Internet Governance Forum: poor stepchild in trouble

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten, Germany

PUBLISHED ON: 31 Jul 2013

While the internet governance community is looking for news from Indonesia about a potential cancelling of the Internet Governance Forum in Bali later this year, a more fundamental debate has developed once more over how to fund the Internet Governance Forum.

Indonesian newspaper Bahasa Indonesia ran a report last week that the Internet Governance Forum in Bali would be canceled due to a lack of funding. The news resulted in an outburst of email discussions on several mailing lists inquiring about the how and why. That was until the Chair of the IGF Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) and former IGF Executive Secretary, Markus Kummer, stepped in to provide some clarity. “Cancelling the whole event is no option,” he said.

IGF secretariat keeps a low Profile

Information from the IGF Secretariat so far had been sparse except a quick denial of the cancellation. "We have received no official notification. We are still talking to Indonesia. And there is always a plan B," wrote Chengetai Masango, Programme and Technology Manager at the United Nations Secretariat for the Internet Governance Forum, in a short email answer to us. Meanwhile, the IGF website has a dementi on the “rumors” about a cancellation.

The IGF, established 2006 as a result of the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), has been hosted by UN members around the world and been welcomed as a rich and open door dialogue forum on global internet governance issues by many. It also has its critics and enemies, including for example Russia which has proposed in the past to integrate it into the more official WSIS forum, which is hosted every year by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Will Indonesia honour its commitment to host the Internet Governance Forum?

Kummer, now Vice President International Policy at the Internet Society, explained the status quo at some length. According to his information, talks ongoing between the UN in New York and the Indonesian government were about finding out if Indonesian authorities would "honour their commitment to host the 2013 IGF." Host countries are expected to pay for the meeting venue and transport to it, and also for travel, per diem and at home replacement of UN staff.

The Indonesian government had offered to host the IGF and delegated the organisation and especially fundraising work to the ID-IGF Multi-Stakeholder Forum and the IGF 2013 Steering Committee. Multi-Stakeholder Forum and, more so operationally, the Steering Committee were put in charge to mobilise resources, "in particular seeking sponsorship, grants and in-kind support from private sector, government and funding agencies," according to their fundraising proposal document.

With a budget proposal in the range of  2 to 3 million US dollars, the final numbers looked bleak: obviously only about a million had been raised, said Kummer this week. If there was a political will in Indonesia to host the event, the missing one million would not be a big problem, said Kummer.

Moreover, there were several options for a plan B. "According to my knowledge, two countries have offered to step in as hosts for the IGF 2013 at a short notice," he said to the Internet Policy Review. Even relocating to the headquarter, while much more difficult and only possibly with a delay due to the always overbooked Geneva offices for example, would be possible.

Who should fund the IGF and its secretariat?

The "Indonesian discussion" has also set in motion yet another more fundamental debate on IGF funding. Not only has the secretariat been underfunded for years, but it was made dependent on donor money for staffing and additional costs.

The funding proposal of the Indonesian Steering Committee and Multi-Stakeholder Forum set off the alarms of many observers. It wanted to give privileged access to speaking slots, "selling seats" in the IGF sessions, as some criticised. Kummer said that it had been made clear to the organisers back in early 2013 that “this is a no-go.” Beyond the meeting funding, the question remains as to where the IGF money for its ongoing operations should come from.

A brief donor list

Governments, some of them most ardent promoters of the "IGF model", have not put a dime in. The donor list is brief, with the government of Finland being the most generous sponsor in 2012. Internet organisations like the Regional Internet Registries, ISOC or ICANN and IT companies have also started to fund the IGF process. But some like Google, who sent a remarkably large group to the IGF in 2012 and even ran their own show on that occasion, have not chipped in. This being said, Google is suspiciously watched by a segment of the civil society groups who are worried about a “corporatisation” of the public space.

Google's public policy and government relations counsel Patrick Ryan meanwhile called on the community to support appeals to the ID-IGF for transparency about how much money was needed. He also asked the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs to clear the way for crowd-sourcing via platforms like "Tides'." Marilia Maciel, Researcher at the Center for Technology and Society of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (CTS/FGV) pointed to an alternative proposal discussed by civil society, namely to draw on the windfall gains from the new Top Level Domain delegation process at ICANN.

Your opinion

What is your opinion or your experience with the subject discussed here? Please make the effort and comment this article.

While it has been clear that the funding problems have to be solved somehow, Kummer also warned against the idea to take the IGF away from the UN. Despite all the trouble this poor stepchild of the UN had been going through, having a parent like the UN lends a lot of legitimacy to the IGF. A non-UN Internet Governance Forum could easily be just another cool internet conference.

1 Comment

Nnenna

31 July, 2013 - 14:48

Great post. Been following the different discussion spaces too. Happy that the Indonesian discussion has begun. So we can have the real discussion that matters: values.

Of what value is the IGF? What values does it have now, should we have given it, should it have in the future.

Funding is always in exchange for value. What will the "IGF" funder, or host country get in return as its value.

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