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

[americo at imit.kth.se]

Perhaps some of you might have seen this already. I just wanted to share
given the recent posting on the same issue in this list.

a./


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: CTO SURVEY SEES DIFFICULTIES FOR CONSENSUS ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE
From:    "CTO News" <newsletter at cto.int>
Date:    Fri, November 19, 2004 1:27 pm
To:      "CTO News Subscriber" <newsletter at cto.int>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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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