Some Personal Questions for this Workshop

Personal contribution of Daniel Karrenberg <daniel.karrenberg@ripe.net>:

The following are a number of personal observations and questions which
I hope the workshop can help to solve.  While these are purely personal
observations and questions that are on my mind, they may very well be of
general interest. 

ISOC and ICC propose a good categorisation of Internet governance.  I am
only interested in the standards development and technical coordination
parts.  Mostly in the latter because I have made a contribution to
developing the status quo in this area. 

Contrary to the suggestion that is often made most of those involved in
policy development for technical coordination recognise that many of the
technical coordination issues are no longer purely technical or
administrative.  Public policy concerns do have to be heard and
considered. 

The processes of policy development in both standardisation and
technical coordination are open to governments at all levels and some of
them choose to participate.  So public policy concerns *are* heard and
considered. 

At the moment this happens most efficiently on the national level of
these processes: case in point is ccTLD policy development.  This is
because sovereignty and related issues such as applicable law are
clearly defined on this level. 

This is the status quo as I see it.  The Internet works, standards are
developed, names, numbers and protocol IDs are readily available. 
Processes for policy development exist, public policy concerns are
heard and considered.  We are doing quite well. 

Of course things can always be improved.  Is it the case that
governments are having real issues that are not heard in existing
processes?  Are there issues that a significant set of governments agree
on but are ignored?  Need existing processes be made more accessible for
governments and others raising public policy concerns? 

It appears to me personally, that ITU-T is an old international
bureaucracy looking to expand its mission into an area whose community
has overtaken it left and right in the past.  It appears to take WSIS
and valid public policy concerns that have nothing to do with standards
development or technical coordination to justify its proposed mission
expansion. 

I hope the workshop can help to answer the following questions:

What are the concrete current issues in the area of technical
coordination that need government input and consensus on the global
level?  Not areas of policy but concrete current policy issues. 

How is ITU-T going to achieve significant consensus among governments on
these particular issues? 

How is ITU-T going to do this more successfully than the current
processes? 

How can it be ensured that ITU-T involvement does not add more
complexity to current processes than it removes?  In particular: will
ITU-T involvement just lead to yet-another *part* of many governments
getting involved? 

Will ITU-T participate in the current processes like everyone else or
does it need a special position?  If it does, what special position and
why? 

I hope to discuss these questions with the other participants
and look forward to an interesting workshop.

Daniel Karrenberg