Multistakeholder approach in internet governance - advantages and possible improvements

Maciej Tomaszewski, DG CONNECT, European Commission

PUBLISHED ON: 30 Apr 2015

D-day is soon approaching for internet governance. Already last year saw some fruitful first discussions on the possible future arrangements after the US government announcedits intent to transition the oversight of IANA functions. Also, we had an opportunity to openly discuss the internet governance framework within NetMundial; this lead to concrete results. This year will definitively be decisive for internet governance: we are currently in the middle of discussions on IANA transition and on ICANN accountability; moreover, the NetMundial principles need to be implemented globally by all actors. The NetMundial Initiative will, we hope, be one of the fora for achieving this. All these processes may at the end of the day have a strong impact on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+10) review and on the future of the Internet Governance Forum(IGF).

We, in the European Union, have a great experience with difficult processes and identifying the best possible solutions. As such, we are truly convinced we can play a decisive role in the discussions on internet governance. We want to play a role of an ‘honest broker’ between proponents of the current arrangements related to internet governance and discontents with the current multistakeholder model. On the one hand, we should be vocal about the fact that the internet delivers great economic and political benefits and has profoundly changed the shape of our societies. Despite the current economic crisis, the ICT sector beats another record in terms of its development1. On the other hand, we have to be frank that certain stakeholders may not benefit as much as they would like to from this development and their claims may be legitimate. There is certainly room for improvement and we are ready to say it openly.

Involving the right stakeholders

The vision of internet governance presented above shall be complemented by your views so that we can have a common message. The goal is to ensure that all relevant stakeholders interested in a broad range of issues related to internet policy and governance may be genuinely involved in the governance of the internet in their respective roles. Therefore, we would first like to involve all these stakeholders in the decisive existing discussions on internet governance, during important events or through direct contact with us. We need to make sure that we can deliver a set of common and comprehensive messages about the benefits of the internet and about the need for certain improvements that can be introduced in its governance to ensure that all, governments, civil society, the technical community and academia, can play a genuine role.

The EU institutions and its member states have already spoken up. We have recently seen a set of comprehensive and coherent documents on internet governance2. Therefore, all relevant stakeholders are invited to contribute to our vision of internet governance. We are aware that different stakeholders have already done a tremendous job to contribute in different ways to discussions on internet governance. However, we need to take a step back to get a broad picture and contribute to a more high-level and political discussion in order to create a common positive narrative on internet governance. We would be happy to hear your voice on the processes related to the IANA transition and ICANN accountability, on the implementation of the NetMundial outcomes and any other topic you deem important. We want to further engage with you in the debate on those issues during the EuroDIG and IGF meetings. All of these debates should lead us to the development of a positive message to be delivered in New York during the WSIS+10 process in December 2015.

New observatory on internet policy

We know that it is not easy to ensure the inclusiveness of all stakeholders in all these debates. We know that this requires a lot of effort. That is why we want to facilitate these debates by the creation of the Global Internet Policy Observatory. GIPO will be an automated platform which will automatically collect and process data on different internet policies. The development of the project will take some time but we have recently launched a website to ensure that all of you can contribute with your ideas to the development of the platform. We very much welcome your suggestions.

We can discuss all of these issues in detail during the panel at re:publica conference in Berlin(6 May 2015). You are also welcome to share your thoughts on any other occasion, as well as by e-mail (maciej.tomaszewski@ec.europa.eu).

Let’s shape the internet of the future together!

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