The IANA stewardship transition: a test case for Internet governance? – PL 04 2015

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Session teaser

A year into the IANA stewardship transition: an update on the ongoing process and its effects on European and global multistakeholder Internet governance discussions.

Session description

The announcement by the U.S. Government in March 2014 that it intends to transfer oversight of the IANA functions to the global multistakeholder community has sparked one of the most significant Internet governance processes of recent years. While high-level and essentially administrative functions for the global coordination of Internet names and numbers, this move would represent an important step in the development of truly global and multistakeholder stewardship of the Internet itself.

More than a year after this announcement, we are in the midst of a global dialogue, spread over three distinct operational communities, to develop a new model for stewardship of these key administrative functions. A great deal of work has already been achieved - thousands of emails sent and read; countless hours spent talking, deliberating and debating on conference calls; proposals, ideas and analyses generated from all corners of the global multistakeholder Internet community.

As significant as this process is, we must also consider it in a broader context - as we move towards the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) +10 year review in December, the outcome or progress of this transition may prove a significant factor in Internet governance negotiations at the UN level.

This session will seek to achieve the following goals: first provide an update on the status and key points of the proposals from the three operational communities; second, it will seek to clarify how the IANA transition discussions contribute to wider discussions on multistakeholder Internet governance and the Internet itself; final, it will seek to put the IANA stewardship into the wider context of Internet governance and in particular will discuss whether (and in what ways) it might affect the discussions of the UN General Assembly in New York this December.

Keywords

IANA, governance, multistakeholder, WSIS+10, bottom-up, accountability

Format

A rotating panel discussion over three parts, moderated by Konstantinos Komaitis. The first part will provide an update on the status and key points of the proposals from the three operational communities. The second will seek to clarify how the IANA transition discussions contribute to wider discussions on multistakeholder Internet governance and the Internet itself. The third and closing section will seek to put the IANA stewardship into the wider context of Internet governance and in particular will discuss whether (and in what ways) it might affect the discussions of the UN General Assembly in New York this December. Three new speakers will be introduced to stimulate discussion in each of the three stages.

Further reading

Deadline 30. April 2015

People

• Focal Point: Chris Buckridge
• Org team: Andrea Beccalli, Konstantinos Komaitis, Jean-Jacques Subrenat, Walid Al-Saqaf, William Drake, Anna Kakalashvili
• Key participants|Panelists: Nurani Nimpuno, Eliot Lear, Jean Jacques Sahel, Cristina Monti, Janis Karklins
• Moderator: Konstantinos Komaitis
• Reporter: Chris Buckridge
• Remote moderator: Lorena Jaume-Palasí, EuroDIG

Conf. call schedule & minutes

PL4 Org Team Teleconference, 9 April 2015

Participants: Andrea Beccalli, Chris Buckridge, William Drake, Athina Fragkouli, Ana Kakalashvili, Konstantinos Komaitis

The first call of the PL4 organising team was held on 9 April, and these discussions produced loose agreement on a format for the 90-minute session that breaks into three distinct segments:

1. info sharing on what's going on, top level, re. the IANA stewardship process
2. discussion of the multistakeholder process and its generalizable implications, and then
3. a link to the broader geopolitics of 'oversight', WSIS+10 and global Internet governance generally

The current approach is to have 2-3 “focus” speakers for each of those segments (with the moderator leading discussion in an interview-style format) and reserving time for audience discussion between each segment (though it was noted that this would require some quite strong, pro-active moderation).

On a related note, we discussed the possibility of Konstantinos Komaitis moderating the session (at this initial stage he was open to the possibility). Other tentative suggestions for speakers included Matthew Shears (Centre for Technology and Democracy, civil society) and someone from the European Commission (or EU more generally... perhaps an MEP?).

The group on the call discussed the teaser sentence and key words, both of which need to be updated on the wiki by 10 April. General consensus was reached on these, and they are now reflected on the wiki.

We will endeavour to schedule a second call during the week of 27 April-1 May (a Doodle poll will be made available shortly). This actually fits quite nicely with our next “deadline” for content, which is 30 April.

Notes taken by Chris Buckridge

Current discussion

See the discussion tab on the upper left side of this page

Mailing list

Contact: pl4@eurodig.org

Session twitter hashtag

Hashtag: #eurodigp4