[At-Large] Fwd: [governance] EC recommends a "G12" for IG

[Sivasubramanian Muthusamy]

Hello Patrick,

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Patrick Vande Walle <patrick at vande-walle.eu
> wrote:

> On Tue, 5 May 2009 18:07:16 +1200 (MAGST), Franck Martin
> <franck.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > And what is wrong with the GAC?
>
> >From my personal perspective, the GAC lacks authority and, in a certain
> way, credibility. Depending how important ICANN is considered under the
> local political context, some governments will send senior officials. Some
> will send junior officials. Some come from the telecoms ministry, some from
> the economy ministry or foreign affairs, some from the telecom regulation
> authority. Some have a well defined political agenda, others only a tourism
> agenda.
>


Different countries assign the Internet related policy tasks to whatever
Ministry or Department that happen to be dealing in related matters in the
context of the country's policy making. So if one country assigns a
representative from the Ministry of Telecommunications and another assigns a
representative from the Ministry of Information Technology and yet another
nation with a smaller cabinet considers it a matter of foreign policy, it is
OK for the time being, Internet happens to be young, very young. It will all
take shape in due course.

The harsh reality is that we have national governments that can't afford the
luxury of airfare to attend the GAC meetings. Perhaps the GAC needs a
program to "improve participation and enhance the quality of participation"
in GAC meetings.

GAC, in its present form, may be imperfect as a representative body of the
governments of the world, everything that you have observed is right, but as
a body representing Governments, it is at least superficially inclusive.
These imperfections could not possibly be an excuse for sidelining the GAC
and bring in an "exlusive" club of twelve governments. For the sake of
argument, one can not possibly dismiss at-Large as irrelevant by saying that
one or two out of the ninety representatives went on a tour of the pyramids
!


>
> IMHO, the GAC crowd is too large and heterogeneous to come up with a
> clearly defined policy. At one stage, we need limited number of serious
> high level diplomats.


A working group model within GAG could be a solution. From within the
'General Body' of GAC, a "limited number of serious ... diplomats" as you
propose could come together as intra-working groups issue by issue, task by
task.. There could be several solutions.


> Now, how they are chosen is a different matter. And a
> very scary one I do not wish to solve.


Actually Viviane Reding's proposal, as an INITIAL PROPOSAL, in the context
of JPA review, is a good start. G 12 in place of G 1 is far better, but
paradoxically, not good enough.

Wolfgang Kleinwachter  points out in the Governance list " There are at
least five confusing omissions in Madame Redings Statement if you compare it
with the language adopted in Tunis...In the PDF File from her video message
you will NOT find five key words from the Tunis Compromise:
"multistakeholder", "civil society", "respective role", "enhanced
cooperation", "equal footing"."

That is the problem here.

GAC operates well within the multi-stakeholder principles, and this may not
be the case with the proposed G 12, at least in the initial form in which
the idea is proposed. Perhaps Viviane Reding is too focused on the task of
ICANN independence from the US, and so this proposal may perhaps be read and
analyzed only in that confined context.

Sivasubramanian Muthusamy


>
> Patrick
> --
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