[Advisors] some notes from WSIS+20 livestream

[Garth Graham]

On Mar 9, 2023, at 9:45 AM, Marita Moll <mmoll at ca.inter.net> wrote:
> 
> As promised, here is the link to the youtube livestream of the WSIS+20 session -- Mar. 15 10:30-12:00 EST
> 
> Looking Toward WSIS+20
> 15 March, 15:30–17:00 UTC
> YouTube Livestream
> 
> ICANN76: Looking Towards WSIS+20 - YouTube

 ICANN76:  Looking Towards WSIS+20.  Marc. 15, 2023

This is not a summary.  It’s impressionistic.  While the range of experience in Internet Governance consultation processes speaking at this meeting was impressive, I was only able to scribble down buzz phrases that struck me as significant.  Not being familiar with speakers’ contexts, I may have inadvertently, not captured what they said correctly.

·      Today all policy is Internet policy. The future of governance in the digital age is what’s at stake.

·      There are now more complexities in the Internet’s application layer, transport layer, and use layer. To be addressed, they all need enhanced collaboration.

·      To have input into what is an inter-governmental process requires raising voices on many related platforms for interaction.  This may require the organization of non-state platforms.

·      WISIS +20 is an opportunity to address digital equality, and digital inclusion in the substructures we all use.

·      We have to address the role of governments.  In the UN, the question of who decides now has evolved to include “who has been consulted along the way?”  This inclusiveness allows for seeing problems from the stakeholders’ point of view. But it means that there must be no closed rooms in the process of consultation.

·      The UN wants treaties as outcomes.  ICANN needs to be present in those treaties, particularly for the context they create for governments in making national legislation.

·      ICANN is an example that the multi-stakeholder model can work. But the model is not in the UN’s process interventions that have now become more focussed on timely outcomes.

·      People are losing interest in the Internet Governance Forum. Discussion is moving to other forums where using the multi-stakeholder model is more difficult.

·      Enhanced cooperation is a necessary outcome. But what institutions are needed to solve the broader problems that are now present?

·      The technical people need to share more than technical knowledge for necessary Internet ecosystem outcomes.  They need to share values and processes.  But the substantive, collaborative effort for doing that is actually quite weak.