[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [CS Bureau] Civil Society Meeting - 18 October 2006

[Robert Guerra]

Francis:

As I mentioned earlier, it was agreeded to by both the CSB and Plenary
during the WSIS process that not only a report of a meeting, but also a
list of those participating as CS and/or CSB had to be listed in any
reports.

>From you comments it does seem that you were there - and that's fine,
>From my view,  it seems like you are acting in your own personal capacity.

You mention that there was a discussion where "some suggestions" where
raised for groups to be "considered" . That is quite vague, in fact
quite opaque.  I personally, and i think others as well want to know
what the specific suggestions where, who were making them, and what
processes of consultation, engagement and decision making were used.

I look forward to further details.

regards

Robert


Dr. Francis MUGUET wrote:
> 
> Hello / Bonjour
> 
> Sorry to post this report in the afternoon.
> Yesterday evening I was exhausted, and
> this morning, I had work to do elsewhere.
> 
> Of course, it would better to post also
> a report of what has been going on in the
> session itself to better understand.
> I will try to write a report, but I cannot
> give a date, since I will be abroad until the IGF.
> 
> Sorry also, mes amis, je n'ai pas eu le temps
> de faire une version en Français, ce
> sera la priorité.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------
> Civil Society Meeting
> 18 October 2006
> Concise report
> 
> 
> While Civil Society was allocated a meeting place,
> 1/ there is not translation ( English / French ),
> 2/ no cybercafé at UNESCO, just WiFi access
> 3/ Only web browsing and ssh are allowed.
> The port 25 ( with a smtp server )
> and the port 110 ( pop) and port 995 ( pop3s ) should be opened.
> It was approved that a request shall be sent to UNESCO computing
> services through the channel of the CSB.
> 
> It was the general opinion that the procedure followed today, for the
> e-learning action line, in the afternoon, was not satisfactory, because
> the chair ( Cyril ) wanted too much to impose to all stakeholders, CS
> and governments alike his selection of themes.
> 
> There were some suggestions during the session that some Civil Society
> entities shall be co-moderators alongside UNESCO, the designated lead
> moderator, but an obstacle is that in the Draft Terms of Reference for
> functioning of the Multi-stakeholders Team A 6 , it is mentioned that :
> The Facilitator should be able to provide sufficient resources to cover
> the costs of its own activities, and/or to contribute to overall
> coordination of Action Line
> Therefore, it was the feeling that, except for well financed
> organization like APC or CONGO, it would be difficult to be accepted as
> a action line co- moderator. CONGO is already burdened with the task of
> the executive secretariat.
> While the possibility should be considered that several NGOs could form
> together alliance with enough means and credibility to be accepted as a
> civil society moderator, yet another procedural strategy has been
> suggested so that the process becomes more inclusive.
> Since the actions lines has been broken into basic themes, along with
> cross-cutting themes, it has been suggested that moderators could also
> be designated at the level of each interest group related to each theme.
> This would amount a fine-grained organization at theme levels.
> At the theme level, the condition enunciated in the item A6 of the Draft
> Terms of Reference for functioning of the Multi-stakeholders Team should
> not apply, and the Draft Terms of Reference should be modified to
> acknowledge the existence of interest groups at the theme level with a
> team of moderators. Fi
> request at action lines.
> During the WSIS process, the important role of Civil Society groupings,
> such as families, caucuses and thematic groups, has been acknowledged,
> while a NGO made a contribution on behalf of a certain WSIS Civil
> Society grouping.
> Therefore, building on the spirit of the WSIS practice, it is suggested
> that, at the theme level, WSIS civil society should be allowed as such
> to act as co-moderator of a theme, despite having no formal legal
> structure.
> This positive proposal has been approved, by consensus, by all the
> attendees of the CS meeting, and is going to proposed tomorrow ( ie
> Thursday ).
> 
> Another interesting proposal was text of the Geneva and Tunis Civil
> Society declarations relevant to each specific action line, should be
> included in the annex of the document entitled “Working methods of the
> multi-stakeholder team”.
> This proposal was also approved by consensus.
> 
> A participant stressed the difficulty of the communication between the
> governance-minded and advocacy-minded civil society and the technical
> communities. In that respect UNESCO and all moderators should make a
> serious effort.
> 
> As UNESCO has just proposed today ( 18 October) to enlarge the use of
> their collaborative tool Sharepoint, concerns have been raised that
> Sharepoint, a Microsoft product, might not be interoperable enough, and
> might put people using a different operating systems, and/or different
> word processor at a disadvantage. The statement by Axel Plathe that
> Civil Society could propose yet another collaborative tool has been
> noted and appreciated.
> Furthermore, it could useful that theme co-moderators could also set up
> collaborative tool servers, and therefore, the choice of the
> collaborative tool should also take into account this need.
> 
> 
> All the best
> 
> Francis
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Francis F. MUGUET Ph.D
> 
> MDPI Foundation Open Access Journals
> Associate Publisher
> http://www.mdpi.org   http://www.mdpi.net
> muguet at mdpi.org       muguet at mdpi.net
> 
> ENSTA   Paris, France
> KNIS lab.  Director
> "Knowledge Networks & Information Society" (KNIS)
> muguet at ensta.fr   http://www.ensta.fr/~muguet
> 
> World Summit On the Information Society (WSIS)
> Civil Society Working Groups
> Scientific Information :  http://www.wsis-si.org  chair
> Patents & Copyrights   :  http://www.wsis-pct.org co-chair
> Financing Mechanismns  :  http://www.wsis-finance.org web
> 
> UNMSP project : http://www.unmsp.org
> WTIS initiative: http://www.wtis.org
> ------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
>