[At-Large] Seeking roll back of the IGF Leadership Panel

[Carlton Samuels]

+1.

At minimum, the UNSG's action intuitively suggests a yearning for some
long-held vision on outcome.

CAS
=====================
*Carlton A Samuels*

*Mobile: 876-818-1799Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround*
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On Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 5:16 AM Evan Leibovitch via At-Large <
at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:

> Disclaimer: I have been to a few regional IGFs but never the global one. I
> keep a relationship with the Internet Governance bubble and attempt to stay
> informed, but remain at arms length because of the general detachment of
> this bubble from society at large. These days I only get involved when
> something really egregious happens that directly affects the public
> interest, such as the PIR/EthosCapital fiasco. I will try to be as brief in
> my point as possible, but there are many premises behind these conclusions.
> And while I speak for myself, I have had many conversations with people I
> trust who have come to similar conclusions to mine but just don't dare to
> express it:
>
> To those outside the bubble, IGF only had one job, but it was an important
> one: Come up with one or more workable ideas for Internet Governance that
> suffer neither the industry capture of ICANN and ISOC nor the state capture
> of ITU. At this task, despite more than a decade offered, the IGF has only
> been notable in its preference of talk over action. So if the IGF in its
> current form can't execute the one thing it was trusted by the world to do,
> it is only to be expected that those who created it may lose patience and
> seek a different approach.
>
> As a result ... I applaud the UNSG's exhaustion with the IGF status quo. I
> am unsure whether his cure is worse than the disease, but there is a
> disease, make no mistake, one whose main symptom appears to be entropy.
> It's been nearly 20 years since WSIS with no discernable public benefit yet.
>
> This letter asserts that the IGF's role is not to form consensus, which
> perfectly illustrates the entropy and justifies the UNSG action. It
> indicates that its participants prefer IGF to forever remain an elitist
> talk shop among self-appointed experts. That's all well and good for those
> inside that bubble who enjoy endless bickering as an end in itself, rather
> than seeking action that would actually improve society. But clearly the
> UNSG, correctly in my opinion, has determined that going forward "talk"
> needs to eventually turn to "do". The IGF either needs to (a) reform itself
> and its mandate into the more-difficult pursuit of outcomes, or (b) go off
> in a virtual corner to talk amongst yourselves till the end of time,
> finding another patron who will support that kind of thing, while putting
> the reform that the IG world desperately needs now in the hands of others
> ready to take on that role.
>
> At very least the letter is highly ignorable in rejecting the UNSG
> proposal without offering alternative reform. The status quo has expired.
> If you don't provide an evolutionary path then your patron will do it for
> you.
>
> Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
> @evanleibovitch / @el56
>
>
> On Wed, 24 Nov 2021 at 10:15, parminder via At-Large <
> at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> Please find enclosed a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General
>> appealing to him to roll back the decision for an IGF Leadership Panel.
>>
>> The letter is co-signed by Dr Milton Mueller, on behalf  of the Internet
>> Governance Project, Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public
>> Policy, and Parmider Jeet Singh, for IT for Change, and the Just Net
>> Coalition.
>>
>> It is cc-ed to representatives of civil society and technical community
>> groups requesting them to refrain from sending nominations for the IGF
>> Leadership Panel, and thus legitimizing it.
>>
>> The letter argues how the IGF Leadership Panel militates against the
>> basic idea, objectives and structure of the IGF, and will weaken it.
>>
>> Best, parminder
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