Not sure if all those subscribed to this list are aware of the rather comprehensive discussion taking place on the Internet Governance Mailing list on and about At-Large and ALAC. Well worth a read, as the discussion is far more comprehensive then what has been the case on this list.. If you aren't subscribed to the governance list, i'll share a recent posting by Wolfgang Kleinwächter. Internet Governance list Subscription & Archive details@ http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance regards Robert Begin forwarded message:
From: Kleinwächter, Wolfgang <wolfgang.kleinwaechter@medienkomm.uni-halle.de
Date: December 1, 2007 4:13:04 AM GMT-05:00 To: governance@lists.cpsr.org Subject: SV: [governance] Innovation Reply-To: governance@lists.cpsr.org,Kleinwächter, Wolfgang <wolfgang.kleinwaechter@medienkomm.uni-halle.de
Two comments to two aspects of the discussion:
Accountability of elected representatives:
Yes, we had five elected AT Large Directors in 2000. I organized from Melbourne onwards until 2002 at seven ICANN Meetings the so- called "Dialogue with At Large Directors" together with Hans Klein. With the exception of one occasion, we never managed to bring all five ALM directors into a dialogue with their constituencies. Very often they had "higher priorities" than talking to their voters during the one week of an ICANN meeting. Karl came nearly everytime, Kato (the Asian At Large director from Fujitsu) and Campos (the Latin America Director from the Bank of Brasil) came frequently. Nii from Africa as often as he could. But Andy Mueller Maguhn ignored it widely. And when Andy, who got such an enourmes support in the elections, ended its mandate as director in 2002 he totaly disappeared from the scene. He did not undertake any effort to fight for a improved at large representation with his knowledge as former ICANN director. Karl did it. Andy did not. Karl voted very often "against", Andy voted very often "abstain". How can election guarantee that you get at the end indeed the people who behave in a responsible way? I know that among all the bad procedures you have at your disposal, fair, free and transparent elections are the best you can get. But while elections are important and an empowring instrument, they do not settle all problems.
Empowering of Internet Users: In the reform process ICANN moved from one extreme to another: The original plan in 1998 was to have nine voting At Large Directors. After four years in 2002 you got just one non voting AL liaison. The background for this movement is - as described elswhere - mainly political. We know this. A big fear and mistrust by some political (and probably also economic) groups was in favour of an exclusion of AL to minimize the risk that uncontrollable voices can make their way to the decisions making process. Within WSIS it was a long way until governments recognized civil society as a main stakeholder and accepted multistakeholderism as a principle. During PrepCom1 at WSIS I in 2002 in Geneva, the doors were closed and CS had no access even to the Plenary. There were a lot of turbulences in front of the closed doors in the ICCG in Geneva. One conclusion which was drawn by CS folks in Geneva was that they have to counter the governmental argument that CS is just a bunch of "individual noise makers" who have no mandate from anybody. The result was the start of a process of self-organisation among CS which procuded the CS Plenary, the CS Bureau, the CS Content & Themes and about 30 caucuses and working groups. One was the CS Internet Governance Caucus (co-chaired first by YJ and me after WSIS I by Jeanette and Adam and now by Parminder and Vittorio). The self organisation of the caucus paved the way for the recognition by the other stakeholders. The IGC became a respected partner in the process, was asked to nominate members for the WGIG and published reasonable statements. It had been the IGC- WGIG members which became a driving force in the WGIG process itself, which paved the way for the Tunis Agenda. In fact, two milestones of WGIG were initiatited and drafted by CS people: the IG definition and the proposal for an Internet Governance Forum.
Can be lessons learned for ICANN? Yes. 1. do your homework in pushing foreward the self-organization process using the existing structures for innovative actions 2. pratice what you preach with regard to bottom up, 3. draft understandable and rational language with substantial proposals 4. make concrete contributions in the acting bodies. One outcome from the ALAC review process could be to change the Advisory Committee status into a supporting organisation status which would than allow an ALSO to send two voting directors to the Board.
Wolfgang
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Fra: Jacqueline A. Morris [mailto:jam@jacquelinemorris.com] Sendt: fr 30-11-2007 16:12 Til: governance@lists.cpsr.org Emne: RE: [governance] Innovation
-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Auerbach [mailto:karl@cavebear.com]
It is good to hear that people are getting interested.
Was it you who mentioned previously that you thought that the Director elected for LA in year 2000 did not fully represent the Caribbean area?
Yes, it was. And I note that yet again you write LA, not LAC. So - if as you say, the Director was elected for LA - not LAC, obviously they didn't represent the Caribbean at ALL, as there isn't even the single letter that includes us in the regional name.
Do you think that the ALAC - a channel in which your regions views are filtered and then filtered and then filtered again - is as good as having a Director you can chose and elect?
I disagree with the premise - I don't think that the views are " filtered and then filtered and then filtered again". And honestly, once one elects a Director, until the next election, there's no accountability - or that's what I am accustomed to here. The elected person or persons can choose to put forward the regional views or their personal ones, as they want. At the end, they can be voted out, but the next person will do exactly the same thing. In the current case, all the views are going forward, without filtration.
Back here in the US there was a thing known as a "company union" - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_union
OK... I don't see the analogy, but ...
If you were drowning, as internet users are, in a sea of powerlessness, and if given a choice between the ALAC, and its nearly vacuous ability to hold ICANN to account, and real elections for real identifiable people - including themselves if they chose to run, don't you think that many, perhaps most would chose elections?
Yet again, I disagree with the base concept here. I think that Internet users in the Caribbean are drowning in a sea of lack of information, lack of infrastructure, lack of affordable technology; not powerlessness that can be fixed with a vote. We need information, outreach, we need to know and understand what the issues are. Then we can determine what we think about those issues and then we can say- this is what we want/need. An election system won't do that IMO. NGOs and information campaigns and technology transfer and training programs will. And the ALSes can work on that, and they can get support from ICANN and other organizations to do that.
Honestly, I think that you are coming from a place that is so different to the reality here that it's almost impossible to relate.
Jacqueline
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