The road to the WSIS+20 Review: Driving technical community engagement

Technical Community Discusses Engagement and Collaboration in Internet Governance Processes

During a panel discussion moderated by Konstantinos Komaitis, key figures from the technical community, including Jodi Anderson, Veni Markovski, Sabrina Wilkinson, and Vinicius Santos, convened to discuss the engagement of Country Code Top-Level Domains (CCTLDs) and the broader technical community in internet governance processes. The conversation focused on the formation of the Technical Community Coalition for Multi-Stakeholderism (TCCM), an informal group aimed at fostering collaboration among technical operators to influence governance processes effectively.

Jodi Anderson highlighted the importance of collaboration in navigating complex and sometimes opaque governance processes, such as those by the UN, GDC, and WSIS Plus 20. She detailed TCCM’s early efforts in sharing information, coordinating engagement opportunities, and developing shared views on issues and texts.

Veni Markovski discussed ICANN’s role in internet governance and its collaboration with governments through the GAC. He emphasized ICANN’s commitment to the technical foundations of the internet and its efforts to inform and engage the community on governance processes. Markovski also addressed the need for the technical community to be recognized as a distinct stakeholder group, separate from civil society, to ensure its unique contributions are acknowledged in governance discussions.

Sabrina Wilkinson spoke about the challenges faced by smaller CCTLDs in engaging with governance processes, particularly in finding the right contacts within government. She stressed the need to educate key government contacts about the technical community’s work and the importance of timely intervention in negotiations.

Vinicius Santos reflected on the lessons from NetMundial and the significance of the multi-stakeholder model in internet governance. He highlighted the event’s success in engaging stakeholders and producing a final declaration with guidelines for advancing multi-stakeholder practices. Santos also pointed out the need to promote the declaration and bring its messages to the forefront of global discussions.

The panellists identified challenges such as staying informed about complex processes, determining positions on issues, and having an impact within multilateral discussions where governments are the primary negotiators. They also discussed the importance of the technical community being recognized as a distinct stakeholder group in internet governance processes, as their expertise is crucial for maintaining the technical foundations of the internet.

Audience questions addressed issues such as raising awareness within the technical community, supporting smaller entities in their engagement, leveraging the NetMundial document, and the potential for a collective statement from the technical community to influence the GDC process. One audience member suggested that the technical community could issue a statement similar to the 2014 Montevideo Statement to strengthen its voice in the GDC negotiations.

In conclusion, the panel agreed on the need for the effective participation and collaboration of the technical community in global internet governance processes to ensure the stability, security, and resilience of the internet. They acknowledged the need to support smaller entities and to keep the community informed and engaged. The discussion highlighted the critical role of the technical community in shaping the future of internet governance and the necessity of its recognition as a key stakeholder in these processes.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
CCTLDs, Country Code of Level Domain Names, have come together and have created a community coalition for multi-stakeholderism. Can you talk to us a little bit about this? Thanks.

Jodi Anderson:
Thanks, Konstantinos, and good morning, everybody. Yeah, I’d like to use this first introductory statement to just talk a little bit about the importance of collaboration, which is what Konstantinos has asked about. In the context of these processes that Konstantinos is talking about, the UN, the GDC, and the WSIS Plus 20, these are quite complex, they’re somewhat confusing, they’re not necessarily set up particularly well for multi-stakeholder input. It’s important for those in the technical community who want to engage to find friends, to find people to coordinate with and collaborate with, to share information, share the opportunities that there are to engage, to share views and positions on the relevant issues and on the relevant texts, to support the development of their views, share ideas for strategy to make sure that we’re having the most impact. As Konstantinos has mentioned, there’s a few of us in the technical community who have pulled together an informal coalition. We’re calling it a Technical Community Coalition for Multi-Stakeholderism, a little bit of a mouthful, TCCM for short. It’s, as I said, an informal coalition of some technical operators in the technical community, and we’re doing those things. It’s very early days, but we’re getting together to share information about, hey, look, the GDC Zero Draft has come out. We’re getting together to share opportunities. You know, there’s opportunity to input in the UN in the stakeholder session. We’re getting together to share views on the issues and on the texts. We got together recently to talk about the GDC Revision 1, to support ourselves to share into government. And we’re also developing shared views on stuff, and we input onto both of those processes with shared views. And I’ll stop there if I run out of time. Thanks, Konstantinos.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks. No, thank you very much, Jodi. Veni, ICANN has been an organization that is part of the Internet Governance Ecosystem since 1998, and very early on also, its structure opened up to invite governments, and over the years, the Governmental Advisory Committee has really expanded. And right now, it actually pretty much includes all governments around the world. ICANN has been collaborating closely with governments. Can you tell us a little bit about the ICANN-led engagements, activities, that you have been engaging in over the past few years?

Veni Markovski:
Well, thanks. I would assume that people here know what ICANN is, so I’m not going to spend time talking about what we are. But just for the record, it’s another abbreviation, which means Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. And if we use here some abbreviations and you don’t know what it is, please raise your hand, because otherwise we’ll continue to use them without telling you, and it’s good to know what we are talking about. And especially also, this is being web-streamed, I think. So we are engaging, Konstantinos, in many ways with, you are right, the Governmental Advisory Committee of ICANN, which has 182 members, I think, and about 38 international intergovernmental organizations as observers, is part of the ICANN community. But we also have every stakeholder that is involved in one way or the other with maintaining the single interoperable Internet and managing the domain name system and the IP addresses and protocol parameters. We are also very much interested in the UN processes. I’m based in New York, and I’m also responsible for the relations with the UN. And we have teams in Brussels and in Geneva and in Singapore. And we are covering the international processes that touch on ICANN’s mission. So we are not allowed by our bylaws to go beyond that. So for example, issues related to content and other stuff like that is not what we do. We are part of the technical community, and like InternetNZ or CIRA and the Regional Internet Registries and the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet Architecture Board and others, we are part of the technical community. We also announced earlier this year the establishment of a WSIS Plus 20 Outreach Network. And there is a mailing list, and people can sign up if you go to the ICANN.org website and go to the government engagement page. There is a whole section dedicated to the WSIS Plus 20 Outreach Network. Please join the mailing list. We organize also webinars around the publication of the Global Digital Compact Zero Draft and then the Revision One. And we’ll be working also when the next revision comes out, you know, to inform the audience and the public. And we try to engage everybody from our community, but also beyond. And one of the goals for this mailing list is to provide a space for everyone to participate and be able to ask questions. And we have some very good experts there who can answer those questions.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thank you, Benny. I’ll turn to you, Sabrina, right now. You are a CCDLD registry for .ca, which is for Canada, and inevitably you’re engaging a lot, I suspect, with Canada and the government. Can you tell us a little bit about how your engagement with the national government is and what you have learned from that engagement?

Sabrina Wilkinson:
Yeah, absolutely. Happy to do that. Thank you. So exactly as you say, CIRA’s been working hard to engage with the government of Canada on the GDC and related processes. So perhaps what I’ll do is just provide maybe three key pieces of advice for technical community members who might be looking to do the same from our own experiences at CIRA. The first key piece of advice would be to, and it sounds quite straightforward, but find the right people in government. As we know, there are many folks across respective industry departments, foreign affairs departments, who are working on these issues or who might be in these negotiating rooms. So it’s crucial to find the right contacts to share your messages, share your views, and that’s a key way to get involved in these dialogues. It’s also crucial to orient those key contacts about the work that you do in the technical community. Of course, industry departments in particular have strong expertise around internet governance issues and certainly that expertise is held in or flows through state departments or foreign affairs departments as well. But foreign affairs departments in particular are focused on the art of diplomacy, negotiating tactics, et cetera. So in particular, it’s key to connect with those right folks and orient them to what you do in the technical community, the role of your community in the day-to-day operation of the internet, and your views on key issues. And finally, I’d say it’s crucial to intervene at key moments. So ahead of respective negotiations, directly after certain revisions are published, connect with those contacts and leverage the schedule to your advantage. So I’ll pause there, but thank you.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thank you so much, Sabrina. I think that one of the key things that comes across from what you have been saying is that governments also need the help of the technical community in order to understand some of those complex issues, right? Because there are very complex issues and especially, we’ve seen it in the GDC, there are some technical considerations that need to be taken on board and people to really understand how the internet works and why it is important that some aspects, especially the architecture of the internet, remains the way it was designed, originally designed. Vinicius, I will turn to you right now. A couple of months ago, Brazil hosted the second NetMundial, Plus10. You also organized the original NetMundial in 2014 and that was a pivotal moment for the multi-stakeholder community. I want to remind people that during the 2014 NetMundial, of course, we had what started and became the IANA transition process, which was a major, major moment for the global multi-stakeholder community and the model itself. Can you tell us a little bit about what sort of, you know, what were the lessons you’ve learned from NetMundial Plus10? Also, let’s talk a little bit about the outcomes document and why it is important that we always go back and refer to it in the sense that we keep in mind some of those things that the multi-stakeholder community decided.

Vinicius Santos:
Thank you, thank you very much, Constantinos. It’s a pleasure to be here and to have some time to talk briefly about these very interesting processes that we had in Brazil with NetMundial and the global community that got involved in this process as well. We have a lot to talk about that, but I will try to be very brief here with some comments about this process so far. Well, first of all, it’s important to remember that it was a very huge effort with a very short time frame, because it was the most difficult part we had. It was very challenging to organize it in a very, very, very short time frame. But it was successful and it was very good to see it happening in this way. But even with these hard conditions, we were able to engage a relevant group of skilled stakeholders that were very committed to contribute to all these debates that we are having in the global ecosystem. Right now, as most of you have already mentioned, all of the processes we are running at this time. Well, in terms of the messages you were asking me about, the statement of NetMundial as well, so we had the final statement of the final declaration of the event, as we had in 2014. We have there very important messages that we had built collectively before and during the event until we reached the final declaration. And I think that, I believe the event was really able to deliver a very much concrete outcome with clear guidelines for what we aimed for that was furthering the multistakeholder practices, methodologies, mechanisms to different relevant spaces throughout Internet governance and digital policy processes. So also to use the language that we had in the NetMundial statement, that was also something very challenging to reach in the final ending. The final statement also goes a bit further, as it gives clear messages to other relevant processes such as the Global Digital Compact, the Internet Governance Forum, the WSIS 20 review process and so on. So one of the important things, of course, the strong mention to the IGF, to the Internet Governance Forum, the explicit mention of the Internet Governance Forum as a preferred space for coordinating governance efforts and discussions, and also to be a place of monitoring results from all of these processes that we are having right now in the global ecosystem. So there are many, many other details there that we could have a whole session just to go each by each, but of course those I think would be some good highlights to mention here as we are in the WSIS Forum and talking about the WSIS 20 review and the related process. Thank you.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thank you so much Vinicius. So thank you so much for your interventions, I mean, great. They were very insightful, but I would like to talk now a little bit about challenges, right, because I’m sure that when it comes to the participation of the technical community and the way the technical community in some spaces is also received, there have been some challenges. Jordi, can you talk to us a little bit about what sort of challenges you have identified through your work?

Jodi Anderson:
Thanks Konstantinos. I think there are three main challenges, and I don’t think these are unique to the technical community. I think these affect other stakeholder groups as well, but the first one is the challenge of just being across the processes. I think if you’re not quite close to these processes or using the vast majority of your day trying to stay across these processes, it’s quite hard to do that. They’re pretty opaque. It’s hard to know where to get the information about what’s happening. And even if you do know what’s happening, the processes themselves are quite challenging. Very recently there was an opportunity to feed directly in to the co-facilitators at the UN for stakeholders, but there was, I think, a two working day or, you know, four day or two working day notice period, and even those who did turn up, there were some issues with the process. You know, if you didn’t turn your video on, you didn’t get to talk or something like that. I mean, they’re just, the processes are difficult to deal with. So that’s the first challenge. I think the second challenge is trying to figure out what your position is on some of the issues and on some of the text, especially for those in the technical community who might be relatively new to the space or who might be working alone. I’ve heard from some people in the technical community that they just need to know where to start in terms of thinking about what their positions on the issues or the text might be. They’re interested in knowing, you know, what the sort of the historic position of the technical community is, or what other positions of people in the technical community are as a sort of a place to start to figure out what their positions should be, and a sort of a really related challenge to that is the fact that in this internet governance space, there’s a few issues which have really deep history to them and are not obvious. And so there’s challenges with just figuring out whether your position sort of brings that into account. And I have one more challenge. I know I’m probably over time by now. The third one, I think, is figuring out how to have impact in these processes, figuring out whether you should be focusing on directly feeding into the UN process or feeding into your government, who’s actually the negotiator in these processes. And as Sabrina said, if you’re feeding into your government, there’s challenges around who’s the right person. You know, a lot of technical community have relationships with their communications agency but not necessarily with their foreign affairs agency. How do you establish that relationship in a way that means that they’re going to listen to your input if they don’t have an open consultation process? And how do you figure out how to work with others to have a little bit of impact with joining your voices together and making sure that you’re singing from the same song sheet and making sure that you’re all saying the same thing so that those themes start coming through and are being heard and are having an impact in the processes? Thanks, Konstantinos.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks, Jodi. Perhaps I’ll turn – Sabrina, do you have anything to add to that? Because you have been talking about some of the engagement that you have had with the national government. Do you see any challenges additional to what Jodi identified perhaps?

Sabrina Wilkinson:
Yeah. I think an additional challenge I might identify in this in particular would impact, let’s say, smaller ccTLDs than CIRA, but is the challenge of finding the resources and time to dedicate to an entirely new policy apparatus, right? Many of us are familiar with engagement in ICANN, and we have done that for a long time. But in particular for smaller ccTLDs, it can be quite challenging to figure out how to engage in a UN system that is multilateral and very distinct. And that’s, we hope, a key part of how the coalition that Jodi mentioned can help support different groups to engage. So that’s what I’d add on that front.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks, Sabrina. And I know that you want to say something, Veni, but if I can tie your answer to a question that I have also for you, that would be great. I know that ICANN, when the Global Digital Compact process started, the technical community was not explicitly mentioned or identified as a stakeholder group. And I know that ICANN had very strong feelings about this, and you also sent a letter stating the fact that we have been a unique stakeholder in these processes, and we would like also to be recognized. Why is it so very important for the technical community to have that specific and identifiable role within these processes?

Veni Markovski:
First of all, I’ll address two more challenges, which I think my colleagues kind of, they talked about others from their points of view, but I think regulatory and policy environment at the international and national and regional level is a challenge, which is very important for the technical community, because sometimes those discussions are taken outside of the IGF or other multi-stakeholder environments, and the trend towards multilateral governance approaches could be problematic for the Internet and the multi-stakeholder model, but also for the global interoperable Internet. And then the second challenge stems from the lack of understanding of the Internet’s technical foundations. So many governments and intergovernmental organizations and big bodies like the European Union and others are thinking of regulating content, but they’re actually touching on the, or trying to touch on the technical underpinnings of the Internet. So that’s a big challenge, because, and I have a colleague here, Elena Plexida, who is in the audience there, so you can wave so people can see and ask you after that. But I think that she’s covering the global legislation, regulatory issues that may touch on ICANN’s mission, which again is very tiny. Now on the question of the GDC and what you mentioned, ICANN actually didn’t send a letter, but we saw a couple of statements by the tech envoy, and in the policy brief of the technical, I mean of the Secretary General, and also in his statement at the Kyoto meeting, his video message, where they talked about the Global Digital Compact, and they were saying it’s a three-part system, businesses, civil society, and governments. And so the technical community, the tech envoy said, is part of the civil society. Naturally this caused some disturbance within the civil society too. So ICANN initiated a letter, which was signed also by APNIC and ARIN, not a letter, sorry, a publication, in which we made a case why it was signed by the CEOs of the three organizations, why the technical community is actually a separate group. And it’s important to note that in the Global Digital Compact, in the Zero Draft and now in the REV1, the technical community is actually mentioned as a separate stakeholder. And the point of that is because the WSIS, Tunis Agenda, and then the WSIS Outcome Document established the roles of each stakeholder. So civil society and technical community don’t have the same role. And we have to maintain that because, as the same way, you know, governments and parliaments have different roles. You don’t mix them, you don’t confuse them. We should make sure that the UN and other UN agencies don’t confuse the technical community with civil society. So that was the message. And also, it’s important to also point out that in the Secretary General Policy Brief, which was published last year, there were a lot of proposals for the Global Digital Compact, which did not make the text. For example, there was a proposal to establish a digital cooperation forum, a multilateral body.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
But, sorry to insist on that, but why you must participate? What is it that you’re bringing to the table in this conversation?

Veni Markovski:
Well, first of all, when you say must participate, we know that the technical community, the civil society, anybody within the UN General Assembly Rules of Procedure, we don’t participate in the negotiations. It’s only for member states. What we are trying to say to the governments, we do regular briefings both in Geneva and in New York with the permanent missions, is that we can provide technical, neutral information about how the Internet functions, so that when they discuss behind closed doors, there is enough knowledge, so that they don’t unintentionally draft a resolution or make a proposal which can impact the technical foundations of the Internet. So it’s really more of a, we work together with the governments and with the intergovernmental organizations to make sure the Internet continues to be single, interoperable. And again, we look at the Internet not as the applications and the communications tools and everything that uses the Internet.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks Feni. Vinicius, a little bit on this question, because NIC.br, right, is a multi-stakeholder body and technical community is extremely important in that setting. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience and why it was so critical for you to include the technical community within setting up this body in Brazil?

Vinicius Santos:
Sure. Thank you for the question. Yes, NIC.br is the CCTLD responsible for managing the .br domain name in Brazil. And we also have, side by side with NIC.br, CGI.br, which is the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, which is the multi-stakeholder body responsible for establishing recommendations and guidelines for the evolution and development of the Internet in Brazil. So the constitution of CGI.br in Brazil dates back from 1995, and it was always multi-stakeholder since the beginning, since its inception. So we always had all the stakeholder groups involved within the management of the Internet back there, because we called it management back there, and now we are talking about governance. Because of this, in Portuguese we have the word management of the Internet for Brazilian Internet Steering Committee as gestor, management. And we had all the stakeholder groups since its inception. It was very important because the Internet in Brazil, as seen in many other countries, began with many researchers and technical community experts involved in establishing the first connections and setting the way forward for the evolution of the Internet in the country, and so on. And then we had a long history about that with the involvement of all of the other stakeholder groups, including civil society, throughout different specific moments of the history in Brazil. And this went together into this sort of group of stakeholders committed to the evolution of the Internet in Brazil, doing a multi-stakeholder body, doing a multi-stakeholder model, working in this sense.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thank you. Sabrina, over to you. Can I ask you, what do you think is the greatest impact that, you know, the technical… How better yet can the technical community have the greatest impact in these conversations?

Sabrina Wilkinson:
Thank you. So as we know, these are multilateral processes, so, you know, in my view, the highest impact activity is engaging with your national government. And I forgot to mention this earlier, much appreciation to the Canadian government members who are in the room, who we’ve been engaging with on this issue, and we very much appreciate it. The second impact activity I would identify is engaging in the elements of the processes that are multi-stakeholder, so the multi-stakeholder inputs into this multilateral process. As Jody noted, some of these inputs have been challenging, and it is not always clear how the inputs into these processes are used, but it is nonetheless my view that it’s, you know, where possible, key to engage in these processes as one additional input. The third impact activity I would identify is public engagement. Konstantinos, you write publicly on these issues, and I certainly see that as another form of impact, and really value your contributions in this space as well. So I’d identify, you know, public writing, engagement through the ICANN WSIS Outreach Network, other forms of information sharing, and, yeah, public engagement as another form of influence as well. Thank you.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks. Would anyone like to add anything to that? Jody?

Jodi Anderson:
I just think in terms of having impact, in all three of those spaces, you tend to get impact when you start to hear the same threads or the same themes from different people. So it’s really useful, and it’s part of why, you know, collaboration is so important and cooperation is so important, to sort of agree those sort of main things that you really want to get in there. And then, you know, if governments are sitting there and they’re hearing the same thing from a whole heap of different people, or the COFAQs are sitting there, or the member states in those stakeholder sessions are sitting there, and you can hear the themes coming through again and again and again, and also in the, you know, in the public arena with the writing, if you start hearing those come through again and again, that’s when I think you, people start to pick those up and actually feed them into the process, you know, the people with the power, I guess. So I think that’s another way to ensure impact, is to make sure you collaborate on those messages and make sure different voices are feeding the same messages into those spaces.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks. Manny, briefly, please.

Veni Markovski:
I just realized that one of the things that we didn’t touch is that it’s actually good that the governments are coming sometimes with strange ideas, you know, that can even break the Internet, because that actually makes some noise and it brings the headlines, you know, into the attention of the general public. Most of the people don’t know what our organizations are doing, because, you know, the Internet is working, so why bother? But when there is some proposal coming from a member state, you know, like dramatically change the Internet or the model of governance of the Internet, it’s good because it raises the attention and it raises the dialogue and it brings new voices. Because when we talk about the Internet from the technical perspective, you know, the technical underpinnings of the Internet, it’s boring, people don’t pay attention, they’re saying, well, you know, it’s working, so why bother? But when there is a proposal that challenges this, we then come with lots of information and that’s good for the, I think, for the health of the Internet. Thanks.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
We have one last question and then I will turn to you for questions, so please prepare yourselves. Vinicius, what sort of advice would you give to any technical entity, technical operator that wants to engage in this space, but has literally 20 years of a lot of history and a lot of complicated processes? So what’s the best advice that you would give them, especially from your experience participating and building up a multi-stakeholder body in Brazil?

Vinicius Santos:
Well, thanks for the question. It’s a very good question if we look to all of the stakeholder groups and all of the specificities we have within all the stakeholder groups. I think most of the interventions here already touched a little bit on it in terms of building collaboration, building collaboration and be within collaboration networks. So I think Jody mentioned that and also Vini and Sabrina also mentioned things related to that as well. So this question for me is a matter of building bonds and be in collaboration networks. So if you are to just start following something, It can be really painful depending on what you have in terms of structure and what you need in terms of monitoring for policy and governance and so on. For instance, let me take advantage of Veni here. If you start to following ICON, for example, for the first time, you can just be crazy with all the acronyms and groups and so on. But if you just touch base on the e-learning tools that are available, the groups that are available, the mailing lists, the collaboration networks that are available, like the CTLDs network that was already mentioned here, you can just be integrated in some groups that are already working and are able to give guidance, orientation, and also help and support for you to be able to start, but also to be able to contribute meaningfully in some sense.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thank you, Vinicius. And I think that one of the common things that has emerged through this first part of the session is this idea of collaboration, right? And I think that this is very important to remember that the story of the internet is not the story of one person or one entity or even one application. It is the story of way too many people coming together and putting their heads together and trying to figure out how to create this decentralized network of networks that allows this global communication. So questions? Oh my god. OK. I will take two, three questions, and then we’ll go back to our panelists. Mind you, we have 10 minutes. So thank you.

Audience:
Got lucky. So I have a lot of questions. Carolina from the DNS Research Federation. So the first congratulations to all four organizations for the collaboration that you’re engaging in. I was wondering what your organizations are doing to raise awareness about these ongoing internet governance processes and sort of the challenges that they pose with the communities that you represent. I was very impressed by a presentation by the ARIN CEO at the NANOG meeting on this issue. So I was wondering beyond collaborating among yourselves whether you were speaking to your own communities. Then the other point I wanted to make, you’re all, I think, mid to large or very large players. So I was wondering if you have any plans to support smaller players, say, smaller CCTLDs with even less resources than CIRA or the CCTLD for New Zealand or the CCTLD for Brazil in engaging and understanding these processes. And last very quick question. The NetMundial document is out. It’s great. How do we leverage it? I don’t see it referenced in the latest version of the GDC draft. So your thoughts on that would be welcome as well.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks, Carolina. Nigel?

Audience:
Yes, thank you very much. I’m one of these awful governments that are in the room, I do apologize. But it was open, so we thought we’d just come along. I hope that’s OK. Nigel Hickson from the UK. Really what I was thinking, I mean, having been part of the technical community, I think the technical community makes an invaluable input into these discussions and always has. But I just wondered, for something as important as NetMundial, as we go through the negotiation phase, and I think there’s negotiations next week, whether perhaps the technical community could come together and issue a statement like they did years and years ago on the Montevideo statement, for instance, and really try and pin down some key issues in the GDC that the technical community finds important, particularly on the next steps and the follow-up process. Because otherwise, I think individual voices are very important, and you’ve had a very important input into the process, but collectively together, I think you could be stronger. Thank you.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks, Nigel. There is someone there, and then Jordan, and then I’ll close to answer. And if we have more time, we’ll go back. Thanks.

Audience:
Thank you. My name is Elisa Yver. I work for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, and I’m the Dutch GAC representative. And what I’ve seen over the past few years, indeed, is that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands has become much more active on internet governance, which I highly applaud, so no bad words on that or anything. But what I’ve also seen is, so you also mentioned find the right person in government, but also combine the two persons in government. Because I’ve seen along the ministries of, well, let’s say economic affairs or communications, finding the person sometimes in foreign affairs is also a challenge, or finding the person in the mission in Geneva can also be a challenge. So please ensure that also those two lines come together. We’re a big government often, and we don’t know what happens in other ministries, and you don’t want a GAC representative not knowing what has been discussed with foreign affairs elsewhere, whilst it’s about ICANN. So yeah, please take that point with you.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks, and because it is a comment, I will just say absolutely, and it is very important for governments to know what the right hand is doing, what the left and the right hands are doing in order to work together. So yes, please, make sure that this happens. Jordan.

Audience:
Thanks, Contestinas. Jordan Carter here from the .au domain administration. One of the challenges in engaging here is that we all have narrow mandates in the work we do, and sometimes we have bylaws, like Veni referenced, that really keep our organizations targeted. But actually, whatever is in our bylaws, we all have a responsibility to be stewards for the overall system of the internet and governance. And sometimes that requires us to do something that’s a bit scary, which is step beyond the direct focus of those bylaws. Not to contravene them, but to work beyond them to keep the system working. So the question for the panelists is, how do we build community support with our stakeholders to allow us to do this kind of work, which is very important, but sometimes hard to explain, and sometimes quite remote from the day to day work we have to do at ICANN and the IETF and so on? How do we generate that shift of perspective so this is seen as important and valid work?

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks, Jordan. So I will just try to batch these questions. I’m not going to do a very good job at it, so please bear with me. I think that Carolina and Jordan are both asking how the technical community is able, A, to be able and step a little bit occasionally outside of its comfort zone and advocate for something that is much broader than its mandate. And in doing so, also facilitate smaller entities, technical entities, in this case, CCTLDs, or assemble a community around them that will be able to strengthen the voice that they’re having. Who wants to take this? Veni?

Veni Markovski:
That’s an easy question. That’s why I decided to take it. The more difficult ones will be for the other guys. I think, first of all, there is no small CCTLD. There may be CCTLDs which don’t have resources and others, but every CCTLD is big for their territory. It’s important for their territory. And they actually are the ones that have the interaction with the governments outside of the GAC. Maybe also with the GAC, but in some cases, without necessarily through the GAC. So they’re the natural partners in dealing with the foreign ministries, with the policies that are being drafted in the parliaments, et cetera. And secondly, with regards to the question about the mandate and the narrow, we care about the single, interoperable, secure, stable, and resilient internet. If somewhere, something is touching on that, obviously we will intervene, because it’s within our mission. So the mission is maybe narrow, but when we are talking about the security, stability, and resiliency of the internet, unique identifier systems, then everything can be touched. I’ll give you a quick example. The European Union created one high level and one expert group on tackling disinformation. And in the reports that this group published, there is a line which says, whatever measures government take to fight disinformation and misinformation, it should not impact the technical availability of the internet and break its interoperability. So that’s an important example of how we can actually contribute to these processes.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks. Anyone else would like to add anything? Please, Vinicius.

Vinicius Santos:
Thank you, Konstantinos. Well, thank you for all the questions, very, very interesting questions and many, many comments to make. But let’s try to be brief. First of all, related to NetMundial, I think there is, of course, this is a very good question, how to leverage it. So I think it’s already happening in many senses. So many of the people that I’m seeing, many people here that were there in NetMundial, many here, here, there, there. And people are already putting it forward in many of their dialogues with other organizations within other processes and so on. So this is already happening in this sense. But of course, we need more. So the important thing now is to put it forward, to spread the word about the declaration. There are many, many very useful aspects there. We didn’t touch in everything here, like the things related to the Mood Stakeholder Principle, the Sao Paulo Guidelines specific to how to implement principles and things like this. So there are a set of things that are very, very useful in this sense. And a second point, I will not comment everything, but just a second point related to local realities and how to support the local reality stakeholders and also other stakeholders within the same stakeholder groups and so on. From our side, for example, I think we can say that it’s very important to look at the national regional initiatives within the IGF context, for example. In our case, we have a Brazilian National Internet Forum, which is our local NRI. And this is a very, very big initiative in Brazil, and through which we can connect many, many people of all the stakeholder groups in Brazil. And this forum has been very important for all the organizations to get involved in the debates related to internet governance and digital governance, digital policy process, and so on, including the global ones. Because within the forum, we have also tried to bring more of these discussions related to the global digital compact, digital cooperation with S++20. We have been putting that in the program of the events and trying to bring it to our activities in many senses. So just these two brief comments. Thank you.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thanks, Vinicius. And you sort of jumped. I was about to follow up on the NetMundial, and thanks for doing that. So I guess the last question, because we’re really running out of time and we’re in between lunch and people. Nigel suggested, well, what happened in 2014? The technical community came together and they released the infamous, by now, Montevideo Statement, where they showed their determination to support the multi-stakeholder model. And of course, they called for the IANA transition, and it was, again, this very critical moment where the technical community showed its ability to collaborate and make something that was very strong and impactful. Do you think, and Nigel, if you allow me, I might rephrase a little bit the question, but do you think something similar could be helpful in the process that we’re going right now, which is the global digital compact? I know that Vinny is shaking his head, but we heard from Jenny, Sabrina, would you like to? And I know that you were not, in 2014, most probably, you were still at university or school. But yeah, what do you think? Would that be impactful, you think?

Sabrina Wilkinson:
On the value of a shared statement from the technical community? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Vinny will have to chat afterwards. But I think there’s value in a shared intervention from the technical community. Absolutely, the coalition that CIRA, and InternetNZ, and others have been working towards have engaged, for instance, in the various UN consultations on the GDC with joint statements, with 12 to 13 technical operators signing on, and we’re looking to grow that group. So yes, certainly I see there being value in this space, and an opportunity to work towards something to that effect.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
A very brief word.

Veni Markovski:
I know we’re out of time. Sorry, I’m just now out because she mentioned me. When we say about technical community, we have to be aware there is no de-technical community. There are many technical communities, and that’s why it’s good what the CCTODs are doing. We are really happy that they have this formal coalition, and they’re going to do something and publish. But back then in 2014, and the IANA transition was a completely different thing compared to the GDC. So there is no such a big thing where technical community comes naturally together to say, yeah, this is an important thing to transition. I think the GDC is pretty big. No, wait until next year, and the rest is plus 20.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Joni, last word.

Jodi Anderson:
Yes, I can see the timer is now counting up. I just wanted to pick up on a couple of questions in there in terms of the small CCTODs. I feel like we’re a small CCTOD, and the coalition that I mentioned, one of the main objectives of that coalition is to support people who can’t necessarily engage to the extent that some of us do engage. So we’ll be talking about that at the next ICANN in the CCTOD news session, and I encourage all CCs to listen into that presentation. And the other question you asked was how we engage with our communities back home. The national IGFs, but also I recently went to the NZ NOG. I mean, I’m basically trying to go out, find the technical community, and tell them about internet governance, because they don’t tend to necessarily understand the international internet governance space and why it’s important. So I think that’s part of it as well. Thank you.

Moderator – Konstantinos Komaitis:
Thank you so very much, all of you. I would like to thank Sera for putting this panel together, and Sabrina in particular. Thank you, all of you, for being here, and have a great lunch.