Hi Jeremy

Very good to see you here.

> On Apr 6, 2015, at 6:37 PM, Jeremy Malcolm <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> On Apr 5, 2015, at 2:06 AM, William Drake <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>> 
>> 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.
> 
> So, where do we go to develop solutions - policy proposals, draft laws and regulations, etc?  Still not the IGF, evidently.

Valid question with no answer. This was something we kind of disagreed on back at the aborted launch meeting at WEF last August when you were saying, if I recall correctly, that NMI should indeed have some normative role e.g. with respect to elaborating and specifying the NM principles.  I understand the concern about the lack of a mechanism for such work, but felt from the start that the errors in roll out and framing of NMI and the decision to link in WEF were inevitably going to generate a lot of backlash, lack of buy in and end of the world hysteria from key actors, so any effort to arrogate to NMI such a role was going to be radioactive and sink the thing before it left port.  I think the subsequent evolution vindicates this view.  Given the foundational original sins, the only way this was going to get any acceptance was to right size it as an operational mechanism to facilitate work by others consistent with the NM statement (and even this has continued to draw misdirected fire on the grounds it must secretly be a scheme to take decision making offline and out of bottom up, which some of Fadi’s lingering representations fed into).  

So the lack of a policymaking mechanism remains, and we will probably hear about it at the UNGA in December as a rationale to rebirth ‘enhanced cooperation’ in the form of some UN uber-solution. It’ll be interesting to see what has to be offered to buy off the G77 and China and successfully reach an intergovernmental deal.  Hopefully they won’t choose to make IGF renewal a bargaining chit, but one suspects they’ll try.  Maybe we’ll end up having to live with an UNCTAD/CSTD program that can study and make recs; they’re already increasingly active on global e-commerce anyway. Wouldn’t be the worst thing, given the old saw that the acronym means Under No Circumstances Take Any Decisions.  It’d be great if the IGF could evolve to provide a convincing alternative, as you argued for in your book chapter, but I don’t see it either.  The whole discussion of intersessional work has been redirected to best practice forums on, e.g.

> Regulation and mitigation of unwanted communications <http://mail.intgovforum.org/mailman/listinfo/bp_spam_intgovforum.org>: Markus Kummer
> Establishing and supporting Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) <http://mail.intgovforum.org/mailman/listinfo/bp_certs_intgovforum.org>: Markus Kummer
> Developing meaningful multistakeholder participation mechanisms <http://mail.intgovforum.org/mailman/listinfo/bp_multistakeholder_intgovforum.org>: Avri Doria
> Practices to countering abuse against women online <http://mail.intgovforum.org/mailman/listinfo/bp_counteringabuse_intgovforum.org>: Jac Kee and Subi Chatuvedi 
> IPv6 <http://mail.intgovforum.org/mailman/listinfo/bp_ipv6_intgovforum.org>: Izumi Okutani 
> IXPs <http://mail.intgovforum.org/mailman/listinfo/bp_ixps_intgovforum.org>: Desirée Zachariah
Which could be a start, but obviously short of what you’d like.  It’d have been good if we could have gotten more CS engagement on the intersessional stuff at the foundational moment, but messages to Best Bits etc. generated little interest.  CS remains all over the place and hence nowhere on this, methinks; I see no organized desire to take the IGF seriously as a policy platform consistent with the TA mandate.  People have moved on.
> 
> Also, FWIW, I'm sure you'll agree that the narrowing of the mission that you're setting out here remains subject to comment during the current public consultation on the terms of reference.


Sure, and if you’d like to comment on the ToR to the effect that it lacks suitable ambition and a needed policy role, have at it.  Fadi might pleased that someone finally ‘gets it.’

Best

Bill