Too-Much-TV

Presentation, Shanghai

Presentation from UN ICT Task Force Asia and Pacific regional meeting on Internet Governance. 21 May, Shanghai.

Download IG-Shanghai-AJP.ppt (Powerpoint, 176 KB, slides with a few notes/comments.)

I was asked to explain what's happened since the Summit, comment on what was said at the ITU's expert workshop and UN ICT Task Force Global Forum. A 20 minute presentation in 10.

Internet governance roadmap

Internet governance working group -- roadmap of known tasks. Not official, my interpretation of comments made by Markus Kummer at various meetings.

(Some working group activities may continue after the Summit. It has a lot to do.)

ITU Workshop on Internet governance

ITU Workshop on Internet governance has started.

The meeting's being audiocast, http://www.itu.int/ibs/sg/spu/index.html, live and archived.

Many of the presenters have sent papers: http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/forum/intgov04/contributions.html

Don MacLean's background paper is interesting. A new paper by Milton Mueller, with John Mathiason and Lee McKnight, and a new paper on "The Accountable Net", John Palfrey, Susan Crawford and David Johnson (Susan's blogged about.)

ITU workshop on Internet Governance, Feb 26-27

So it begins.

ITU's Strategic Policy unit will hold a workshop on Internet Governance, February 26-27.

Quote:

"Background and Objectives

The workshop's goal is to initiate a process to prepare ITU's position vis-à-vis the UN Secretary-General's Working Group on Internet Governance to be established as a result of the World Summit on the Information Society Declaration of Principles and Action Plan agreed on 12 December 2004."

And:

"Participation

Attendance is by invitation only to ITU Member States and Sector Members."

Thursday, February 26 and Friday, February 27, is convenient for the ICANN meeting in Rome (Tuesday, March 2 to Friday March 6, but can expect pre-meetings on the Monday and perhaps weekend?)

Relevant text from WSIS plan of action (as adopted in Geneva, see the Summit website for links to the full document) is:

b) We ask the Secretary General of the United Nations to set up a working group on Internet governance, in an open and inclusive process that ensures a mechanism for the full and active participation of governments, the private sector and civil society from both developing and developed countries, involving relevant intergovernmental and international organizations and forums, to investigate and make proposals for action, as appropriate, on the governance of Internet by 2005. The group should, inter alia:
i) develop a working definition of Internet governance;
ii) identify the public policy issues that are relevant to Internet governance;
iii) develop a common understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities of governments, existing intergovernmental and international organisations and other forums as well as the private sector and civil society from both developing and developed countries;
iv) prepare a report on the results of this activity to be presented for consideration and appropriate action for the second phase of WSIS in Tunis in 2005.

It will be interesting to see if the ITU will manage a transparent and open process. Perhaps as the much criticized ICANN does: open to all (to at least observe), transcribed, with documents and records of the meeting promptly posted for the public.