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4th IGF Meeting |
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Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt |
18 November 2009 |
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ITU has a membership of 191 governments and over 700 private sector members.
The membership has not discussed the future of the IGF and will not do so
until early next year when it can reflect on this IGF and the previous
three.
However the ITU Secretary-General will recommend to our membership to
support the continuation of the IGF in its present format, for the reasons
that many speakers have expounded over the week.
This is not to say that improvements cannot or should not be made. The IGF
has evolved from the first event and will continue to do so.
In particular the number of events running in parallel should, we believe,
be drastically reduced. Eight different events starting at the same time is
far too many.
ITU has itself contributed to this – we organized eleven events here. We
will not hold as many events at the next IGF.
Although, I am pleased to say, our events have been well attended, we have
seen that many other events have had just a few participants. This is not
fair to those that organized them or their presenters. It also means missing
interesting discussions in the main sessions.
Why has this not been addressed? Why do we have side events in parallel with
important discussions in the main session? Why not concentrate on one or two
themes for each IGF?
This leads one to question the effectiveness of the organizing structure,
including its transparency and accountability.
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