The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris, France, from 12 to 14 November 2018. 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 event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Okay. Good morning, everyone. I think it's the right time to start our session because we're already ten minutes past the designated time. So, this session will be about history of the multi‑stakeholder model and we also want to talk about how the multi‑stakeholder model is practiced in the united governance world and we also want to talk about how this multi‑stakeholder model can be developed in the future or how can be directed toward some other ways than it was taken, it has been taken so far.
So I'm going to introduce you to today's panelists one by one, from my left side. So, Marcus Kummer is an internet policy expert with ‑‑ especially the United Nations internet institution like ICANN. He also used to work account Internet Society and from 2004 to 2011 he worked for the United Nations as the executive coordinator for the working group on internet governance and subsequently, the secretary on purchasing the Internet Governance Forum. So, he was there even before IGF came into the.
Marcus is now based in the Netherlands, Sandra became involved in the united governance in 2006 by chair which can the European summer Google on internet governance and participating in ICANN's at large advisory committee. Sandra's contribution both to the ICANN community and access are dedicated to deliver a dedicated ground for different stakeholder groups and to develop her different stakeholder processes that are transparent.
In 2017 she was reporting to, since 2019, advice chair of the directors of EuroDIG, the registry for the Dot EU domain.
and next, a top facilitator with the Modelo Foundation where he is researching the ongoing development and harmonization of global privacy standardization laws. And right next to Ayden is professor Kuo Wu. Kuo Wu has extensive knowledge in the united policy measures. Between 1,980 rearing and 1987, Kuo Wu worked for Cray research and this was the time for him to use the internet. Between 1987 and 1988 he worked for multicomputer flow organization. Between 1988 and 1990, he went back to work for Cray research again and between 1990 and 1998, he ape operated one of the first super computing centers in the AP region and began to deal with the internet and operate computing poms back then and he also used to serve as a member in ICANN as well and he also used to work for Telecom international and he also used to work to implement IP policies as well.
And thank you for coming. Because this session will be more about the round table, we really anticipate you to participate a lot just coming to and asking questions about multi‑stakeholder model, even between the panelists huer talking about what he they are saying. And you can also tell about what's happening in your region considering the multi‑stakeholder model and we'll expect a lot from your participation. Thank you. So to begin this session, we just wanted to listen to more about how IGF came to be and how multi‑stakeholder model was dependent considering this IGF. So, we just want to listen to Marcus Kumer's history lesson a bit.
>> MARCUS KUMER: Thank you, it's a great measure for me to be here this morning. I said when we compared the session I'm not going to give long speech and I'm definitely not going to prepare a big presentation, as many of you are longstanding participants in the IGF. Let me just make a few points and I hope if you have questions or if you think I'm off the track, keep shouting and I hope to be as interactive as possible. But, let me just explore a few areas, first of all, the use of the term multi‑stakeholder, look back a little bit at the history but then also look at function of the different organizations and lastly maybe also have a few thoughts on the role of governance.
Now, multi‑stakeholder has become a very popular term and by now, absolutely everybody claims fob multi‑stakeholder. We have from ICANN, IGF to start with. ICANN, ITU, the world economic forum, they all say they are multistakeholder organizations and it obviously has different meaning to different people but somehow I feel the inflation Harry use of the term, it's like inflation and money, the more inflation you have, the less value you have of the mand that also may be inflationary use of the term diminishes the value because we don't know what we're talking about. That's why it may be useful to look back a bit at the history. Words, they come and go in their fashions. I do remember back in the 1,990 recks, the absolute faction was PPPs, public private partnerships. That was then seen as the silver bullet to solve all the problems especially in a development corporation and multi‑stakeholder was not that much in use. Although it was practiced.
The summit opened up greatly nongovernment actors in Civil Society and a business and that inclusive character was very much part of the concept of sustainable development, but they did not use the term multi‑stakeholder. In 98, a pivotal year for ICANN and ICANN was set up as an organization to administer the domain name system. The term was nod used multi‑stakeholder, it was then used the private sector. ICANN was a private sector led organization as opposed to government led organizations, such as UNESCO, in whose building we are using today. And the part in mine yap list started the WSIS program and the general assembly resolution calling for a world summit on the information society. Again, they did not use the term multi‑stakeholder. They used governments that should also include private sector and Civil Society.
>> So, I have a question. So, back then, it was more about like multi-led, what the government was expecting from the internet.
>> It was set up as a classical summit where governments sit on the top of the pyramid or in the front of the room and the other actors sit behind and that was very much the discussions we had. I do remember the very first visits in 2002, it was a painful exercise in establishing rules of procedure.
Some governments wanted to make sure that there was not too much room given to nongovernmental actors and they clearly were sitting in the back at the room. They were given maybe five minutes at the lunch break when delegates started packing up then sometimes allotted to Civil Society or business speakers. They organized themselves very well. They had their own bureau so there was one speaker speaking on behalf of Civil Society. They only interfered at the end.
Then during the WSIS process, there was some minor improvements, some innovations. One innovation was actually discussed in this very building in July 2003 that maybe they should be an opening for nongovernmental speaker at the end of each item. Instead of just coming at the end of the morning session that the share should open discussion to allow nongovernmental speakers to come in at the end of each agenda item and then at the next agenda item, again, governments first.
The end of the first phase of WSIS in 2003, that was then a mandate given to inspector general of the UN. Books like a working group to internet governance and that clearly said should include all stakeholders. This, that working group was able to be all participants of the working group, members of the internet governance represented stakeholders and there, they participanted as leaders. We also had the open meetings where they interacted with the broader community and there again there was no hierarchy. Everybody was allowed to intervene. They wanted without having to wait for governments first and this had an influence, then, on the second phase of WSIS with a which was much more open and the IGF came out of that and adopted exactly the same methodology.
>> So, you mean that like from 1990, there were a growing influence from the Private Sectors and they used to, started to play bigger roles compared to previous years and each atmosphere was there but it was only substance 2003, the multi‑stakeholder process officially started to be adopted in the ‑‑
>> Yes, it's also, the rules of procedure for WSIS we had adopted, the state of the art rules of procedure but there are still very classical government‑heavy with this working group on internet governance, we managed to breakup this pattern and that influence to second phase of WSIS and that was also much more open to nongovernmental stakeholders. When negotiating the first outcome document of WSIS in 2003, I happened to chair the negotiating group on internet governance and that was then a government only group. There was the CEO of ICANN in the room but I had to send him out at the request of some governments. He was not allowed in. That change completely in the second phase of WSIS and the mandate given to the secretary general was a forum to discuss public policy issues. That based itself on the model of WCIG. The working group on internet governance. If you look at the outcome document of Geneva 2003 mentions multi‑stakeholders two or three times, but in rather obscure contexts.
Whereas in the Tunis outcome document, the Tunis agenda has multi‑stakeholder all over the place and that was taken from the report of the working group on internet governance. And when then the IGF was set up, the model clearly was a multi‑stakeholder model where all stakeholders participate as equals but again, a group that is known as MAG now, multi‑stakeholder advisory group to begin with was just called advisory group. And then the term was not used. And then by 2008, we used the term multi‑stakeholder advisory group as informally it had been used by especially Civil Society from 2008 onward also the UN reined in all official press releases.
But, that is maybe a good segue to also look at his function. The IGF, a function is not an operational function. The IGF is here to discuss policy issues and the multi‑stakeholder format was amazingly well accepted by all stakeholders, including governments. We were slightly apprehensive ahead of the first meeting but you did see a member, there was one workshop who a representative was sitting on the floor because the chairs left, which is unthinkable in the traditional UN context but that was accepted and most participants felt this open format led to open and vibrant discussions and that is, in essence, the success of the IGF that it allows stakeholders to come together as equals but again, IGF has no direct responsibility, no operational responsibility. The internet, they have operational procedures. But clearly, no procedure in place.
>> So, definitely younger generation because I came into the internet governance in 2016 so somehow it's quite surprising to hear there was no room for private sectors to talk in very lengthy manners back in like 2000 or even before that. So, it was only after the multi‑stakeholder model has been somehow like officially adopted by the U.S. and that the private sectors could somehow come into the Internet Governance Forums and talk, was given the equal with the government access as well. That's what I got, too.
>> Well, this is maybe slight exaggeration of the sector as it is, but it's just, the private sector was always involved that the rights given to the nongovernmental actors were more limited in the IGF, so to speak. But the point I'm trying to make it it's possible to be so open and loose in many ways as the IGF has no responsibility. Whereas, organizations that have a direct operational responsibility such as ICANN, for instance, you need to have more procedure in place. And again, of the internet organizations, iStarters known as ICANN, regional internet registries. Their question is, they say they're multi‑stakeholder, but are they truly multi‑stakeholder in the sense of, what is the role of governments. ICANN is a very sophisticated model that governments participate but do they participate as equals? There's some who don't like their role in ICANN because they are there in an advisory capacity. They feel we come in at the end of the process. Now, other people think that governments have too much say in ICANN because they have vitae rote? No, they don't but they have a way to influence the board. But, that's another discussion. But, if there's a question, you may well ask. It's not like the IGF where everybody participates as equals in ICANN. The roles are very clearly distributed and there is Monopoly for policy development and that is with the generic names supporting organization and the GNSO is also very jails of their role.
But, clearly, ICANN is not government‑led. That, again, brings us back to the origin of ICANN which was set up as a private sector‑led organization.
>> Okay. Because you have mentioned GNSO, and I know that ‑‑ is active. She has been very active in GNSO as well. So I just want to press the mic to Ayden so he can somehow talk about how you think about ‑‑ how they operate. In general.
>> AYDEN FERDELINE: Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Ayden and I'm a fellow within the foundation and I'm also a counselor on the GMSO for the noncommercial stakeholders group so I'm very cynical about multi‑stakholderism in general. I don't think it is particularly representative. I don't think it's particularly accountable. I'm not sure it necessarily leads to good policy being developed. I think it can somehow lead to policy being volunteered through exhaustion rather than through a reliance on evidence or a reliance on trying to reach the best possible outcome. And I think later when I speak, I would prefer to speak a bit more broadly than ICANN to speak about internet governance in general because I'm very cynical about the multi‑stakeholderism that is practiced within ICANN itself because I think there are certain stakeholders that have more muscle than others. The governments have muscle by virtue of state power.
The private sector has by virtue and Civil Society is essentially brushed aside and ignored and I'm not sure that the institutional set‑up is really designed to allow all perspectives to filter through versus perspectives to filter through where there may be some kind of benefit to what I would call the not impartial organization that is responsible for ultimately implementing the policy that this multi‑stakeholder community developed.
So, I'm sorry for that healthy dose of realism that I've just added there because, would you like me now to speak just about multi‑stakeholder and internet governance? Because that's something that I it would sort of say that I think is something that is desirable and it's something to be protected. For so many reasons. It's just unfortunate that I think a lot of the case studies of where it is applied aren't really great. Whether that is because of the lack of accountability, whether that is because of many issues, and increasingly, I'm wondering, is it evenness? And that's a really provocative statement that I've just made there as well but I think we've seen in recent years that many of the reasons behind resorting to the model simply haven't proven to be true. So, I guess there were two classical explanations for multi‑stakeholderism. Firstly, that it was this natural extension of the enlightenment and Jeffersonian principles. This idea that particular power without representative of the government is illegitimate. Other interested parties could participate in the policy deliberations that would impact them alongside governments. That's good.
And so, that's how institutions like ICANN gained their legitimacy to govern, I would argue, they gained their legitimacy in direct proportion to which they facility the participation of the stakeholders impacted by the decisions that they make. I guess the second explanation for why multi‑stakholderism came to be was that one can't have a global infrastructure who's interoperability is dependent upon dozens overlapping rules, overlapping frameworks, it just wouldn't work. So, to ensure that the internet continued to operate at this global comment, these frameworks and policies had to be developed in a in way that would allow forints operability. There was a traditional solution here, a historical solution that was avoided which was global treaty organizations.
We could have, their regulatory approach would have provided for an overall commonality of frameworks but they would not have provided for open, equitable, nongovernmental participation and they certainly would not have provided for open, equitable Social Security participation. And so, for those reasons we sort of avoided the historical solution. And when I say we, here, I really mean nonstate actors and in particular, Civil Society. So, we encourage governments not to regulate unilaterally, we encourage them to discuss on a basis of shared values and mutual interest. And for the long time that seemed to be the best approach but I was thinking about this earlier this year when enforcement of the European union's general data protection regulation came into effect.
What this really validated was states taking extra territorial regulatory measures and it working and enforcement actually happening. And I'm not saying this would work for every state, but every state is going to have the power, but I think that we've now, be it because of circumstance or intentional strategy that we missed two decades ago, we now improved state interest can actually be maintained for some of the regulations that have an internet‑wide effect.
And that is something that I think is really interesting and worth watching over the coming years because I think we're going to see a variety of new regulations emerging from states with extra territorial effect and serge as someone who researches the development of data regulations, I'm not expecting to see any regulations emerge that are radically different from the GDPR. I think we've also seen this outsider's need for stakeholders to comply with the first law that comes to market, so to speak, will effectively preclude other frameworks be they stronger or weaker from getting due consideration. So, I think that is also something really interesting. So, I'm going to leave my remarks here. I think I made a few provocative statements. Feel free to approach me to discuss further but I guess what I sort of insinuated here is that the European union kind of displays the multi‑stakeholder model with the multilateral model online. And it seems to be working. And suddenly, a very shrewd approach, if it was intentional. But certainly a valuable lesson for all involved.
>> Yeah, thank you, Ayden for that, that is actually quite help. I mean, I said I was not cynical, but said you were cynical. But I also question whether ICANN is truly multi‑stakeholder in the same sense the IGF is and there are reasons for that. I mean, the IGF is really something with no direct responsibility. My next point would have been exactly that. Was going to say who remembers John Perry Barlow. He used to be the literal cyst of the Grateful Dead but he also declared the independence of cyber space in the 1990s and with strong belief we don't need governments anymore but now we clearly see governments are back and the GDPR is a very good example.
And in many ways, in the past few years, many have said multilateralism versus multi‑stakholderism and I would also question whether that is not a false dicot my in a sense. The IGOs have clearly opened up to nongovernmental actors. They recognize the real expertise is clearly outside of governments and that was also clearly what led to the formation of ICANN as the U.S. government felt an IGO would not be well equipped to deal with a fast moving technology. But, governments are back but we have not yet quite found the right balance on how to work with governments. They want to work on the train, that's for sure. But they can't be sure. With that, I conclude and happy to answer questions.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. So I just want to pass my mic so Sandra because she has been also working in like European IGF as well. So, I certainly believe that she has a lot more to talk about all these processes and multi‑stakeholder model as well. So, how do you think it's actually like being practiced within the European continents?
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Well, I can speak, first of all, before I get critical here, I want to make sure that I really whole heartedly support the multi‑stakeholder model. I think that's the best model to move forward with. It's not perfect as democracy is also not perfect and not even reality in our countries in the world but it's probably the form of state that and I think for regulation. Internet and also for regulation of other sectors like energy or climate, multi‑stakeholder model should be the model that should be aimed at, but, as I said, it's not perfect. For markers, intervention, I understood the big achievement from the WSIS project was that Civil Society for the first time was not standing out of the door, outside protest egg but had no right to speak when groups came together and started to discuss the digital future. But now we see that Civil Society is the biggest stakeholder group at least in the IGF and this has also some backlash because we are missing other stakeholders, we are missing to a great extent a technical community and we are missing the private sector and here it is the same as if we miss Civil Society in the past. You miss one stakeholder group and weaken the group. Therefore we have to strengthen our efforts to include all stakeholders equally. As an organizer, I'm asking myself how to achieve this. Just inviting them?
They are not coming. It has cost implications, time implications so they decide, am I going there or not? And therefore, this call for a more tangible outcome is on the table. Personally, I think if we would have an IGF every year, negotiate a declaration or something at the end, we would really lose the openness of the debate. Just imagine big companies are attending the IGF because they want to have their little piece in the declaration, same applies for government. I think this works on the other hand, push back and I'll Civil Society again. So, I don't think that's a solution.
At EuroDIG, sorry if I do a little bit of promote, but EuroDIG, we prevent those message has. Messages is a rather neutral term. It is a recommendation. It is something that comes out but not something what was negotiated in a way. And IGF last year started also to produce messages and I hope they will continue this year because I really think this is a term, a type of outcome that you can put forward, that you can revisit one or two years after and see what happened in the past.
I think there are still a lot of space for improvement.
Then, something I also realized when we are trying to reach out to new communities, for instance, insurance sector. Banking sector. Healthcare sector, pharmacy. They are all affected by what we call Internet Governance but if you go to them and say, you should participate in the Internet Governance Forum and discuss the regulation of the internet, they just don't understand.
They, it's really difficult, and just imagine, this term, Internet Governance, translated into multiple languages. It is really confusing. Sometimes it's totally misunderstood just by the way it is translated, and sometimes as Markus said already, people have different understanding about multi‑stakholderism and about Internet Governance. So, I personally started to find new words, easier words, that make it easier for those we want to actually reach out to understand. So, what I am using at the moment, and I can't really tell you if I will be successful, but I'm saying, we are discussing to shape our digital future.
It's a bit broader than just concentrating on the inter, on the network, on the connected computers. It implies also that we are talking about societal questions, about ethical questions and this is much broader than just discussing the governance, the regulation of a network. So, this is, one of the efforts I'm trying to do, and then on the issue of multi‑stakeholder versus multilateralism, there's a difference. Multilateralism is between one, two, or more states. Multi‑stakeholder involves all the stakeholders that are concerned.
I think both models are justified and they both have to exist. Sometimes states will, and they will not stop doing so sometimes state whether negotiate, find a treaty, do a contract whatsoever, and this is multilateralism and this is okay but some questions you have to address in a more broader sense in the multi‑stakeholder model, Ayden, you just said it's exhausting sometimes. We receive results by exhaustment. I know what you mean. I am also involved in ICANN and involved in this lengthy debate and process but I did see positive examples. For example, this was truly a shining example of how the multi‑stakeholder model could and shod work. So, I'm deeply convinced that it is the best model to move forward. Results that come out of multi‑stakeholder discussions definitely be more sustainable but they take time and time is money and this is the big issue and this is where we have to probably convince others to participate and to sigh the need to move forward and not just wait for an outcome or for something to negotiate. It is a societal debate that we have to do and I used to compare that with the right to vote for women. I mean, not in every country women can already vote but for instance, Switzerland was one of the last countries in Europe where women were allowed to vote.
It took three votes before they were allowed to vote. But, the societal debate that took place beforehand, that was actually important part and this is what we are doing here. We are having a debate and the results, the outcomes, they will not necessarily be directly connected to our debate because we want to bring that one to one in connection with each other, but actually, the results are based on the discussion that we are having here at floor forums like this and I think that's such an important thing that we should not stop moving forward, but improving and including, or improving by including all stakeholders equally.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Sandra. And we definitely can say that multi‑stakeholder, I mean, the term itself has come into the world only maybe 20 years ago. Or even like ten years ago, and we have also like written a thing that still a lot of debates are going on within side the academic sphere as well about how we can define the multi‑stakeholder model as well. And I definitely can, I definitely think that this model or this term itself is somehow like ongoing like discussion topic and I want to pass the mic to Kuo Wu professor because she used to be working in the technical sector and yeah. It's going to have a lot of words.
>> KUO WU: Thank you. Yeah, actually, I start from the technical side. In the very beginning, actually, it was supercomputing and supercomputing actually was networking also. And so, I was participating in the networking since the 1980s. And I think the Americas gave a very good explanation how multi‑stakeholder mechanism inside the UN system and also some of the ICANN stuff. Let me back to see what is the core issue of the multi‑stakeholder mechanism now we are looking for.
I think it's a very important is what we are looking for, the multi‑stakeholder mechanism is open and transparent. Open and transparency are critical and very important. The reason is, the open and transparent actually is a, the whole idea actually came from the very early day of the IETF meeting. There is an idea of the internet standard developing meetings and this idea actually tried to find out what is internet standard and to be global acceptance and so, this is the idea they're always running in the open and transparency. Although, at the time, they are not talking about also called a multi‑stakholderism but I think the core of the multi‑stakholderism is built from the idea of the beginning.
And then, you are looking around the, ICANN. Basically, ICANN is only in charge of three major things. The IP address, domain name, and then loose server managements or coordinations. But, if you look at IR, the regional internet registry in charge of the IPV4 policy stuff, basically, there are regional internet registry, IR, in the five different continents. They're actually running in the membership base, no. You have to get a membership, but, so when they are talking about policy, it's open. Anybody can make a comment into the, you know, the IP address policy. It's open. You don't need to be a member. You can participate in this policy.
So, in that case, you can see there from the IEF go to the I, they're always open transparency.
Let me put a little bit more information into Mar co s' talk. Actually P multi‑stakeholder, this idea is coming into 1998 because at a time, the many governments actually arguing how the INI is okay and how the INI should be operations. And somehow in the United States, the U.S. government in the very beginning, they agreed to go to it the new corporation and particularly outsourcing to the Harvard law school to developing b kind of Constitution today we call is the bylaws of the ICANN.
And at the time, they begin to put the multi‑stakeholderism into the bilaw. I remember the famous ‑‑ is in charge to developing in by law and two of his students is involving into developing the by law. And the by law of ICANN actually developing what we see today, the so‑called multi‑stakeholder mechanism, if you look at the stakeholder in ICANN you talk about GNSO, at the time, also political supporting order to show cause. You know, and then they begin to developing so‑called, and their position into the ICANN mechanisms. And so, this is kind of coming back to some kind of the ICANN and I don't need to go on regarding for the IGF, Markus has already commented but only one thing I want to add in here. If I remember in the second WSIS meeting in Tunis, actually, in the government, they are looking for the potential possibility, how to locate ICANN. They even propose four or five different models how the ICANN should be belonging. You know, inside UN system or related, strong related to the UN system. But, by the end of the WSIS meeting in Tunis, there's actually no conclusion regarding for the ICANN located.
So, began to b generate so the IGF right now. And the 2005, I think Markus already commented how the multi‑stakeholder mechanism came into the IGF. And I think it's an important thing, the multi‑stakeholder mechanism is particularly today. We all know we have a problem in the real world, just to take one example, you might be, everybody has experiment. For example, like Aruba. Aruba kind of tried to run the global operation, but in many countries, they have trouble with local taxi regulation or policy. So, you can see some of the country allowed the Uber to run their operation of business but some of the countries or cities, they say no. And what is the problem? The major problem is because Uber the platform is running globally.
So, it's very important some of the, one of the penalties talking about GDPR, I think political, particularly if you remember once upon a time talking about intellectual property issue in the U.S., the Congress, arguing about how to protect the intellectual property.
Also in the EU system, talking about , you know? The similar problem is because the technology and its platform actually running global. But, what you're doing with the issue might be only in the, is a domestic, but how you can balance the technology global, technology to the domestic issues. So, this is, I think H is a lot of things we need to learn and actually, I think there's one of the major, you know, the issue is how we can allow the multi‑stakeholder to come into their voices before the government sets up policy or sets up regulation, I think there's one of the reasons. And the main purpose of the multi‑stakeholder mechanism for me, actually, is open transparency because most of the government sometimes is like a bread box, of course. Of course, not all, but some of the government is like a bread box. You don't know what is a regulation, how you the policy is developing and the technical people and business people, they only can have a very slight understanding how the policy developments.
And for looking for a better, you know, the card nation into these technology and those, the real world has happened. For example, we see many things that happen
This state. The origin and many different kinds of the e‑commerce operations. You are getting more complicated or sophisticated system in our business or delivered occupation is not leaving along living in your hometown. You even are living in a small city or small town but if this global technology is moving into your living room. You know? So, how we can walk it out to come up with a much better policy to fulfill or to resolve this issue and I think this might be the value of the multi‑stakeholder mechanism. It might be the people say, they deserve some of the back drop of the multi‑stakeholder mechanism. I always tried to say that, you know, the people, we don't have, usually, we don't have a really the perfect solution. But, what we can do, we actually tried to have a optimized solution to resolve the issue then we go into enhance or improvement
And I think there is a reason we are sitting here talking about the multi‑stakeholder mechanism today. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you for your comments on how technologies have somehow overcome the world and how it became like a levelized and how the government sectors and other Private Sectors just began to come in to regulate like all these Private Sectors and technologies. So, what I actually got to understand about multi‑stakeholderism is that it can be actually thought of as some kind of revolution, evolution of like social structure. Just like we got to have some kind of evolution of technologies such as internet, to adapt to this kind of new technologies, social, like, structure, also some kind of new firms or new structure and new organization to deal with all this kind of new technologies which. This item, say is also very critical because you mentioned that actually the government started to play a large role, maybe a larger role. So, what do you think about this? Do you think that the role of the government will just grow bigger and bigger? Or do you think that it can just maybe rival with other private sector or other stakeholders.
>> AYDEN FERDELINE: I think, this is Ayden, for the record. I think there's a potential for that. I think if we do not fix the multi‑stakeholder model ourselves, if we do not look at it critically and explore why it doesn't work or how we can actually improve it, and actually improve T. and when I say we here, I mean those who are mon state actors. If we don't improve it, I think it's very possible that what will happen is the multilateral model will take over. Now, if you ask me whack are some concrete steps we take to improve the model I have a few suggestions to take it forward. As I mentioned before, I am on the GNSO council and the GNSO council within ICANN managed the pollings process over the past few years for a working Group that failed over the past few years. It was simply disbanded after hundreds of meetings, no outcomes which is not great. But we did do something of a post mortem afterwards to understand why this working group the registration policies development working group failed and there were a few causes we identified. One, that there wasn't an independent conflict resolution process in place.
So, everyone, I shouldn't say everyone, but some stakeholders weren't were prepared to die over certain requests that they wanted and others were prepared to die over the same issue so we certainly couldn't move forward. There was gridlock so perhaps when we look at ways we reform the multi‑stakeholder model, we need to make sure that there is a way to have some b kind of independent conflict recess s Louise and also to be able to have some kind of independent actor say, make some kind of subjective as to whether someone is being. Maybe we need to become better at breaking pieces into bite size chunks. How can we do that? We also thought about, how do you review working group leadership. If you have a working group going on for several years and there's no system in place to review the leadership to make sure it's functioning, can we fix that? And just to be clear, I'm not insinuating at all that the leadership that that particular working group had was deficient in any way. I don't think they have they had good leadership but just as an ongoing mechanism as the model matures, we do need to make sure that in environments where we're applying a model and they're perhaps in a working group setting, something has not been making progress. Maybe there isn't the right leadership structure in place.
And then the final thought that we had in our post mortem which is, might seem at odds with the multi‑stakeholder model was also to consider alternatives to the open bottom up participatory model that we had. So, in that working group where you had hundreds of people on every call once a week, for a 19‑minute call, it doesn't really allow time for anyone to speak or to make things substandard. It also allows for filibustering to happen. Maybe there's some flexibility to consider that maybe one‑size‑fits‑all model isn't going to work. There needs to be different models explored depending on the issue and maybe you don't need every stakeholder to be participating in every discussion. Maybe you need to make sure you have the relevant voices. How you determine who the relevant voices are, how you ensure representation, there's another discussion. There are no easy answers here but simply at a high level if I was to say, if we think about how can we improve the model moving forward, that's something we might want to consider because multi‑stakeholderism I think is not working at the moment as well as it should but I agree that it is important and has to be.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks. And I think Sandra might have something to ‑‑ okay.
>> KUO WU: I'd like to make a comment B you know, you are talking about a multi‑stakeholder mechanism using that word. I don't think so. You know, first of all, in the day when you were thinking about the government of the organization when they were setting up the policy P. usually, it's only government and then there might be some business sector trying to talk to the got government, try to understand that. Or might be talking with NGO, you know, the academic or some of the community. But one thing is usually being noted, it's technical communities. The point is that right now in the world, right now we are running almost everything on the internet. So, it's critical that the internet, if you don't know what you're going to break, then we had to be very careful about what is internet structure is running in here. So if you look at no matter is our domestic, national, government, or international organization. I think at least right now, they are beginning to recognize that the technical community is the information is important to get, for example, you are talking about GDPR is one of the issues.
So, of course, I'm not saying the multi‑stakeholder mechanism going to solve everything but I think at least it's generally kind of two things is important in this whole, the domestic policy, international policy to developments. First of all is a now and more P you know, the government recognized open and transparency would make a bad policy. I think that's the first point. I think there is how the model stakeholder delivers the core value to the policy developments. The second thing I'm saying is now when the government is developing a regulation policy. For example, might be, many of you know that many people expect the 5G and now the people have to come back to figure out how you can implement the technical solution for the 5G is not like in the early days, make an open bid and resolve the issues.
Many of the things might not be really, you know, talking about the policy developing everything based on the multi‑stakeholder mechanism. But, it's core, its value is a begin gradually to accept it by the week later to, you know, working on the policy. I think there's my point. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. So I heard that there's your question from ‑‑
>> Yes, I have one. It's from Wakiberry. From University, PG in cyber norms and media. The question is, it's a question and a comment. Hello, Okay. Hello, cyber norm, making cyber rules verification prima facie stakeholder in more democratic trains parent fair internet governance model. Otherwise, how can we trust American internet? This is framed only under UN framework and the greatest enemy of internet is digital unilateralism and digital terrorism with this approach clearly addressed in U.S. nationalist cyber strategy, 2019, how can other ‑‑ counter internet and what's the meaning of not making U.S. unilateral and nationalist policy. With that fragmentation, what must be done?
>> Maybe we need to listen to the question again? Did anyone catch the question? Okay.
>> This is the sort of question we heard right at the beginning of the Internet Governance discussions which was essentially about the role of one government, and that was seen as not the appropriate way of dealing with a global resource.
We had long discussions during visits and since then a lot has happened as well. With the translation, the U.S. government has withdrawn from its oversight roll over ICANN in a function, but obviously ICANN is still located in the U.S. and this is still, I think, at the heart of the comment that was also very much at the beginning of the debate. Many governments felt then that the internet should be dealt with as a global resource like most other global resource by an intergovernmental organization, preferably under a UN umbrella and that is essentially what we are talking about here. It's not so much multi‑stakeholder versus multilateral. It is government‑led versus non‑government‑led and clearly, the internet is dealt with in a nongovernment led way by the community and decentralized organizations and they are adapted to the distributed structure of the underlying technology, the internet is also distributed technology.
And one single organization would be at odds with the underlying technology. ICANN has gained more prominence than the, more emotional than the numbers, but the same applies to the numbers and I think one very good argument to defend the existing system is it actually works. That's how I think the main legitimacy of the organizations that are actually running the internet have it from the fact that the internet works.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks. And I heard that there is another question from the floor. So, okay.
>> Thank you very much. I present myself, I am Nassir, professor of University in direct communications, ICT and the economy. And I've been the president of the conference of 2002 in Moraccas when this time, as general secretary. I have formed communications in ICT in Morocco. So, it's just a question and a comment in the question. You know that ITUU the international intelligence unit is the more international organization in the world. It was created in 1860 and at this time, it was international telegraph union, then it became communications then to ITU and it comes something depending on the United Nations when the United Nations was created for first other in 1918 to then 1945. My question is that, a lot of problems in the governance of internet. There are technical problems, standardization and all that. That was in ITU for telecommunications. You have also medical problems. Privacy, lot of things like. You have technical issues, like the fins and all that.
You have economic issue has. You have social and political cultural issues. And you are just at the beginning of this resolution. I follow the resolution of the communications and internet and it was very fast and at the beginning, because a lot of questions merging now. So, my question is how to have an efficient model. The intergovernmental model was the ITU. Works for something when there are telecommunications Monopolies. Then after, there was private sector. Then internet. And big actors of this private sector. What we tried in Marakashan which was, Mr. Veins was president of ICANN, is how to find something working efficiently. This international global forum is very interesting, but it's innovate working on an operational way. It's just beating a forum and the question that we have is how to make different stakeholders or different persons government organizations private society work together for this new sources you are creating and building.
So, it's a huge question, and there is no perfect model that what we can do is to improve the models and adjust. And thus was this story of telecommunications from the 17th century. Thank you very much.
>> Let me try. It's a big question. Okay. Let me try too, from my point of view. I think basically the difference in ITU and also regarding ‑‑ I think a lot of people might be a little bit, I tried to say ‑‑ I can roar. Actually, ICANN only do z3 things. The IP ‑‑ loose server coordination managements. Regarding enforcement e‑commerce or something like that, on top of the application is not really into the ICANN schema okay? But the point is the developing structure of the ITU and also we see today in the internet, the major difference is in the ITU is a much larger international organization structure. So, if we are looking at how the telephone system is developing to really go into the worldwide population, we took almost 1,500 years, the internet is not developing in that way. The internet actually developing is a kind of not centralized, not centralized.
So, for the people, if you want to get into connect to the internet is getting easier, you don't need to have kind of the national carrier in the past, in the old days. Today's telephone company to provide you the service. Any people, if you can get on the internet through whatever channel, then you are part of the internet population so you can see why the internet population goes so fast. So, I think the two different approaches from the telephone and also the internet that generate different issues and different questions. So, I think, yeah, I agree. It is, there is maybe we can talk about, you know, particularly in the ICANN that people continue talking about accountability issues. You know, and the accountability issue in the ICANN is more than just the accountable to the supporting organization, particularly you want to talk about is how they can accountable to the global user.
You know, I think there is a kind of differences and in the ITU. You know, we always go through the government and to understand how the private sector or the individual. So, I think there is two major differences in the past.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks. And there was a question from the floor, so. Okay. Claudio.
>> I'm sorry, it's not clear to me whether you're calling on me or someone else?
>> Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, Claudio can go first.
>> All right. Thank you very much. This is Claudio Pasena, I am at the state University in Brazil for science and information. I'm also community of ICANN involved in internet governance regional forums and schools and internet governance also. And I was listening to my fellow professor, he had stated the existence of the international organization that is there for not more than 150 years. And this multilateralism, this model, we have been patient enough with it for over 150 years, and yet it doesn't all the problems it was designed to address from start.
And we have been patient enough with that model. Now, multi‑stakeholderism as we know it in this space here ray couple of decades old, maybe two decades and the way we know it. The internet governance forum hasn't been there for that long and regional movements of Internet Governance forums are just starting.
So, I do acknowledge that we need to have more concrete outputs and results and I congratulate EuroDIG on the massive exercise we had this year. I do understand that our financial constraints in that, there is money that finances this model in the way we want to build it : but the fact of having the voices, even if they are not the most adequate and the most relevant ones a the this moment, it's different from the models that we had in the past.
Even if you're talking about ICANN because it's interesting, I share with Ayden the same concerns but I do not share the same skepticism or sin six about the model itself and the outputs because I do not see many more other international corporations or organizations whose board sits in front of the community and answers direct questions several times a year. Does that solve all the organizational problems? Far from doing that, but this is something different and we experience something different for a couple of years only so my call here is even acknowledging the difficulty that we face, even acknowledging the financial constraints on putting that model to work, let's not lose the patience with the multi‑stakeholder model when it's just starting to produce its first results. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks. And Sandra ‑‑
(applause)
>> SANJA KELLY: I can just echo what you're saying and to give clarity, the IGF, for instance, we are now under 13th additional ‑‑ with 13, you are a teenager. So if you look at the IGF, a parent that gives its teenager. I really can only echo what you say. ICANN is a little bit older but the ICANN model is slightly different and for me, that's actually one of the best functioning multi‑stakeholder models I know and I must say I don't know any others and I'm interested if any one of you knows another model where the decision making capacity is in a multi‑stakeholder because this is the big difference. The decision making capacity. At IGF level, we are discussing. We are talk shop.
what I said earlier, why I consider a talk shop to be so important if anyone has other models of multi‑stakeholderism, I would be really interested to learn about. I'm not aware of any. As for the IGF, think B we are a teenager.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you and there was another comment from the floor. Could you ‑‑ Okay. Okay.
>> I'm Ted Hardy. I'm the chair of the internet architecture board which is part of the internet engineering task force and an advisory board to the Internet Society. I wanted to make two replays. One of which was to the gentleman who was concerned about the mechanisms of the IGF and how that would relate to the ITU and I wanted to say that there are volunteer technical organizations which are kesh concerned with advancing the internet which do come here to the IGF to hear what other parts of the Ministry say.
As it happens, my colleague, Alyssa Cooper who is the chair of the IGF is on a particular different panel for this particular thing but she would be here otherwise and I believe the cooperation between the technical community and IGF communities is an important part of why this is a community and multi‑stakeholder effort works because different people are willing to come together and listen to each other in ways that might be more difficult if we went and tried to participate in ITU processes. The second thing is, I will let the gentleman know that the IGF sits its leaders in front of itself three times a year and we sit in front of our colleagues to listen to whatever concerns they might have and to make changes. And I believe that one of the critical things about the longterm success of the ITF is a technical body is its radical openness.
It has no membership. It has participation. Anyone may any effort that's part of the ITF and you can do that by being part of a mail being list or part of some other technical effort like a GitHub repo. But, in all of those cases, there is absolutely no barrier to entry beyond that which is imposed by understanding the technical topic and unfortunately, understanding it in English. I think that there are methods that the history of the ITF suggests might eventually come into the IGF. In particular, making more of the efforts based in internet technologies rather than meetings. That radically lowers the cost and it makes possible to sustain long term efforts throughout a year and I believe that those are available to us as we try and improve the multi‑stakeholder process that we see before us. Thank you for your attention.
>> Hi there, my name is Colin Curry. I wanted to just briefly respond that there are quite a lot of multi‑stakeholder initiatives in other sectors so everything from disaster response to environmental management to world health or even airline slot management is an example of multi‑stakeholder decision making processes. So, I think that it's really important that within internet governance pace spaces we don't consider ourselves too unique because we might lose are the opportunity to take lessons learned from other sectors and apply them here. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks and I think that's really an important point because we're actually like, the panelists, just trying to find out whether what kind of other multi‑stakeholder models can exist outside the Internet Governance and I think that's really important know there is some kind of other ‑‑ multi‑stakeholder model to exist and function very well. And I also thank for the chair of IAB as well and I really agree that this IGF just started to function. I mean and because we all agree that like IGF somehow lacks the possibility of decision making but we also know that this kind of conversation is really important.
Like, this is an actually very critical process because all different stakeholders can actually understand what kind of like problems are going on outside their own interests and I think concerning that, this IGF is really an important place to talk about all those issues to make the internet open and transparent and if any, is there any other comments or? Where a?
>> I'd like to echo the previous, the, you know, the floor talking about it. If I remember in 2003 and 2005 WSIS meeting, I go to WSIS meeting and I think many -- you actually know that. The session run in the morning, 9:00 AM to the 5:00 PM, and there is only the delegate that most of the time can talk. And if I remember in the morning session and afternoon session is only 50 minutes for the rest of the peoples. Preponderance so, that means many of you are sitting here in the old way of the WSIS meeting, actually, you cannot get a microphone to talk. I think that's one of the key values of the IGF multi-stakeholder model to allow the people in the equal businesses talking about your point of view, no matter what the issue is.
And of course we understand that the issues in the internet right now are so many and so complicated and every is an emitter -- but at least it varies and gets into getting your policy. I think four of the multi-stakeholder is in place.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you and I think it's the right time to wrap up this session. Thank you all for your comments and thank you all for coming here to talk about your opinions and I just want to echo what Sandra has just said that like IGF is just coming, just begin to experience its teenage period. I know that a lot of similar sessions are going on in IGF this year and I also know that NRI session which is also going to be about multi-stakeholder model and I really wish that be there is some kind of more talks about how multi-stakeholder model can be developed and can be further implemented in the IGF. Okay. Thank you all for coming.