ACT has two people who have flown to Hyderabad, India to participate in multiple events built around the United Nations Economic Development arm sponsored “Internet Governance Forum” Conference.
In addition to the main IGF conference, there’s the ICC/BASIS meeting, the WITSA meeting, the GigaNet meeting and a whole raft of “Dynamic Coalition” meetings.
Right now in the WITSA meeting, Markus Kummer Executive Coordinator of the Secretariat of the UN IGF, is giving a breakdown of the Conference to the board of WITSA.
Here is a summary of Mr. Kummer’s main points and the vision for IGF moving forward:
History and basis for IGF:
- WSIS asked the UN Sec Gen to establish the IGF.
- IT industry did not ask for IGF, but is beginning to see the value in IGF’s ‘soft governance’ model
- IGF is run by the UN Economic Development project (not the ITU).
- IGF was purposely given no rules of procedure or document negotiation powers.
- While some groups want IGF to have voting rules, governments would never agree to be bound by votes where non-Government stakeholders gets equal voting rights.
Future of IGF:
- Will IGF continue after its current mandate ends in 2010?
- UN Sec Gen will do a review and recommend a resolution to the full UN Gen Assembly.
- Only Governments will vote on that resolution of whether to continue IGF. They won’t amend the resolution substantially.
So what does this all mean? It means the international governmental community is very interested in the Internet, and they aren’t going away – but they are interested in hearing from more than just other governments.