informative paper ahead of time and she said on accountability, what you really want to ask yourself four basic questions to just bring it down to really brass tacks here. Who is accountable? How are they being held accountable? What kind of mechanisms are in place? And what standards of accountability apply? And what are the cons for not being accountable? And also we also want to look at the representation we have of individuals, of companies, of trade associations, of governments and how do we manage the accountability dynamic that takes into consideration the fact that people are wearing many, many different hats and maybe we'll get to talking about culture and I would love to hear more about the RIRs because I know they are doing great work about standardising or sharing or harmonizing accountability. And I just want to draw your attention to ‑‑ who is the CEO of AfriNIC who has just come into the room. She has been across all the RIRs globally to put some words articulate and some kind of accountability for the RIRs.
Anyway, Laura DeNardis, professor of American University, I look for introductory remarks.
>> LAURA DeNARDIS: Sure. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for that introduction. I do agree with Dr. Cerf that there's quite an emphasis on Internet accountability and critical resources in general without having that same accounting of accountability for these other areas of Internet Governance. You mentioned my book. What I tried to do in the book is lay out all the layers of Internet Governance. I had chapter 2 be about critical resources and the rest of the book not be about ICANN in names and numbers to go through the other layers. There's really an asymmetry in focusing so strongly on ICANN and not looking at these other areas. And I think it's admirable that a workshop like this is organised because there really is not enough attention.
So the point there is that there is no single system of Internet Governance. Sometimes when the media or others discuss it, it sounds like it's one thing. And questions of how should it be accountable? Or who should control it? But it absolutely is not one thing. People use the term ecosystem and I guess that's as good as any other kind of word to apply to it. But even in this, let's just stay within the critical Internet resources arena for a second and talk about that, even in that area, in that single area of the administration of names and numbers, ICANN is just one of many institutions that are involved in keeping this all operational. You mentioned regional Internet registries. We have operators of the name servers. We have registrars. There are many organizations that are involved.
Now, I understand the focus on critical Internet resources, to be sure, because there are so many obvious public policy issues. It's not obvious to the public, but it's obvious to this crowd, to be sure. You have issues like trademark protection, what counts as free speech in domain names. You certainly have the issue of how to mediate tensions between territorial government interests versus global corporations. The best example of that is probably the dot Amazon and dot pad an gonia and dot wine controversies. So these are very obvious. And other public interests that keep it operational and protocol and entire management of the Internet address space. So these are really critical issues, and I understand that.
But all of the other areas are critical, too. And I often ask myself: What accounts for the intense interest in ICANN accountability? And almost no interest in accountability across the actual entire ecosystem of management of critical Internet resources. So even in that one issue, it could be a lot more granular and a lot more descriptive about how things actually work in practice rather than focusing ‑‑ it's appropriate to focus on ICANN but I think it's also important to have reflexive accountability and to look at other areas. We can learn things from these other institutions, as well, who have their own accountability mechanisms. So looking at the entire spectrum of institutions would be much more beneficial.
But that is an area that is highly complicated institutionally, technically and it's politically charged, as I mentioned. But, again, the point to make here today is that really just one area of Internet Governance. Other administrative ‑‑ what I did in my book is I just described how Internet Governance unfolds in these other areas and what is at stake politically and economically over how those things are run. But they include cyber security governance mechanisms. It includes, of course, standard setting. Hundreds of institutions there. It includes interconnection agreements and other basic infrastructure systems. And I want to assert that it should include for our consideration the policymaking function of private companies who serve as the information intermediaries that determine the extent of our civil liberties online in their private decisions. And of course the whole area we could spend an entire day just on how Internet infrastructure and the companies run Internet infrastructure intersect with intellectual property issues. Those are just a few examples of the layers. And all of these functions are points of control, just like critical Internet resources, over the systems that keep the Internet operational.
So if accountability is important, I believe the motivation behind this workshop, which I was very thrilled to be asked to join, is that if accountability is important, then it should be important for all of these technical arrangements of power.
The basic theme here tying this all together, as I often say, is that arrangements of technology are also arrangements of power. And in the Internet ecosystem, the arrangements of technology are brought to bear through technical design, through private companies, through government policies, through intergovernmental agreements. And, yes, also, through the institutions that are on a global scale like ICANN. So all of it is important.
So I think what I will do is leave it there by way of some introductory remarks and turn it back to Maria for our next subject.
>> MARIA FARRELL: You raised a very interesting topic which is private sector accountability. And I think Patrick also has a couple comments to say about that even in terms of tell comes and other Internet providers. Patrick foster over to you.
>> Patrick: Thank you very much. I think we're looking at one of the reasons why the Internets have succeeded in that from a technical standpoint the ability to communicate was earlier in the centre and in the network itself. And it has now moved to a situation where we have a very stupid network and instead we have the intelligence at the edge of the devices. That gives much more power to the end user. It gives the ability for the end user to actually create information, share information and also produce services and set up services in a way that was not possible earlier.
On top of that, we also, in the 1980s, in large parts of the world, agreed that privatization and market economy forces, which means introduction of competition on the provider side, was also something that was good for evolution. So the multiple of choices of whoever provides services, the introduction of market economy but more importantly the ability for anyone to bring anything to the network introduced the ability to innovate not only in business models and technology but innovation in all different kind of ways. Innovation regarding information. Innovation regarding the ability to consume information. Innovation regarding hardware and software and services.
Now, so what happened was that it moved from being incumbent, one and only one provider deciding what services could be used in a territory within the jurisdiction and offering that often very limited set of services to its customers to a situation where anyone can do anything is very big change. And that is basically what I feel are the large changes that where the Internet is only one of them.
When we have a situation where we only have one incumbent, one provider of what is called telecommunication, then of course that party is always responsible for what's happening. Responsibility for servers, for the up time of service, you know who to call if something is wrong. It doesn't matter whether it's the wire, the radio, whether it's the service itself, whether the information doesn't reach the destination, you know who to call. You only have one party that is responsible for everything.
Now, when all of us bring whatever we bring to this thing, which happened to be the Internet, but I'm speaking much more general terms here, I bring software rights, other people create information, where Wikipedia or anyone can edit the data. We have multitude of providers. So access that have dark fibers of wholesale service. We have a complete inferno of various providers of things.
So who is responsible for all that? I claim that we moved from a situation where we know who is responsible for everything to a situation where all of us and any of us that bring something to the Internet, whenever we bring in something part of the Internet and we are responsible for that. And I'm allergic to all of those pictures and all of those discussions when people say: Oh, wait a second. This cable where I have a fiber cut and whatever and that means that I cannot access the Internet. That's wrong. When you connect to the Internet, whatever you connected end up being part of the Internet. So when you have a connection doesn't work or the wireless doesn't work, that's a fragmentation. So the various parts of the Internet actually get separated from each other. And then the question is: Who is responsible to repair that? Well probably the one that brought whatever is keeping the communication up and running. If you bring your computer, if you write some software and third parties are using that to attack other entities because you had bugs in your software, well, I'm sorry, you who wrote the software is responsible for that.
So the responsibility and the cause of that accountability relies much, much more on each one of us. But in too many people are looking for who is accountable to make sure that things work, and I think the general rule that we have to sort of think about is how much we are responsible for ourselves. And given that very often we are in a competitive situation, we are the ones that need to make the conscious choice when we are procuring something, regardless of whether we are Telco that buy wholesale services we're end‑users that are buying phones or software, or we are public services that buy whatever we are buying. So that's where I think we need to start.
And then, of course there are certain things where we have issues like we have a single‑sided market. And we have dominant providers. It might be the case that in reality the market economy forth doesn't work. But all of those things are sort of exceptions from the modern we are currently living in. We are not living in 1990 anymore. Thank you.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thank you very much, Patrick. It's really telling how we got moved from the old incumbent telecom model where just one person was responsible to now where we have the anxiety‑causing distributed model responsibility and more personal responsibility.
Back in Ireland in 1990 in '85 to 1990, when you wanted to get a telephone, you had to write a letter and ask for a telephone. We had no telecom area. And typically it took about six months to get one. So it wasn't very good system. But my goodness it was accountable. Because if you didn't like the fact that you have to wait for six months, you would write a letter to your Member of Parliament, or as we call it your TD. And you would get them to bump you up the cue a little bit. It was incredibly inefficient but it was also very accountable. Which is very, very different from where we are now. Things are distributed and yet none of us quite knows how it works.
There are some key parts of the infrastructure and I think you one of the ones that many of us don't understand well is the regional Internet registries. So Anne‑Rachel I'll ask you to explain about that and tell us broadly about your experience of broadband accountability.
>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: Given that he is on the panel, I'll let him dig down a bit more in what is really specific to the RIR work around the what we had called the accountability to the community and corporate governance.
Laura and Patrick talked about the different layers. Because the way I see it, and from my experience at ICANN and from the Internet world, from the beginning, my take has been that accountability is at all layers. It goes from the user all the way to the technical construct that on one way or the other, be it ICANN, be it the RIRs, be it the operators, be it as Patrick said, the one who operates the network that gets cut, and if I'm their customer, I turn to them for accountability. So accountability for me, I mean, when we go to the ATM and we get money, we make sure that we get our receipt in the physical world. And plenty enough. When we go on the Internet as a user, we don't feel like we have to know what is at the back in terms of software or things like is my antivirus, how do you say updated? Is my OS updated? Is somebody going to be able to see my transaction? Heck, I think as a user, I am as much accountable of what I do on the Internet as ICANN who actually provides me, you know, the regular DNS coordination to make sure that the root is functioning, as much as the dot com organisation who's giving me ‑‑ so accountability, seriously, we have, I guess just because we've been, you know, as Sam said, we've been so focused on talking about ICANN we have not taken the time to actually push the responsibility of quite a lot of things back to the community also.
ICANN can be accountable on the things that it does. The RIRs will be accountable on the things they do. In fact they have policies that are done by the community. So when the community says you're accountable via a policy. They can only do with what is in that policy at that moment. The rest of the accountability again will be distributed ‑‑ the user end, the network operator and everybody who has participated in making that policy actually and sent to the RIR has said from now on this is how you will do it and you will be accountable on these mechanisms and they're in the policy.
So there is in the physical world, we're happy to actually each see our own level of accountability. But funny enough, when it comes to the Internet, you know, I don't know if it's because the medium has been so easy to use. A lot of us have come to the point where we've delegated that authority to somebody and think that they will resolve the issue for us when issue time comes. Which is not normal. When we go to these institutions today ‑‑ and this is one work that will tell you about that the RIRs have done, it is about what is in the policies? You guys directed us to do in this way. When as Patrick said when standards are done and people accept to use them, then they also should accept the accountability that goes with that. It's about a network. But you have accepted to use a set of devices, of software and all of that. And then suddenly it's about ‑‑ or somebody else has to take care of that, of that accountability if there is an issue.
So for me, accountability is really at all layers. And we have to stop thinking that the technical organizations who are behind the Internet are the ones completely responsible for all of it because when we translate basically what is in the outside world and what we do that we are transposing on the Internet today, we definitely, you know, that accountability should also follow.
I don't know if I'm being a little bit controversial here, but I really wanted to make sure that for me it's, yeah, this is it. Accountability is for everybody and at all levels and we share that. So this is what I had to say.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thank you, Anne‑Rachel. Rising words. As a Chair, I should be a bit of a devil's advocate. It's all well and good to talk about individual and community accountability. I absolutely accept the sentiment, but I wonder if a lot of the anxiety people have around Internet Governance and accountability is simply that we know we depend practically for our lives on this technology. And we don't understand it. And also we know that there are so many intermediaries between us and ‑‑ I've got my ISP, I've got my browser, I've got the backbone provider, all of these people that I'm depending on to get my messages across, being interfered with or from A to B. And I don't even necessarily know how they work. I don't have a direct relationship with them. And so from that point of view, I think probably all the anxiety and worry of accountability comes from that. Laura, I saw you putting up your hand. Do you have contributions to make on that? Laura DeNardis?
>> LAURA DeNARDIS: Just a quick point. I think the distribution of accountability is a very important point and I understand it. And including user accountability. But I feel primarily that is in the area of content and the content that we provision online or access online.
If you look at the systems of Internet Governance, I really believe that end users don't have any idea of what they are. They don't see them. Even my students who are doctoral students, they see their iPad and they see the content. In the United States we're watching a show called "house of cards" right now. Everybody, they don't see ‑‑ and they think the Internet is a cloud. So they don't know what an IP address is. They don't know what a regional Internet registry is. And even where they can see mechanisms of governments ‑‑ of governance, like the Terms of Service, I have them read them in my classes. They don't read them normally. They just click" I agree" and I suspect some of us do that in the room sometimes for expediency. While I think it's a very important point to make and I agree with it, I believe there are also limitations about the knowledge that end‑users have about systems, which is part of our role to educate them. And also their ability to enact any kind of change within the Internet Governance system with the exception of content that they themselves provide.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thanks, Laura. Putting an academic hat on, I think we suffer from differences in power and perhaps not everyone can extract information from Internet providers like they would like.
However before I bring you and Patrick, I'd like to ask Adiel with AFRINIC and they are doing work to try to make some of the account ability of RIRs more open and transparent. And in the RIR governance, so could I ask you to tell us a bit about that?
>> Yes, so I'll talk about that initiative about RIR and cross accountability observatory framework.
We as RIR, we are one of the and ecosystem that since the beginning have put a lot of weight on the bottom of process in terms of defining policy. So the RIR is mainly based on Policy Development Process where the users and the user of our service are core and central to our operations and we are accountable to them. If we do not apply the policy, they have the right, because, one, they have membership account so.
What we have started doing to make this more visible. That has been called to get involved with that. We start buy doing a survey. RIR to kind of know I understand what are the mechanism in different area. Account ability practice, transparency, how do we deal with those things, how the accountability framework is involved. So the result of that survey has now been published, something that everybody can consult of different area. That work will be moved to another level now where we will do an analysis of that framework and see what are the common practices? How do things differ from one region to another? Because, again, accountability may have some original diversity there, cultural diversity. And that has to be taken into consideration how those things are.
And so the second step of this project or programme will be to do an analysis of this accountability matrix and come up with recommendation area which can be improved.
All of this we are going to do it still with our community input. So they will have to be called to give us their input on matters, on the analysis that will be done so that we can improve it. And we will go even further by probably allowing peer review on the accountability framework which will again be published for the community. So it is a fundamental aspect in the way we operate. Because we believe that ‑‑ comes from our members, basically. If we show we are accountable to them, we can run our business. But I will come back to this notion of distributed accountability. I think that is where we are all struggling right now. Because distributed account abilities is a cultural revolution, I'll call it. It's a cultural revolution because it is not easy for people, humans to naturally and voluntarily take responsibility. And when it comes to taking responsibility, people usually want to delegate that to somebody else and just do it. And that's how the world has been working, the real world. Now we are now generalising something that has worked perfectly in the Internet ecosystem, particularly the technical ecosystem. If you look on the protocol itself, you take a packet, you send it to your neighbor, you don't care what he does with it. He has to take it to the network. It is based on distributed accountability. The technology itself is based on that. And that shared responsibility is the way we have developed the technology, the way we have worked to make it what it is today. Now, we are asking people, users to now start taking their responsibility using that technology. And that's where people get lost and say, hey, we are not used to doing that. We have other people who take the responsibility and we just use or it is the government to take that responsibility. They take care of us and we were just here.
So changing that mindset will take time. And of course in a lot of capacity there is a lot of effort in helping people want to understand this new environment of Internet Governance where the responsibility is distributed. And, secondly, help people understand what is in them for them to be engaged. What is the impact of their voice in the global world? They don't know. So we also have to put a lot of effort in building that capacity. And building that capacity is more than just saying it. Because there are cultural impact. Cultural diversity impact that because from region to another, people are not friend the same way to read thousands of documents to understand how things work, doesn't speak English. So there's a lot of aspects of this distributed accountability.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thanks.
I'm going to ask you a difficult question but it's something that people raise quite a bit. RIRs, the regional Internet registries, your accountability to your members, to basically the people who buy a box of numbers from you, and so you're not directly accountable to Internet users. I'm sure you've got a very good answer. But let me give you an example of this. Let's imagine I live in Cairo and I have a number ultimately from you guys but I got it from my ISP. And my ISP got it from you. And let's also say Google comes around and says hey, AFRINIC I want to start pinging your data because we want to do a distributed geographical ‑‑ and let's say in Cairo, for some reason I don't want to be in that database. I don't really have any recourse, do I? How does that work?
>> I can tell you you have a recourse. There is two level of accountability. As you mentioned, we have a legal relationship with our member which accountability goes deeply into our organizational accountability, I will say.
But in terms of policy development, policy development is open to anyone. Meaning, you don't have to be member. You don't have to buy to pay membership fee to an area [Inaudible] the decision that is made, the consensus that's built around the policy comes from global consensus that include people who are not a member.
So if you have a concern about that, you can easily come to any of our mailing lists or our meetings and raise the issue. The issue will be discussed among all the users, all the interested parties to see if it's eye what can be the solution. Including, of course, the ISP obviously. And if there is a consensus, yes, the policy can be changed. So the recourse is there. But, again, user don't know that they can use that. And that's where the capacity building and information, the awareness is important because anyone can practice Policy Development Process and can contribute to policy. We have seen policy who are proposed by people who don't even run an ISP. And that is true because what is in the policy makes sense.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thanks. I think the point is well taken, really. It's hard, it's complicated, it's technical, but it's really important. So if you want accountability, you have to exercise accountability.
Patrick, I know you wanted to come in. And also the field is absolutely open for anybody that would like to make a question or contribution. Patrick?
>> Patrick: Thank you very much. I'd like to add a little bit about the power that we have as end‑users. And we should not forget, for example, that if it is the case that I feel that I cannot choose between two ISPs or two mail hosting providers and I'm not happy with any of them, it's really important that we are in a situation that I can in that case start my own ISP or I start my own web hosting providing company. And that is where I can start my own competition or my own service or whatever it is. Some people call this permissionless innovation regarding like that I referred to earlier not only about business models but also technology and software. And question not forget that. That's really, really important.
And this is one of the reasons in the European Union where I happen to live, within that legislation, they're talking very ‑‑ we are talking very hard about what is called low barrier entry of new market players. And this is why in the terms of telecommunication in Europe, they're looking at something called investment ladder where regulators have gone in and forced the dominant providers over, for example, access to provide both bit stream and local and band link. The reason is that the bit stream must be there so the low barrier of entry exists. It's really cheap to get your first customer.
On the other hand, it must be possible for you to also buy the copper or the local low band link, the more basic sort of wholesale product because you must be able to compete yourself with the existing providers. You need to be able to build your own services. You need to be able to sort of come up with new services yourself. We cannot forget that.
So quite often we think that customers know we can be competitors, as well, to those trying to deliver something to us.
The second thing I wasn't supposed to talk about but mentioned the databases and others where we have to be recorded, I think it's really important that when we have this discussion, we should be adult enough now after talking about who is for, I think I talked about who is for at least 25 years, is that we must separate the question of whether we are registered for whatever service we are buying from someone or getting from someone from the situation that that information is known to somebody. Those are two very separate questions. And people are still mixing them up. And as long as we mix them up, we'll not move forward. Thank you.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thanks very much, Patrick. That point is well taken about who is ‑‑ I suppose my idea with that illustration is simply to kind of invoke the idea of contractual accountability. And how do you manage to make or feel when you're doing business, are you relying on is accountable to you when you have no contractual relationship.
>> Patrick: Yeah. Let me be a little bit more specific. This is one of the cases where maybe regulation has to come in and help when sort of the market economy forces doesn't solve it. So, for example, if you look at the data privacy regulation in Sweden, it's written so that if you registered domain name and you're a private person, your address and even your name is not allowed to be disclosed full stop. So the default is that the data for individuals is not known. Thank you.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Adiel?
>> Yes. I want to add to the fact that when we are talking about accountability and regulation and all, when seeing that from developing country perspective, we have to be balanced and not dogmatic on this. In many regions, don't have the choice. You have the competitive environment where you as user can impact what's the operator is doing because you can move from one to the other one, which is giving you the right service. But in area where you have only one, you have no choice. You can do whatever you want. You cannot invest and build your own ISP by yourself. So at that point in time there is a need to find the best to help the system to grow to a point where you have the right competitive environment so that that distributed responsibility can be really exercised. We have seen a situation like that in many countries in our region for instance where the ISP will ask end user to pay enormous amount of money to have their own IP address, to use their own IP address where they are not getting that. They come to us and we direct them to best practice. This is how you should do it. But they have nothing for to do that because that is their business model. And that can only be solved the local contest where people who can help through persuasion and through other means, local ISP to do that. That is where it is important to raising awareness and framing or helping policymaking is very important, as well, so that ‑‑ what needs to be done because the competitive environment does not exist everywhere in the world.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Choice is say luxury we don't all have. Martin, Martin Boyle?
>> Martin: Yes, thanks. I'm with the dot UK registry. I should just really like to pick up that concept of getting the environment right to get in the competition then allows you to get a point of free choice. And I was particularly struck, Maria, by your example of the Irish mon open list telecom provider because I have the same issue when we went to live in Brussels. Again it took us six months to get a connection. Now I don't know it has improved in Ireland, but I believe it has improved in Belgium quite simply because you open up the market and you then also put in place good regulatory practices at that level. And the interesting thing on the regulator is the regulation is supposed to work on behalf of the consumer. That's his role. And he very often sees his role as making sure that there are special rules that allow the networks or people to be able to lease lines and the rest of it. Because I'd actually go back and say telecom air, if that is the right name for it, was not actually accountable. It was particularly not accountable if the way to get up the cue was to write to your MP. That in my mind is completely and utterly shocking. And, yet, I am aware that that is the environment how lots of places work.
So I would actually go back and say: Yes, the competition approach works because people can make their own mind up as to whether somebody is providing reliable, stable service, whether their terms and conditions are fair and reasonable, if you could debunk some of the legalese in most of these conditions. And if they find they're not getting the service, go somewhere else. And very quickly people actually do become much more accountable.
>> MARIA FARRELL: I'm going to tell you another tale from Ireland.
[Laughter]
This one is about my father is now retired but he was a surgeon for many years. And we have a public health system. And so often there were many ‑‑ there were waiting lists for operations. And my dad used to get letters regularly from MPs whose constituents had asked them to help them get on the list. And the MP would say dear surgeon, can you please this person and on them as soon as possible. Put them to the top of the list. And my dad developed a very, very good response to this. His response was: Dear MP. I will be delighted to put your constituent to the top of the list. Please also be aware I will be writing to everybody else on the list to tell them that you have caused them to lose their place on said list. So, yes, there is accountability and dysfunction. I think we can all agree there's a big difference to be drawn there. Martin?
>> Martin: Yes. Actually, his response was actually a good response because there is actually another form of accountability that you expect the representative of the people not just to represent one person. And abuse of power. And that quite often is something that can be sneaked in to the process is actually invidious. It's something that undermines the whole nature of the process, whether it be to get my telephone line faster, whether it be to get my unique IP address so that I can run my business more effectively. It doesn't matter. And it's that transparency of why you've made decisions that are out of policy. And then I link that back to the conversation earlier about making sure the policy process was open, fair, transparent, clear. And when people understand what the policy is and that there is no way around it, no special exceptions, that is then accountability.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thank you very much, Martin. I think that gives us an interesting segue into another topic which I would love us to give some thought to in this room, which is: Where accountability and personal ethics overlap. Samantha Dickinson who organised this wrote a background paper. It was kind of more a behavioral question. I want you to cast your minds to accountability of individuals at forums such as this one and how we behave and what we expect.
One of the things Sam pointed out was that a couple of things are happening as Internet Governance is becoming a much more mainstream and an important topic. As many more people are coming to the table and people from different countries and cultures. Some pointed out that there's a greater number of people coming along, but also we have many people in our community who have multiple roles. I'll put my cards on the table. I work for Internet communications, interconnect communications, I really should get the company's name correct, it's been eight months now.
[Laughter]
I used to work for interconnect communications. I am a GNSO council member in ICANN. I represent noncommercial stakeholders. I'm on the board of directors of the UK open rights group. I've got many, many different hats I wear. And I'm sure there's lots of people here who also have that. You know, oftentimes we're at this meeting a person will stand up and say, "I'm the Chair of this. I work for that. And I wrote that report. But I'm speaking as an individual. "And it's kind of an interesting ‑‑ it's useful. It's got pros and cons. But I wonder what the views are of people here how you segue from one identity to another ‑‑ Abril Catagonian. He writes ‑‑ he wears different hats when he spoke on public Forum at ICANN. I'm speaking now as a applicant. And Catagolian. It was a really, really good way to say I have these different roles.
And to sort of manage that end, representative but also ethical challenge.
And so I have a couple of people I would like to put on the notice. Peter, you just walked in. He makes a bolt for the door. Peter is the former Chair of the ICANN board of directors. And indeed had role in Internet. And you had many different roles. I wonder what your roles are of how people manage the accountability of being in discussions but representing different organizations. There are all sorts of people I could put. Rinalia, I wonder if you've got any thoughts on this topic, as well. I know you're just about to join ICANN's board of directors but you bring with you a whole world of experience and concerns from Malaysia and others. So maybe, Rinalia, I could ask you first. Peter, you're on notice.
>> RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Thank you, Maria. I wanted to agree with Laura that I think it's really important to pay tension to the accountability across the he co. And also I agree with Anne‑Rachel. The individuals for me are individual, community and organizational. So how organizations are held accountable is generally clear. Organizations tend to have account ability mechanisms that generally cover elements much transparency, consultational participation, monitoring or evaluation that are done internally and externally and mechanisms for correction and redress. In general these elements are highly diverse both across and within categories of organizations. And buy categories, I mean public/private, nonprofits et cetera. So when you want to do an overall assessment of accountability, you want to look at how the different aspects work as a pack and rather than just looking at one particular aspect. Now we come to the area of how individuals in a community are held accountable. And here it's less evident in terms of how this is done. In some communities it may be more apparent. In others it's sort of hidden. I believe it depends on whether rules have been developed to address accountability at that level and whether they are sufficient. And so we need to pay attention to this. And in terms of rules, I think it has to do with transparency on interest as well as conflicts of interest. If you are participant in each fora, you have to follow the rules for that fora. And also you need enforceable sanctions for bad behavior. If you don't have that, it's like a moral hazard. Thank you.
>> MARIA: Thanks very much, Rinalia. Yes, redress is important or useful ways to ensure good behavior. How do we know what good behavior is? Are there general principles that we can articulate across‑the‑board for personal, individual, community and organizational accountability in these fora? Peter, you're a lawyer, you can think on your feet.
>> Peter: Thanks, Maria. Can I answer your first question before I tackle your second? And that is how do you manage the multiple representations of wearing many hats? And that's a good question. I think there's four parts to the answer. The first part is that the key to it is the transparency. Once people know where you come from, that takes quite a lot of the heat out of it because they are in a capacity, then, to judge what you're saying by reference to your known origins. The problem usually arises when somebody finds out at a later date that you had an interest. So in my case, for example, it was well known I think when I was on the board that I had a history of working with the ccTLDs. And many people forgave me quite a lot when they also found out I was a lawyer. So that was helpful.
The other way of dealing with that or part of the way of dealing with that is that at least in relation to the institutional bodies like the board there's a register of interests. People have to declare their interests. So there's administration that goes into this and makes it easier. It's searchable. If people want to find out what the interests of the Chairman of the board are they can go to the place and find out.
I think the other step is when people are talking, they tend to announce what capacity they're talking in. Very often they go through the effort and say I'm a member of the Council of This but I'm speaking in a personal capacity. That's part of the process so that you know who you're hearing from and what hat they're wearing.
And then the last element of it is the conflict of interest policy that all ICANN has as a whole and then the board has its own conflicts policy. This is again a very carefully drafted set of principles and practices because it's impossible in something that is industry‑led. And that's part of the focus of ICANN is to be an industry‑led body, to not have people from industry involved. And for example, when I was Chairman for considerable period, my vice Chairman was from the registrars. And the registrars contributed a substantial amount of money from registrants through their books to ICANN. And as a consequence, Bruce would have to not vote on many issues affecting the finances. So those are parts of the answer. I think it's something that a lot of people have given quite a lot of thought to and have created institutional and procedural processes to try to deal with. Are they perfect? Probably not. Do they get looked at frequently? I think they do. And if a problem arises, I think there's a willingness to fix a defect.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thanks, Peter. Bruce came to my mind, as well because he made what I thought was a really per acceptive and useful comment about ICANN's conflicts policy.note.
Sometimes people think that people have a lot of declared conflicts. That means that conflict policy is working. We know where everybody is coming from and where they are.
Can I ask you something?
You were the chairperson of the ICANN board. We have a public Forum and lots of people come up to speak. And you might have three or four people that come and say I'm this, that and the other and I'm speaking personal capacity. How do you, as board director and as Chair, figure out how much weight to give to that versus "I am from the government of Turkey and this is our official position"? Is it difficult?
>> It's a lot like asking how do you like a meal?
>> MARIA FARRELL: Or which of your children you love the most.
>> Peter: I can only speak personally. I found that I try to listen to everybody and filter, take down the filters first and hear what they have to say. And only later see if it made any difference. In other words, I try to put aside most of the considerations. Actually the first job because you're getting a lot of data. Make sure you're hearing what they're saying rather than worrying who they are or where they're coming from. And then only later if you think it makes a difference.
So I try to make data‑driven decisions rather than personality‑driven decisions.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thanks very much, Peter. Patrick, I am going to put you on the spot. I have a question from John Curren. I am going to read it out. John Curren is at the American regional Internet network. The American RIR. And he is on remote. So John CEO. ARIN. On the managing roles, I would like to hear from Patrick regarding the practice where everyone is generally participating as an individual. Patrick, John asks, do you feel that when input based on its merit rather than the speaker's hat is good practice? And aside from potential conflict of interest, does a speaker's hat even matter? Very similar question. We'd like to hear what you think, Patrick.
>> Patrick: I think that the most important difference we use between the IETF and more historical standards of organizations is that IETF primarily is a meritocracy and not a democracy. And that's a very big difference.
So the primary goal of the when you evaluate input to the IETF in similar processes is the proposal itself. That always wins.
Now, in a traditional democracy, there is, of course, sometimes hard to differentiate between real interests and when there is lobbying behind and money. And that's why you need transparency and various rules and various jurisdictions. And the Sam way, of course, in the IETF. We are also using similar kind of mechanism requirements for transparency regarding, for example, affiliation and goes with everything from having the mailing lists, open transparency for the various appointment of people, to also the requirements regarding intellectual property and management of licensing where unfortunately it has not been possible to reach a generic agreement on how to deal with licensing for the standards and ideas that comes up in the IETF. So this is something which I think is good, but it is just in IETF and other fora. And there's much more to do there. And I'd encourage people that are specialists in this topic and not technologists like us who are in the IETF to continue that discussion because I still think we don't really know how to design the best system. But so far the IETF works also because compared to, for example, standard normal trade organizations by their membership is bound to do whatever is coming out of it. It is also the case whatever is coming out of the IETF, people can use it if they choose to. Also the competition between standards organizations is very fruitful.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thank you, Patrick. I know David wants to come in. I'd like to ask you a quick followup question. My perception, perhaps wrong, is that the IETF runs almost on a reputational model in that if somebody doesn't declare or is basically unaccountable in some way that the reputation suffers and that is sort of a social sanction. Are there any other sanctions that come up? People sort of misrepresent themselves in any way?
>> There are no real sanctions. As I said, that's not really needed because in the IETF and that process, we'd never say no to anything. It's the other way around. To be able to move forward, you need to say explicitly yes to things. So if you compare, for example, the IETF, it's very, very hard to say yes. The ITU and ICANN have very hard problems saying no to IDS. So can you see the general differences between the organizations. And because you don't really ‑‑ cannot really ‑‑ you don't really have to say no to someone, so sanctions is a little bit hard to talk about.
And at the end of the day, if you writ a standard, and I actually have two of them which I'm an author of, and people don't like it, they don't implement it, it's not harder than that.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thanks, Patrick. Again it's fascinating to learn. I wonder, in a sense, in an organisation where you have essentially depoliticized much of the comparison of whether something is good or not, you take away the motives and purely look at the work. But it's a fantastic model. I do wonder if that's something that could be equally well applied in far more political environments where the ideas have to be compared and discussed on their merits. But it's certainly useful. Carlton. Why don't you come in straight‑away and then David I will let you. Carlton.
>> Carlton: It really does. Oh.
>> I just wanted to put a few things on the table here. Homogeneity certainly delivers a kind of uniformity of spirit and output. But you have to look at participation, also. With a sought of these bodies, if you look at the bodies for rates from the global, for example, and we are not saying at all that more participation from the global South would decrease the level of trust that you get from the output from cases like the IETF and so forth. But we're saying that to the extent that the participation plays a role, you never know what it might throw up. So it's a good thing. And there's a lack of political upheaval in these areas. But certainly when you look at the participation rates, you are led to wonder what if there were more participation from the outside?
And Patrick's right. It's a meritocracy. I've been to a couple of them and I don't see anything wrong at all how you get to participate in some of them. But there is still the sense that we are barriers to participation.
And maybe if we look at that, we can see ways to increase the participation rate from global sources. That's the first one.
I am quite intrigued by the lack of recognition that the legal framework, the legal existence part of these organizations does allow for legal intervention as part of their accountability process. So, for example, if you had a problem with ICANN organisation we can go to District Court. [Inaudible] and you can dispute a decision. That in itself is is a good thing. But it also exclude, probably not intentionally, a goodly set of the people that are in the user community. So the accountability mechanism, my friend Rinalia Rahim spoke very effectively about the various levels of accountability and so on, it might also induce us to look at ways that we can improve the accountability process even before we get to the stage where we have to go to District Court. And I think that is the challenge that we have. When you bring more people in, how do you create frameworks, accountability frameworks that allow greater participation and their greater ramps, inputs, places you can input into the process from the user community and so on. So I would urge you to have a look at that and maybe come up with a framework that will be more conducive to greater participation. Thanks.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thank you very much, Carolton. I think it's a real question we all struggle with whether as Internet Governance is growing, does the sort of the trust model, the reputational model and for personal accountability, will that scale? And also the many cultural norms that are embedded in how we act in various fora. And do we need to articulate those so that they're more understandable to people who don't come from the typical Anglo‑Saxon northern Europe tradition and are indeed we need to change those.
David, you've been very patient.
>> David: I have seen a few times that this, the way we deal with accountability in terms of conflicts and interest is one of those things that sometimes acts as a real kind of cultural barrier to people first encountering Internet Governance. And particularly I think it can be to people who come from government where usually those roles are very strictly defined. You are a ‑‑ you are representing the government. The idea that you would have any outside interests in connection to other parties would disqualify you from having the job. And everyone is accredited. And they're used to it. And they come into this thing where not only is it ‑‑ it is very heterogeneous, very varied environment. But people do have obvious sort of conflicts of interests that they simply deal with.
I don't want to end ‑‑ this notion of wearing many hats is also ‑‑ two things I want to say an anecdote about this where at NETmundial there was a diplomat it was his first time in any multistakeholder environment. He looked around him going who are these people? Who are they responsible to? When you come across agents it's like from the matrix. He had never been in this situation of this kind of civil society and commercial bramble where people were multiply conflicted and there was no clear idea of who was represented who and who was speaking.
Now others we understand that the idea that you can covertly sneak through an agenda in something like a civil society consensus core seems ridiculous. It's very transparent and extended process. But until you have learned a bit of how it works, it does seem, I think, a real concern. To people outside the process, it can sometimes seem a real issue about how we deal with accountability.
And certainly there are real issues. We don't want to ‑‑ when you've gone from a regulatory process position to something that immediately might be affected by that decision or something [Inaudible] is of a concern. But for those of us not only that but it's really routine that people will not only have multiple hats at once but they will ‑‑ the same person will reappear in different roles, often widely different roles. And it is just how it works. We have people who are knowledgeable. The system is full of people who are knowledgeable and passionate about the Internet. And it is natural, you know. They will re‑appear in the community. And they won't disappear forever just when they get a different job or their term of office expires. And it does seem ‑‑ can it look like a revolving door kind of system, inside others the outsider. But for the insider it is just a community of passionate people that kepe coming back to something they feel challenging and enjoyable and valuable. Perceptions are a big deal.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thanks, Steven. I often wonder these multiple layers and identities that we have is that very offputting and often barrier to people coming in because you don't understand all of the agendas nor history nor the personalities. And I think that information asymmetry once again? Would you mind telling us your name?
>> Thank you [Inaudible] I wanted to make two comments. One was to John Curren's comment about the IETF and your reflections about the merit‑based processes. And I think one of the challenges with actually applying those ‑‑ that methodology to a space like this is that when you look at the IETF, we are looking at the facts and the merits of the fact. Well in at that fact in this context we are looking at different perspectives. And it is politics. So it is very hard to, in that scientific way, evaluate whether someone's perspectivetive is more valid than the other. I think the IETF context is quite different there. But I don't think we should be naive in those things not coming into play in the IETF, either. It is very scientific‑based approach but we know even in science it's quite important to actually declare what your interests and your affiliations are because you might reach different conclusions depending on what your perspective is.
And then I just wanted to say a few things about transparency and accountability. As someone who's been involved in the RIR communities, for a very long time. And I've seen how those ‑‑ how the transparency has, I think, increased in the RIR communities over the last 15 years that I've been involved, I think so in the very early days, it was very informal. And a lot of these things were not defined. And now I'd say that some of the old schoolers probably thought it was a lot easier to interact then. We didn't have this bureaucracy. We didn't have things documented. We didn't have these very sometimes cumbersome PDPs, policy development processes, but I think coming back to actually getting the involvement of people who are not from those communities, I think that those processes, the transparency in documenting those things is what makes it easier for outsiders to participate. It's easy to be part of a community when you know the codes, you know the processes, you know the people there. But there are enormous barriers to enter into these communities from the outside. And I think a way of fighting that is to be more transparent and to document things.
So, for example, in our own government matrix, it's not a particularly exciting document. And then not a lot of news for people in those communities. But you should still not underestimate the power of those documents in actually declaring to the outsiders: This is how we work. And also by writing it down and declaring it, you also allow for evaluation of those and improvement of those processes.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thank you very much. Would you identify yourself?
>> Thank you. I am Sayed, from India. While this discussion was going on I was just thinking what could the immediate challenges of accountability processes in Internet governance from a developing society perspective? Because the holder of developing society or those on the development societies, they look forward to international, methods of account ability mechanism. Because the I can foresee the challenges because there is a whole lot of information, decentralization, democratization of technologies, there is a whole lot of spread of this service providers, devices, technologies, content, services and all.
So for a country like India, of the size of millions of plus competition and service providers and all, so what kind of accountability mechanism we should also have? Whom do we look forward to that? Because of course the country will have its own policies and frameworks to be devised and adopted. And of course we have this telecom regulatory authority of industry, TRAI that regulates service providers and all. And sometimes we can see that ‑‑ come into the need of educating the issues, courts and all.
But the larger issue of social accountability is also missing in a country like India. How do we look at that? And solutions? So perhaps while we are discussing and than‑‑ideal IGF and the next year of course is a crucial time to look at renewal and all. So this accountability challenges an and issues and the structure and the method at a global level and then at the national level. Because when at the global level we have a strong process and start to lay out, then preferably the national government can look at that as an example standard practice. Otherwise image anybody the next five years the whole of IT citizenry scenario is going to expand very rapidly. So getting in the next five to ten years, how do we look at solutions international level? And also studying the national government and the national nation states to adopt standard practices of accountability. Three triangular aspects of accountability layers as you have also, many of the speakers have mentioned. At international, the citizen accountability things.
So some kind of modeling methods to certainly be looking forward where we can adopt, we can learn from each other. International level then at the next capacity the national level, also. I consider challenge. Thank you.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thank you very much. I think that's an extremely useful comment to help us start wrapping up because listening to it, it occurs to me, to the previous speaker, we will rye need to boost accountability. We really need to start articulating these norms of involvement of participation so more people can be effectively be involved. We need to document the processes and do the hard work to understand the technologies. It sounds hard and difficult but it's really clear that we need to do all those things. We need to build capacities. And to build the communities so that people can exercise their accountability muscles. And we need to take responsibility for, as individuals and communities.
I wonder if I could just, we've got about three minutes left. So perhaps a minute each for ‑‑ oh, Edwin, I was hoping we might hear from you, Edmund Chung from dot Asia, please come in.
>> EDMOND CHUNG: Hopefully not taking all of three minutes, but I think the last topic that we circled around, Edmund Chung from dot Asia about wearing the multiple hats. I think I personally I guess have a little bit of experience about that being, operating dot Asia as a gTLD. And we help, I'm on the ALAC for ISO Hong Kong and we support other ALSs as well and we also run the dot MO as a ccTLD.
One of the things that I think what Patrick has just mentioned is very important is we are really not talking about a democracy here. And when we talk about Internet Governance and multistakeholder approach, including where ICANN is, not to say that some of the processes should not be democratic and represent, representative in some form, but we're not talking about in a sense especially not in terms of a voting mechanism in terms of when we talk about democracy. Because a lot of things is, as mentioned, merit‑driven. And when we talk about consensus building, it's really less of a situation where you get into vote system.
So one of the things that I think is very important is when we talk about accountability, it is certainly the transparency and the process, well documented process is very important, and also it's important to understand that this is not necessarily ‑‑ I think in IETF terms they don't think it's necessarily a bug. It's kind of a feature. And one of the things about the multistakeholder approach is to be able to understand the other stakeholders and actors who actually have different hats can also bring that kind of perspective to the discussion.
So I think this is one thing that we really need to think about.
And, finally, one of the interesting things about accountability here is also the stakeholder group boundaries. When we think about different areas, ICANN in particular, you can see that there is a blurring of stakeholder boundaries, especially with the new gTLDs. You have registries and registrars, you have governments becoming registries. You have ALSs or different actors that you see that the constituency boundaries like the brands, the constituencies and stakeholder groups, boundaries start blurring. How do we think about with what accountability means especially with multiple hats on? And it's almost by default now that people have multiple hats on. So I think this is certainly something that we need to think about but not necessarily in the traditional sense to think about.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thank you very much, Edmund. You have no idea how close you came to being pounced on earlier for questions. So I'm glad we got to hear from you.
And the buzz outside the door tells us that everyone else is already drinking their coffee. So I'm going to ask our speakers Anne‑Rachel and Patrick and Laura, do you have even a 20‑second sound bite you would like to leave us with? Laura is straight to the mic?
>> LAURA DeNARDIS: Sure if I go first I'll very the coffee first. I think one final point to make is there's no one solution to accountability. We have different kinds of institutions and we have different kinds of tasks. We've talked about the IETF as a model that works. And I agree with that. And even in a situation like that that works completely well, there are still barriers to involvement for everyday people. People are involved in their individual capacities but many work for corporations that pay to send them there. So we can't have a democratic, completely participatory environment but we can have processes that are open in terms of the potential for participation, open in terms of how things are implemented and procedurally, transparency, all those kinds of things and then the result is open in how they actually proceed once the technology is developed. So that's my final thought is that there's not one solution for everything. But different kinds of approaches depending upon what the layer is of the Internet Governance task.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Thank you so much, Laura. Patrick, do you have a final remark?
>> Patrick: Yeah, my recommendation would be for people to think about people and organizations, private and public, to think about what responsibilities you have yourself. And then what you can do yourself about it. And then everything else need to talk to each other about. I think it's a little too much finger pointing at others and look for things that you can take care of yourself.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Words to live by. Adiel?
>> Two things. Accountability in this Internet Governance environment is about everybody. Again, I'll say that. And it is also a process. It is not something that can happen overnight. It's improved with the maturity of organizations, the maturity of the community, of the understanding of what is at stake. So that is an ongoing process. But also from a developing point of view, accountability has a cost, financial cost. And how do you honour that? Thank you.
>> MARIA FARRELL: Yes. This stuff doesn't come for free. The final remarks, Anne‑Rachel, it's to you to close us out.
>> ANNE-RACHEL INNE: They said it all. One of the things that I will add is that maybe one thing that I would like everybody to take away is that what is our part of the accountability in making sure that as Laura said those who are out there who are the users of this medium that we put in their hands, how much of our accountability is part of the process of making sure they learn how to actually come on board in the proper way? So that, you know, they finish up, they are using the medium and learning to be accountable themselves to this whole process. Thank you.
>> MARIA FARRELL: And we need to adapt to them, too. Key message. Thank you everyone for coming. Thank you for all the of the great comments and for your attention. Thank you to our speakers. And finally thank you to Sam Dickinson who put all of this together and couldn't be here but has been proposing this whole workshop very close to her heart. So thank you all very much. We will stop recording. Thanks.
(end of session).
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This is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. 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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