Hi Milton
> On Apr 5, 2015, at 4:22 AM, Milton L Mueller <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
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> From: William Drake [mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>]
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> The Initiative will seek to complement and support the work of existing Internet governance dialogue and normative processes and institutions, including particularly the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), as well as the technical Internet community. In addition, the Initiative will not be a policy-setting body.
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> MM: I understand how the “Friends of the IGF” supports the IGF. I understand how I support it when I attend and propose workshops and participate in its processes. I understand how host governments support the IGF when they provide facilities for its events. But I don’t understand how NMI does. It seems to be duplicating many of the functions and multiplying another process that makes it more difficult for many of us to stay on top of it all.
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I don’t see the duplication, or that the difficulty for you in staying on top of things is a reason like-mineded people can’t collaborate on something. You don’t have to pay attention if you don’t want, it’s mostly stuff you’re not into anyway, e.g. helping developing country actors with non-ICANN issues.
> MM: As for complementing, you need to better specify what it is the IGF currently can’t do that NMI does better, how NMI’s structure is better suited to these purposes.
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There’s can’t and doesn’t. I’d have preferred ten years ago that IGF develop the capacities to do these things but it was turned into just an annual gab fest for reasons you are aware of. So doesn’t is the order of the day.
> Serve as a neutral clearinghouse for issues, solutions, expertise and resources in Internet governance, and provide a platform on which diverse actors can solicit project partners and establish collaborative relationships.
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> MM: Seems highly duplicative of what IGF is supposed to do.
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IGF shares info about the IGF process. Fine, but it’s not a place where, e.g., the Chad minister goes for info and connections to build a policy network to tackle spam or whatever at the national level, or get connected to people doing this at the global.
> Enable open, inclusive, balanced and collaborative communities to share knowledge and expertise, leading to best practices, suggestions, innovation and solutions to address challenges identified by the community.
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> MM: This language could be drawn directly from the description of the IGF’s mission
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I had a hand in writing the IGF’s mission statement in the WGIG and do not see this. IGF is for open dialogue. NMI is for fostering collaborations between partners.
> Facilitate participation in the Internet governance ecosystem, particularly in the developing world, and advance multistakeholder processes at the national and regional levels.
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> MM: Seems highly duplicative of what IGF is doing. Local and regional IGFs, etc
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Multistakeholder processes at the national and regional levels does not mean hold an IGF, it means develop CIG.br <http://cig.br/> type mechanisms for actual policymaking.
> Promote the application, evaluation, and implementation of the Principles and encourage community reporting efforts.
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> MM: The link here to the Netmundial principles seems to be distinct to the NMI, agreed. NMI as promotor of the Netmundial principles would be a potentially unique function.
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> Assist developing-country communities, governments and underserved stakeholders by enabling capacity development efforts and in networking with relevant organizations and processes in order to address gaps in policy development.
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> MM: In addition to IGF, seems like almost a dozen organizations and government agencies are already trying to do this, ranging from ISOC to HIVOS to US AID. Is your real purpose to promote the Netmundial principles or to be a development agency? Why can’t the capacity of IGF be expanded to do this?
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Will not be an agency. A light connector mechanism that on demand helps with contacts and relationship building etc. The other orgs you mention have more narrow missions and outlooks.
> Either way, there's no dastardly plot here to take over the world.
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> MM: You’ve often accused critics of NMI of not actually reading what NMI says about itself;
Yes, that and reading what is said through a distorted lens in order to find something to bash due to Fadi fever etc.
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> A core concern is and always was contributing to capacity building for developing country governments and stakeholders trying to deal with non-ICANN issues.
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> MM: you always have a problem explaining why ICANN is leading an entity designed to deal with non-ICANN issues.
ICANN was the catalyst in getting it started. It’s not up to me to explain this and I have never tried. Now that the things is standing up, ICANN is one of three parters in the funding and staff support. Over time I expect/hope that role will transition, I think NMI should hire a couple independent staff and eventually have a budget that’s donated with no strings.
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> Either people will decide this can be useful and it will sustain a place as a small facilitating connector in complex institutional ecosystem, or they won’t, and we’ll say ok we tried and it’ll drift off, not the end of the world.
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> MM: Good to see a scaled-back version of NMI.
Yes, as I’ve said, Fadi confused the situation for a long time by making loose comments about it providing policy solutions, which sounded to some like he meant it it be a negotiation space that agrees stuff. I spent a half a year telling him he needed to stop this, and inter alia successfully insisted that the staff take off the website loose talk drawn from the Ilves process about solutions meaning policy proposals, draft laws and regs, etc. Drove me nuts. But of course he doesn’t readily take his cues from troublesome CS types and didn’t really take recalibration to heart until it became clear business and tech comm were not going to let that fly and key governments were mightily unenthused as well. So at the meeting last week he was totally focused on making sure the language adopted was clear NMI doesn’t do policy, doesn’t negotiation, and doesn’t do dialogues, which is for IGF. Better late than never.
In any event, if you too have recalibrated and will now be criticizing per above on the grounds that some functions could be seem as IGF activities (funny to see you extolling IGF virtues given past pronouncements), great, there’s a useful conversation to be had there about how exactly to define the scope in a way that’s non-redundant and really value adding, so helping people involved in NMI to think this through would be constructive.
Cheers
Bill
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William J. Drake
International Fellow & Lecturer
Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency,
ICANN, www.ncuc.org <http://www.ncuc.org/>
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> (direct), [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> (lists),
www.williamdrake.org <http://www.williamdrake.org/>
Internet Governance: The NETmundial Roadmap http://goo.gl/sRR01q <http://goo.gl/sRR01q>
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