Information Society Watch

On Friday May 18, 2007, the ITU held a consultative meeting with civil society organisations and individuals who are attending the WSIS week of action line meetings. The topic was the work of a new working group that the ITU set up in terms of resolution 141 to study the participation of all relevant stakeholders in the activities of the Union related to WSIS.

Max Cadet and Tim Kelly of the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit outlined the current membership rules which the government still has in place and indicated that their were two views within the ITU with regard to civil society participation in the ITU. Member states in favour of CS participation argue that the principle of multi-stakeholder participation, as developed through the WSIS process, maintains that 'building an inclusive development-oriented Information Society will require unremitting multi-stakeholder effort.' Civil society can enrich discussions, share its experience to bring diversity and fresh perspectives to ITU's work. In addition civil society entities have a wealth of operational field experience, and they may also be better able to represent specific interest groups, such as the disabled or indigenous peoples.

Member states in favour of the status quo, argue that the existing options for participation are adequate and do not require revision. Many Member States are concerned that the efficiency of ITU's operations, and their essentially technical nature, should not be impaired. There is a concern that some civil society entities may be a "front" that is used for political purposes: or in lobbying over issues that may have little direct relationship to telecommunications. Large-scale participation by civil society in ITU's activities, on a non-fee paying basis, may lead to additional costs, for instance for larger meeting rooms, extra documentation, longer meetings, more staff for registration, security etc.

Bill Drake, director of the Project on the Information Revolution and Global Governance at the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva pointed that many of the argumants for the status quo in the ITU lacked a real basis. To the view that participation in ITU is already open so there is no problem, he asked if that is the case where are the CS groupings participating in WSIS. To the view that opening the doors could unleash a flood, he pointed out that most of CS lacks the ability to pay or send representatives to relatively frequent and lengthy sector meetings in Geneva and that in the short term, there would probably be low demand for membership. To the view that CS might disrupt the work of the ITU, Bill said this had not happened in other UN bodies where CS participation is open and was even less likely to occur at the ITU due to the focus and highly technical nature of ITU processes. To the question what does CS have to contribute to the ITU, he argued that this is the wrong question as under ECOSOC rules CS have a right to participate in the processes of UN bodies and the question is how to accommodate this right effectively. To the argument that CS participation would be too expensive, Bill argued that CS would not participate in most ITU meetings and would not require hard copies of documents.

Bill indicated that there would be unfortunate consequences for ITU if they remained closed to CS participation:

- ITU would not "capture" a share of the energy, enthusiasm, & technical/policy expertise that thousands of CS actors world-wide now direct into other ICT institutions & collaborations

- There would be widespread perceptions of ITU as a "closed shop" comprising "old guard" interests that are not responsive to public interest considerations & individual users' concerns. This has been as demonstrated and consequential in the WSIS & Internet governance debates, and could be reaffirmed as ITU increases work on Internet-related issues (e.g. security, NGN) that could impact users and the global public interest.

Bill made a number of very useful recommendations on what ITU could do to encourage CS participation. These as well as other documents can be accessed on http://www.itu.int/wsis/implementation/2007/civilsocietyconsultation/index.html

In my presentation I argued that

ITU needed take greater note in its study on civil society participation in the ITU that the growth of the new networked information society demonstrated that multi-stakeholder participation and activity has been integral in the shaping and building of that very information society and contributing to its innovativeness. The rise of the networked, computer-mediated communications environment placed the means of information and communication production in the hands of millions of people and is rapidly impacting on the industrial model of information production in which states and corporations have hitherto controlled the means of information production This, as Yochai Benkler [1] has observed, has the following implications:

• The material barrier that pushed much of our information environment through proprietary, market-based strategies is currently being challenged through the means of information production being in the hands of many people, who are working within non-market, non-proprietary motivations and organisational forms, e.g. the impact of bloggers on industrial forms of journalism and the organisation of political and economic cultures, the potential impact of wireless forms of infrastructure on the last mile and YouTube on media, transparency and advertising.
• Non-market production has assumed much greater significance. Individuals can reach and inform millions around the world. Previously such reach was not available either though market or state organisations, e.g. Google searches aggregate the uncoordinated actions of a diverse range of organisations and individuals with a wide range of motivations – both market and non-market, state-based and non-state.
• The rise of effective large scale cooperative efforts – peer production of information, knowledge and culture, e.g. from the emergence of free and open-source software to peer production of knowledge goods like encyclopaedias, news and commentary.

This expansion of the networked information society can pose severe challenges to market organisations and states that operate on the old centralised or industrial model of organisation and control. It is not easy to adapt to what is happening at such a rapid rate. Civil society organisations and individuals live in this new networked information society already - in their forms of organisation, agility and culture. To some it appears that an organization like the ITU, in spite of its contributions to advancing the information society, is not fully integrated into the networked information society. It seems to retain the features of the previous industrial information order as an un-necessarily rule-bound, bureaucratic institution and this stands in the way of realizing its leadership potential. Yet, on the other hand there is also recognition of the role of the distributed, networked and collaborative information environment and the importance of these new constituencies as is evident in the ITU's decision to establish a working group on civil society participation.

In opening the meeting the new ITU Secretary General, Hamadoun Toure, indicated that there may be immediate steps that could be taken to improve relations between the ITU and civil society. I proposed that four steps could be taken immediately:

• - Establish a civil society liaison office with the task of interacting with civil society with respect to current membership options within the ITU, with respect to WSIS activities and with respect to civil society organisations and individuals who wish to become more involved in ITU's work as collaborators and volunteers.
• - Ensure all WSIS implementation activities in which ITU is involved operate on WSIS principles and effective multi-stakeholder participation – this means sharing the control and management of these activities with greater sensitivity to the needs of other stakeholders and not to let them function as promotional vehicles for existing ITU projects however critical they might be.
• - Take steps, perhaps in conjunction with CONGO, to make a broader range of ITU publications available for free download to civil society organisations and individuals who are actively involved in the information and communications policy, regulatory and technical environment.
• - Request civil society organisations and individuals involved in WSIS implementation to nominate two people to become participant observers on the Resolution 141 working group. CONGO could undertake this task.

We don't know which way the ITU study group on participation will come down - in favour of greater CS participation in ITU or not. The first meeting of the working group, chaired by Facundo Fernandez Begni of Argentina, will take place on 15 June 2007 at ITU headquarters in Geneva. Anyone reading this should consider making a written contribution to the working group on ITU-Stakeholders@itu.int . before 15 June 2007. Bill's recommendations are comprehensive and thorough and could form the basis of a written contribution. For more information on the working group, see

http://www.itu.int/council/groups/stakeholders/index.htm

Anyone, who likes my suggestions for immediate steps the ITU Secretary General could take now to enhance CS participation in the ITU, should write to the ITU SG, Hamadoun Toure c/o the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit in the SG's office at spumail@itu.int

This is a piece of do-it-yourself advocacy, from your desktop to the ITU. Don't think too much, just do it.

[1] Yochai Benkler: The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Yale University Press, 2006 - available for free download at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Networks ----- Read this book !