The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. 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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>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Okay, hello, everyone. We're going to start. Sorry for the delay. The technicians were working on the remote participation settings. So please take your seat, and if you can come more close. So thanks to everyone for attending this session.
My name is Rafik Dammak and for today we have the front table to talk about the answerability within the multi‑stakeholder model, and we have several speakers and we'll try to cover several areas. For that to kind of facilitate this discussion, we have four questions. So I will read them, and this is ‑‑ this gives guidance on what kind of topics we will cover. The first question is how an international organization with their constitution structure in the process to respond to expectations like transparency, openness, legitimacy, and accountability. Sorry there are so many terms there.
The second question is, how stakeholders, in particular Civil Society strategize their participation? What do they each as mechanisms and approaches to justify their actions and maintain transparent see? The third one what is the influence of processes within the stakeholders in terms of issues framing and yielding outcome.
The last questions, can we envision a set of principles, best practices, mechanism or have a process template shared between all Internet governance organizations and processes? So this is really just to kind of make it more easier for the audience and also for the speakers to discuss the issue, and we will start first with Professor Janet Hoffman, and I think maybe she can give us some from an academic standpoint what she thinks about this question and if she can pick up on them.
>> JANET HOFFMAN: Thank you, Rafik. I'm just addressing the first question. That's what we agreed upon, right? We go question by question. What I would say about the first question, I think that Rafik formulating the question by how contingency bid? I think they all have a vital interest in shaping the constituencies that hold them to account. We can see in in the kind of wording we find. For example, when ICANN speaks the ICANN community or the IGF about the multi‑stakeholder community, these terms are not value‑free. They sort of imply definitions of who is part of the community and who is not part of the community.
When we speak of the mighty stakeholder process, who is not part of the community, those people who don't believe in that kind of process. So there is already ‑‑ there are values in this terminology, and one of the things that seems to be excluded from the term "community" is the power relations between those holding an organization or its board to account and those who make the decisions. Community sounds like eye‑level relationships, but typically it's not.
So what I would say from a Civil Society point of view is we should be aware of the kind of terms we use, the wording, and what implications they have. We should have a critical perspective on that kind of language, particularly with a view, too, that these terms implicitly define a constituency. Thank you.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks. That was concise and straight to the point. From there we go with Matthew, and I think he probably will kind of follow‑up with this. If you want to elaborate one of those questions.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Rafik. I'll just stick with the first question, if that's the order we're going in, right? I think that probably makes more sense. It's a really interesting question, answerability. I think it's one of the biggest challenging we struggle with from a governance perspective.
None of the structures in the Internet eco‑system are traditional structures we're used to dealing with over hundreds of years such as the evolution of businesses and international organizations and similar. And that's simply because at the end of the day we have a very distinct definition change between or differentiation between for example where we have businesses with shareholders and those entities in the eco‑systems that are stakeholders, and I think that's a significant challenge whether it comes to understanding what the accountability and answerability relationships are between those stakeholders and the organizations they're associated with.
There's an important difference between the two. When it comes to international organize organizations, there's no doubt the organizations themselves are answerable to the members and the members of government and those governments are answerable to the citizens. And that's what makes the interaction between those international organizations and the Internet eco‑system organizations so challenging, is because of that difference of association and answerability, and finding a way to mesh those, is one of those things we struggled with certainly since these issues and the Internet eco‑system came to the fore in 2002 and 2003.
I still don't think there's a ‑‑ we haven't found yet a comfortable way assessing how we're answerable to the various stakeholders and who they are. Within ICANN, it's difficult to know which way our responsibility goes, because as a stakeholder we have an interest in the organization for it to perform much like a shareholder has an interest in the business for the company to perform financially.
At the same time, we have another responsibility and an answerability for our actions vis‑a‑vis ICANN. We have another answerable issue, which is the other direction which typical shareholders don't have to the broader communities. In that dimension, we're clear what our answerability is to the organization to the itself, but the answerability to the stakeholders that we represent, I think we're still struggling with it. That's one of those things that's very different and makes our eco‑system different to traditional eco‑systems to international business. Thanks.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks, Matt. We heard from the academia and Civil Society standpoint. For now we will move to Jay, who can probably speak for private sector and maybe technical community standpoint.
>> SPEAKER: Sure. Thanks, Rafik. So I guess we're going question by question here, which is a little different than my understanding, so bear with me. You know, to kind of piggyback on what Matt was saying, I actually had a very similar view of him in terms of answerability as both an internal and external perspective when we talk about ICANN. Internally we immediate to make sure that ICANN and its members and its stakeholders are actually following through on the bylaw reforms and things like that. Then in a more broad sense, we need to have a ‑‑ make sure that ICANN and the multi-stakeholder model and Internet Governance meets the need of the broader community and people outside of the eco‑system. With that, from kind of a private sector perspective, one of the things that I think about in terms of a multi‑stakeholder model is this concept of a B corporation. I don't know if many of you are familiar with this concept, but it says here that B corporations are used as a business force for good.
They're certified by a nonprofit lab that meets vigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency and have a multi‑stakeholder model component to somehow they come up with their working groups and bylaws. It's a
very kind of open platform from that perspective.
The interesting thing about this, to me, is 1900 companies have signed on to become a B corporation. I think that's probably far exceeds the number of companies that are involved in ICANN or Internet Governance. So there is definitely other places that we could draw from when we looked on how to answer this question.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thank you. Just to make clear, as for speakers, they can answer whatever question they want. Maybe continuing in the space for those from the technical community I'm going to Andres to speak on this point and also with your experience with IR. So if you can respond to one of the questions.
>> ANDRES PIAZZA: Thank you very much, Rafik. I'm not maybe representing the standpoint this, but I can speak on my behalf being part of the technical community in several different places. The last item, I won't say how many years, because it doesn't benefit me. Anyway, trying to pick up a little bit about the first question on international organizations, I would say even if they're not international organizations because some are territorial organizations, so this accountability, I believe, is something that falls into the national communities and I hope it remains that way.
I have to say that the technical community, the regional and the global technical community, they have some challenges on this and expectations of policies and buildability. I would believe some may not agreement, but for me these organizations, especially ICANN are on the right path. They have a lot to do yet, so I won't have a lot of discussion on that.
We'll leave it in this principle, and we'll go to the third question, and that is I believe I can contribute to that much more. I believe on the processes and the setting, the issues framing this organization have been collectively discussing this for more than ten years. This forum taking all the processes are useful for these issues on framing. Global forums, intersession instructions, and regional and other processes that are regulating this global sphere. I believe this is working quite well.
The real challenge for me is to lift this from this stage of evolution to the outcome or the process to decision‑making. My sense until now is this amount of collective effort, this amount of evolution that we ‑‑ I tend to think we made and maybe I contributed a little bit to that have not yet impacted on the regulatory environments and on the decision‑making and policies. Maybe they only have the example I have ‑‑ some of you may know it also.
I believe the transition could be an example of that. Maybe only an exception, and the rest of the environments are not influencing us. I believe it will be desirable to have this inference from this collective evolution.
I believe that the global communities are on the regional also fail to show, even to the democratic countries, to the democratic governments that the stakeholder model is not about replacing the role of their governments but to inform them on the decision‑making. I believe the rest of the challenges are much more in that part. These communities should now try to think collectively how to influence those decision‑making processes, and we are not doing that very well. That's my initial take. Thank you very much.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Okay. Thank you. It seems the focus on the beginning is about the ICANN, but we may need really to see what happens in other spaces, and maybe we start first to talk about the trait. We can kind of move to a program, so you can give some insight about your experience in that environment and maybe compares that to other spaces and forums.
>> SPEAKER: Thank you, Rafik. So I'm going to talk about the TPP, because I think there's a story there to tell people, to tell about people's power. So the TPP is dead in the U.S.
I think there are discusses going on in other countries, especially here in Mexico, whether they should try to do it. Please don't do it. In the U.S. the TPP is dead, there's a misconception out there, because people think that Trump killed the TPP. That's a lie. This is Trump, but that's a lie and rubbish and bullshit, because it's Trump.
Who killed the TPP? It's the power of people who killed the TPP. I started to work on the TPP five years ago when I first joined it. At that time I realized there's a big trade coalition. It's cross‑sectional and cross‑borders and its movements of movement. This movement managed to kill the TPP in the U.S. and other countries. We strategize the issues and picked our fights. That was a huge coalition of different Civil Society organizations representing different interests.
We picked our fights. We picked the technical issues. We worked with the governments and worked with negotiators and with Civil Society. We approached the journalists and tell the journalists that, look, the TPP is not a good deal for this country because there are all these issues in the TPP.
This year in the U.S. when you were having the elections, TPP became an election issue. Both Trump and Hillary were against the TPP, and I remember Hillary in 2011 was saying the TPP was the gold standard, but she had to say it because people in the U.S. were concerned about the TPP.
So the Civil Society has a power. People have power. We should be reminded of this power, because we are getting ‑‑ we are entering into really, really rough times. I have to say that like, you know, now maybe we're happy. We killed the TPP, but probably in a couple of years we'll look back and be like those provisions were so great because the threats that we are facing now are worse than the TPP.
So it's time to reunite and come with big coalitions and pick our fights and fight against the corporations, business interests, not necessarily all business interests, but big multi‑national corporation interests and is this agenda out there.
The agenda out there is not the right agenda. It's the big business' agenda. Thank you.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thank you. We will continue in discussion here about multi‑lateral space, and moving to another example. Maybe you can give an example of something that is relevant.
>> MICHELE WOODS: Thanks. I'd be happy to do that. For those who don't know the world intellectual property organization is a multi‑lateral organization. It's a specialized United Nations agency that addresses as in the name intellectual property. What I wanted to highlight is particularly with the example of the recently adopted Marrakesh Treaty to benefit persons blind, visually impaired and print disabled, there was tremendous stakeholder involvement, and really this treaty started with stakeholder.
With the world blind union and Civil Society groups supporting the idea about having a treaty about limitations and exceptions to copyright to harmonize them to provide access to published works for persons in this category who wouldn't otherwise receive access without having to get permission from rights holders, and the copyright system does include the concept much these exceptions, but this is the first treaty we've had that has been focused on those exceptions and also that seeks to harmonize them across borders and add across‑border transfer elements.
All of that was unique, and really the motivation for this what we call or NGOs, which is really any stakeholders that are not governments or IGOs. There was active participation throughout all steps of the process including at the diplomatic conference, and this has been pointed out by some Civil Society commentators as a real gold standard in multi‑lateral organizations to bring elements of multi‑stakeholder principles into the process.
We also have a system with our traditional knowledge discussion that's going on about potentially adopting treaties in this area where there are panels, for example, of indigenous people who are funded to come to the meeting, where we have specific consultations with indigenous persons as part of the meetings and where there's really a very active effort to bring those stakeholders into the process.
I would say that it is important that there be some members, when you are made up of member states, there are supportive of these initiatives. For example, for the Marrakesh Treaty to get on the agenda on the standing committee on copyright, member states had to be the proponents. So the treaty text was initially prepared mainly by stakeholders with some participation by some government representatives, but some government representatives had to come forward and basically be willing to put that proposal forward.
So there does have to be some support, but generally speaking, we have found that there is strong support from at least some elements of the government representatives to include stakeholders in the process. On the Marrakesh Treaty they formed a multi‑stakeholder platform and a group to implement the treaty. This is called The Accessible Books Consortium.
It has membership from across all the different stakeholders including representatives of organizations that help or are made up of persons that are blind, visually impaired and print disabled. Libraries that provide services to these entities, publishers, authors, and basically, all the different groups that are involved in trying to implement the treaty. WIPO does provide a secretariat roll, but the work of this consortium is driven by the stakeholders. That's an area where we bring in a multi‑stakeholder entity built within the organization in order to carry forward some of the work that was basically started by groups of stakeholders.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks, Michele. You want to intervene here?
>> SPEAKER: Thank you for mentioning that treaty, because it's a success story for us. We've been fighting all those years in the different areas in in the FTAs because there's a progressive agenda from the corporations and developed countries against developing countries.
So the Marrakesh Treaty was the start of an era, because for the first time we have a proactive, progressive agenda and we pushed for that. The union of the blind and some of the other Civil Society members they pushed hard for the treaty. It's a success story, and it's out there. There are lots of lessoning to be drawn from the Marrakesh Treaty. Thank you very much.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Okay. Thank you. Moving now to another space, which is the cyber security, and I think Tatiana wants to elaborate on some points here.
>> TATIANA TROPINA: Thank you, Rafik. I was struggling when I saw four of your questions, and I was even a bit struggling when I saw the title of the session, because it was speaking about cyber security, and I'm working in cyber security field. The reality and answerability get a completely different dimension. Sometimes I think we have to see the reality first.
First of all, if we're talking about cyber security spaces, there are so many of them. Many of them still closed, even if there is a conventional wisdom already for a decade at least that cyber security should be multi‑stakeholder. If we're talking about multi‑stakeholder approaches, how do we strategize?
How do we build these models? I would say that it is mostly ad hoc, and in many cases it's just top‑down. When some governments want to open for you on the national level? When some international forum getting open like for example a global concern in cyberspace in the process. It's just a way in many cases.
I think that we have to accept the reality that all these closed and not inclusive forum Wilco exist with some more flexible multi‑stakeholder model. Where it's coming from, I believe, that for some cases it's just natural. With cyber security, there's different dimensions and different domains. So are closed are like national security. Some are open but not for Civil Society, but more academia like critical information. They include businesses by default, but Civil Society voices are not heard still yet.
What is interesting, what is getting multi‑stakeholder is actually the strategy of how to open this forum. I do see how law enforcement, governments, academia will come in together, and we are still talking about how to work together. How to make this forum open, but I believe that and I say it again, we have to accept the reality. Some of the processes whim be multi-lateral. There are some sensitive issues, and there are some absolutely natural limitations from multi-stakeholder models in cyber security. The last issue I want to cover is these dichotomy, legitimacy and transparent. In cyber security it goes vice versa. It doesn't always mean transparency. They can be mutually exclusive.
Legitimate models doesn't always mean inclusion. Legitimate models doesn't always mean openness, especially if it's about government, if it's about some of the political regimes.
In the cyber security, you don't always need to be open. This is a harsh reality we're facing now. We look at making all the spaces more open, but I believe the first priority would be for multi-stakeholder corporations and just to focus on those venues which we can get open and where we can cooperate and just accept that some of them will not be up. The last thing, even if they get open, it's interesting because I took place in some of them which were closed and which are exclusive.
Even if they open it for you because you're academia and you write reports for them or you're a part of their decision‑making before it comes to the real decision, then you get to sit away in the corner, and even bringing you up front at the table might get a lot of political controversy if you're not anyone from the government. Thanks.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks, Tatiana. I guess we can take another round of intervention from the speakers. Janet, do you want to? Yes.
>> JANET HOFFMAN: Yes, the cyber security should question the scope of the multi‑stakeholder model. I have the suspicion that it's celebrated in an area where it doesn't count either because there are no decisions being made or the decisions were not really relevant. That is one point.
I also want to say and in response to Matt, who talked about representativeness of Civil Society. I think we have a real misunderstanding here. The whole idea and notion of representativeness goes back to people that make binding decisions on our behalf. Civil Society doesn't make binding decisions on anybody's behalf, and to sort of imply that concept, that whole concept of accountability to Civil Society sort of seems to take the carpet away from under our feet, because it makes a weak stakeholder even weaker.
How often have I heard that who are you responsible to? I'm an individual not speaking on anybody's behalf and I don't blame to be a representative. I think Civil Society is such a diverse community. It cannot even agree on sort of single positions in many cases. How can these groups then be responsible or sort of representative of anybody? I think it's the wrong concept.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Okay. Thanks. Okay. We will go with Steven here. Matt, please.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: I clearly wasn't communicating correctly. I don't think I ever implied that, and I certainly don't believe that's the case. If we are talking about stakeholders, stakeholders do in the sense they're representative have an answerability to some of other stakeholders that they represent. We have to be careful here about whether we talk about Civil Society as a community or as some stakeholder identity acting within a construct. That's a slight difference thing. About the multi‑stakeholder model, it's a great model.
It does work. Some of us have sat through two years of the CCWG, and it works. We have fundamentally changed the government structure that's very unique. It's a unique organization at the core of the Internet eco‑system, and we facilitated a government to step back from the role in the DNS. That's a pretty substantial and real impact multi‑stakeholder engagement.
Where does it happen elsewhere? This is the interesting thing. Where has it happened elsewhere to the same degree, and why was it successful in this particular construct of ICANN, and how can we take that ‑‑ the learnings from that construct and apply them elsewhere?
What we haven't got to date is a very other example we can point to that have that impact, and I think we really need to learn from the ICANN experience and say, what did it take?
What were the parameters? What were the requirements? How effect was the chartering up front and things like that. Those are key factors when it comes to seeing a success of the multi-stakeholder model. We need to stop kidding ourselves. The multi‑stakeholder model is new in Internet time it's not new, but compared to other constructs it's new. We struggle with this as we go forward, and I think that we need to ‑‑ the other thing I would say, we overemphasize the model. It's going to have failings and limitations. Don't think of it like a panacea to governance. Thanks.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks, Matt. We will go with Steve.
>> SPEAKER: Steve with NetChoice. To the extent they deemed effective or works is often a function of what organization it's in. ICANN, for example, was born with an operational role publishing this and distributing numbers. That operational role gave it, well, a little bit of credibility and legitimacy and made it important that Civil Society, business and technical community would show up, because they knew that it mattered. That their voices would matter. IETF is another multi‑stakeholder group that's effective.
I don't know whether Civil Society perceives its presence there is effectively represented, but W3C and groups that actually publish things that matter, like a root table, right? Groups that publish standards then implemented, those are multi‑stakeholder candidates that have an opportunity to be far more effective than a group that doesn't make decisions.
However, IGF as a multi‑stakeholder gathering is seen as highly effective at generating conversations and sharing ideas and best practices and concerns addressed. If that's its full output, I can measure that as effective. There are some that wish it made decisions as well and they will deem it ineffective.
Jeanette, if I could turn to your yes about downward accountability. There are instances where Civil Society is given in the charter of an organization, it's given an explicit role with vote. ICANN is a great example of this. This is Civil Society representing itself and having the ability to make decisions that absolutely matter in what policies are approved and put forth and policies that end up being implemented in the demand name system. In that instance, the charter describes who the Civil Society bodies are that have that role, and I think Matthew is right.
It behooves us to ask whether those Civil Society groups as well as business groups and other chartered, are they actually representing the interests or entities that they were chartered to represent? It's a fair question and one of the work stream 2 items that Matthew Shears is working on. If they want to join, can they figure out how to get in? Is there an eligibility criteria and decisions made challengeable by a neutral third‑party? Are there fair and open elections for officers, and how are decisions reached when NCSG or DC decides it's time to cast a vote on a policy?
Those are legitimate questions to ask whether we're answerable to the communities we were designed to serve. It won't apply to every Civil Society organization, but it's an askable question for Civil Society organizations that participate in multi‑stakeholder groups where they have a decisional role.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks, Steve.
>> TATIANA TROPINA: I actually agree with you regarding the relevance of the multi‑stakeholder model I'm actually torn about. I think the fact that it doesn't work in cyber security in many spaces is because it has a long history of other dynamics. It wasn't born multi‑stakeholder. It has a history of power and government responsibility for protecting its citizens. It's a mix of different responsibilities, and it's not sometimes about answerability but about power.
Also I believe in cyber security that different stakeholders and different processes doesn't work, because if you think cyber security consists of so many fat sets like policy‑making and like processes of actual provision of technical cyber security and also enforcement. If I have a look at the relevancy of the multi‑stakeholder model on this different level, I would say the most relevant is policy‑making. I would say it can be multi-stakeholder to a certain extent because it would be anyways the responsibility of the legislature and not of different stakeholders.
When we come to the actual operational level, for example, critical information infrastructure protection, it can be multi-stakeholder but mostly governmental and business. When we come to enforcement, I don't want enforcement to be multi‑stakeholder. And I believe that there is a big confusion when we say multi‑stakeholder cyber security. Let's be clear what we're talking about.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Okay. Thanks, Tatiana. Yes, please.
>> SPEAKER: Thank you very much. I'm from the National Research University School of Economics from Moscow, Russia. I belong to academia. This kind of stakeholder group, and I think that just a couple of words about this. The Internet is one of the most complex systems we need to govern so that I believe ‑‑ I believe that multi‑stakeholderism is the boast model for governance, because no stakeholder group for itself, even the governmental or intergovernmental could be responsible for the Internet Governance. I think the picture that's Indian‑like, but it's for the blind man and the elephant.
So each blind man could get an elephant with the same thing. Only the different groups could understand what it is and how to deal with this so that I'm in strong support of any kind of multi‑stakeholderism and to engage all stakeholder groups to participate.
I wanted to ask the question. What's the role of academia, and could the academia be recognized as a separate stakeholder group? Thank you very much.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Okay. Thanks. I see a cue so I ensure that I'm taking it up. I think you want to speak.
>> SPEAKER: Thank you. This issue about representation, which Jeanette brought up and it's an important question. I wanted to bring a nuance into it, because what often happens is people either say your representative, you've got to be accountable in all the ways like a parliamentary and et cetera.
Civil Society is not represented in that way, therefore, we don't have accountability. That's one extreme. On the other extreme you say you represent people there, and you could be accountable to the same extent as parliamentarians and the like. Then it gets put into those two extremes.
I'm not sure that's really the best way to think about it. Civil Society groups, I think, represent in a variety of different ways. Sometimes as Steve says there's actual representation in the sense of having a formal mandate to take decisions, and at that point you are given a mandate by a certain constituency and are answerable to that and maybe wider for the decisions you take. There's lot of other times they speak as and not for.
Many times Civil Society that we get into this kind of forum, and they will say, as a Russian or as a woman or as a disabled person therefore I have this insight. That's representing also speaking as rather than speaking for. Whether you do that you make claims and you say I have a special position with special insight, and therefore I have a right to make a certain impact on the discussion. Maybe you don't have the same kind of accountability with the extent of having a formal position, but you're making claim that is could have consequences.
You might also speak about ‑‑ come in and speak about people. How many in groups come in and speak about people not in the room and don't have a chance to represent themselves directly in the room? People are speaking about them. That can also have huge consequences.
And then you might also speak with -- I spoke with the business community, therefore. I spoke with the peasants, therefore. That's also making claims of representation. I'm going around the houses around bit, but I think one can unpack different types of representation.
When people get in the room as Civil Society people. They have better access and resources and possibilities to affect the process, and they make various representative claims when they do that. I think when they make those representative claims with that does come accountability, especially to the case in formal mandate but to the extent in other cases, too.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks. We'll go with Wolfgang, yeah.
>> SPEAKER: Thank you very much. As was said, we're in the early days of a political invention was born one or one and a half decades ago. I would agree more with Matt and Steve and disagree with Jeanette if it comes to all the questions summarized. I want to give you a practical example. If Jeanette speaks as an individual I don't represent anybody and don't want to be accountable to anybody. If Jeanette was a German lady who was the former chair of the advisory committee and she's a member of the German trade union with 150,000 members, if she speaks on behalf of the trade deal as a Civil Society organization, then she is certainly accountable to the 150,000 members of the trade union and to ‑‑ if he speaks she has a certain tendency to bring her perspective.
Certainly she can speak as an individual as well. This is the difference. I think because this is such a big picture with so many different animals I have compared this very often with the rain forest. We have no overview how many plants and animals are there, so this is what we have to learn with this and how to structure this. So far the transition process is an incredible source of knowledge now and experience. How can you manage in a certain way with this rain forest‑like processes.
So far we have three big results, which are already on the table from the multi‑stakeholder process. The definition of Internet Governance was produced in the multi‑stakeholder process in a multi‑stakeholder body where the governments had no priority for the nongovernmental members. It was at the end of the day rubber‑stamped by the government, but the Internet governance definition is the result of a multi‑stakeholder process.
You have the eight principles from Sao Paulo from 2014 is the result of a multi‑stakeholder process, and this is an achievement. Now we have a new mechanism and accountability system from the transition, but it means we have a definition. We have a framework of principles. We have a mechanism accountable mechanism and other checks and balances in the system. This is for the 21st century already allot, but more has to be done.
If we have this perspective and do not expect the solution of the problem tomorrow or until the year 2020, so if you have this more, let's say, Chinese way of looking into the end of the century, then probably we can be more effective and say, okay, this has to be done step‑by‑step to move forward slowly. If I have to work, let me also respond to the second issue with the usability for the multi‑stakeholder model for security, trade and things like that.
I go back to the definition because it was the mandate to define what Internet Governance is, because nobody had a definition. We had a discussion between a narrow definition and pro definition. At the end of the day, the outcome from the Wiki wars, Internet Governance is much more than names and numbers and more than ICANN. The final part of the definition, this is relevant for the evolution and the use of the Internet. You always differentiate between the governance of the Internet and the governance onto Internet. All we have discussed in the transition is the evolution of the Internet, the governance of the Internet. Governance on the Internet is the challenge ahead of us.
In particular governments and I think Tatiana made a good point here, recognize that their traditional domains like security and economy is now infiltrated by the Internet. But they do not link it to Internet Governance. Security people speak about cyber. Cyber war, cyber weapons and all this. It has nothing to do with Internet Governance. This is just cyber. Already the language makes the difference clear. This is cyber.
Business people speak about the digital economy. Though Germany has the chairmanship of the go‑20 and have adopted a huge document on the digital economy, and there is one paragraph that says G‑20 countries support Internet Governance and mighty stakeholder model for Internet Governance, but in their understanding, here's to digital economy, and then we have one small point of the governance that has nothing to do with the digital economy. This is wrong.
The core of cyber and digital economy is more or less based on Internet Governance, and this is the misunderstanding among a lot of governments that say, yeah, yeah, the multi‑stakeholder model is good for Internet Governance for names and numbers. That means they still live in the narrow definition and have not accepted the pro definition that all of this is infiltrated. Again, we have 84 years to go in the 21st century. Thank you.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks, Wolfgang.
>> SPEAKER: I want to comment. Thank you very much your comments. I would to talk about multi‑stakeholderism in the trade. I heard a couple of times the United States trade representative negotiator is talking about the stakeholderism, and I warned them don't shoot yourself in the foot. Multi‑stakeholderism doesn't work in the trades. If it ends the minute you realize that the other stakeholder has millions of dollars to invest in the well‑being. Look at the TPP and other trade increments.
The U.S. is part of it and the text is tabled by the trade representative, and the USTRL has like 600 corporate advisers, so they shape the text. Here we talk about ICANN, we talk about the multi‑stakeholderism and we talk about domain names, but there are provisions in the TPP about the domain names. I want to ask the ICANN people here, have they consulted with you or have they consulted the Civil Society or business society who have done this work.
I wonder whether they have approached that we're trying to make rules for the Internet and domain names and this is the position we take. What do you think about that? No? So you discuss ‑‑
>> SPEAKER: If you'd like an answer from the standpoint of the business community, you don't wait until negotiations are underway to make your points known. The business community showed up in force with the commerce department in charge of the negotiating and let its opinion be known with respect to what kind of domain takedown language would be included.
Guess what? The business community wasn't of one mind. There are Civil Society groups that don't always agree. These views were taken on board and something of a compromise emerged in the final language. There wasn't a formal consultation after the language because the time to get your licks in is before it's written.
>> SPEAKER: How about the Civil Society?
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: I think that people will intervene, but we can go back to the question. Michele.
>> MICHELE WOODS: To be honest, I think we're a bit past the point I was going to make. I was thinking about this representation for Dave, and there's different aspects pointed out by people. One example where we had to make a change and when I say wee ‑‑ we, not the organization but the group in in group working on putting in the Marrakesh Treaty. It became clear there wasn't enough representation of the beneficiaries, so organizations that represent blind persons, those persons themselves or organizations that work closely with them and advocate their interests.
The group itself had to think about basically if one came down to a vote, normally the group doesn't vote, but if it does what would the representative representation be of different interests there, and then decided as a group that really more spaces had to be allocated to the primary beneficiaries of the treaty.
So that was something that was decided by a multi‑stakeholder group, but there it's clear when entities join this organization they're coming in some kind of representative capacity. It doesn't mean that individuals can't also express their views based on their experience, but there is a clear representational mandate.
That may be different from Civil Society organizations that come to our standing committee meetings on copyright and express views in a context where they're not designated as representatives of a certain community and then everyone would expect that there would be much more freedom to express views either as individuals or on behalf of that group without having to think about being accountable to a larger group or some kind of other entity behind the scenes. You can have both concepts depending on the context. Thanks.
>> SPEAKER: I'm with the Internet Governance project at Georgia Tech and I want to address the cyber security relationship here. If you listened to what Tatiana said you got a correct position between multi‑stakeholderism and cyber security. There's a lot of rhetorical overtones accepted by the group that when you deal with security, suddenly you're in the land of states, right?
We at the Internet Governance Project are going about to challenge that directly head‑on specifically. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding by multi‑stakeholders and we put too much emphasis on the multi and forget why it's relevant to include additional stakeholders other than states.
The reason you have to do that in the international context is because you have policy decisions. It's in policy formations it's most relevant. You have to do that in the transnational context because you have a transnational system that requires transnationally effective policy decisions made, and states are fragmented into territorial jurisdictions which makes them fundamental incapable of making those decisions in a way that advances the public interest. States represent interests and their own as a military and political entity and the security of a nation state is not the same as the security of the Internet and the users of the Internet as a whole.
In the interest of the users of an Internet as a whole are not con joined with the sum of the interest of the individual national state policies, so the reason you need to go multi-stakeholder more in cyber security because you need the Internet as a whole represented. That can't happen through multi-lateral state‑based systems. You have to include the technical community and academics and Civil Society.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: You want to make interventions?
>> SPEAKER: I can address it very briefly. I think that the based what I told, I think these forums will be open sooner or later. Right now the only way to make them channeled in multi‑stakeholder model is to create it on the national level. So governments who come into these close group of experts like all this, they will at least bring the opinions of their Civil Society and their nation states the technical community.
This is the only way I see it right now, but this is just the first step, and I completely agree with you that they are going to get open. We also have to understand that policymaker is demonstrative in the sense, and I sense that there's a fear that opening the multi‑stakeholder will make negotiations take ages in any case on that level. Even longer, and even more complex, even more complicated, and I think this is one of the reasons why they tend to be more exclusive.
>> SPEAKER: It's really hard to react to everyone here, but I will ‑‑ I chose him and he left. Of course, I agree with Matt and Steve said about the model. I'm trying took back to the first question on what are the principles that we can agree on. It was having trouble myself to answer the question, and I found out that I don't see you answering that or having a concrete approach on what is the thing with agree on. Maybe he said in a very structured way that we have a definition and we have then processes, a set of principles and then now we have one operative example with the transition. I'm finding hard trouble on understanding if this is something on the principles that everyone shares as principles or values. I even don't know and to which extent this is something that's being accepted in Latin America or something that has been widespread in my region.
One example could be interesting, the trade example is something that comes back to the question in Bucharest on trade. The TPP in our region, I work closely with our region and four of them are part of the TPP. I don't know if now they are, but they used to be. There were a lot of discussions, but they're ‑‑ not even do they have a strong relationship with government and the community. They couldn't do a lot of ‑‑ that was part of what I was referring to at the beginning. They weren't as influential as I expected they should be. Even in the weak side of it, but then I realized that even Steve explained that, not even the private sector of the strong side of the treaty are as influential as they'd like to be as organizers.
I really believe in trade the model is not as influential as I believe it should be. So that revolution is and that part is I think some of the challenges that this model has to be involved and fob able to infringe those processes.
I hope in the next treaty ‑‑ in the next wave it's much better than on TPP. At least in my region the community wasn't comfortable at all with that outcome. So it's good that it's here.
>> SPEAKER: I've been waiting in the queue for a while, so I might backtrack a little bit. I want to go back to Jeanette and the notion that Civil Society, you're not really accountable to anybody because you're not an elected representative offer appointed. I think in the multi‑stakeholder model having representative power is fundamentally different than that power in government.
You are obviously elected or appointed and represent a certain group of people. You know, specifically at ICANN and other Internet Governance forums, you're coming willingly. I participate here willingly. At the same time, you know, I represent the IT coalition. So I'm answerable to them. I'm on the BC and I'm answerable to the BC. If I start spouting off things that are totally inconsistent with the mission, they're having a touch conversation with me.
Then I also represent the interests of the broader business community and the way it interacts with the Internet domain name space. So it's very naive for me that you say that, you know, Civil Society doesn't really have a representative role in the multi‑stakeholder model, because you do.
There's a lot of different, I guess, constituency groups that the Civil Society can participate in. When you do that, you adopt those kind of responsibilities of those groups.
And now moving on, Michele, thank you for your example using The Accessible Books Consortium as another case. Maybe it's multi‑stakeholder model, but it's largely driven through a top‑down process. I would imagine when WIPO said they would put it together, they kind of went out and cherry‑picked people they thought would put together a reasonably functional panel and groups of people.
You know, again, ICANN and Internet Governance in general is very different than that. You know, Steve has mentioned certainly in the business community there's a huge variety of viewpoints around policy matters that we put our views out on.
You know, as ICANN gets more and more diverse, which I hope it will because by the way in that only 3% were from Africa and only 3% from Latin America. That needs to get worked on. As we get more and more diverse, people are going to have to be more and more actionable to the organizations they represent or the constituency groups they participate in.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks. In terms of transparency we take everyone at the queue. I am assuring you will speak at some level. By chance, Jeanette, maybe you can respond to him. Go ahead.
>> SPEAKER: Two points or three. First of all, when I speak as a woman, I do not represent women. That would be preposterous. So if we think that when I speak as a woman I represent women, then we stretch the concept to a degree that it becomes in my mind really meaningless. It's an unfounded claim to authority.
When we say we speak on behalf, it's always a claim to some degree. It is a claim, and we seem to want to make our voice stronger, more powerful, give it more weight, and I think we need to take that into account. It's different when there's a constituency such as the NCUC and they delegate decision‑making power to one person. This person is then answerable to the constituency.
In organizations there is representation, but without clear constituency where we know who the members are and how the relationship between the members is, outside of that to speak of the same type of representation I find problematic. That's my first point.
The second point concerns the age of the mighty stakeholder process. The literature on the multi‑stakeholder processes says that the first international organization is the ILO, the international labor organization that was founded in 1919. They did not use that term, but the idea of getting various constituencies together and making and hope that they make better decisions because there is more diversity, that is really old. There was also a period at least in Europe where we talked about corporatism.
That sort of is the same idea to have employers, unions, and other parties come together and make decisions. So as much, the idea is not new, but what is new is the term multi‑stakeholder. That was introduced. He wrote about it in 2005 into the Internet Governance space. Thank you.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks, Jeanette. Yes, please.
>> AUDIENCE: Thanks. My name is Marcela and I'm from the Chilean government. I work in the mission of Chile, and it's my first time in the IGF. So it's very interesting for me to be here, especially in this conversation. First of all, I'd like to thank Michele because I work closely with her. All of what she said here and shared what we do in WIPO and there's definitely a very strong participation of interested observers not only watching the plenary of what the countries do, but also as she pointed out in the specific process of traditional knowledge negotiations.
In informal settings that normal it's closed for observers, we have indigenous participants there debating the issues in the same footing as governments. So I just wanted to make that point, but I'm interested in knowing in terms of concrete ways and the reality of the answerability of the multi‑stakeholder model in areas that weren't a multi‑stakeholder setting.
Here I'm speaking on my own behalf, and I hope that that's not a problem that I represent only myself and not necessarily by government. I'm really trying to think out of the box and see how these could be implemented in a realistic way. Considering we have democracies and I would assume that this is also gives some level of representation to governments to agree on certain things, and then we at least ‑‑ in Chile there's been a lot of interesting in trying to pursue more transparency, more participation particularly in trade areas, and that's the area I'm more knowledge on. Especially hearing this issue about representation and think in practical terms how more multi‑stakeholderism could be included in the process realistically.
How could the government administer the situation and these are included in things that weren't this way on the beginning. This is a question for anyone that wants to comment. Thank you very much for the opportunity.
>> AUDIENCE: Good morning to all. I'm from Algeria and I'm also from the government. I would like to raise an issue that hasn't been invoked in this workshop, which is how to promote and improve transparency of the society and organizations involved in IEG in relation with ‑‑ and how to save independence vis‑a‑vis powerful big Internet companies and issues related to agendas sitting and decision‑making processes. My second comment also is related to how these organizations could learn and benefit from the experience gained by other similar organizations engaged in, for example, the issue related to climate change. Thank you.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: I'm not sure who wants to respond to that. Okay.
In the queue we now have Yohan.
>> SPEAKER: Just on the representation issue, it's not the same kind of representation. It's not the same kind of representation, but there are representational claims being made. Many people do often say, as a woman, as a peasant, they do it. We may contest those and they made claims and there's accountability. So I think we need to think about new kinds of ways to deal with those claims. Many, many Civil Society groups come into the fore and make public interest claims. We represent the public interest, and I might be on their side, but I would like to know through what processes of transparency, consultation and evaluation and correction when they make mistakes that claim to public interest representation is made. It's all trying to think about what happened to those claims. Then you throw them out.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Okay, guys. I understand the representation issue is quite controversial. Marcus.
>> SPEAKER: Thank you. It's just a discussion. Jeanette referred to me and I thought I would come back with. She's right and I think the basic difference between what we now call multi‑stakeholderism is that this is what we are doing here. We sit around the table as equals, and the ICLO the stakeholders are in silos and they don't really sit around the table and discuss the same issues. This they discuss it among themselves and bring it later. Corporatism is yet to gain that, but nothing that we refer to as multi‑stakeholderism is very much what we practice here in the IGF. Interesting also that ICANN used the term of the multi‑stakeholderism.
ICANN was built in silos, and this is still a policy development process. It's still done that way. What was really truly multi‑stakeholderism is the transition process, the CCWG, that's where they sat around the table as equals and came up with amounts. It may sound arcane, but it's a distinction to make note of. Thanks.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks, Marcus. Is there anything you want to say?
>> SPEAKER: Thank you very much, Rafik. It's not reacting to anyone but just a general comment. I really am glad to be part of this discussion. Maybe in the future I would like to ‑‑ it's not a criticism. It was really balanced and well‑structured, but I would like to see more opinions or takes from people from eastern countries or eastern communities. I believe there's less chance to have some general views or circumstances or agreements with mother diversity in these types of discussions. Apart of from that I'm really glad to be part of this discussion.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks. That's a fair comment. It's always ‑‑ in terms of organizing a workshop, it's kind of ‑‑ it's complicated how to ensure diversity because of requirements. And also there's the diversity of point of view that maybe we do it. Anyway, that point is taken. For some reason we don't have anybody in the queue, but if, you know, you want to intervene or maybe it can be good ‑‑ oh, Jeanette.
>> SPEAKER: I think Matt asked the right question. Who are the conditions for multi‑stakeholder cooperation within an organization? I have heard all of you talking about this, about how satisfying and really great the collaboration was. Perhaps I should then give the question back to yourself. What do you think were the conditions for working together in that way? Was it the common enemy? Was it the fear that the U.S. government or anybody could sort of undermine that process? Was that one of the conditions that made you stick together and work in that way?
>> SPEAKER: As one of the leaders in the CCWG, I would say it had a couple of critical ingredients hard to capture in all cases. One, was the sense that it mattered. This was our one chance to use the leverage of the transition to get accountability from the corporation called ICANN that we never had before. So it matters.
The second was that it had a time frame. It was a sense of urgency with respect to the date of 2015 moved to 2016. It was dictated by political considerations, not contract terminations.
So it had ‑‑ it mattered. It had a time urgency, and then the third criteria was that we found ourselves with a bottom‑up process. We asked for the process. ICANN did not want to look at accountability at all. They wanted a short, sweet transition of the functions. We at the community at the London community went to the microphone together, Civil Society and businesses and governments saying, we're going to call time‑out here. Until we come back with a plan for buildability, this transition is not going forward.
That made it a process worth enduring, and I wish it was as simple as Matt described it. We wrote thousands of pages and worked hard to struggle through con sense that would completely unraveled when new people joined in. The product was not perfect, but it is a vast improvement on what we had before and a vast improvement on what we would have had the community not come together in London and asked for it.
>> Thanks, Steve, but it was a kumbaya moment with stakeholders.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Steve captured it wonderfully. What's interesting is when the stakeholder ‑‑ when the factors are important, and another factor important unique to ICANN is this notion of chattering agreeing with parameters up front and that lends itself to the process. We don't want to underestimate this. This wasn't easy sailing, and many different individuals and stakeholder groups and subsections came to this process with very different ideas.
I know came into their process with different ideas but what happened over time is by being forced to work together because of the conditions Steve said, we built whether we liked it or not that ability to discuss and agree and argue in a way that was constructive rather than arguing in a way not constructive. That was one of the big differences that stood out.
You can trivialize it by saying it was trust, but it was a willingness to work together towards a common goal, and take common goal that finally came about through spending a good amount of time just feeling our way around each other and how we came from in the beginning. That's an important factor as well.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thanks, Matt. I think we're going to get to the end in a few minutes remaining in the workshop to wrap it up. I'm not sure that we answered all of the questions, but at least I see there are several issues about the represent activity, so it's learning about other experiences in terms of the multi‑stakeholder model. I was hoping that if we can make just to highlight some principles and how to operationalize the model, but some of that is not easy to do. However, I think it can remain a goal to reach.
So since we have a few minutes, just if the speakers want to kind of make a last statement maybe to summarize their thought or maybe the way to move forward from here. Michele.
>> MICHELE WOODS: So, well, I can't say I have an answer to that question. I'm sorry. I'm kind of thinking about it going along here and also thinking back to Marcela's question about what do you do for organizations that didn't start out espousing these multi‑stakeholder principles or the prior versions before that name was given.
I do think that the goal of trying to distill some principles and provide some kind of, I guess it would be a document but that some kind of set of guidelines for entities that have very goodwill and would like to bring components of this horrible word "multi‑stakeholderism" into their organizations, how they could do that. That might be a series of case studies, and it might be also some sets of principles thinking about how you make sure that you bring in all of the different stakeholder groups that out to be a part because, that can be an initial question, and how you structure, for example, meetings or other situations in which issues are discussed in order to make sure that it truly is what was mentioned by a couple of the speakers coming together as equals to have the discussion, because that may not have been the original forum that was adopted by many entities.
Those might be some elements one could think about as sort of subjects of at least one of the components of a set of objectives and principles accompanied, I think, because I think for example for the organization I work for that case study looking at models of what other organizations did is really most of the time this kind of change would come about and say, so‑and‑so tried that.
It worked well for them. Let's give it a try. Sometimes that's brought in by governments. Sometimes that's brought in at the international organization or U.N. level. Sometimes it's suggested by suggested by Civil Societies groups. Those are a few thoughts that are a start.
>> SPEAKER: So, you know, in terms of setting up a set of principles or best practices that could be adopted by other multi-stakeholder organizations, you know, I think we face a number of challenges on a number of different fronts. One of them is just from a timing perspective, you know. The transition took two years to put together, and there was a deadline we had to meet. If we try to do something like that outside of the context of having a deadline, it will probably never get done.
And you know, one of the reasons for that and there's a balance, I think, between ‑‑ you need a set of documents to produce and be accepted as legitimate and one of the ways you do that is through diversity. As you get more and more diverse, everything gets more and more complicated because evening the meaning of the word such as interesting can become very different to people from very different cultures, and then the pace of your work becomes very, very slow.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Thank you. That's interesting. Tatiana.
>> TATIANA TROPINA: Well, it is hard for me to conclude in the context of this session, because there are too many aspects of cyber security, even if you talk about best practices or good practices or however you name them. I believe my suggestion for good practices and best practices is starting with understanding what we mean when we talk about cyber security, which is where we meet with the multi‑stakeholder model will work and where it will not. Thanks.
>> SPEAKER: I'm not sure what is the right answer for trade, because the times are changing now. We're in transition, and I think next year will be a transition period for us in terms of trade and in other trade negotiations and they would be changed because there's a strong political will in the U.S. to go for bilateral rule and not international.
So there are lessons to draw from the TPP and the defeat of the TPP. Also, you know, like in terms of trade negotiations, it didn't start out as a multi‑stakeholder, because this trade model was set up in 1940s and they only talked about tariffs at that time. Now the trade negotiations have lots of issues that affect everyone's lives. If that was the case with the TPP and that's why people came concerned about it. Big businesses found their way into the negotiations and not necessarily small businesses.
We're in a transition period now, and the future doesn't seem that bright. I still believe that, like, you know, if we can come together and discuss coalitions, you know, we might be changing something. We'll see.
>> SPEAKER: It's a great question we struggled with for a while now. Ever since net neutrality where there was the best details what those characteristics are, and I'm sure we made much progress and there are Dynamic Coalitions to address some issues. We really do need to think about what is the purpose of it rather than figuring out what we call it, right? I mean, the purpose at the end of the day is to have decisions well‑informed through people with the expertise to bring to the table that are holistic that reflect the interests of stakeholders, and it doesn't have to be every stakeholder. We have to be careful about what we talk about, because the way we define them could in and of themselves be limiting.
While it's nice to think we have a template or we can have something we point to and stay this is multi‑stakeholderism, I would suggest we need to really be cautious about doing that, because I don't think there is a model, and I think the reason why we talk about the ‑‑ it's a mistake to talk about the multi‑stakeholder model. There are variations and permeations and I'm sure as we continue to evolve in this IG space, there is other variations and models as well. It is a nice idea.
They're out there already. Let's not think about creating more. Let's see if we can actually implement them, but at the end of the day figure out what we're doing it for. Thanks.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: I don't think we're trying to stop the multi‑stakeholder ‑‑ we're trying to establish the multi‑stakeholder church here. We want diversity.
>> SPEAKER: What I found interesting is what Matt said before. He said we built whether or not we like it or not the ability to work together. So it happened throughout the process. So it wasn't predictable for all the participants before that it would turn out like that, and I think the same is true for this period of this and also for the process.
When we look back, we can identify certain moments where it seemed to work and what worked there is that hierarchy was less important than the expertise brought to you table so that people took each other serious and benefitted from what the others could contribute. We are not able to figure out what the conditions are for these few moments where it works. So it's important to keep asking ourselves, but also be aware that it's more the exception than the rule.
>> SPEAKER: Hi. It's really hard to ‑‑ there we go. It's really hard to answer that. I already tried to approach that in my previous comment. I believe that the situation is quite satisfactory and there are some happy exceptions and I believe what I already said about where I should ‑‑ where I think the evolution has to go and I hope that there are many exceptions in the future. I believe in the next four or five years. I don't know.
>> RAFIK DAMMAK: Okay, thanks. Yes. I think that's the end. I want to thank everyone that has stayed until now. It's always hard to compete with lunchtime.
Thanks for your dedication to keeping in this session. Thanks, again, and hopefully we will see you after this. Okay. Bye.
( Session ended at 13:33 CT )