[Chapter-delegates] What should ISOC's future goals be? How can we work toward achieving them as ISOC Chapters?

[Nazar K Nicholas]

*Nazar Nicholas*
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On Thu, 23 Sept 2021 at 22:52, Veni Markovski via Chapter-delegates <
chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
Andrew and Veni



> Andrew,
> One piece that needs to be put in perspective - you are using the word
> "lobbying", and need to say that it has different meaning in different
> countries, and while some countries have laws, regulating lobbying
> governmental officials, Congress, etc., (e.g. the USA), other don't (e.g.
> Bulgaria). So, conclusions, based on the US experience, won't necessarily
> be valid in Bulgaria and vice versa.
> Likewise, we can't talk about "the chapters"; some chapters are active,
> and others are not. Some talk to politicians, other don't. Some are small,
> others - big. Some have stuff, others don't. Some chapters "guard their
> independent status pretty jealously", and others don't care what the status
> is, as long as the job is done, the Internet in their country is not under
> threat or control, etc.
>

I think the main point here is funding for Chapters to enable high-level
Public Policy Engagement with lawmakers and technocrats. For example,
currently, in my country(Tanzania) the gov is working on Privacy and
Personal Data Protection Law. It is supposed to be a multistakeholder
engagement process, but the technocrats do their thing until the very end
where they call so-called " stakeholders" in the half-day meeting to
collect their input - which is often never included in the final version of
the law anyway. I have seen this time and again. But had there been a
Public Policy Engagement Fund for Chapters this is where ISOC in the form
of ISOC-Tz Chapter would come in. It would organize high-level
multistakeholder engagement meetings to influence the legislative process
and outcome of the proposed law. However, to put together these kinds of
meetings(for the big shots!) and assemble an agile  Experts Task Group
needs money to smell the incoming legislative process for a law that may
affect the running of the Internet, influence it in a good way and follow
it through to the end product(the law). Without this kind of engagement,
all else will just be the barking-without-biting or shouting on the
sidelines that accomplishes nothing. Is this what you call " lobbying" in
the Western hemisphere?  If so, to us in Tanzania it is not. I think we can
use "Public Policy Engagement" instead of "lobbying", and create a Public
Policy Engagement Fund for the Chapters.  The chapters would use the funds
to engage and by engaging lawmakers, government technocrats, private
sector, the academia/research, civil societies, technical communities, and
minority group they would thus influence lawmaking without the word
"lobbying" in play! I hope this is helpful.

>
>
> And another observation - at least for me this conversation sounds as if
> we already have had it. Maybe 5, maybe 10 or 15 years ago - I don't
> remember. But I do remember discussing the %subject of George and
> Muhammad's email several times, including when I was on the Board of
> Trustees, and I volunteered to come with some written ideas to the staff.
> It was, if I am not mistaken, during the Minneapolis BoT meeting; and the
> other volunteers were Alan, Don and George. Maybe I am missing someone. In
> any case, none of our suggestions were used by the organization, which is a
> pity, as it would have solved a lot of the issues ISOC had to confront in
> the years after that. So, if people don't respond to the current thread, it
> might be that they don't want to spend the time over and over again?
>
> v/
>
> On 9/21/21 18:37, Andrew Sullivan via Chapter-delegates wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 09:27:05PM +0000, Franca Palazzo wrote:
>
> Whatever the decision as to goals, there should be a bucket for Chapters'
> to use for issues that are specific to their jurisdictions.  These can't be
> anticipated a year in advance.  In many cases, we are reacting to whatever
> crazy legislation proposals the current gov't tables.  In order to
> influence policy we need funds to hold events that promote the
> consultations and submissions done by our policy committee.
>
>
> I understand and sympathise with this suggestion, but it would actually be
> quite dangerous for the Internet Society and possibly for certain chapters,
> for two reasons:
>
> 1.  Actively funding what might qualify as lobbying campaigns under US law
> would endanger the Internet Society's charitable status.  US charities are
> tightly constrained as to what lobbying activities they can engage in, and
> we can't just have a pool of money that is generally open for funding such
> issues.  (This is in no way to minimise the importance of chapters reacting
> to legislation -- in the recent Canadian case, indeed "crazy", in my
> opinion.)  The penalties for messing this up are pretty serious, up to and
> including revocation of public charity status, and we just cannot possibly
> allow that to happen.  (For instance, if we were to lose our public charity
> status, all of our supporting organizations, including PIR, would
> automatically be affected.  PIR's legal status has implications for its
> contract with ICANN, so this is not a small matter.  In addition, if we
> lost our charity status that would immediately affect the IETF, which would
> also be bad.)
>
> 2.  Chapters are legally separate organizations, and if they are
> automatically eligible for funding for their political (not necessarily
> "lobbying", note) activities this could affect either the legal reality or
> the perception of that independence.  From the Internet Society point of
> view, of course, this might not be so bad, but I have always had the
> impression that chapters guard their independent status pretty jealously;
> so we would not wish to do anything to impugn that.
>
> With my CEO hat on, I will say that the first of these is more important
> to me as a corporate officer; but it's certainly not something that is
> trivial to work around.  Some other organizations set up other kinds of
> affiliated entities that are designed to do lobbying (but that have very
> different rules related to how they are funded).  It might be useful for
> chapter leaders to express to the board how they might feel about such an
> arrangement.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
>
> --
>
> Best regards,
> Venihttps://www.veni.com
> pgp:5BA1366E veni at veni.com
>
> The opinions expressed above are those of the
> author, not of any organizations, associated
> with or related to him in any given way.
>
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