FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES – ENHANCING MULTI-STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
22 OCTOBER 2013
8:00
ORIENTATION SESSION
The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Eigth Meeting of the IGF, in Bali, Indonesia. 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.
>> -- the programme paper, which you will see there, outlines the entire preparatory process and the different sort of sessions that will be taking place. The session notes are the detailed agendas of the -- all the events that are taking place in this main hall throughout the week. And the schedule, which is printed that some of you have here already, has actually been updated since this was printed, so make sure you refer to the schedule that's on the website throughout the week to get the most updated information, and that organises all of the events under the various themes so that you can find what you want. So that's a good, important reference to have.
>> Thank you, Brian. Any questions from any one of you? Anyone who has been at IGF wants to share shortly the experience of managing through the schedule? Nina.
>> Thanks. Hi, people. As Brian was speaking, I want you to look at this. If you can read, I will read it for you. It's Master Programme Sheet. This is my IGF in the IGF. The thing, like they were saying is that you can get in here and get lost. So you must follow up. The most important thing is that you know where you are going and how you are going about it.
So between -- actually, I have local travel check-in, I have all the dinners, I have all my lunchtime planned, I know where I am going, and it's fixed, and I know when I have free time. So I just want to share that with everyone. It's still day 1 today, so you can sit down and make your own programme and know where to be. You must check to know if the rooms have changed. You must keep updated and arrive before time. Don't go in very late so that people do not overwhelm you.
So my experience I am going to share is be prepared, make a programme for yourself, and the other thing is check the list of participants and know nice people you want to hang out with, you want to have an opportunity with, and just people you would like to meet. If you would like to meet me, hey, come on now.
(Laughter)
>> Thank you.
(Applause)
This is serious. I mean, the IGF requires for all of us the preparation to know what we want to do there, and one of the worst things about the IGF is it always happens at these so nice places, but you are so overwhelmed with activities and things to do, especially if you prepare and so on, you don't want to break your schedule, your own one, and sometime, but you should find some time for fun as well, that's also true.
Any other comments about the experiences of the IGF or any questions from the newcomers about the types of sessions, what you should listen to, and so on? You can raise your hand even after if you think of something.
If not, we will move to the next part, which is going through how the IGF emerged, so what happened in the World Summit and what was the political context of these times, and then we will try to listen to a couple of different stakeholders and also some of you, what are the positions -- well, basically, the positions of the stakeholders about different issues and so on.
Jovan, you were involved in WSIS from the beginning. You haven't missed any IGF. Oh, you have. You missed in Rio, you missed the Rio experience. Share with us.
>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Vlad. Good morning. I just realised I cannot invite her for lunch in these few days. She is overworked.
It is great to meet you all, and as Vlad suggested, I will try to squeeze ancient history of the IGF in about five minutes. It's a part of my life story. When I joined the first time in Internet Governance, I tried to explain Working Group on Internet Governance, I tried to explain to my wife what I was doing, and she said well, that's very, very strange. Then I tried to explain to my friends, and they said Jovan, my printer doesn't work or I get new software. Can you come to install it? That was the awareness about Internet Governance 10 or 15 years ago. Now it has moved, and now people are asking more reasonable questions.
But on a more serious note, let me just give you a quick survey what has happened over the last, let's say 30 years. As you know, IG started bottom up with academic and professional communities in the United States. It was sort of circle of engineers with relaxed way of governing at that time very early Internet. Later on, the first complexities were introduced, mainly DNS. I am now simplifying, not oversimplifying. And they needed some sort of governance. There was some sort of loose structure started appearing.
And in '90s, Internet started becoming important academically, economically, and the first elements of the need to more serious governance were needed. And in late '90s, you have the whole development about ICANN. ICANN was established as some sort of early DNS battle between this early Internet community, business community, trademark community, and various players.
Now, what is important for us, for IGF and World Summit on Information Society, governments realised in the late '90s, beginning of our century, that something important is happening in this field of the Internet. And they started moving into the Internet -- early Internet Governance discussions. This was one process.
The other process was if you can recall, in '90s, there were many conferences, conferences on population, Rio conference on sustainable development, there were conferences all over. There was Copenhagen on the human rights. Cairo conference on the population. There was some sort of fashion of organising major UN events. Therefore, ITU came to the idea, the plenipot meeting, to organise conference on the ICT. And this is how the idea for the World Summit on Information Society came into the reality.
The first Summit was organised in 2003. It was unique Summit because it had two events, a Geneva event in 2003 and Tunis event in 2005. Therefore, during these two events, Internet Governance emerged on the diplomatic agenda.
In 2005 in Tunis, there was Tunis compromise between two views, which are still existing today, one view that Internet should be governed through mainly nongovernmental processes or later on multistakeholder process, and the other view that Internet, like any other issue, climate change, migration, should be governed through intergovernmental process. Therefore, Internet Governance Forum was created as a compromise between these two views, and the part of the compromise deal was that it is part of the UN, it is organised under the UN umbrella. But it is not typical UN process. It is multistakeholder, very informal, very bottom-up process. And this is uniqueness of the Internet Governance Forum both uniqueness and also weakness in how it is managed.
Therefore, you have challenge and you have risks. And you should keep in mind when you are analyzing, when you are following what's going on in Internet Governance Forum. Therefore, this is inbuilt element into architecture of the IGF that compromises between two different views.
We have had eight IGFs. In the meantime, what was happening in real life, there has been enormous explosion of the Internet Governance developments. We got Facebook, Twitter, almost 2 billion users.
Now, the key question that we have to address, not only at this IGF but this year, the next year, is what is suitable governance structure that should support this enormous development in order, A, to facilitate future development, not to constrain; and B, to protect public interests and to have proper role for governments and other public institutions.
Therefore, we are in a very visiting Tunis discussion about this compromise, but different context. Therefore, this is a short ancient history of the Internet Governance Forum, and also background for understanding where are we now and what is underlying theme to discussion that we will be facing because you will be -- you will be following many discussions, but you should also know what is the underlying dynamics and what is the history, how we came to this point today and how all these discussions are influencing what we will be discussing at the IGF next three days and throughout this year and the next year in trying to shape the future of the Internet Governance Forum. And we should keep in mind that that new architecture should keep vitality and what is good from the Internet Governance since its early days, the open process, bottom-up process, involvement, creativity, while adding this layer of protection of the public interest in its various forms on national, international level.
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Jovan. When we are talking about the IGF, some people -- I hear it's often -- well, they say the IGF is not a negotiating body, so we can't have anything out of it. But we have a bunch of people which are just scattering and talking about and so on, and this dialogue between stakeholders, I figured out after a number of years that in fact, this is negotiations. It just lasts for much longer than sitting around the table negotiating the paper. But I think Peter has a lot of experience with this kind of multistakeholder negotiations, not only within the IGF, which is a long process, but also within the Commission for Science, Technology and Development of UN, which is in a way in charge of deciding on the future, on possible reforms of the IGF and so on.
Peter, what are your experiences? Why do we meet here? Is it just a traveling circus around the world?
>> PETER MAJOR: Good morning. Why do we meet here? I don't know. Probably it's dedication, adventure, experience. I would think it's a unique experience. The first time I came here, I was just amazed. Why? Because the approach we are having here is completely different whatever you may experience somewhere else, meaning that you can approach some ministers if you wish to, you can approach parliamentaries, you can talk to CEOs, whoever on an equal footing. So this is a unique opportunity for you to do that.
Now, I think there's some truth in saying that in spite of the fact that it's not a negotiating forum, we are still negotiating. We are taking input from all stakeholders, and it's extremely valuable.
In a negotiating environment, probably people start talking in a very United Nations-like language, which sometimes doesn't really convey the real meaning. Here it's more relaxed and you can have the real information how people think about different issues, and there are a lot of issues.
Well, to make your life a bit harder, after all this information you have received up to now, I would like to add some more. I have been told that in a good presentation you can't concentrate on more than three items. Up till now, I think you have already had about 10 or 15. So I don't want really to increase the confusion, but it has been already said that in some way, it is under the umbrella of the United Nations, IGF itself, that it is apart from the United Nations. However, it has already been said that as for the future of the IGF, it is the United Nations who is going to have its final say.
Why do I say so? As you know, this is the eighth event of the IGF. We have started in 2006. There was a renewal of the mandate, which was for five years, and this is the second five years, and we hope that the -- the IGF is going to continue beyond 2015. 2015 is the magical year where we have a kind of review of the whole process, including IGF.
There has been some mention of the World Summit of Information Society. We are going to have the tenth anniversary of the World Summit of Information Society in 2015, meaning we are going to have this evaluation, and hopefully the renewal of the mandate of the IGF, which is going to continue.
Having said that, whatever the outcome will be of the review, we know that the IGF is something which has contributed to other processes on the national and regional level as well. So you may hear about national and regional IGFs, which are flourishing, and you have it everywhere. You have it in the Asia Pacific, you have it in the States, you have it in Europe, in Africa, in different parts of Africa. So the IGF, whatever the issue -- the outcome will be of the review process is going to continue, but we hope that the global one will be also renewed.
So just as a conclusion, I really recommend you to make use of your stay here, not only going to the beach, but as well approaching some people you may never have opportunity in your prior life to approach. So this is something extraordinary, and I'm always fascinated when I come here. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Peter. Note the special emphasis not only to the beach, which doesn't exclude the beach, right, sometimes.
Now, when we are talking about this process, Markus Kummer from the IGF Secretariat is here with us, and the question is now we see the flood of events around the world. We have seen the Cyber Conference. We are hearing about the possible new conference in Brazil next year. There is a number of fora. Why should we choose the IGF, or should we choose just the IGF, or why should we be here and contribute to the IGF?
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Small correction. Not Secretariat anymore. I used to be, but now I'm Interim Chair of the Preparatory Process.
Well, I think Peter gave the answer to this question to a large extent. Let me face you guys. On the one hand, there is a link to the United Nations. The meeting is held under the auspices of the Secretary-General. The Secretary-General of the United Nations convenes the meeting. That gives legitimacy to the meeting to many countries who, for instance, fail to see legitimacy in any other meeting that is not convened by the United Nations.
And at the same time, the IGF is as open and inclusive as possible. Anybody who has a legitimate interest is welcome to participate. And this is more than most other meetings.
Now, the IGF is not operational meeting. People don't come here to solve problems, but they come here to exchange information, to share best practices, and to share their experiences. And they enrich themselves, they learn something, and then they can go home, back into their own organisation, their own country, and implement what they learned. And I heard stories like that, people went to a workshop, learned about how to set up an Internet Exchange Point, went back to their island in the Pacific Ocean and set up an Internet Exchange Point. So this is an indirect impact, but it is important, and Peter mentioned the spread of all the national and regional IGF-type meetings in countries where before they didn't know how to interact between different stakeholders, and all of a sudden they interact and they have participatory processes where they solve their own problems.
And that is something that has started from the IGF and what's called a not negligible impact.
Yes, of course there are many other meetings, but I would say the IGF is sort of the annual watering hole for the community when you can come and learn from each other, learn what's happening elsewhere, and I heard that from government regulators. I cannot go to all these meetings, but I like to go to one meeting a year, and the IGF is the meeting where I get my annual update of what is happening. So this is my short sales pitch.
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Markus. The confusing thing about this information, that this is a process which provides a lot of exchange of information, but it's also kind of on the long-term a negotiation process about the future of the Internet. But then we have a bunch of different stakeholders. This issue about stakeholders, what are the stakeholders and who are, so to speak, the legitimate stakeholders or not and who they represent and how is quite an open question and discussed around.
I wanted to check with you now again. How many of you represent civil society here? Or feel like you represent the civil society? Okay. Quite a number. Government? Any government representatives? Okay. You are grouped somehow over there. That's interesting. Business? Or corporate sector? A couple of, probably the fewest. Okay. Technical community? Some are raising the same hands I see. Okay. That's good.
>> Some wear many hats.
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Some wear many hats. Is there anyone coming from the media as a kind of TV or journalists or bloggers or something like that, that we can say the media? One, two -- you have many hats -- three. Okay.
So academia, for instance, the universities, research centers, and so on? Researchers. Okay. So there's a number of hands.
So I see most of -- I mean, many of you do wear a number of hats, so how do we really say what are the stakeholders and then understand their needs and their interests and their positions and so on. Yesterday was a High Level Meeting. It was very good to see we have different stakeholders on the main panel on the High Level Meeting. I was a little bit maybe not surprised, but I thought it should be mixed, not have one by one the government, technical community, and then business society.
I will mix it now here and start from corporate sector, for instance. And Tero is here with us, who is representing the business sector, so Tero, why are you here? I mean, you are the business people. What do you find interesting in IGF? Except the beach.
>> TERO MUSTALA: Okay. So a very good morning for everybody. I am Tero Mustala from Nokia Corporation in Finland. And I was trying to say the beach, but Vlad took that out.
Anyway, why to be in IGF, and why business is present in IGF? I think it's that we feel that we are part of the let's say the multistakeholder community, which has been actually repeated already this morning many times, and I am afraid you will hear the same word many, many times during this week. But then maybe some words, what is the business or which is also called as private sector in some of the documents or in some of the meetings this week.
So naturally, business is the big corporations, like the IT companies, the Internet service providers, the mobile operators, all those companies like our company, but it is not only this side. It's also the smaller companies, all the companies who make e-Business, which I think everybody here also knows and has been working with, and including each and every small business.
Nowadays, if you think about Internet and some kind of base, you can't actually do any business if you are not present in the Internet. Almost everybody has their own website at least, if not having any, let's say, e-Commerce or anything like that. So it's -- Internet is nowadays really part of all economical activity, so we feel that business or private sector has the role here, and we really believe on this multistakeholder model. So to have everybody with equal having ability to discuss and exchange ideas with the other parties. And because this is the way we increase the understanding of the issues. The issues in the Internet are, in many cases, complicated. They may have the regulatory aspects, but they also have the technical aspects and business aspects. And to be able to evolve the Internet, we need the understanding of all these sites.
Then just a couple of words how actually the private sector in IGF is organised. We are very much organised around the International Chamber of Commerce, ICC, which is a special group looking after all of these Internet Governance issues, and naturally, it's open to all the businesses and ICC members, and really, this is the group in the business community who is trying to focus and take care of these issues and take the responsibility to be part in the IGF discussions.
Thanks, Vlad.
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Tero. Remember him, so if you see him in the corridors and you need to get linked with someone from the business society or ICC or whatever, you can always approach him. I am sure he is going to help.
Yes?
>> Hello. Good morning. My name is Anna, I am from Google. So I just want to add some comment about the area of private sector, and sometimes when you think about what means private sector or the companies, people think in the big companies. But I think it is important to think about the small or the local entrepreneurs that we have in our own countries doing businesses online and how the regulation will impact the development of these local businesses in our different countries.
So sometimes I am trying to have conversations with this group of local entrepreneurs that are working and doing a lot of amazing applications, local content in our countries, and maybe they should be involved in this kind of debate in the future.
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you. I think this was really a good comment that usually we really think about business as big corporates and so on, which is included, but it's not only that, of course. So it's important that small and medium enterprises and entrepreneurs are also involved in this.
Now, moving on to civil society, for instance, and Wolfgang is with us, well, you are also academia. You also have two hats.
I am interested to one extent talking about the business and civil society do have a lot of different positions about the IG, many issues, but on the other hand, they are fighting a lot for multi-stakeholders and so on. So why is the civil society here, and do we really think we can do something here?
>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Vladimir, and good morning to everybody.
Indeed, all the stakeholders involved, all the four stakeholders, technical community, civil society, government, and the private sector, have a different profile, but they have something in common. And nobody today can act against the interests of others. So that means if you want to have sustainable results from a process, you have to have the involvement of all stakeholders. No one stakeholder can make decisions by disregarding the interest of the others.
This is the result of an interesting process, and I just want to add some historical remarks to what Jovan, in a very brilliant way, outlined because he went back to the '90s, when we had a lot of these World Summits. I was involved in the World Summit on Human Rights in 1995 in Vienna, where this Summit was purely an intergovernmental meeting, and all the civil society and human rights groups were in a separate building in the basement, and they had no access to the intergovernmental negotiations. So that means you had different batches, and there was a counter, and you could not go to the real negotiations. That means you could make some noise in this basement, but you had no access and no impact to what happened in the big room.
When the mandate for the World Summit on the Information Society was drafted, I think governments realised that they cannot do it alone, and they started with this experiment to have the World Summit on the Information Society also open for other stakeholders. But then in the first phase in Geneva, it started that the governments had no clue how to treat the other stakeholders. It started with do they have access to the room? After the Opening Ceremony in Geneva, the civil society people and the private sector people were removed from the room outside and said now it's an intergovernmental thing.
Then civil society people knocked at the door and said, you know, why do you exclude us? You know, we want to listen to what you are doing, and we want to have our own contributions. We want to have a say. And so step by step in the WSIS process, we were able to broaden the so-called rights for civil society and participation. It started with access rights to the rooms, to the plenaries, then access to the working groups, then speaking rights, and you know, we have not ended up in negotiation rights. That means when the final texts were negotiated, this remained in the hands of governments, but civil society people were in the room, and this has changed the picture dramatically.
In the WGIG, Jovan was a member of it and reported a bit, the Working Group on Internet Governance, we saw at the early beginning there were two different approaches by governments and by the rest of the stakeholders. Though while the governments could not agree on the oversight function, so the idea of the IGF to have a stakeholder, a multistakeholder, let's say, forum, this was able we could agree. But it means to have the Internet Governance Forum as it is today is the result of a process, by the way, which was initiated by civil society, if you go back to the records, in 2002, the civil society Internet Governance proposed something like an Internet Governance clearinghouse, and over the years the clearinghouse idea was developed into the Internet Governance Forum.
So what it means, this Internet Governance Forum, from a civil society perspective, is a huge achievement because here civil society groups can participate on an equal footing, so they are sitting next to a Minister, next to a CEO from a private corporation, or to technical people. There are no differences. That means you have a voice, you can express whatever you want, and you can, let's say, argue for the interests of the constituencies you represent. Certainly civil society is priorities are human rights, freedom of expression, privacy, freedom of association. These are questions like capacity building, access, you know, development, sustainable development, education, training, all these other priorities for civil society.
This is certainly also in the interest of the other stakeholders. But you know, the civil society has to play this special role by fighting or by arguing in favor of these special values.
Thirdly, the civil society is not the only band in town. Like governments are not the only band in town. And you will have sustainable results only if you listen to all voices and then come up, you know, with a balanced solution which takes into consideration the civil society interests, in particular what I mentioned already several times is human rights, education, access, capacity building.
Let me add one thing to the beach because you have mentioned this several times. I think it's interesting to understand the architecture of the IGF because this mirrors a little bit the architecture of the Internet itself. So the Internet architecture is that you have in the middle the root server, then you have the main server, then you have the servers, but everything is based on the end-to-end principle. But it means the power, decision-making power, and all the knowledge is on the edges, not in the centre. I would not say that the, let's say, main sessions are like the root servers. They give you just the orientations, they give you where to go. Go to the main server, and main servers are the workshops. In the workshops, sometimes you get the inspiration that you see now I have to go to a very concrete server, you know, which handles finally my email or my request for a website.
And this very often happens on the beach because that you talk to people, you know, at top meetings. You meet some people and say, okay, you share the same ideas, you know, I have. Can we do something? Can we produce something? And a lot of things which happened in the last ten years are the result of this end-to-end communication. So that means the value of a network is driven by the number of the members. Here you have nearly 2000 participants. That means you have chances to talk to 2000 people. If you multiply 2000 with 2000, then you see, you know, the tremendous power this communication has. That means do not concentrate your activities only on the main sessions or the workshops. You know, all the coffee breaks, the lunch breaks, the dinner tables, they are an important part of the whole discussion process. Certainly, after four or five days of communication, you are totally exhausted, but then you are also excited, and the IGF is still a big excitement.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Wolfgang.
It is true that there is a lot in personal context, and as the diplomats also say the corridor talks are probably one of the most important parts.
What I'm quite happy to see is that also the Brazilian Ambassador is with us today, and this is a perfect moment maybe to ask about why do the governments come here? So basically, we know that the governments have a number of different fora where they can show up, but still, most of them -- well, more and more of them, we hope -- join the IGF and work at the IGF. Why is that so? Why do governments basically wish to be involved in that?
>> Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Well, in a very short answer, I would say that we view IGF as a meeting point, a meeting point of people, of ideas, and a place for cross-fertilization of ideas, exchange of information. My government attaches value to IGF. We see IGF performing a function, a role that is not fulfilled by any other institution we have, and actually, we have hosted the second IGF in 2007, and we are proposing ourselves to host IGF 2015. So the attachment of the Brazilian government in the appraisal for this exercise is very firm. I'd like also to touch on one point you mentioned before, which is the relationship between IGF and other processes regarding Internet Governance, and just to confirm that from our point of view all those processes are very important.
At this very moment, we are discussing within the General Assembly context on how -- whether there will be a high-level event in 2015 or late 2014 for an overall review of the outcome of the implementation of WSIS, marking the ten years of WSIS, so this is a very important discussion for us.
Of course, we also have the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation within CSDD, which is also a very important process we want to pursue, since we, in our view -- and we know there are differing views -- the concept of enhanced cooperation has not yet been fully implemented, and this is something we want to discuss also with all partners, stakeholders, how we can move forward in that direction.
I would mention there are a variety of other is fora. Indeed, I just read a figure that there are over 85 processes for dealing with Internet Governance, and we think each of these has a particular role, and we attach importance to all of them. In synthesis, we think IGF also represents and maybe a seed for a new paradigm of international cooperation. As a professional diplomat, I am used to going to meetings, and as we said, I worked at the UN in New York, so the kind of meetings we have there, we have intergovernmental discussions, at the end of the session you have maybe five or ten minutes in which civil society representatives come forward and make their input. And it's a moment in which most decisions have already been made, and those interventions are, I would say, hardly heard because people are already doing something else and finalizing the reports.
So it's not, let's say, the UN traditional context, which has, of course, its value, its importance. I think it's not fit for Internet. This is something that we are convinced as a delegation. We have been doing this internally in Brazil, the Brazilian Steering Committee, which oversees the daily operation of Internet as a truly multistakeholder model. So we are very comfortable in endorsing the concept that at the international level regarding the Internet, we also need a new paradigm, and this would be the multistakeholder model.
Now we can draft and have the outline of this is, of course, a very complex exercise because we are talking about different cultures, I would say the intergovernmental process, the self-regulatory agencies process, so it's not an easy task how to reconcile this and to draft a structure that will allow at the same time to take into account governmental concerns and to have significant input and participation from all other stakeholders. But this is an exercise that I think IGF, as I have said, is a seed for that. Maybe it shows a way. It has been highlighted. It was born within the UN context.
So I am very optimistic that since that has taken place within the UN, we can be creative enough and bold enough to engage to new forms of cooperation. And my government is fully prepared to embrace these and work with all other governments and stakeholders to that end.
Thank you very much.
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Ambassador. Thank you for the encouraging speech.
(Applause)
I think it's really important to hear from the governments which do have some experience, and Brazil is one of those who has experience also on the national level about the multistakeholder model, so I am sure we can learn a lot from Brazil and many other cases.
We have Anna Neves with us also who is from the Government of Portugal. Anna, what would you say? The mic is somewhere over there or I will give you mine. Okay. Anna, how do we get more governments involved, or do we have enough governments at IGF? How do we get them more involved? And why should the governments be here?
>> ANNA NEVES: Hello. Good morning.
Well, I think that governments are not fully engaged on this movement. It's a pity, but they don't understand this process. It's not working? Okay. I should start back.
So I was saying that governments, they don't understand the process. So they are not fully engaged. We have several countries here, of course, but as the Brazilian Ambassador was saying, there are a lot of definitions, lots of things that for the governments, it's a bit to waste their time to be here.
It's not the case of the countries that are fully engaged at ICANN and ITU processes and United Nations processes and more that they want to understand what Internet policy is and what means Internet Governance. So these country that is want to understand what Internet Governance is, these countries, they are fully engaged, and they have to be here because it's not only the technical community, it's not only the civil society that will change the paradigm. We need the governments to change the paradigm. Even if you don't want government to make rules and standards and other things, you need governments to make aware all the society that Internet Governance should be a multistakeholder process and why and what does that mean and who are these stakeholders and how they should compromise and how they should compromise with the government. And this dialogue has to be made at national level, regional level, and international level.
But still the voice of the governments is not well heard here because does it make sense to have a Minister here today? For me it would make sense, but for the ministers it does not make sense because they will be wasting their time.
Yesterday we had a High Level Meeting with ministers. Well, ministers, they stayed for the afternoon workshops. They were involved in the discussions. No. So it's up to the public, to the civil servants, as I am, to do my job and to go back home and to explain, explain, and explain and to organise different meetings involving all the stakeholders I think that are needed in order to engage governments. So I am not defending the other stakeholders because I am from the governmental side, but I think there's a problem of governmental engagement here, and there's a lot of misunderstandings as well, and when we can surpass these misunderstandings, then Internet Governance will be much easier, and our path will be much more smooth and we can really discuss what we should.
>> Thank you. When we talk about government, we think only ministers, but it's not only them. It's about the structures. We need ministers to basically convey the message and bring the whole process into discussions at the local level. Thank you, Anna.
The last -- so to speak the last stakeholder, then we close this part -- we are coming close to the end of the session -- is the technical community. And if I remember correctly, technical community was not initially mentioned in Tunis Agenda but was added later on. But it is really dominant because we have all these acronyms, TCP/IP, IXPs, so on, and we don't really know what it is, but the technical community does.
Then, on the other hand, we have, of course, CSDD, IGF, ITU, so on, which are the political bodies. A lot of acronyms. How to manage? We even have to prepare a glossary of acronyms for people to be able to follow that.
But I want to hear shortly from the -- from Markus, who is on behalf of ISOC, also wearing more hats today, on behalf of ISOC, why is the technical community here, and why is it distinct from others?
>> MARKUS KUMMER: A short correction. The Tunis Agenda mentions the academic and technical communities. They came into the process between the two phases of the WSIS, when we had the Working Group on Internet Governance. I remember they turned up and said what is this all about? They talk about our job and we are not allowed to have a say? And that was in Tunis, where they were at the back of the room then, and they were deciding on our future and don't allow us to speak, but they were allowed to speak. They were able to come in, make comments, not in the way they can do it in the IGF, but a little bit as Ambassador explained in a UN way in between some of the segments. The Chair called on some representatives of the technical community to make a statement. But already that proved very beneficial.
And when we started with the IGF, the technical community really bought in into the process. They saw there is value in engaging in a dialogue with other stakeholders, with civil society, with governments. It's not that they had not had these contacts, as all these organisations are very bottom-up and multistakeholder, and everybody can participate. But the IGF allowed them to meet people they might not otherwise have met, reach out to them, make them interested in their own work and activities, and so at this IGF, ICANN will have an Open Forum where they explain their work. The Internet Society will have an Open Forum. The Internet Engineering Task Force will have an Open Forum. So if you are interested more to learn more about the work these organisations do, please go, sit in, learn, listen, and ask questions and inform yourself.
This has proved a very valuable platform for the Internet organisations to explain what they are doing, and it is our firm belief that policy decisions should be taken on a sound understanding of the underlying technology. You cannot come to a good policy decision if it ignores how the Internet actually works. And the IGF allows to do that.
I do remember very early on when I was involved in the process, there was one leading engineer who said how can we solve a problem like spam and politicians can't tell us what this is? So clearly, no group can do it alone. They all have to talk to each other, and that's why we think the IGF is an important platform for us.
Thank you.
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Markus.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Oh, let me have a commercial, actually. The next session will be on the role of governments, which will follow very nicely in this discussion we have had. We have various government representatives and other stakeholders talk about how to move forward involving the governments into a multistakeholder cooperation. Thanks.
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Markus. My next question, but that's good. I want to underline what you mentioned, I think, one of the particular roles of the technical community which I think everyone appreciates is exactly explaining how the Internet works to all of us, all those who are not engineers, but politicians, several society, and academia, even, to some extent that are not involved in the technical aspects. While, on the other hand, of course there is a role in this kind of education of the other stakeholders like the politicians to educate the engineers how the political processes work and how diplomacy works and so on. So in that case, there is a great involvement of the IGF.
We close this part about the stakeholders. I initially intended to open the floor for comments and questions. Unfortunately, we were a little bit late, and the next session is coming. But fortunately, we have three more sessions next days, every day next one. We have a question from Santos, which I will leave for tomorrow, if you agree. Tomorrow we will be working in smaller groups, so it will be easier.
And before we close the session, just a brief overview of the two sessions of today. First one that Markus mentioned is Building Bridges, the role of governments, which is in this room just after this session, within the next five, seven minutes. I don't know, Markus, if you want to add anything to this. Okay.
And the other one that we wanted to briefly present is the capacity building-related workshop. Ellen should be somewhere around. Ellen is there. Briefly, what is it going to be about? Where is it going to be? Why should people come in it's a capacity building one, so we wanted to share with everyone.
>> Thank you. Hello. I am Ellen Blackler with the Walt Disney Company. We have organised a session at 11:00 today in one of the rooms on the second floor that is how to encourage the growth of local content. We hear a lot from people trying to develop their Internet ecosystem to include how they can have more content available for people online, so we have organised a session that will be talking about the different kinds of policies that encourage content creation. We also will be talking about a partnership we have just developed with the Bandung Institute of Technology here in Indonesia to encourage the development of app developers and digital media. We'll be running a contest with the students at the university, and we'll award a cash prize and some mentoring to different digital media ideas that have been applied when people apply. So it's an example of things that can be done at the local level to encourage content creators, which we believe will drive adoption of the Internet. So come at 11 in the Kintamani Room.
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Ellen. Thank you. So we'll close this session. I will just remind you that tomorrow's Orientation Session again starts at 8:00. I know it is quite early. I will make it. Tomorrow we will start with mapping the sessions, the main sessions of tomorrow, which are Internet Governance principles, principles of multistakeholder cooperation, and then security, legal, and other frameworks. So we will try to hear what will be spoken about at these sessions and why should we visit them, if we should.
Then we will move into this group work. I hope we will use small tables and split into a couple of groups, and not to make, again, a mistake about the topics we will cover. One group we will discuss security openness, privacy, human rights. The other one will discuss access, diversity, infrastructure, and so on. The third one will discuss IG4G, basically, governance, you multistakeholder models, environment for emerging markets, so on. And the fourth one will discuss critical Internet resources, including DNS management, IP management, role of the ICANN registers, so on. So I invite you to join us tomorrow again. Day 3 will be the negotiations exercise and simulation. But a fun game. Then day 4 about what to do after the IGF.
Tomorrow we'll do more questions and interaction. I thank you for coming today, and see you tomorrow. Thank you.
(Applause)
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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