IGF's Role Continuing to Evolve, Stakeholders Say
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will need to continue evolving in coming years to remain relevant for influencing Internet issues, said Internet governance stakeholders Friday during a D.C. Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-DC) event. IGF’s latest annual meeting, this month in João Pessoa, Brazil, focused on the Internet's importance in economic development and how to connect more users. The 2015 IGF also operated under the specter of efforts to include a 10-year renewal of IGF’s mandate in an outcome document to be drafted at the U.N.’s Dec. 15-16 high-level meeting on its 10-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+10) outcomes.
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Although the IGF isn't meant to produce outcome-based documents, it remains highly influential in shaping Internet governance policy debates, said NTIA Associate Administrator Fiona Alexander. “Getting everyone together in one place to talk about Internet issues is a very big thing,” she said. Although making the IGF a more document-driven conference would increase its importance in the Internet governance debate, it would be detrimental to the conference’s air of open discussion, said Committee to Protect Journalists Advocacy Director Courtney Radsch. Document-driven conferences result in much of the actual debate being “done in advance” of the actual conference, which “could end up making it harder for civil society to have any sort of impact” on the process, Radsch said.
It appears “pretty certain” that the WSIS+10 final outcome document will renew IGF’s mandate for another 10 years, said Microsoft Director-Technology Policy Group Carolyn Nguyen. Although several provisions in the WSIS+10 document are under contention, IGF renewal is not, she said. The WSIS+10 review, like the 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference and other similar U.N. forums, has been focused on determining the future of multistakeholder Internet governance. A new draft of the WSIS+10 document is set to be released once governments complete their current round of negotiations, but that’s unlikely to occur before the end of November, Nguyen said.
Two sessions on the ongoing Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition process drew attention because of the transition’s importance in Internet governance circles, said ISOC-DC co-Convenor Paul Brigner. Alexander said the IANA transition panels were largely recaps of progress made on IANA transition planning at ICANN. ICANN’s IANA Transition Coordination Group has “effectively declared itself done” with creating its proposed IANA transition plan, though the working group is still waiting on the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability to submit an accompanying set of proposed changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms, Alexander said. NTIA is “optimistic” that the ICANN community is “making its way forward,” she said.