[WSIS CS-Plenary] FW: <incom> Creating spaces for civil society (and ICT enabled communities) (post) WSIS

[Gurstein, Michael]

Hi Willie,

My compliments on your thoughtful and informative commentary on the WSIS
process and sorry that my response has been so delayed but real life
intervenes from time to time...  

Let me start by saying that I well recognize and applaud the "gains"
that "Civil Society" seems to have made at WSIS. They were, in the
context of Internet Governance and even in broader and longer term
matters of modalities of "global governance" potentially of considerable
significante. 

My problem is that I don't see any necessary connection between "Civil
Society" as it was constituted before, during and apparently after WSIS
and the kinds of "Information Society" issues and objectives with which
I'm concerned.

A bit of background.  I'm the Chair of a Research Network that is
concerned with "Community Informatics", that is "using ICTs to enable
and empower local communities".  Most of the researchers in the network
including myself are working with communities, community activitists,
community ICT practitioners in trying to figure out how, and then
implementing ICTs to support the range of applications of interest to
local communities--e-learning, e-health, local economic development, and
so on.  

I would say that both the researchers and those in communities see the
problem with most ICT4D efforts and why most haven't been successful as
being that they are implemented "top down" and fail to include those
most directly concerned, the users and the local implementers, in their
design, development and implementation.

Before I came to WSIS I did a fairly extensive round of consulting with
both the practitioner and the research networks around these and related
WSIS issues.  What I got from the practitioner side was a very strong
sense that they hadn't been included in WSIS; that they didn't see any
way for themselves or their interests or concerns to be included in the
process; and that the whole thing was pretty much of a waste of time.
What I got from the researchers was a sense that whatever was being done
in ICT4D so far, whether through WSIS or related efforts, was more
top-down business as usual.

So I should say that I didn't come to WSIS with the assumption that
re-adjusting processes of Internet Governance or making advances for
"Civil Society" in global governance processes was going to have much
significance for the folks that I was in discussion with.  And what
concerned me even more was that all the policy space was being taken up
with more or less technical or structural issues of Internet Governance
with the issues and objectives that would be of value and significance
to the folks that I'm working with being more or less completely
ignored. 

Equally, I saw that there were virtually no linkages from the literally
thousands of people on the ground in the various practitioner networks
(as for example the 10,000 or more community telecentres represented by
the Telecenters of the Americas Partnership--I'm on their Steering
Committee) and the on-going discussions of WSIS and including the
various Civil Society interventions and on-going areas of participation.

As an aside, I understand from a somewhat limited experience with
involvements of Civil Society in various earlier Summits (for example on
the Summits on the Environment and Sustainable Development) that Civil
Society in those areas had more or less direct and continuing linkages
with very widely dispersed and quite broadly based grassroots networks.
This was the strength that Civil Society brought to those
events/processes and was I believe, the basis for Civil Society's long
term policy (and
programmatic) influence in these areas. Quite honestly I saw almost none
of that in WSIS...I recognize that circumstances were different and that
the issues in the Information Society space aren't as immediate or as
directly mobilizing and of course, the funding hasn't been available,
but I also think that those presenting themselves as "Civil Society"
didn't made appropriate attempts to be, dare I say, "inclusive,
people-centered and development oriented" and the result is what we saw,
a Summit whose major outcome is a set of recursive policy engagements
(the Internet Governance Forum) on the one hand, and mumbled platitudes
(the Internet Financining Mechanisms) on the other.

Further though, where could we go from here? Can anything be done from
this point on?

Let me say that I think it would be immensely valuable and on all sides.
if means were found to constructively engage communities, community ICT
activists, ICT practitioners and so on in post-WSIS processes.  These
folks understand quite directly what the issues are and have direct and
useful experience in the range of practical matters towards building an
Information Society "from the bottom up".  Let me give a couple of
examples from a few casual interactions with practitioner acquaintances
I encountered at WSIS...One, an individual involved in setting up
satellite based telecenters in rural Africa mentioned that government
regulation in some circumstances was raising the price of setting up a
telecenter from $6000 US to $60,000 US!  A second person related to me
the difficulties they were having in working with a community as it
learned to make effective use of ICT access in support of local
trade--how long it took, how labor intensive it was, but in the end how
real and sustainable transformation was taking place. A third person
discussed the possibilities of using remittance payments facilitated
through the local telecentre as a capital pool for local "venture"
investment and so on.

The challenge it seems to me is how to create a means to facilitate
engagement between those making policy and directing high level ICT4D
investment and those on the ground who have experience (successes and
failures) in making it work.  What didn't happen in WSIS was that kind
of engagement, so would it be possible post-WSIS as an outcome, to
structure that engagement?  

Think for a moment about creating truly "multi-stakeholder" working
groups on for example, "ICTs, remittances and local economic
development", with participation from the private sector who would
provide the technology and deal with infrastructure, hardware and
software issues; with the UN agencies and the World Bank who would
handle the global policy and regulatory matters, and overall
co-ordination; civil society folks who would be concerned with privacy
matters for example;  and the community telecenter operators and those
involved in local economic development who would deal with designing for
effective use, with implementation issues, with training, with how to
make these processes socially and organizationally embedded (and thus
sustainable) in the local fabric. 

Think also about similar Working Groups in ICT for community based
e-health (including AIDS), for local e-learning and so on and the
development from these of horizontally and vertically networked caucuses
of those with both the policy skills and the real on-the ground
information as to the policy issues of most importance to pursue.

And then lets think about what would be needed to actually make
something like this work.  First there would be the need for a
recognition that those doing the work on the ground were necessary
partners in the process.  That their participation would require
financial support and facilitation (including linguistic) and not the
laughable and profoundly discriminatory "voluntary and in-kind
participation" and further it would require enabling processes of local
self-organization and representation rather than selection from the top
and "representation by designation"--remember these are "partnerships"
so the "partners" need to have a measure of independence.

One could even envisage that these Working Groups might make some useful
("bottom-up") contributions to Internet Governance issues ;-)

So in the end, do you think this could provide the makings of a workable
collaborative and inclusive agenda for Civil Society and the other WSIS
"stakeholders" moving forward post-WSIS?

Best,

Mike Gurstein

Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
Chair: Community Informatics Research Network 
http://www.ciresearch.net

Editor in Chief: Journal of Community Informatics 
http://ci-journal.net
  
-----Original Message-----
From: incom-l-bounces at incommunicado.info
[mailto:incom-l-bounces at incommunicado.info] On Behalf Of wcurrie at apc.org
Sent: November 29, 2005 10:56 PM
To: incom-l at incommunicado.info
Subject: <incom> Creating spaces for civil society in WSIS

Prior to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), UN Summits
were largely closed spaces for inter-governmental debate and negotiation
on issues of global public policy such as sustainable development or the
position of women. Civil society summits ran in parallel to those of
governments and usually at some distance. So during the UN Summit on
Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002, governments met in
the elite business zone of Sandton, while civil society met in the black
township of Soweto.

In WSIS, there was a certain recognition that the Information Society
involved policy issues in which governments were one stakeholder
alongside the private sector and civil society. The history of the
internet as a grand collaboration between technical communities, the
private sector, civil society organizations and governments meant that
governments needed the participation of all stakeholders in the process
of deliberation at WSIS. Hence the WSIS process began as an invited
space in which all stakeholders were involved until the point of
negotiations, which remained the prerogative of governments. The private
sector and civil society were nevertheless able to make statements to
the plenary meetings of governments, while they were negotiating the
text for the outcomes of the Geneva and Tunis Summits.

In addition to this, the atypical Summit format as a two year process
starting in Geneva in 2003 and ending in Tunis in 2005 also created a
space in which civil society could mobilize. A range of civil society
organizations and academic institutions took up the issue of internet
governance, which used as their focal point the internet governance
caucus that was affiliated to the civil society process within WSIS. And
the point of disagreement between governments on internet governance
gave civil society an opportunity to engage more actively in the
process. The key shift was in the establishment of the Working Group on
Internet Governance (WGIG) as a multi-stakeholder body, in which all
stakeholders had representation. This created an open space in which all
stakeholders had representation and had a significant effect on the
outcome of the
internet governance debate in WSIS.   Within WGIG, private sector and
civil society participants were on a par with government participants.

The WGIG report made four sets of recommendations - on the need for a
forum to discuss broad public policy issues related to the internet, on
oversight models for internet governance, on measures to promote
development and access to the internet (especially with regard to
international interconnection costs)and on capacity building for
developing countries to participate more effectively in internet
governance.  With the exception of the issue of oversight models, civil
society participation was decisive in the other three issues. And the
issue of a forum became the key point of consensus in the Tunis summit.
So the decision in Tunis to establish an Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
was a result of civil society initiation of the idea within WGIG and a
factor of the multi-stakeholder process that enabled stakeholders to
interact.

It is worth recalling that the idea of a forum was opposed by the US
Government (USG) and the private sector during the second phase of WSIS
until it was clear that it had broad support. The USG also opposed the
EU's 'new co-operation model' regarding the governance of critical
internet resources and made it clear that it would retain oversight over
ICANN. This was to be expected as no Empire has ever surrendered its
control over the means of communications. Nevertheless, the EU
intervention opened a space to address the set of principles that should
apply to the oversight of ICANN. The combination of the IGF addressing
'broad' internet policy issues and the 'enhanced cooperation' process
addressing 'narrow' issues of names, numbers and the root zone file is a
significant outcome of WSIS.

After WSIS, the IGF will constitute a global public policy space of a
new kind that is open to all stakeholders. Civil society organizations
through the internet governance caucus played a leading role in creating
this open space for deliberation on the complexity of internet
governance. They will take the process of creating this open space
forward in the Internet Governance Forum when it meets in Athens in
2006.

In the aftermath of Tunis, Michael Gurstein delivered a critique of the
civil society participation has emerged which constructs the main value
of WSIS as one of networking in a closed network of the privileged, that
in a self-serving way has perpetuated its existence by advocating for an
Internet Governance Forum and has lost touch with the grassroots and the
issue of bridging the digital divide. While this critique has some
merit, it is too partial a view and dismisses the real gains that have
been made by civil society participation. Remove civil society from WSIS
and there would be no IGF, no new global policy space for considering
broad public policy issues affecting the internet, including access to
the internet and the digital divide.

Discussion of the issues of WSIS has not only taken place in Geneva or
Tunis, but also at regional and national levels. At the Accra PrepCom in
February 2005, the most energetic participants were a contingent of
youth, who had traveled from Nigeria to participate. Sangonet ran a
series of workshops on WSIS issues in South Africa that provided input
into WSIS. Even ICANN engaged in an extended roadshow around the world
to put its case to practitioners and publics in various developing
countries, including South Africa and Argentina. These activities
involved a broad range of people in the WSIS process.

One of the reasons that the issue of the digital divide did not receive
adequate attention in Tunis relates to the fate of the Task Force on
Financial Mechanisms (TFFM).  The TFFM was convened as an invited space
by UNDP and could not be transformed into an open space by civil society
as was the case with the WGIG. This affected its outcomes which were
more limited. Nevertheless, the TFFM report and the section on financing
in the Tunis Agenda provide enough hooks to be developed creatively by
civil society activists in the post-WSIS phase. These include references
to the uses of public finance, the promotion of community and local
government networks, a renewed mandate to Universal Access Funds, a
welcome for the Digital Solidarity Fund and a recognition that existing
financial mechanisms have proved inadequate with regard to regional
connectivity, broadband and rural connectivity in the developing world.
The combination of these factors may serve to support the introduction
of open access models and community networking in the developing world -
precisely to bridge the digital divide.

Michael Gurstein's critique of civil society participation assumes too
easily that civil society activists engaging the WSIS process agreed
with Ambassador Khan that they represented everyone else. This was
simply not the case, however flattering Ambassador Khan's remarks.
Gurstein's assumption that everyone in civil society was only there to
network is similarly false and denies that civil society groups meeting
in the civil society plenary and caucuses had sufficient strategic sense
to understand the power dynamics involved in engaging with governments,
the private sector and international organizations at WSIS. The
interventions of civil society activists made a material difference to
the outcomes of WSIS in the text of the Tunis Agenda. In addition, those
civil society activists, who tried hard to support independent Tunisian
NGOs against the human rights violations of the Tunisian regime and were
harassed and chased by the police at the Goethe Centre in Tunis on 15
November 2005, were not there just to network in a closed loop. For a
few days, they helped open a space of freedom in Tunis and pledged
ongoing support. A Luta Continua.

Willie Currie
Communications and Information Policy Programme Manager Association for
Progressive Communications

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