[afnog] FW: CTO SURVEY SEES DIFFICULTIES FOR CONSENSUS ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE

[Badru Ntege]

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-----Original Message-----
From: CTO News [mailto:newsletter at cto.int] 
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 3:23 PM
To: CTO News Subscriber
Subject: CTO SURVEY SEES DIFFICULTIES FOR CONSENSUS ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE

CTO SURVEY SEES DIFFICULTIES FOR CONSENSUS ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE

London, 18 November 2004 - A preliminary survey by the Commonwealth
Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) warns of potential difficulties within
the international community in reaching consensus over the governance of the
Internet, one of the two fundamental issues, together with the funding of
the efforts to bridge the Digital Divide, that the second phase of the World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS II) is expected to address.

As the Internet continues to grow as a cultural, economic, and political
phenomenon, increasing attention is being paid to how it should be governed.
The debate over this is what led the 11,000 delegates at the WSIS I in
Geneva in December 2003, to agree that the matter be referred to the UN
Secretary General for further study. Although the Secretary General has set
up a Working Group on Internet Governance, a variety of interest groups are
undertaking their own internal consultations, with a view to contributing
composite views where possible to the WGIG, for onward discussion at the
next WSIS in Tunis in November 2005. This survey by the CTO of its member
countries and institutions represents an attempt to collate the views of
Commonwealth ICT stakeholders in order to contribute. 

The CTO, as an intergovernmental agency representing the interests of
governments, regulators, telephone companies and other ICT stakeholders
mostly based in Commonwealth countries is centrally concerned about the
impact of the Internet, its possibilities for making major contributions to
developing knowledge societies and economies, and the challenges and risks
associated with certain aspects of this important means of communication.
Cognisant of the role information and communication can play in reducing
poverty and promoting growth, and especially in enabling developing
countries to achieve their targets set in the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), the CTO considers it as part of its responsibility to create,
amongst its core constituencies, awareness and understanding of the issues
involved in Internet Governance. 

Deeper understanding of the critical dimensions of Internet Governance, the
CTO believes, would enable delegations from countries that will be
represented at WSIS II in Tunis to speak from a common framework of
understanding, and hopefully lead to a more harmonious outcome of
deliberations and agreements. As a true multi-stakeholder partnership with
representation from the varied sectors of the ICT sector and with membership
from all major geographic regions of the World, the CTO is increasingly
becoming recognised as a honest broker. Its efforts to provide hard facts
about the opinions of decision-makers in its member countries should
facilitate a deeper appreciation of the areas of convergence and the areas
of divergence amongst countries and types of entities, thereby providing
early warning signals about likely flash points in the debate. It is hoped
that the interim findings of this preliminary survey will already
demonstrate the need for considerable knowledge sharing and public education
long before November 2005, if the global gathering in Tunis is to succeed. 

This interim survey has been conducted purely as a preliminary effort to
begin mapping of opinions, attitudes and positions on some of the
contentious aspects of Internet Governance. It was conducted entirely with
the CTO's own resources and therefore does not pander to any special
interest. 

The survey was conducted based on a formal questionnaire that posed some 25
questions to government ministers, other public servants from ministries,
regulators, telephone company executives, and other ICT practitioners who
had gathered in  Colombo, Sri Lanka, in September 2004,  for the annual CTO
Forum that precedes the Organisation's Annual Council meeting. Responses
were obtained from delegates from some 30 countries, mostly from the
developing regions of Africa, Caribbean and the Asia-Pacific regions. 

As results coming out of surveys of small sample size can possibly be
skewed, it is the intention of the CTO to conduct further surveys on larger
samples to minimise distortions in reaching conclusions. If the results show
clear consensus on aspects such as the need for a clear and broad definition
of Internet Governance, they also reveal disparities of opinion and
potential disagreement and on other aspects, as the summary below shows. 

General governance issues 

1.	Asked how broad a definition of Internet Governance they wished to
see, most participants (78%) stated the need for a broad definition of
internet governance, to include such issues as spam, Internet pricing and
interconnection, rather than a narrower definition that would limit the
discussion to such matters as IP addresses and root server administration. 

2.	Asked what kind of organisation respondents felt should govern the
Internet, 41.4% said they preferred an inter-governmental organisation while
27% were happy for things to remain as they are. 

3. 	To the question regarding how Internet Governance decisions should
be made, 37% of respondents wanted the WSIS to be the main focal point for
decisions, 29% asked for a new inter-governmental organisation, 25.9% were
happy with the status quo and 3.4% thought ICANN should be in charge. 

4.	Asked about the role of ICANN, 47.8% of respondents felt that ICANN
is only one of several important actors in the Internet Governance system,
with 21.7% stating that ICANN dominates the system, and 4.3% reporting that
ICANN's role is minimal.   
 
5.	Asked about any changes they may wish in ICANN's role, the majority
of open-ended comments suggested that ICANN should have more representation
for developing countries, and listen to their concerns, especially on
matters such as bandwidth pricing. 

6.	On linguistic accessibility, 44.8% of respondents expressed
satisfaction with the current English-dominated system for e-mail addressing
and web-page addressing, while 27.6% supported multilingualism and
internationalisation of the Internet-perhaps reflecting the bias of a
Commonwealth English-speaking audience group. 
   
Policy/technology issues - Spam and cyber crime

7.  	While respondents were informed by the questionnaire that 90% of all
spam originated from OECD countries of which the USA alone accounted for
57%, some 38% of respondents stated that nation states are not responsible
for spam originating from their countries, and that it is better to find the
actual perpetrators of spam and to punish them. 27% felt that the solution
to eliminating cyber crime is technological, requiring users to acquire the
necessary software to eliminate it. 

8. 	In an open-ended question about which form of cyber crime is most
prevalent in their respective countries, most respondents thought it is
illegal access while most respondent also stated that the most serious cyber
crime is the financial fraud. 

Revenue sharing issues

9.	On revenue dimensions of the Internet, 60% of respondents agreed on
the need for international agreements to govern taxation and e-commerce,
while 35.7% disagreed with the need for any such agreements. 

Control of Root Server 

10.	While 20.7% of respondents were satisfied with the current system of
root server administration, 72% felt that an organisation under the UN
umbrella should be responsible for control of root servers.

11.	On ccTLDs management, 51.7% favoured a single private sector
multi-stakeholder entity, endorsed by Governments to manage ccTLDs, while
27.6% felt a Government agency in each country should manage ccTLDs and
domain space.
  
Impact of Internet Governance

12.	Regarding how important a consensus on Internet Governance issues is
to enable countries to achieve their Millennium Development Goals, 53.8% of
respondents thought this was very important, while only 7.7% thought it was
not important. 

13.	Nevertheless, 81.5% of respondents said good Internet Governance
cannot directly create gender equality or end poverty, but will enable ICTs
to be an effective tool for social action and positive social change, while
some 11.1% thought it would help create gender equality and end poverty.

Participation of developing countries in ICT decision-making

14.	Asked in a ranked order what factor seemed most to withhold
developing countries from active participation in international ICT
decision-making, the factor selected by the highest group of respondents was
'lack of technical and policy capacity on ICT issues', followed by lack of
financial resources to travel to events involving ICT decision-making. 

UN ICT consultation processes

15.	Some cumulative 80% of respondents either strongly agreed or agreed
that it is an excellent idea for the UN Secretary General to have
constituted the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), while 7.7%
strongly disagreed. 

16.	On the online forum initiated by UN ICT Task Force, respondents
indicated that around 63% had no prior experience with the online forum and
felt that the forum could be more useful through regional discussion groups,
seminars and workshops conducted by the CTO with better publicity to
increase participation by LDCs.

Confidence in UN WGIG

17.	While 37.5% of respondents are confident and 45.8% mildly confident
that their views will be recognised by the UN WGIG, over 66% are not
optimistic or only mildly so, that the UN WGIG would be able to achieve
consensus amongst its members and produce a workable definition of Internet
Governance by the time WSIS Tunis 2005 begins, with only 8.3% feeling very
optimistic that consensus would be reached.

***

For more information, please visit www.cto.int or contact Marcel Belingue at
m.belingue at cto.int or telephone: +44 20 7839 5174.

About the CTO - The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) is an
international development partnership between Commonwealth and
non-Commonwealth governments, businesses and civil society organisations
focused on information and communication technologies (ICT) and development.
The CTO supports the international community's efforts to bridge the digital
divide and promote social and economic development, by delivering to
developing countries unique knowledge-sharing programmes in the use of ICTs
in the specific areas of telecommunications, IT, broadcasting and the
Internet. Recently, the CTO has significantly reviewed its mandate to
reflect and respond more fully to today's global development challenge as
set in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Today, our
mission is to offer the highest quality programmes for capacity development,
knowledge-sharing and information services, expand and diversify
partnerships between governments, businesses and other organisations to
reduce global poverty and fulfil the global development agenda for ICT in
the key sectors of food and agriculture, education, health, e-government and
e-commerce. The CTO also facilitates the successful development of
telecommunications and other businesses to support social and economic
development objectives of governments and civil society.

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