EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES ‑ ENHANCING MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
OCTOBER 23, 2013
11:00 AM
SESSION NUMBER WS 57
MAKING MULTISTAKEHOLDERISM MORE EQUITABLE AND TRANSPARENT
The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Eigth Meeting of the IGF, in Bali, Indonesia. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Making Multi‑stakeholderism More Equitable and Transparent
>> I think we'll wait a couple more minutes and then we'll start. Could I ask all of you, please, to come further closer? That includes you, Chuck.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you very much for coming. A bit late starting, but we have a couple of more panelists that are coming and joining us. I think for many, first of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Khaled Fattal. The subject matter we're here to discuss is something that is very close to many people's heart who attend IGF. This is going to be more of a debate and a discussion and more like a focus group to try and come up with some possible scenarios of how to make the multi‑stakeholder model more transparent in its processes, more relevant to local community, and at the same time reflect what I would call the new religion, multi‑stakeholderism and in my book many people's books is really a new adopted faith. It's a mechanism of way of thinking and away of approaching of how representation takes place while it's still work in progress, it has tremendous opportunity to make the leverage the Internet that we know into something more powerful and provide representation by people across the world.
Zoo the subject matter here today is how do we make multi‑stakeholderism more equitable and transparent? Many of you who probably looked at the program and were interested in coming in and having this debate would recognize the policy decision and Internet governance or climate change directly affect daily lives of billions. To expect a high level rule of observance, a high level of public participation is mandatory. Thus, ownership of the adopted rules. Risks from and on multi‑stakeholderism are paradoxically related to the nature of this model, the openness and inclusiveness, without enshrining transparency in multi‑stakeholderism can be highjacked by small groups. We have heard the expression you are as strong as your weakest link. With multi‑stakeholderism taking root around the world, it's paramount that the processes that take place in local IGFs are as transparent as possible, adhering to a standard of some sort. They are actually strength evening the global IGF rather than creating a weakness in it.
So this workshop here is how to debate mechanism for an equity model.
We have a great panel here today. I will give them an opportunity to announce themselves and tell us who they represent and speaking on their own behalf or on behalf of their organizations. At the same time, part of the program today is to actually address the relevant subject matter that's of the day. When we talk about multi‑stakeholderism, we're talking about faith, trust, representation. The latest revelations about the surveillance that we've been hearing about that many of us are finding very distasteful, cannot be taken away from this conversation. They are part of this conversation. So part of what I want to actually present to you in the beyond and to the panelist is how do we ‑‑ how should we address the subject matter of the surveillance and the way it has been revealed and the way it challenges the multi‑stakeholder model, which, again, in my special opinion I treat it like a cancer that needs to be looked at and figured out of how to deal with it, because it can challenge the trust in the whole process of the whole system.
So that's my personal opinion. I will leave it to the panelist to actually address this and then give us their thoughts. So we'll start first with I'll ask the panelists to start from the left. Thomas, would you please?
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Yes, hello, everybody, and good morning. My name is Thomas Schneider. I work for the Swiss government, which is the regulator for electronic media and telecom and information society, but it's also the ministry of these issues and sometimes also the foreign ministry. We do many things at the same time. And I represent a number including ICAN, council of Europe, UN, and so on.
With regard to religion, I was raised Catholic, but I decided not to be that religious, the older I get. So for me multi‑stakeholder is not a new religion but it's very funny how this term is spread and at the same time how there's no agreed or only a limited agreed shared common understanding of what that actually should mean. We spend much more time discussing how good this is than to actually agree on what we actually mean by it and where the limits of multi‑stakeholder are or by the principles of the basics of multi‑stakeholderisms are. And I hope we have a good discussion here, but not only here, we need to get to more common understanding how to improve the multi‑stakeholderism so that it is actually a valid alternative to more ancient processes or structures like multilateralism. There are many people that are still not convinced of the real benefits of multi‑stakeholderism because it's most of the time not really properly done on the potential of multi‑stakeholderism is not fully used. We'll get to more debate.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you.
>> I'm from the TRA in Beran. I represent the ITU and other such as the IGF. Multi‑stakeholderism is actually a very hot topic these days, but it's been a hot topic for the last eight years or more. I think Thomas hits on a very important point, which is we keep talking about this definition of multistakeholders and how it seems to be talked about with the passion and fervor of faith. If you break down the term, it doesn't mean anything of itself. It just means you have several different stakeholders. That's a project. Every project will will have multistakeholders. Any decision you make that affects more than your will have more multistakeholders. The problem is not in the term. The problem is in the mechanism. In many of these you hear reference to the agenda, because it was the one document that was ratified at the high level that lays out the responsibilities, but it laid them out as a simple phrase or a simple sentence for each of the stakeholders.
So now it comes to how do we operationalize some of those things, which is why you hear about the Brazilian proposal, because there was some vagueness in the mechanism of this.
So my preference is not to use the term multistakeholders. My preference is to use the word inclusivity, they should have their say in this.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Would you, for example, add the term representation to inclusiveness?
>> Of course. I think the real key here is respect. At the end of the day, everyone who impacts or is impacted by these decisions should ‑‑ their point of view should be respected. You don't necessarily have to agree with it. At the end of the day, every group will have a different agenda, but we need to respect the fact they have concerns. If we dismiss them, that's under mining the entire model to begin with.
>> KHALED FATTAL: That's coming from government as well. Thank you. Walda?
>> WALDA ROSEMAN: I'm Walda Roseman. I'm with the INTERNET SOCIETY. First of all, I want to thank Thomas and Musav for your comments. Thomas, you talked about multistakeholders if I could use the term a buzz word at this point. And I have been, I dare say, I've been around long enough that I remember it when competition was a new concept in the market. And a competition was considered a tool. And probably the best tool that could be used in any circumstance in trying to open up opportunities for telecommunications and broadcasting in the marketplace. This dates back, dare I say into the 70's. Then we watched it evolve to an objective and lost along the way when we were trying to accomplish it when using it as a tool.
So I think it's very useful for us to take the term multi‑stakeholderism and begin to pull it apart as a tool, key tool, for much better decision‑making that leads to implementation that is much more pragmatic and essentially more effective.
My own sense is that multi‑stakeholderism is highly situational. The principle is to bring in all of those who have a stake in the outcome and who might well have a solution for the outcome. But it does make a difference what the outcome is that you're seeking, who's seeking it, what the process is that's put in place, and who drives that process. And as part of that process, full knowledge of who's ultimately going to make the decision, whether it's a shared set of decisions or a central decision.
The questions that Khaled asked how do you keep a small group from high‑jacking it, and I found that confusing, because you don't. You have a process in place where there's transparency of the process and how that decision takes place. So I'll stop there.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you all. This is exactly what we wanted to debate, because the processes that are being ‑‑ put it this way ‑‑ put out to be followed are still as was referred to early on. They're really high level guidelines. And the challenge here is you can still at local level have those kind of processes that might appear to be multi‑stakeholder approach. Until you dig deeper to say what was followed? This is something we want to debate and we'll come to that a bit later. But to get to the subject matter, what I would like to read to you is the five key points that we want to actually create the debate about. By the way, this is open to you guys, not only the panelists.
Point one, how can we prevent the openness and inclusiveness of the multi‑stakeholder model being highjacked by unrepresented groups that have the resources, leverage, or will to impose themselves or those with the loudest voices?
Remember, this may not be very common in the western hemisphere, but it can be very common in emerging markets where processes are not as transparent. And this is important.
Point Number 2, how can we instead of serving the global public interest, if we don't to that, we are actually curtailing the value of the global multi‑stakeholder model.
Number three, how can we protect the multi‑stakeholderism for the global interest.
Four, how do we ensure equitable.
Great ideas have great names. Is there a better name we can come up or are we happy with the term multi‑stakeholderism so people can feel they're adopting to the new faith, what we call it, faith in progress; right?
Something else that we need to interject is how to ensure that the faith in that model is not curtailed by other events like the revelations we've heard about the surveillance issues.
So here what I've done is I've laid out the five key points. I think you're able to see them from the online from the agenda of this event. What we want to do is create it into a debate. So you guys in the audience are also asked to give us your interjections, agree to disagree, or at least give us your thoughts. Maybe if you want to interject something else new.
I'll open it up to the panel on some of these key points and see who would like to take a first crack at it. Please, Thomas.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you. First of all, when I reread the two things that strike me, first of all, the multi‑stakeholderism model doesn't exist. There are hundreds at least around. One example, when ICAN is talking about we are the multi‑stakeholder model. I always tend to answer them, you are not a multi‑stakeholder institution, you are a private institution. This is a multistick holder model with private sector leadership, which is something completely different. I, too, have some ways of incorporating businesses definitely and also they also open up to some extent to NGO's and academia. But it's a multi‑stakeholder model with a clear government leadership. There are many models in between. So far I haven't really seen yet, apart from things that I don't know too well, like ITF or these technical bodies that I don't know well, but on a political level, I haven't seen a model that is a multi‑stakeholder model on equal basis. At least nothing exists. Maybe it's in a different language or whatever. So what I personally would understand as the multi‑stakeholder model would be one where decisions are taking with all stakeholders on equal level. ICAN is not like that, but UN isn't ‑‑ this is something that I want to keep as first.
Then the second nice thing is the global, we act in the public global interest. There is no such thing as the global public interest. Depending on who is defining the global public interest, you will have very global public interest.
It's a question of who is shaping and making the decisions. You can't discuss with the whole world. You somehow need to have ways of people representing other people, people representing stakeholders, and through the mechanism that you basically channel these representations, you get different results. This is the oldest stakeholder model that worked more or less is is democracy with parliaments where all stakeholder in the country, if women are allowed to vote and foreigners would be allowed to vote, which is still not the case in most of our countries, then all the inhabitants of one country, all the stakeholders, would be represented in the parliament would be represented in the government somehow. But this only works to a certain percentage.
And this system of representation has its flaws because in the end a government will will discuss this with some friends last night ‑‑ a government doesn't necessarily do what what the people want. Because of the means of the representation ‑‑
>> KHALED FATTAL: We have seen that many times, yes.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: It's the same in the multi‑stakeholder model, depending on a, you don't get results that are correspondent with the most relevant.
>> KHALED FATTAL: You're making some excellent points. And I think I will interject on a couple of them. Maybe I can shed a bit more clarity and I'll give the floor to the other panelists and to you in the audience. I think your point is valid about the versions of multi‑stakeholder approaches. However, when you start ‑‑ when we start observing the term multi‑stakeholderism being used in a singular term, I think then that becomes ‑‑ that is being promoted as the new faith. And unless it is promoted as something that can represent or can be a process for representation with transparency in the processes, from local to global, then it has challenges. Secondly, on the issue of the global public interest, an actual fact within ICAN, it's only within the last year or so you started hearing the term global public interest being used. I don't want to take all the consider for it, but I've been pushing on ICAN to actually recognize their role because of their mandate and where their outreach and how they can impact other communities around the world through their mandate with the DOC. Does impact of on the public interest in local communities therefore their impact is on a global level.
Do we need to create more definition at a global level? Yes. I think the impact is at a global level. I think you're making some valid points.
>> Thank you very much. Thomas makes an excellent point about there being multiple models of multistakeholders. So it really comes down to which definition are we using? The first point I'd like to touch on is when Thomas mentioned quality. It's not necessarily the case, at least in my opinion. We need equal power between all the decision‑makers in every model. Okay. I imagined that's made a few people perk up their eyebrows and say what? Think about it. If it's a technical decision, why do governments really care? Shouldn't the technical community be leading the decisions in that? Don't they have the expertise? If it's public policy, shouldn't governments take lead in that? The point is there are people with more expertise whose decision or advice should actually take more weight. And this is why we keep going back to the TUNS agenda. It actually reflects this level of expertise in the decision‑making process.
Now, TUNIS agenda? ) We keep talking about the multi‑stakeholder model. If you don't subscribe specifically to that model, you're not in support of the multi‑stakeholder model. Now, I mentioned yesterday and I will repeat today that coming from an Arab country where I've had people ask me, why doesn't Behrain support the multi‑stakeholder model. Not only are we supporting it, but we have in practice on the TNRA coming up on ten years. Every issue we make for public consultation and we open it to everyone. We open it to the industry, to the operators, to your average consumers and we get responses even from individuals. They're like why do you as TRA do such and such? Why don't you do XYZ? And by law, we are required to issue a response to every single consultation question that we receive. And we are held accountable for it. We don't necessarily implement it, but we must respond to it.
So how do we go forward on this? Coming from ‑‑ this is a personal opinion as opposed to an administrative opinion. This is because I come from a project management background. I think we need to have clear leadership on any particular area in a particular topic. If the leadership isn't clear, your decision is not going to be clear and your implementation is going to be less so. So I'm going to leave that as food for thought and I'll let the other ‑‑
>> KHALED FATTAL: I think that's an excellent example. I didn't know that's how you operate in the TRA for ten years, that's exactly your mechanism of consultation. It just brings me back to observations that I made when I was attending the summit in Dubai. Going back to labeling and you're either with us or against us, I felt a lot of debates in wicket, if you don't support the multi‑stakeholder model, the way it's promoted, you're the Antichrist. It's like you're government, you're not supporting, you're not with us. And I felt it was very, very negative approach, especially when you hear that there are many jurisdictions that implement their version of multi‑stakeholder model which should be celebrated and brought in into the fold.
So I think that's a good example. I'm glad you mentioned that.
Walda, the floor is yours.
>> WALDA ROSEMAN: You see, one of the beauties of multi‑stakeholderism is you can choose not to take the floor.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Would you like to give me the microphone back?
>> WALDA ROSEMAN: Here we go. Jovan. I can only agree with what I'm hearing here. I think when we refer to the TUNIS agenda, we also hear there is also reference to each stakeholder according to their own, which both clarifies and probably confuses it further.
I'm a former regulator as well and a former policy maker and have been in industry. So I've seen this from a number of perspectives. And one of the things I have seen in various models, certainly in the U.S.'s FCC's consultative model, there is government failure. The government may have the responsibility of making a decision after full consultation of all stakeholders, but that responsibility, does that mean that they have to lead the decision or the action as a result of that decision? For example, quite often it makes sense to forego making a regulation or a policy and letting the market forces or the technical forces work together or facilitating their working together with the government stepping back. I would concur that we have multiple public interests as well, which global public interest is a good principle. I think that we're in another room right now we're hearing discussion of different principles of effective Internet governance. Certainly freedom of expression, open global accessible Internet. All of these are principles that one can relate to the global public interest. But how it ends up affecting individuals may ‑‑ there may be differential impacts. Again, it's situational who makes that decision and plays in the execution of that decision, has different impacts.
I think, Thomas, what you talked about with ICAN is an interesting example. The example is that multi‑stakeholderism is by and large experimental, a moving target. We are learning from those experiments. I think wave lot of excellent achievements from them. If we look at what we learned, for example, I'll turn to Internet exchange points. We have examples where governments have chosen to move in in good faith to put regulations on Internet exchange points. And those who have foregone making those and we see much better results for those who have foregone making those regulations. That's a matter of experience. But it's also a matter of faith in the multi‑stakeholder approach on how does one find what is going to work best in a particular circumstance and carry that forward.
I'm going to actually give this back, but I have a feeling you want Jovan to maybe say something here.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Yeah.
>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: I want to say hello. Good morning, and I first apologize for being late. I'm coorganizer. 50% of our delegation got sick and 50% myself here to take care of a bit of help and assistance.
Context matters a lot. Today is public holiday which increase complexity. My big apology for being late on that.
>> KHALED FATTAL: We'll give you the opportunity as well to get into the conversation. So thank you.
Walda, I think from what you just interjected and what I've heard from the other panelists, something I would like to share with you. If we recognize that the multi‑stakeholder model is an experiment and it's an experiment that has had some successes to start with and we'll acknowledge that, I'm going to share a story with you, takes us back to 1982. I was this young kid at the university, and my professor of economics is a gentleman whose theories are taught around the world. His name is Arthur Lafer. The Lafer curve, anybody who have have studied economics would understand that. Back in '82, professor Lafer used to teach us at the University of California, he was one of the architects helping Margaret thatcher implement supply side economics. And back then, as a student, I remember having the debate with him because the concept of competition, supply side economics was still a new faith, if you recall. And the conversation was I used to challenge the professor during those sessions in front of all the other kids saying when society ceases to operate in a normal manner, supply side economics will collapse. And I was born in Syria, by the way. Jokingly, he would say oh, you Syrians, you want to nationalize everything. You're communist.
When you are in a civil war and you allow for the supply and demand to actually allocate resources best, what happens is people will have problem actually being able to function in society. And because it was an experiment, there was a lack of oversight of a component, and that component I identified was social responsibility.
Dr. Lava used to say you don't need that. The market will allocate its resources. What we've learned from the economic failures in the last few years, social responsibility was at the heart of why we ended up in the mess we were in. And I recall, and some of you may recall this as well, when Federal Reserve chairman Greenspan was testifying in front of Congress a few years ago, and his answer was, "Did you not see this coming?" His answer was, "We assumed people will do what's in their best interest and companies will do what's in their best interest. We did not anticipate the greed factor."
Where it fits with the multi‑stakeholder model is that ‑‑ or many of its versions ‑‑ is because we are now in an experiment, we need to figure out and factor in all the relevant components and social responsibility is an intricate component many of us believe that needs to be factored into multi‑stakeholder. Many people in many emerging markets, they want freedom online, freedom of expression online, they'll tell you it's natural but we don't want it to be in absolute terms. We want it to be with social responsibility.
So, again, if we can from this panel, from this debate, interject some new ideas of how we can factor in social responsibility in multi‑stakeholderism, we probably would be doing it much better service so the experiment could become a good implementation. That's my interjection.
Thomas?
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Just a quick reaction to. Not all stakeholders have equal knowledge responsibilities on all issues or on all aspects of government. This is why we always put the focus on in their respective roles. The question is what is the respective role and this is not so easy as to say we love multi‑stakeholderism because then it gets very complicated and also with differences from country to country.
With regard to market versus politics, I happened to study history and economics, and I learned in history this is a theory that sometimes works to some extent, but many times also not works because it's just a model that is not really only have socialized and irrational emotions and so forth. So I agree with you on this.
No matter which one you choose, whether it's more multilateral or capitalists, the question is what are the results, but many people after the result think that this has been mistake. So we have to correct it. In a traditional politics in a democracy in France, if people don't like something, they go and block the streets with tractors. If it's an agricultural issue. In Switzerland they start collecting signatures in other countries. They do other things to show they are not happy with a decision taking. Online protest, they block access of a website of a company or government, which, unfortunately, is considered.
(Audio drop).
Not every issue or situation or social development has been taken into account in a decision‑making process, if you can correct it. Afterwards, once you realize, maybe then this is a good model. I care much less whether the governments are in the lead or private sector is in the lead, as long as everybody has the possibility to say something is wrong here. If you agree, let's fight for having it changed.
The applicant guidebook,.cocacola is not the same as dot Swahilee, because it's different use, different target groups. They said we want to go fast, one size fits all. There we go. We see a brand registry group forming itself because they think brand TLD is something different, we got the gTLD. If they didn't listen to us in 2009, if this is emerging in 2013, that people agree that maybe some categories would make life easier and not more complicated. Fine, if this correction mechanism works, the question of more markets in Western Europe there is a permanent tension between capitalism. Social capitalism is like you have basically you let the market rule. You fight hard for the regulation for the market, because no market in the long term works in the more or less fairway without intelligent regulation. But for the ones who didn't succeed in the market, the ones that fall out of the system, you need the Social Security system. And this is the compromise between two models. Each of them is too weak, but if you try to take the best out of both models as neutral correction system, then you can get something that is accepted by the national public or by the global public.
>> KHALED FATTAL: I'm going to try to make it simple to the audience and to the panelists. Simple brief keywords, if it was up to you, what are the missing ingredients today in multistakeholdersism that you would like to see factored in.
>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Five feet. Okay. Avoid the multi‑stakeholderism as ideology. Use pragmatic approach. And I think Thomas outlined quite a few building blocks. Good strong multi‑stakeholderism needs strong institutions, not necessarily institutions of government departments, but institutions as regulations and the elements that give people some predictability.
Silicon valley is a good example of the development based on very solid institutions that protect intellectual property, attract investment, and not necessarily having many government departments.
>> KHALED FATTAL: When you talk about institution, are you referring, correct me if I'm mistaken, processes, perhaps?
>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Processes, regulations, environment that can facilitate growth. It's completely underestimated. Very often innovation is associated with some sort of anarchy, but it requires predictability.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Absolutely.
>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Third point, rely on the multi‑stakeholderism but make sure that all stakeholders perform their legal rules. I'm always critical about social responsibility used as legal organizations. Child labor should be illegal, but they cannot be covered by social ability in the private sector. I think we'll have to apply in this sector.
If we have social responsibility in the private sector adds to what is legal minimum, that legal minimum has to be ‑‑ we shouldn't be too naïve. I know that very often when we speak about ICT Internet Governance, multi‑stakeholderism, we speak about the end of hierarchy. They are linked. It's the natural principle in society. It's how society functions and it is in the online world as well.
What Thomas indicated, and I think for institutions and the basis for good democracy we have example in Switzerland. I'm born in the Balkin where institutions does not exist, now I live in Switzerland where you have quite tradition of democracy. Those feedback groups that you need in society, they exist in various ways. Not necessarily through elections. You have referendum, you have public criticism. It doesn't have to be very, very formal, but those mechanisms in critical times must function in the interest of everybody. People who have the power, who have the rules and for those who complain, because ultimately the stability of the system has to be maintained through the active and the open feedback.
Excellent. Social responsibility is ‑‑
>> KHALED FATTAL: Back to the question I was asking. Your keywords to the missing items that you would like to see or items that you would like to see missing or you would like to see strengthened in the multi‑stakeholder model.
>> Let's see. Social responsibility is definitely one of them. However, call me a synic, but I don't have masses living up to the social responsibilities. There will be one factor or the other that puts it as the second, third, or lower choice. Like to put some inputs on that, I'm actually specialized in Islamic banking. The key article of the Islamic system of finance is social responsibility. That's the whole point of it. And yet without legal articles enforcing it, you don't necessarily find that every bank that has the Islamic tag is actually living up to their social responsibility.
Yes, I think it's very important, but take it with a grain of salt. More importantly, I would say accountability is perhaps key here. Not only in the decision‑making, but also the in the repercussions or the impact of that decision. Transparency is another. But I would also say clarity is another one. Okay. Whose responsibility is it? What is the process?
And from clarity, I would actually go on to say documentation. We put things in writing. Let's have a common reference ‑‑ this is all coming from a project management background. The more planning you put into something, the less problems you have down the line.
And I think I would add to that, I think I've added a lot of keywords here, but education and awareness is key. You can't expect to have multiple stakeholders effectively contributing to something if they don't understand what's at stake, what's the impact of the choice, and it doesn't matter if we're talking about your laymen on the streets or if you talk about governments. I mean, again, if I can talk about the experiences of TRA, we can get challenged on our decisions. And we have actually overturned our own position based on new inputs or strong enough position from the public, from the operators, and we will issue a new ruling based on that.
At the end of the day, we don't necessarily have all the answers.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Actually, from the floor, let me bring that. Thank you, Jovan. This is also open to the floor. Anybody that wants to interject, raise your hand and go ahead.
>> Thank you. My name Manella Milen. I represent Egypt at the ICAN. Actually, it's a very interesting discussion. I think we need to be really convinced about the approach and sincere in implementing it. Otherwise it's taken as more like an excuse to come up with the decision and then label it multi‑stakeholder and then you will not be blamed for it later on.
It's taken more as a recipe, as you said. We need three government representatives, three private representatives, one and a half academic and one and a half and then it goes.
>> KHALED FATTAL: I like that.
>> So we have to be sincere in wanting to implement this freely. This comes to us that we need to make sure that people are aware so they anticipate effectively. We don't want them only attending. We want them participating and saying their opinions.
>> KHALED FATTAL: I like what you just said, but I need more clarification what you mean. For example, the principle of knowing what the ingredients are as what you just said, three government representatives, I'm using this as an example ‑‑
>> When you say ingredients, I become allergic.
(Laughter)
This is exactly my point. It's not just the recipe that you need to follow and then you can label this decision‑making ‑‑
>> KHALED FATTAL: So you're not referring to ingredients. You're saying for a process, and correct me if I'm misreading you, are you saying that for a process to be recognized as having been multi‑stakeholder approached, it needs to have representation from different facets of society to actually carry legitimacy, so to speak. Would that be a good phraseology?
>> Let me get to the point. Regardless the terminology, because I think when we say multi‑stakeholderism, we mean that we want everyone to have the option to participate so you can either participate or at least know how the decision‑making process is and you choose not to participate.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Correct.
>> In comes to transparency and clear process that's transparent and you either get to participate or not.
Even if an organization like ICAN, for example, even if they are a multi‑stakeholder platform, if they don't participate in a multi‑stakeholder format also, then it's meaningless. What I mean is, for example, if Egypt, for example, sends only a government representative, then we are not participating in a multi‑stakeholder approach. And this comes to the importance of having the same model implemented naturally. Otherwise, even speak at such venues, you're not representing the views of whatever other stakeholder ‑‑ we don't have someone, for example, from the private sector attending. If this company does not really represent ‑‑ so it has to go all the way down to make sure it's inclusive.
>> WALDA ROSEMAN: I think you raised some very interesting points. There are some traps, clearly in how we go about calling something multi‑stakeholder. Some of them, I think, are difficult to avoid because you cannot fill a room always with all the stakeholders when you're trying to make a decision. But I think that it's too easy sometime, at least not to be aware of what those traps are. If I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that there's such a thing as representational inclusiveness, meaning we'll have one from this category, two from this and this and now we have an inclusive process, which may or may not be the case. The process that leads up to and leads out of it can, perhaps, improve that. You can make sure what's brought into a consultation is more inclusive. But I think another trap, of course, is consultation after the fact. And we see that quite often.
A third one is, I think, having such broad consultation that you can draw any conclusion you want from it. And that's very much of an effective leadership approach. I've consulted with everyone. Not everyone agrees, but we think that this is probably the large body. And so what we were gonna do anyway is what makes sense.
How one avoids that, not altogether clear. I think what's really important is understanding, is that these are potential traps. They may be done in good faith. That's not to say that they're intentional always, but it's important to be aware of that, but they skew the result. It may not be the most effective or constructive result. That's something we all need to get better at working at. Again, this is experimental as well.
I also wanted to raise ‑‑ pick up on the issue of social responsibility and education. One of the things that I personally worry about is the fact that we even here in this Internet Governance forum, where we have a broader group representation, are still largely talking to the innerconcentric circles. If we expect the multi‑stakeholder process to work well when we go local and when we ‑‑ or national or regional or even international, then we need to make sure that those new people who are coming on, the consumers, the new professionals in every field, understand what it is we are trying to do here in terms of creating an open global representational Internet.
And I would challenge all of us, including my own institution, to get much better at scaling out our message through the institutions. I would say that this is an important role of regulators and of governments, for example, but also of companies and NGO's. It's comfortable talking to ourselves, sort of comfortable. We don't always agree. But nevertheless, we understand these circles, but we're not yet reaching out beyond those who are, frankly, in a short number of years going to be the ones who are really making the decisions in a decentralized Internet world.
>> KHALED FATTAL: You've just added some very, very key phraseology, Walda. I thank you for your comments. Will he me share something with you from my personal experience and I'll pose it to the panelist and to the floor. We really are a close club. How much of a close club can be determined of how close.
(Audio drop).
To People many capital. I was in Cairo, and I held things in the universities and let me lay fact to you, most people don't know who ICAN is. I don't mean most, the vast majority. If you tell them what is ICAN, we have the data, but ‑‑
(Audio drop) tell them this is a new mechanism. I'll give you the floor in a moment. Why I'm making this point here is we're really talking to ourselves. So relate in to other activities we're doing. We are now ‑‑ we announced last month that we're doing a series of sum its around emerging markets around the seismic change in the global Internet. The fact of the matter is you go to the local communities and you want to talk about educating them on how to be involved, the organization that are involved in this, they don't even know that they exist. Most of them use the Internet for being on Facebook or illegal downloads. So there's a lot that we have to do. In my opinion, again, I will put it to the floor so that we can create the discussion and maybe come up with conclusions, is it is not enough to actually start philosophizing. If you follow this kind of an approach, keep it loose. Then you have an opportunity at being represented if that is an approach, they can give them the opportunity to be representative, to have democracy online, and then start participating. This is taking the root in local society. That's just a thought. I will open it to the panelist and to the floor.
The reality here is we have huge challenges coming from the in how to deal with emerge markets in local communities and making them and bring them into the fold so they can be emancipated users of the Internet. My thoughts, please. I'll leave it to you.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER thank you. You started a very important discussion, but how to represent the multiplicity of multi‑stakeholder. We are not the poorest country in the world. We're not the biggest one. We can afford two people coming to a GAC meeting. We can support some civil society and others either financially or through other means. We can afford two people coming to an IGF. That's it. And for the new gTLD, I was trying to contact the banking regulation, whether the bank there would be a problem talking to the health sector. They were telling us, sorry, we have a problem with the Germans on tax things. We have a problem, no resources, no time. Your issue is very nice, but we have other priorities. So you can't send half of Switzerland, and that doesn't only account to an IGF or an ICAN meeting. It's simply not possible. You have to find ways of ‑‑ I wouldn't say that we are closed club because we are not we. I'm talking of all the institutions. We have remote participation. We have many ways. We have some have travel support mechanisms. But the thing is you can't ‑‑ it's not only a question of money to travel, it's a question of I have to earn my living somewhere, and if I spend a week three times a weir at an IGF, including all the preparatory process, we don't have the time for this. I don't even have the time to follow whatever I should. I would need two more persons at least to do what I think I should do. So we need to find ways to be maybe representative in a better structured way. And I think the key if you allow me to come back on your five points, transparency is a key point. Everybody agrees that transparency is a key point, but what does that concretely mean? For instance, I would have other points, but sticking to transparency, it means not that you publish 10,000 pages like ICAN used to do. We have transparency publish everything on our website felt fine, but who gives me and others resources that are relevant to me. Transparency means it's easily accessible. Who does what? Who does not do what? The second point is extremely important, where does the money come from that pays those who take the decisions? And where does the money go to that is involved ‑‑ that is it is the result of these decisions? You can also say not only raise transparency, but fight corruption. In every system you have corruption. In my government they have corruption. In other governments you have corruption. Also in ICAN, in the UN, you have corruption. If you have easy access to find out what is the money involved, you can sake the U.S. Government, election campaigns, party programs, the easier you find out what money is involved, where does it come from, where does it go to, the more easy people I empower to realize, uh‑huh, so I have to support this or I have to fight for this here. This is fundamental.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Like when the tobacco industry commissions study about smoking, you want to know that the money that came from the smoking study did come from the tobacco industry so at least you know the conclusion.
>> Just a few quick, first, I'm happy that the delegation isn't the size of the Swiss delegation. We have two persons here. It's really comforting. There are a few keywords and I will relate to what was already said. Understand about the question of of footprint. We can call it in climate global Internet Governance footprint. Our footprint is still limited. I share Thomas' view that representation needs to be established in some way, and it's always democracy. You cannot have accepting the squares and forums, but even at that time there were no citizens who had the right to be there. That has to be taken with a bit of realistic view.
But what was important, we have he to extend the footprint. Let me give you one example. During the BaliIGF, I explain the governance to the policeman with big hats. They were going around collecting, and they came to our booth and found a book in Russian. They said what is it approximate? They realize this conference is something about the Internet. And then he said, do you have a daughter, yes, she's facing Facebook, yes, she's using Facebook and everything is fine? Not exactly: What is the problem? A few months ago a few I explain to him it's not easy for those guys not likely abroad and not the way to do things. There are other processes. And then he brought two colleagues to collect the book. I'm doing now the same thing here in Bali. This is a small thing and I'm proud of those achievements.
Quick points, this is about footprint, which is extremely important. I would argue for translucency. You can see just the contours what's going on without details.
(Laughter)
And it is sometimes realistic what we can do, because that offering what Thomas said, you have thousand pages, it's usually done in order to hide the most important information. If you remember the whole minister 20 years ago that was masterpiece of the governance and manipulation of governance. As a matter of fact, I'm discussing with a few colleagues to the minister for multi‑stakeholderism and we have 20 pages. We are starting with that
(Laughter)
The last point, which is extremely important whenever I talk to the government officials all over the world, including countries which are skeptical about multi‑stakeholderism. I always base it on their interest. Their interest is to have more people who have limited government abilities to participate in IG. And having them inside the tent with whatever contextual explanation, is better to find some sort of ideology. Ultimately, a risky term, but I will use it, we can learn a the lot from the Tea Party, the Boston Tea Party. You can recall the key slogan was no taxation without representation. If you can implement into Internet governance in modern politics is no implementation of rules without representation. If you want communities to implement Internet governance rules, and we're not speaking about borders between countries, we're speaking about procedures and the rules that affect our daily reality, how we live, how we interact, how we share sometimes intimacy, you cannot impose it by a adopting the law. Multi‑stakeholderism, we have to find some better term is the key to have a proper implementation. Governments should be part of that international organization
(Off microphone)
>> What would be the translucent ingredients, for lack of a better term, to representation so that if it is followed to a large extent at local level, then what we can conclude is it has been representative. We need to come up with a format, some kind of a format that can be followed by those who are walking into this new arena, some call it faith, some call it religion, a new arena, so that representation can serve the local entity. So it serves their interest. Can you interject some of those mechanisms for representation?
>> I'm very skeptical about grand schemes. For example, if I had planned ‑‑ my plans today were completely changed by developments last night. Planning the grand schemes, I have limited faith into that. We have to plan and we have to organize our life, but we have to be available the real constraints of life and development. Therefore, first fix use the famous term U.S. government, not good practices, support good initiatives, avoid ideology and big schemes, be aware of the fakeness of the ideology which we experience some elements in the IG process, and address that which you're trying to do with this seminar. And rely on ‑‑ put more trust into people's creativity.
People can organize themselves. If they are not suffocated by sort of apathy or too many rules. If you ask me for some sort of blueprint, I would owe I can tell you what we do in Diplo. What we do in Diplo, we started six or seven years ago. Now I see it was followed by ICAN, you bring people, you emerge them into the process. First few days hand holding and then you let them go and do things. I'm very proud of that achievement. You can see many Diplo representatives. If you ask me, I was asked once by the big institutions in Geneva to give the recipe for our capacity building. And I said it's contradiction in term. I can give you a few hints, but basically the success of our capacity building was high flexibility, clear idea what we want to achieve. Avoiding the grand schemes, addressing people's interest, developing a respect for our participants, and developing empathy, which I mentioned yesterday at the opening session. Those are the key elements what are quite normal, natural, and human. And if you expect grand design, I'm afraid I can talk about the research and this and that, but that's not necessarily wait how we can achieve generally in multi‑stakeholder.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you. Anybody from the floor? Oh, Chuck ‑‑ oh, sorry. Forgive me.
>> My name is an ambassador through the INTERNET SOCIETY. I'm also involved in ICAN for the nonprofit. I want to raise a point. I agree that multi‑stakeholderism needs to be equitable, but who decides equitability? In ICAN, is ICAN the one to define who are the stakeholders and what hierarchy do those stakeholders come under, or do the stakeholders decide their own groupings and how equitable they deal with each other.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Let me help you on that one. Would you say that a country or a region that has ‑‑ I don't know a hundred citizens should have a lesser voice than a corporation that has 5,000 employs? The truth of the matter is equitable is to have the ability ‑‑ so that all voices are being heard and no louder voice that is pushing has grander access to implementation of their desires taking place. This is just like part of what we're talking equitability. If that's not coming across before, if you want to interject on that, please do. That's really what we think about. To make sure that it's equitable and equal across the board.
In my book, and this is my personal opinion, even we have a sense he have responsibility to those Internet users that are about to enter. They don't have a voice yet. But part of our responsibility in empowering them is we have a responsibility to make sure that they also have a role to play and they are able to participate, but they haven't enjoined in yet. Just like a citizen that hasn't been born. Their rights are already guaranteed.
>> The next comment I have is that I do think that there needs to be a little bit of an expansion in terms of this discussion. I've heard us touching not just on equitability and transparency, but also on effectiveness. You know, we keep hearing policy which is implementation. Even when you have different stakeholders that come to the table, how are we so sure that implementation feels and they get turned off from the multi‑stakeholder model because they've engaged, spent all this time and funds and money to get here. At the end of the day what is the output? Who is really driving the process? And who orders the process?
>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you. Chuck, did you want to add something else before the panel addresses these questions?
>> Sure, and several other topics came up of interest while I was waiting. Let me talk about equitability. It's a loaded term. You raised the point yourself Khaled, what does it mean? Those are not invalid questions you ask. The big corporations versus the smaller company.
Regardless of their size or impact, that's an ongoing challenge.
With regard to participation, which we've talked a lot about today, we have to recognize that you can't force participation. You can't enforce representation. You can do things to facility it, make it easier. You can make sure it's open and so forth. But the bottom line, you're going to get situations where you don't get good participation. You don't get good representation from some groups. You should try to do that. And I think everybody's saying that. And the only thing you can do then is to be transparent and to show this group wasn't represented. Where he tried. Here is the efforts we made to do that and we look at ways to do it better in the future, but the bottom line you're not going to always get the participation from every impacted party. Some will will not be represented. You can't force people. We have to recognize that. I'll end with one question. The term accountability was raised.
>> KHALED FATTAL: On the last point you just made, may I interrupt you? I want to point out something here. Let's assume in a country A there's an effort to create a local IGF. Okay? They've tried to reach out to different segments of society so that you have the different representation from different segments as we would wish to have. But in some areas you can't force nobody participated. Does that initiative from that country A become recognized as a country A IGF or does it not get recognized yet because it has not fulfilled the requirement of creating representation from across the board?
>> Well, if you take that position ‑‑
>> KHALED FATTAL: It's a question.
>> And I'm responding. If you take that position you may as well close the doors, because nobody's going to be fully represented. There will always be groups that are isolated. The I deal is to try to at that void that situation. You literally think if you're that idealistic, you're gonna always come up short. Now, we should keep trying to get better.
>> KHALED FATTAL: I take it back to Jovan's point later on, no taxation without representation. No implementation without representation is what we're talking about.
So if we have a group representing country A that is actually presenting themselves as the multi‑stakeholder model of country A, but they are not fully ‑‑ what's the term I'm looking for? ‑‑ fully inclusive. We don't want to close doors or label it as multi‑stakeholder country A work in progress or something like that. I don't know. I'm just thinking allowed.
>> That's where transparency comes in. We she hopefully require, I don't know if we could to that, groups to be as clear as possible of their level of representation. Be honest about the fact that we reached out to these people. That's where transparency comes in. You know what is missing from their ‑‑ but their input is still valuable. We go back also to the point mentioned earlier on about documentation. I have a challenge coming to terms with expecting or documenting trust sincere, but you can't really pinpoint them. Perhaps if a country A is wishing to be represented in IGF, and they are a local country IGF representative, then we can say you're a work in progress until you actually documented your processes. Then it can be part the mechanism. This is going back to Thomas' point. Nobody can attend these international events at all times. You have to find some localization of representation to be able to take it to the global IGF. Just some of the thoughts that would come across.
>> One last question and I'll stop here. The term accountability was mentioned. We all believe in accountability. But accountability by itself doesn't mean much. We have too answer the question. Accountability to what or to who or whatever. And I'll stop there.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you very much, Chuck. Thomas, I think we're almost at the end of our session; correct? So.
>> Thank you very much my name is Emmanuel EDETS. I'm from Nigeria. The national information technology development agency. I work in the legal unit there, so we deal with policy development and regulations. I've listened with rapt attention to the comments being made, and I have a few things to say. First of all, we have to recognize that every country has its peculiarity, so it may be the IGF as a whole. For example, in Nigeria, one of the greatest challenges we have in the local IGF is funding. If the government does not provide fund to sustain the process, it doesn't work, because you cannot get funds anywhere else.
Whenever the government provide funds, they are actually entrusted in the outcome of the process. And it's a bit difficult for you to fund a process that is basically set up for the purpose of criticizing your own policies. It's a bit difficult.
For me, I think this is my personal opinion. One of the best things we could do is to develop process that puts ‑‑ that gives trust to every participant. I am avoiding the use of stakeholders or representatives here to every participant, because even though we try to reach out to the academia, we hardly ever have them represented, even though they have funds for them to come up and make contributions.
So in our attempt to provide inclusiveness to every participant, there should be at least some basic features. One of those basic features you were talking about a keyword trust. If the people trust the process, there will be no need to question the outcome of the process. That's my intervention.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you very much. We are just almost at the end of the session. So what we'll to is we're going to spend the last five minutes, and I'll give the panelists the floor to give your interjections to what we've heard from our debates and gives your closing comments as well on how we should move forward.
Thomas?
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you. Actually, I wanted to say the opposite of what you said. So it's very funny that you raise it. I wanted to say in order to make transparency and accountability and all these nice things we all agree on but normally only happens to a limited extent, you need to incite people. This is what not always, but in some part of the Swiss government and Swiss society you need to pay people to criticize you. This is the point. If other institutions would do this much more, because you only transparency and accountability only taken serious if somebody, a journalist, a public service broadcaster, that is not broadcasting the political leading party opinion, but actually asking questions is what the government is doing that pays my job, is it right, what do you think? You need people that criticize you. If they are not there, without your funding, you need to fund them. Then with checks and balances, you need checks and balances. I don't care, as I said, whether you call it the kingdom or democracy, if you have the checks and balances, good or bad thing, corruption, could be modified in the course of time based on an inclusive process. Then the system works. Then you have stability. You normally have better outcomes because you can correct mistakes. If people know that if they make a mistake they will be corrected, they have an incentive not to make mistakes in the first place because they are criticized for it. I think this is fundamental and we have to find out what are the checks and balances needed. And we need to have a constant debate criticizing ourselves or criticizing the institution if you're working with it, trying to help the improvements. This is the checks and balances that I'm looking for.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Thomas, would you say, for example, checks and balances could be if there is voting at a local IGF, that there is a transparency in the process of voting and how that has actually been ascertained? Would you agree? One of the things you mentioned about trust, I agree with you trust needs to be there. I would think the trust becomes an outcome if the processes have actually been followed and they have been transparent. They are, perhaps, documented. Election processes are a bit ‑‑ you can trace what happened. Then that conclusion leads to trust and then the trust becomes more like the seed planted. I don't know whether we can institutionalize this trust, more like the trust and the consequence of doing it well. That's my opinion.
Walda, please.
>> WALDA ROSEMAN: Thank you. Thank you, I strongly agree with what Thomas has said and I understand what you're saying. Let me comment on that.
>> KHALED FATTAL: I like agree and understand.
>> WALDA ROSEMAN: Well, to an extent I agree with what Emmanuel has said as well. I think there is not one of us who wouldn't rather be praised than criticized. And this flows through every government, whether it is an old democracy or some of the older democracies, and I would talk about the United States here, there are very interesting constructions in place to protect, for example, I'll use an example where I had an experience the public broadcasting system, which leaves federal money from being controlled in what it says by the federal government. There is actually institutions whose job is to provide that shield.
However, I think that it's clear that the kind of multi‑stakeholderism that really is ‑‑ how do I say, succeeds in reaching the kind of end results that we're all talking about is still aspirational.
And there are very good and growing number of examples where we see very effective results with feedback loops or we could call that accountability that show that there need to be adjustments. There need to be reconsiderations. Some things are working better than others.
However, I think what you're saying, Emmanuel, is that governments and other stakeholders are more likely to take the leap of faith in the way they consult and allow criticism and make decisions in a multi‑stakeholder environment as more and more examples mount of other governments, other entities, take it on and succeed so that there is a tipping point at which point it's easier to take that step and make that case internally.
I go back again to the example of competition. I remember sitting in the ITU meetings of the global symposium for regulators, and even before that, where there were a couple of handfuls of countries that had independent regulators that were looking at open market decision‑making, had examples of it, and they were being blocked to the extent possible by most of the other governments saying that's not the way we do things. That's not the way we want too things.
It took a few years of their talking together and sharing examples and seeing the kind of economic development that grew out of opening up markets and the kind of service in markets that there was a tipping point. Now it is rare a country not to have some sort of open market approach. Still it's not the ideal that I think many would like to see, but there is that tipping point. And I would submit that as we go forward and refine and gain experience with the multi‑stakeholder model, in the Internet world, but in other aspects of how we do business, we will reach that tipping point where it will be easier for other countries to come on and to that.
In the meantime, it's not going to be perfect, but any experimentation, whether it's an IGF that is not quite there or not, is of value, because it does begin to move the multi‑stakeholder model along and a growing comfort with that model.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you, Walda.
>> Thank you. I think I'll just keep my comments brief on this. First of all, I'd like to touch on what Emmanuel said, which is one size most definitely does not fit all. So if we are going to talk about an overarching structure, we understand it has to be flexible, it has to be simple, and it has to allow for further structures to take place under it. Unfortunately, what we're seeing and going back to the beginning of the discussion on the on the multi‑stakeholder model, there's often an over looking of cultural and regional differences. These need to be taken into account and respected.
Responding to the point about accountability, I'd say here everything comes down to clarity. If you know what's happening, then you know who is accountable, and by extension you know what corrective actions need to be taken.
I think in many of our models, whether at regional or international level, this clarity is not necessarily there in all cases or there's not the same understanding between all.
And finally, I'd like to put a note of caution into what would really negatively impact going forward. The biggest detriment is noise. We are swamped with information. There is so much information out there. I'll touch on what Thomas said. We just don't have the time. We don't have the resources to adequately filter it and to adequately understand what is being said. There's just too much out there.
This noise could include even criticism from special interest groups. They make such loud noise that they make such loud comments that they drown out the relevant factors of other agencies, other participants. So the best way for us to move forward, I think, is to find an effective and fair way of filtering this noise to get down to the key decision‑making information and make the decisions from that, which would again come back to clarity.
So I think I'll end on that.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you. Jovan, you have the last closing remarks.
>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: Just a few comments. Life is what happened while we were making big plans. We should aim to big things about multi‑stakeholderism, but we should make concrete and realistic step.
At the same time the time is extremely important component. We discussed yesterday that Europe needed almost hundred years old to introduce functional democracy between 1848 when the principles were introduced and started operating in whole Europe after second world war. Time is important and we have to be patient.
That's ‑‑ those are essentially the main building blocks in which we have to follow on all of these principles, transparency, accountability, clarity, and I think we have all the ingredients here. What I would introduce is one concept that was mentioned earlier is the limited ‑‑ we can call it governance bandwidth, institutional bandwidth. We should start with that. We very often focus on choices, responsibilities, horizon, blue sky. Ultimately we have limited 24 hours a day.
>> KHALED FATTAL: What would you think about adding a checklist to the list? A checklist that would be a format or a template to be followed? Would that be helpful for local IGFs as well?
>> JOVAN KURBALIJA: It depends what type of template. Sharing experiences, yes, but definitely not the models that should be imposed across the board.
>> KHALED FATTAL: Thank you all very much. We keep it brief in closing. I thank the panelists for their excellent interjection he is. Thank you all from the audience as well. And keep an eye on that space. Thank you very much. Enjoy. Bye‑bye. (Applause)