World Summit on the Information Society. Working Group on Internet Governance. Written contribution from Norway.
22/07/2005 :: An over-riding objective should be the continued stability and growth of the Internet and its ability to deliver social and economic benefits. There is a need to build on the present structure of the Internet to reinforce its stability and growth potential. On this background, Norway would like to make the following comments concerning the Working Group on Internet Governance:
Procedure and WG structure.
1. The process and working methods of the WGIG to be established must be open and include all groups of stakeholders, in particular governments and the relevant private sector.
2. The composition of the WGIG must ensure a sufficiently high political and strategic level of the agenda.
3. The actual work of the WGIG must be carefully balanced between efficiency (small group) and openness and representation (very big group).
4. Norway will participate actively and constructively in the work of the WGIG, regardless of the mode chosen.
Internet Governance policy issues.
1. As the Internet and its applications now are essential for economic and social development, they become associated with broad ranging political areas. The significance of Internet governance must be expanded from management of domain names/addresses to a full range of generic issues including usage/penetration, spam, robustness/reliability/stability, data protection and privacy, IPR, trade/taxation, research, standardization, multilingual and local content. In fact, the WGIG must develop a working definition of Internet governance and identify relevant policy issues. The scope of Internet governance should, at the outset, be broad.
2. Internet now being a global factor, it is of paramount importance that the number of active stakeholders in the governance activities is increased substantially (outreach). The active, competent and broad participation of developing countries must be ensured.
3. A better balance of influence concerning the present domain name management must be targeted. This concerns the relationship between the US government and other governments as well as between the different industrial actors. The transition towards such a balance must take place in a cooperative and respectful atmosphere, taking the time needed.
4. The WGIG must propose a sound structure and financing of the ICANN Government Advisory Committee (GAC) as well as an effective secretariat. The GAC cannot continue to have a mere counseling role to the ICANN
5. The performance of the GAC must be improved, notably in its relationship with the ICANN bodies, New tasks and responsibilities should not be given to ICANN/GAC. Broader participation – specifically from developing countries - must be ensured. With a stronger and better funded secretariat, the actual GAC meetings could focus on more strategic and political issues.
6. The WGIG should seek to structure the set of governance issues and distribute responsibilities such that we better could benefit from the operational competence of existing bodies, e.g. ITU, WIPO
7. The WGIG must draw a roadmap of how to arrive at an operational structure for Internet governance that can satisfy all the objectives as stated in the WSIS Declaration.
The difficult issue is really to find an acceptable effective political/organisational structure for IG with the appropriate legitimacy and authority. There are probably three different alternatives:
a. Establish a new global organisation for IG within the UN. This means that the GAC should be closed or restricted to domain names, addresses etc referring only to ICANN.
b. Enhance GAC to take on such an overall, broad governing responsibility. Then GAC must be separated from ICANN and upgraded with the necessary international legitimacy
c. Distribute IG between already existing topical organizations: GAC, ITU, WIPO, etc.
WGIG. Norwegian comments.doc