*** Note the March 15 hard deadline for nominations. *** Dear all As many of you are aware, the outcome document of the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis [1, para 69] contains a call for "enhanced cooperation in the future, to enable governments, on an equal footing, to carry out their roles and responsibilities, in international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet, but not in the day-to-day technical and operational matters, that do not impact on international public policy issues." [1] http://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html <http://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html> So far there has been little to no agreement on how this should be implemented. Now the UN General Assembly has asked the Chair of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) to "establish a working group to develop recommendations on how to further implement enhanced cooperation as envisioned in the Tunis Agenda." This will continue work done by an earlier CSTD Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation, that was active from 2013-2014. There will be five Civil Society representatives on this Working Group, one from each UN region. These civil society representatives will be selected by the Civil Society Coordination Group (CSCG), see below for further information. I'm sure that before long CSCG will publish an official announcement detailing selection criteria, but since time is short, here is the information which is available already: The Civil Society Coordination Group requests that Civil Society communities and individuals submit names of candidates from developed and developing countries as well as from economies in transition, all geographic areas, and policy orientations to serve as Civil Society representatives on the CSTD Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation, the announcement for which can be found at http://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=1193 <http://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=1193>. More information about the WG proposal can be found at http://unctad.org/meetings/en/Presentation/CSTD_2015_s11_Major_en.pdf <http://unctad.org/meetings/en/Presentation/CSTD_2015_s11_Major_en.pdf> . While the exact timeframe for the working group has not been established, nominees are asked to consider a service period of 2016-2017 (and eventually the beginning of 2018). Shortlists should be submitted to the CSCG’s nominations committee (nomcom) via the email address nomcom06 [at] internetgov-cs [dot] org no later than 15 March 2016. Independent Civil Society experts (i.e. those who are not nominated by a civil society network or other community) are welcome to send self-nominations directly to the CSCG nomcom by the same deadline. Nominations should include a short bio of one paragraph, one paragraph of motivation to be a civil society representative to the WG, one paragraph describing substantive proposals or a vision on "how to further implement enhanced cooperation as envisioned in the Tunis Agenda", and one paragraph describing experience or qualifications to represent civil society on the WG. Name, gender, regional/geographical, as well as any appropriate affiliation information and contact information should be included as well. Proficiency in English is necessary for communications within the Working Group. About CSCG and the current nomcom: The Civil Society Coordination Group (CSCG) has been established to ensure a coordinated civil society response and conduit when it comes to making civil society appointments to outside bodies. It comprises representatives of the coalition members of the Best Bits, Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Internet Governance Caucus (IGC), Just Net Coalition (JNC), and the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group of ICANN. As per the CSCG's procedures [2], for any selection task, the CSCG will determine selection criteria and announce them as part of a call for candidates, which is then circulated as broadly as possible across many different constituencies. All members of the CSCG nomination committee are required to consider the interests of civil society as a whole, and not just their own coalition, in determining appropriate representatives. The nomination committee will take into account geographic and gender balance in determining their final selections, while considering also the need for the breadth of viewpoints/worldviews represented within civil society to be represented. [2] http://internetgov-cs.org/procedures <http://internetgov-cs.org/procedures> Peter Major, the Chair of the CSCG, has appointed CSCG as the "focal point" for appointments of Civil Society representatives on this Working Group, and CSCG has correspondingly established a nomcom for this selection task. Please feel free to contact us if you need further information or to discuss how we can work together to ensure our mutual objective to ensure the best possible civil society representation on this Working Group. Members of the civil society networks which are directly represented on the nomcom are requested to address such communications to the representative of the corresponding network, while the co-chairs of CSCG, Ginger Paque and Ian Peter, are available for inquiries from others. The members of the CSCG nomcom for the CSTD WG on Enhanced Cooperation are: Deirdre Williams, representative of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC), and recent Co-Coordinator of the IGC Chat Garcia Ramilo, representative of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), and Deputy Executive Director of APC Ginger (Virginia) Paque, non-voting Co-Chair of CSCG, and with Diplo Foundation, Internet Governance Programmes (contact: virginiap at diplomacy dot edu) Ian Peter, non-voting Co-Chair of CSCG, independent (contact: ian dot peter at ianpeter dot com) Nadira Alaraj, representative of Best Bits Norbert Bollow, representative of the Just Net Coalition (JNC), and Co-Convenor of JNC Robin Gross, representative of the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG), and member of the NCSG Executive Committee