[Chapter-delegates] New wiki posting: UN Requests annual report on "enhanced cooperation"

[Stefano Trumpy]

At 12:07 -0400 26-03-2008, Bill Graham wrote:
>Dear Chapter members,
>
>Last week, ISOC President and CEO, Lynn St. Amour, received a letter 
>by fax from the Under-Secretary General of the United Nations (see 
>link below).  The letter is "an invitation" to ISOC to submit annual 
>performance reports on our "enhanced cooperation on public policy 
>issues pertaining to the Internet."  I understand that several other 
>non-UN agencies active in the Internet space received similar letters, 
>as did the main related agencies in the UN system.
>
>This letter comes out of the World Summit on the Information Society 
>debates on Internet governance.  The WSIS ended in November 2005, so 
>it comes as a bit of a surprise to receive a request such as this more 
>than two years later without any prior discussion with the community.
>
>I wanted to let you know that we have received this letter, and that 
>we are considering our response to the request for an annual 
>performance report.  We have started consulting with other 
>organizations in the Internet community to see how they intend to 
>respond.  Also, we have posted a copy of the UN's letter to the ISOC 
>wiki site to provide you with an opportunity to comment on the 
>invitation from the United Nations.  Please see 
><http://wiki.tools.isoc.org/Policy_Activities/UN_report_request
>  > if you are interested or have comments to offer.  It would be 
>helpful to have comments posted by the end of April 2008.
>
>I also should explain why we've used this separate public wiki for 
>this posting, rather than posting it directly on the chapters wiki.  
>The reason is that we feel it is important to be able to share the 
>letter broadly in the Internet community.  We also want to make a 
>single site available to collect comments in a transparent manner 
>where everyone involved can see one another's postings.  Additionally, 
>the registration/login requirement provides some level of protection 
>against automated and nuisance postings to the wiki.

Bill, this is something that was floating in the air actually since a 
couple of years; first I submit a few comments on the letter, form , 
timing etc.

	- this letter is aiming at implementing the first part of 
par. 71 of Tunis Agenda, that is the so-called top down approach of 
the so called "enhanced cooperation";

	- this activation is happening with a two years of delay and 
is sent by the Under Secretary General;

	- in the mean time the bottom up approach of par.71 has been 
activated in particular by ICANN and the IGF (that was not conceived 
to be involved in the so called "critical resources" and in 
particular in the enhanced cooperation process) had the chance to 
verify the progress in the bottom up approach;

	- in the letter there is no mention about the interpretation 
of UN SG referring to the term "enhanced cooperation";

	- it would be interesting to know the list of the 
organizations that received this letter; this could give an idea of 
the interpretation of the process by UN;

	- there is no mention about the actions that will follow the 
receipt of the answers by the relevant organizations.

Concluding remarks:

	- my impression is that UN had pressure do something to 
demonstrate that they are seriously considernig the outputs of WSIS 
in Tunis; they than decided to adopt a king of smoggy approach with 
the idea that the process will be clarified on going;

	- my suggestion is that ISOC should produce a nice document 
explaining it's achievements and the collaborations with other 
organizations, including ITU, OECD, UNESCO, etc.; I am dubious about 
asking IETF to produce a separate document; the sense of what I am 
saying is that ISOC was already collaborating with other 
organizations before WSIS in Tunis but we take the chance to show 
further improvements;

	- the relations with the IGF process should be discussed in 
the meantime while waiting the enhanced cooperation process 
interpretation by UN to be understood/clarified.

Stefano Trumpy

>
>Best wishes
>
>Bill Graham
>Global Strategic Engagement
>The Internet Society
>graham at isoc.org
>www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/governance/globalengage.shtml
>
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>Chapter-delegates mailing list
>Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
>http://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-delegates


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