Transcript - Internet Governance Plenary
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While every effort is made to capture a live speaker's words, it is possible at times that the transcript contains some errors or mistranslations. APNIC apologizes for any inconvenience, but accepts no liability for any event or action resulting from the transcripts.
Fadi Chehade: Good morning, good evening, wherever you are today. First of all, I wanted to commend Pablo and his team for this incredible experiment today ... many people here and it is fascinating to be here and to be working with the panel on the other side of the planet. It's a very good experiment and I hope it's successful and I hope it's the beginning of more of the same, where we can partner with people around the world, without having to impose on everybody to travel.
Good luck with that, Pablo, and thank you ...
I'm Fadi Chehade. I'm the -- I can't say "new" any more, but I am, I guess, for the first time, in Paris at UNESCO as the President of ICANN. I have been in this role for six months.
I must say that enhanced cooperation, which is the subject we are here together for, is very central, very central to how ICANN understands the multi-stakeholder model and applies it.
We are extremely committed to that concept which started 10 years ago in Tunis. Our commitment is shown through our very close cooperation with organizations very much like UNESCO. We have for three years now ... worked together and that is a great substantiation of our commitment to enhanced cooperation.
It's very important to note that our close work with GAC ICANN government advisory committee is very important and it's work that if it's supported, as we have been lately, including a lot more effort around making the GAC successful and being close with their decisions, with their advice, really does nothing but enhance cooperation between Internet organizations and the governments that need to see us working together, in order to achieve the Tunis Agenda and all the things we agreed on.
With this, I'm really going to let the experts speak. I'm just here to confirm ICANN's unequivocal support and continued effort in investment to enhanced cooperation in this space. I will pass this back to the moderator and ask him to ...
Thank you for welcoming me from Paris.
Pablo Hinojosa: The next speaker was Tarek, but he doesn't seem to be here. So the next one will be Bertrand and then it will go to Singapore, so that is good for Singapore, because they will have more time. We negotiated sort of half and half, but now I think we can turn the mic and position on to them. Are you ready in Singapore?
Paul Wilson: Yes, Pablo. Is that clear enough? I'm not sure if I can be heard.
Thank you very much, Pablo. Thanks for the introduction too from you, Fadi. It's a great pleasure to have you back in Singapore again, after your recent departure. Thanks for coming back to us.
My name is Paul Wilson. I'm the head of APNIC, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, which is one of the Regional Internet Registries.
For you in Paris, you have joined us at the APNIC 35 Conference, the 35th APNIC Conference here in Singapore. We have an audience of the best part of 100 people, I suppose, and I'm here on stage with a panel of experts to help us and to participate in this joint session with some remarks and responses and to help to have a fruitful discussion, I hope.
I have with thanks Dr Govind, the CEO of NIXI from India, Kuo Wei Wu, a member of the ICANN board from Taipei, and Axel Pawlik, the CEO of RIPE NCC, which is a sister regional Internet registry of APNIC.
When we started planning this enhanced cooperation session for Singapore, we had the unnerving finding that many of the speakers that we wanted to join us actually weren't going to be available, because they were going to be joining a very similar meeting, a meeting in a different context and under a different umbrella, but a meeting on the similar topic of enhanced cooperation over there in Paris.
So we couldn't get some of the speakers that we were interested in having with us, but we didn't want to let that stop us, so we're here together, thanks to the wonders of the Internet and it's nice to see at least from this end, that the Internet is serving us very well so far.
I think, all things going well between now and the end of the session, we may have a success here that we can use more often in future.
We're here to talk about enhanced cooperation, which like Internet governance itself is a topic that emerged from the WSIS process nearly 10 years ago. It hasn't had the same amount of coverage, I think, particularly in this community, but I think more generally as well as Internet governance itself has and I think we're all used to talking about Internet governance. It's pretty familiar these days. Enhanced cooperation is a little more mysterious and I think the idea of this session is to throw some light on it.
Since the topic came up in WSIS and since there was a call that was made by the UN Secretary General for reporting from members of the community for their efforts in enhanced cooperation, since that time the RIRs have thought about the topic quite a lot. We have given it a fair amount of thought and consideration and we really see it as something that we have done and we do quite continuously.
It's what you'd call technically a multicast process, not a unicast process. It's something that involves connections between all stakeholders. It's not just a question of government, although from a governmental perspective, of course, they are involved with cooperation from their perspective to others, as are we, the idea being, I think, that it's about cooperation between stakeholders of all types.
The NRO sees this as something that has been happening in our sphere for quite some time and we've published some reports about NRO activities in response to the UN Secretary General's call. We have entitled those reports "Continuing Cooperation". You'll find those on the NRO website. These are an expression of our view of what continuing cooperation or enhanced cooperation means to us.
We think here in the APNIC perspective, we can talk about enhanced cooperation by way of examples. We really have many examples from recent years and before. We have really strong engagements throughout our membership, not just talking from the APNIC perspective, but throughout the community, really strong engagements and cooperative relationships among members of that community and in particular, the National Internet Registries which are part of the APNIC community and structure.
We have most recently, very significantly, a new National Internet Registry in India, which is very soon to be launched and inaugurated formally and that has a very strong governmental component to it, which not all NIRs do, by the way. But it does in this case, which is also an interesting aspect of the cooperative model.
APNIC itself has very good relationships, I would say, with the ITU, particularly at the regional level cooperating in IPv6 and general capacity building in the development sector in particular.
Just at this meeting this week, we have seen the first, the inaugural meeting of the Public Policy Advisory Committee, which is a community initiative that's designed to discuss various issues of Internet policy that sort of extend beyond APNIC's traditional remit. There are other examples, I think, as well, which we, I hope, will hear about some more.
I think even another example, actually, is what we're doing right here now -- what we have achieved in this room, in linking together these two quite different meetings is a really nice example under the same banner. We have UNESCO and a series of important meetings in Paris. We have APNIC, a sort of technical community meeting here in Singapore.
I think we're not only talking about enhanced cooperation here, but we are demonstrating it as well in this live setting and I'm very proud that we're able to do that.
I'd like to hand over to my guest panelists here, firstly Dr Govind, to talk about the NIXI experience and how enhanced cooperation is seen in your environment in India in particular. Thank you.
Dr Govind: Thank you, Mr Paul. First of all, I would like to thank the WSIS in Paris and the Singapore APNIC established. This is the first example I will say of the enhanced cooperation between the two continents, one in Asia Pacific and one in Europe.
To start with the issues of the enhanced cooperation, which is a wonderful platform, we met Fadi yesterday here, and now Fadi you are still with us through the conference call.
Janis Karklins, so the past Chairman of the GAC, who has a wonderful three years experience where, you know, governmental advisory committee and ICANN did wonderful work with the engaging the governments, engaging the private sector, engaging the public policy issues of the Internet related resources and I have a personal experience to run the GAC Secretariat for five years under the chairmanship and leadership of Janis Karklins, that we did work on the establishment of the websites, the Whois system and the mailing system and the reporting system. And all worked very well. Bertrand is there, Markus Kummer is there, Pablo is there, Fadi is there and we have a panel here.
So first of all, I would like to thank everyone for starting the WSIS meeting intercontinentally rather than within the European continent.
Having said that, now I think as the Tunis Agenda has come out with the various points and one was the Internet Governance Forum and another is the enhanced cooperation.
So I think the time of the second component has reached now, which we are beginning today here with this Conference here and with the WSIS advocating that enhanced cooperation working group, establishment of that, so that is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to see how to engage like Lynn said in the inaugural session, that Internet is nothing but engagement and engagement and engagement.
So it is a wonderful way, how the various stakeholders of the government, the private sector, the academia, the technical community and intergovernmental organizations, how we can engage them, we can listen to them, we can include their point of view in your scheme of system, that is the enhanced cooperation and taking into view there the smallest player and the largest player. From the private sector, government, undeveloped countries and the developed country, if all can come together to decide about any issue which is coming up in the Internet, which is a borderless medium and which will help the system to work in an improved situation.
I will quote my minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, who recently said in Baku:
"The Internet has evolved itself into a powerful ubiquitous empowering and liberating medium, even though only a fragment of its full potential is known and has been exploited by us so far. It is expected to grow exponentially in future, faster than ever before, and so would be a strategic, economic, social, cultural and political impact. Most of the new expansion of the Internet will happen in the developing world. So the need of the hour is we have to design in cyber space a system which is collaborative, consultative, inclusive and consensual by dealing with all public policy issues involving the Internet."
Not more than like Mr Paul has just mentioned, NIXI, National Internet Exchange of India, is a wonderful example of public private partnership and involving of all the stakeholders, the government, the private sector, the industry, the academia, they are all on the board of NIXI, we have done this national establishment of NIR recently, thanks to APNIC, that they have recognised us, last year, and we have started the work and with the involvement of all the ISPs, whether it is the small entity or big entity and we have accommodated in the economic system of the delivery of the resources giving space to both the community, whether it is small or big, through giving a balanced discount system within the NIR, so that both get the adequate discounts in the IP resources. It is not that the bigger one gets bigger chunk with the lesser money and the smaller one is paying the same amount.
We have taken into account every balanced inclusive policy and the technicality and the financial system which is helping the NIR and NIXI to go forward in a way which is inclusive, consultative, consensual and in cooperation of all the industries and private sector.
Thank you.
Paul Wilson: Thank you so much, Dr Govind.
It seems that we are assembling the panelists at the other end, so I would like to hand back to Pablo in Paris and let's continue with the agenda. Thank you.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Thank you, Paul. I have the responsibility of moderating this panel today and to do this interesting exercise of a joint meeting between Singapore and Paris. So hello to everybody in Singapore and I hope that the connection will remain as it is now.
We have a very tight schedule and I would like to highlight three elements that will structure the discussion. The first exchange will be about how ICANN functioning illustrates and to what extent it illustrates an enhanced cooperation practice.
The second leg will be to dedicate a little bit more attention to how this notion is practised in the addressing space by the IRRs in particular. In the third element, we'll try to draw a few messages or thoughts that come out of the discussion.
Without further ado, I will ask Tarek Kamel to speak a little bit about how ICANN implements this enhanced cooperation model and how the evolution has been.
I have unfortunately to ask for it to be very quick, because we have a lot of speakers. Thank you, Tarek.
Tarek Kamel: Thank you, Bertrand. I'm glad to participate in this distinguished panel that is organised between ICANN and APNIC and between Paris and Singapore.
I am sorry for being a couple of minutes late, but I wanted to refer back to a definition -- I don't know whether it has been mentioned -- of enhanced cooperation. Where does it come from? Because many people are talking about enhanced cooperation and it is actually in the Tunis Agenda in three paragraphs: 69, 70 and 71.
The concept is introduced in paragraph 69, in order to enable governments on equal footing to carry out their roles and responsibility in public policy issues, but not in the day-to-day technical and operational matters.
In the next paragraph -- and this is more related to ICANN:
"We call upon organizations responsible for the essential tasks associated with the Internet to contribute to creating an environment that facilitates the development of public policy."
Let me share with you in the next couple of minutes how ICANN responded within the last years to this request very specifically in paragraph 70, by enabling public policy principles, facilitating the environment to get more input from the public and to make sure that we are providing the right platform for public policy principles.
The affirmation of commitment was announced in 2009 and this showed the evolution of the relation between ICANN and the US Government from the JPA in 2006, 2009 the affirmation of commitment. We started the ATRT, the Accountability and Transparency Response Team, in order to do a community review. Phase 1, ATRT, that has been completed around more than a year ago and provided a couple of recommendations in order to make sure that it provides better transparency for the governance of ICANN's work. But more important and related to the topic here, it provides the right platform for better coordination between the GAC and between the board. So it empowers the GAC. It provides the GAC with the right principles, in order to provide more public policy input from the governments to the ICANN processes and to the ICANN board.
There have been 26 recommendations. They have been implemented, related to different issues, community input, but as well, as I have mentioned, empowerment of GAC, enhancement of the relation between and communication between the GAC and the board, as well as several other issues relating to the governance of ICANN and the governance of the board of ICANN.
Now we are starting phase 2. In October, it has been announced that there will be phase 2 for the ATRT. The community has been invited to nominate people and there has been a team that has been selected and announced by Chairman Steve Crocker and Heather Dryden, the Chair of the GAC. They will start work soon and provide before the end of the year -- committed to provide before the end of the year, the report and the recommendations of phase 2 of ATRT.
Again, in order to fulfil the same issues, a community review that is public, that is transparent, that provides ICANN with more transparency and enhances also the overall environment for better input for public policy issues, as well as from the GAC.
I have to mention that within the ISPA organization, the GAC is the only platform where government in an organized way, has the input -- to provide input.
I think this is something that we need to bring on, we need to empower. This is really a challenge for the multi-stakeholder model, how we can work with governments, get the public policy input from them, involve them in the international public policy issues, but as well as listen to the other players.
We look forward to participate at ICANN in the committee, hopefully, that has been called upon by the UN General Assembly at this year's ... representing the technical community, together with ISOC, and together with the RIRs and the other ... We look forward that this committee really works in a multi-stakeholder model to provide recommendations to the UN General Assembly about the modes of enhanced cooperation.
Again, we at ICANN are committed to the enhanced cooperation process. We responded to paragraph 70 very specifically and will continue to do that with ATRT. Thank you.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Thank you very much, Tarek. Thank you in particular for highlighting paragraph 70, because in most cases we talk about 69. For those of you who are familiar with the little blue book -- and I see in the room that a lot of you are -- we tend to forget this notion that enhanced cooperation is also something that deals with the different institutions.
In that regard, you mentioned the evolution and the role of the GAC. May I turn now to Janis in this first segment, because he has been, during a significant period, the Chairman of the Governmental Advisory Committee, especially during the period where the role of the GAC has evolved. Could you maybe tell us in a few words how you feel the evolution of the role of governments in ICANN and also the evolution of the relationship with the United States Government after the affirmation of commitments.
Janis Karklins: Thank you Bertrand. Good morning, everybody. Let me start by saying that I'm not speaking on behalf of UNESCO. I'm speaking in my personal capacity.
I see that there are several evolutions. One of them is the evolution of the interpretation of decisions of the summit concerning enhanced cooperation. Already for a while we are talking not any more about a starting process leading towards enhanced cooperation, we are speaking about enhanced cooperation in March. So that is evolution and certainly at the time we spoke about enhanced cooperation in slightly different terms.
That said, we still have different interpretations what enhanced cooperation means. But let me now go and answer your question ...
Indeed, the work of the GAC and of the weight of the GAC in ICANN's decision-making process has been strengthened since a certain period of time, in particular after the adoption of the affirmation of commitment and full engagement of the Chairman of the GAC in the process outlined in this agreement.
I think the fundamental evolution of the situation, in comparison with what we were discussing in 2005, is the shift of accountability of ICANN, from accountability to one government, to accountability to the community and through community, to the government of the United States.
This needs to be recognised and I think that this is a very positive development which goes in the direction of the wish which was clearly expressed during the WSIS summit.
Unresolved issue, of course, is the advisory role of the government in the process. I think here there still remains a point of tension between those governments who think it is an acceptable model and those governments who think that governments should have a stronger role, including a decision-making role, on issues related to public policy.
Here comes the next point and the last one. Do we know really when we use the term "public policy", what does it mean? I think since 2005, there has not been a point of putting the list of public policy issues where governments would have a very clearly defined role and maybe a leading role in promoting those issues. As a result, we're talking a little bit in the abstract and that creates additional tensions in this debate about the role of governments in the Internet governance issues.
I will stop there and I would be happy to answer any questions that you have.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Thank you, Janis. Indeed, you highlight the evolution and the increasing role of governments in the GAC, in the structure and the evolution of the AOC.
One of the challenges is this distinction between policy making and day-to-day management because as you mentioned, in many cases, it is extremely hard to define exactly where the boundary lies. As a board member in ICANN, I can testify that there is an ongoing debate in the organization regarding the distinction between policy and implementation ... which is not a surprise. This is something that any governance system, including any national entity, any national government experiences.
That being said, one element that I would like maybe to ask Jefferson Nacif, who is from Anatel in Brazil, is the question of the equal footing. Because the notion of equal footing covers different dimensions. It covers the relationship between governments amongst themselves, for instance inside the GAC; it covers the relationship of an entity like ICANN towards one government or all governments in the evolution of the affirmation of commitment.
It covers also the footing of governments versus the other stakeholders within the structure of ICANN -- what ... sometimes likes to refer as a multi-equal-stakeholder model.
Could you give us the perspective of Brazil on how ICANN is implementing those elements and actually naming or not the governments on an equal footing and where maybe you see progress could be made.
Jefferson Nacif: Thank you, Bertrand. Good morning all. Well, a very good question. First, I would like to highlight some basic principles that like to proceed in this process and is involved in this process. The position of Brazil in the process of following the World Summit of the Information Society stated on the ... Multi-lateral, transparent and democratic involvement, with the participation of all relevant sectors. Brazil defends greater participation of developing countries and their communities in the process of global governance of the Internet, as well as the adoption of initiatives aimed at the universal axis in bridging the digital divide.
We must ensure that Internet governance is developed in an inclusive way, with the full participation of all countries and their communities, so it does not solidify in concentrated structures. Brazil supports debate on the operationalization of the concept of enhanced cooperation, envisaged in articles 69 to 72 of the Tunis Agenda. CSTD ... has a role to accomplish in this regard and we do hope that this exercise leads to effective conclusions.
We think that there is a gap in the current governance model, since there is not a single identified forum where international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet can be addressed on an equal footing by all multi-stakeholders. The existing fora are not effective in doing so and the existing mechanisms are not far reaching enough. Nor IGF, ICANN or UN agencies are sufficient to correct and treat all stakeholders on equal footing as envisaged in the Tunis Agenda.
Sorry, Bertrand. ... respond to your questions. I think that CSTD will try to respond to these questions. Perhaps we should start by elevating ... of every stakeholder in different forum and governments in ICANN, for instance, civil society in the United Nations system and then we could start at least an assessment phase. Thank you.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: If I understand correctly -- and it's a very interesting point -- is the notion that the different structures that exist today, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm trying to formulate for the wrap-up. On the one hand, I'm not sufficiently developed to handle some of the issues, that we don't have sufficiently strong structures to handle some of the issues that I usually call the governance on the Internet -- not the infrastructure, but privacy, security and other issues.
The second thing is the rebalancing in the different structures of the different stakeholder groups, like stronger governments in ICANN, stronger civil society or even business in international organizations. Thank you. That's very important.
Do you want to make a comment, Markus or Adiel, before we move to the second leg, and maybe I hand over to Singapore? Markus, Adiel, do you want to make a comment at that stage? It's okay?
So I couldn't argue that this closes the discussion on the question of how ICANN is connected or implementing enhanced cooperation, but at least it gives a few highlights and points that will allow us to send messages forward.
What I would like now to do is to hand over to Paul Wilson in Singapore to address the issue of enhanced cooperation or the cooperation between the different actors and governments in particular, in the space of the IP addressing system.
Paul, do you hear me and can you take the lead on this for a few minutes?
Paul Wilson: I certainly do. Thank you very much. We stole a little bit of time from you in the first part of the session on this topic and I mentioned, by way of example, some of the approaches that we are taking, the general conceptualization of enhanced cooperation that we have as a sort of multicast mesh of many different relationships and we have many actors and many stakeholder representatives here between these two rooms that I think illustrate very well the types of relationships that exist.
I gave some examples within the APNIC context of some of the activities that we have in recent years that I believe do exemplify the types of relationships that fall under this enhanced cooperation framework or steer.
But of course there are other Regional Internet Registries and one of them is represented here, that is by Axel Pawlik of RIPE NCC. I think RIPE NCC also has a number of very interesting examples and I won't try and steal Axel's thunder, but we will hand over to Axel to tell us a little bit more about RIPE NCC. Thank you.
Axel Pawlik: Yes, thank you, Paul. Greetings to Paris.
I just thought a bit about what we perceived enhanced cooperation to be in the year 2000 and I think that was my second only ICANN meeting when I talked to an old colleague from Germany and he said, "But the governments, they will take great interest in what you are doing with IP addresses." I said, "Yeah, but not any time soon." Then, of course, WSIS happened.
So one thing that I can clearly say what enhanced cooperation is, it's a lot of work and it's getting more and I think that's actually a good thing, that we embark on full speed ahead.
We started on something that would fall into enhanced cooperation in the first half of the 2000s when we at the RIPE NCC said, "Now, look, we are techies and we are talking to ourselves all the time about really interesting stuff, but there are more people out there." WSIS was just gearing up a bit. We thought, wouldn't it be nice if we could get to talk to the governments of our service region; that being Europe, the Middle East and parts of central Asia. It's quite a number of them, and we wondered how we could do that.
So we set up what we called the RIPE NCC round-table meetings for governments and regulators, initially in Amsterdam mostly, that's where our company sits, and we did get a fair bit of participation from the governmental side, not really great numbers, also at the time we were not known that much. There was ICANN of course, that was the big front and the RIRs were sort of somewhere doing their bit and that was all rather uncontroversial at the time.
What we also realised a little bit later is that, okay, now we are talking among ourselves, among the technologists, but also we do talk at the RIPE NCC with the governments and regulators from time to time, but wouldn't it be really much better if the governments would talk to the techies?
Now we do run those RIPE meetings twice a year, similar to what APNIC does this week here. We installed what we call the RIPE Cooperation Working Group, which is actually chaired by members from governments and that brings together the techies and the governmental representatives insofar as they do come to a RIPE meeting, but more and more of them we do see at RIPE meetings and it gives us an opportunity to voice and exchange our concerns and our views, from both sides, from the techies and from the governmental side.
Of course, what happened after WSIS is that the IGF was set up and all of the RIRs were quite, quite deeply involved in those IGFs, Internet Governance Forum, in both participation and also financial support and we do see, after initial trepidation maybe, that it is a very nice forum for exchange of views, not decision-making, which, we found, is basically what we try to do at the round-table meetings at the RIPE Cooperation Working Group, on a much bigger global scale, a wonderful thing.
What we have done since is talk increasingly to also law enforcement agencies, the police, we have had contact with them for a long time, but as the Internet becomes more and more pervasive and more and more important for all sorts of good and quite not so good activities, we see the need and certainly the police forces see the need for more knowledge, gain more knowledge, what is it? What is an RIR, what a Regional Internet Registry is doing and what are the capability of RIRs in terms of aiding the police force, and we had to say in many cases, well, there is not that much that we actually can really physically do; we are running a registry, we can give you all sorts of information that is publicly available, we can help you to have a look at that.
So law enforcement. We do IPv6 is an interesting topic. We do roadshows, mostly in the Arab region currently, hosted by governments, run by technical trainers, doing hands-on workshops with workshops from the region, we wanted to try and get them around to Russia and the Russian region as well and to wherever it's needed.
Training in general is a very interesting topic and that's something that we also want to cooperate even more among the RIRs in particular with APNIC.
Paul Wilson: Thank you very much, Axel. I'm being asked to hand back to Paris, so I'll do that, but I'm sure that if we do have a few more minutes by the end of this part, then, Kuo Wei Wu, who is an elected member of the ICANN board from this region, and also in fact executive of the APNIC board as well, so he provides a very interesting link in this region between APNIC and ICANN, I'm sure he would have some contributions as well, time permitting.
Back to you, Bertrand, thank you.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Thank you very much, Paul.
I would like to take the opportunity to have a housekeeping remark for people here in Paris in particular. If you can refrain from using too much bandwidth, like watching videos or things like that, because it eats on the bandwidth for the communication. There was a slight moment where there was a glitch in the middle of Axel's presentation. Thank you.
I want to just put as a marker for a little bit later, one comment that Axel just made regarding interaction with law enforcement. Because I think there is an important element in the debate on enhanced cooperation, when we talk about to enable governments on an equal footing.
Governments are actually multifaceted. There are many public authorities. There are law enforcement agencies. There are judges. There are data protection authorities. There are foreign affairs ministries. There are regulators and so on. How to engage those different actors in enhanced cooperation mechanisms is probably one of the challenges that needs to be explored.
Adiel, may I go to you to share with us some of the perspectives and the relationships that you have within the AFRINIC space.
Adiel Akplogan: Thank you, Bertrand. I think when we are talking about enhanced cooperation, in our region for AFRINIC, there is very significance importance in what we do.
We have several cases of real manifestation of enhanced cooperation and we take enhanced cooperation in two aspects. We have the first which is enhanced cooperation among, I would say, a known and already built community, which is cooperating with ... or the RIR, cooperating with other, I would say, technical organizations in the region. That has been something that was more easy to do, because the creation of AFRINIC itself is the result of an enhanced cooperation between all the RIRs to come up and support the initiative in the region. That enhanced cooperation has continued until now.
We have also engaged with other organizations, like ... and other organizations to strengthen the technical ecosystem of the region to enhance cooperation. We have engaged all those organizations and regularly meet with them to help understand the challenges they are facing and work together on that. That being said, that is the most visible, simple part.
But the other aspect, which is enhanced cooperation with government, with policymakers, with law enforcement agency, is something that was kind of new in our region and something that we particularly, as AFRINIC, put a lot of effort in. Because if we want to talk about enhanced cooperation with those stakeholders, we need, first of all, to make sure that they have the same understanding of what we understand by "enhanced cooperation", by "multistakeholderism", by "participation on equal footing" on "policy definition", on "solving issues".
That has been the first remark or the first observation that we made when we started discussing enhanced cooperation in our region. How can we bring those non-commercial stakeholders in our region within the framework of the enhanced cooperation? We have done initiatives, a few things.
First, we have created a government working group within AFRINIC framework. The objective of that working group was to build capacity among government and ... is not only government, but also ... agency, a framework through which they can formally raise their concerns when it comes to number resource management in the region, to AFRINIC and discuss with them what are the possible cooperation that we can have within that framework.
It has proven to be very interesting, because through that cooperation and that initiative, we have enlightened government and policymakers generally on how they can complement what we usually do as a registry in our policy development processes, to see where the complementing can happen between the global policy development and the local implementation of those policies, because that is where they have their legitimacy.
So that has been very fruitful and we have seen in a few countries some policies coming up as a complement, not as an ... policy with what we do as RIR.
The other thing that we have done as RIR is to secure some kind of legal framework of cooperation with inter-governmental organizations, like the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization and the African Telecommunication Union. Why did we stick that initiative is because we find out that it's more easy to work through those established inter-governmental organizations to reach out to government and to be able to bring them into that enhanced cooperation framework. Through the CTU, the MOU for instance, we have been able to work on training programs that are specially targeted to governments -- not only government policymakers, but also government network operators, et cetera, so to understand the implication of policy that are developed globally and to work with them on how they can translate that. The African Telecommunication Union where we work with them to run every year a workshop on Internet governance in general.
So it is something that we continuously put effort into. It is not something that we stop in time, it is a continuous effort, and it is an effort that every small step contributes to the global ...
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Apparently we have a slight bandwidth issue here, but I hope it will be solved. So the same recommendation. Please don't use your connection too much.
I'd like maybe here to again make a marker and piggyback to something that Adiel mentioned, which is the governmental working group. If I'm not mistaken -- and maybe Axel can comment later on this -- RIPE has also established a particular initiative or outreach process towards governments. I remember when I was the French ambassador dealing with those issues, I participated in some of the RIPE round tables. This kind of informal interaction is clearly helping.
One element I would like to ask maybe Jefferson. On an even more local, ie national, level, you have established in Brazil an important structure which is the NIGVR and TGRVR. The different ministries and the different entities of the government are participating, are following, are interacting with this structure.
How do you see at the national level the handling of the diversity of players within a government that have to be interacting? You are the regulator. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is involved. The Ministry of Science, Technology and so on. We have the same problem, the same issue in other countries. How do you handle this question of almost equal footing among the different agencies and the different actors?
Jefferson Nacif: That is a very good remark, since Brazil has a very different structure and model ... IP addresses and distribution. Because of this structure called NIC, as you said -- and NIC is supervised by a steering committee and where there is a steering committee, you can have representation from any part of society, not only government.
Actually, we have more than 20 representatives and government is just nine. So we are few in number in the other parts of society, for instance, providers, ISPs and consumers and civil society ...
So that's quite amazing, how can we work? I think that's an example of enhanced cooperation that we can reach in terms of IP addresses administration.
If I may, I would like to make some other remarks regarding registries.
While that's my experience in working with IQ and the regulator, I would like to put some comments so that we can work on these ideas.
We should consider, in my opinion, that there are some concerns regarding the migration from IPv4 to IPv6 and that imposes some challenges that must be dealt with very clearly by all stakeholders. Some of these concerns are expressed in the international fora, including such as the costs involved in the migration to IPv6, in terms of equipment and softwares, the establishment of IPv6 solution policies, so that errors of the past do not return now.
And what will happen to unused or returned IPv4 addresses, the possible emergence of a remaining IPv4 grey market, or even leaving it to the market to solve may not be appropriate -- so on and so forth. There are many concerns about this migration.
Moreover, as we all know, some governments are of the view that the ITU ... Europeans accomplish duties as of a registry organization receiving blocks of IPv6 that are distributed to developing countries, according to the final policies.
In this regard, I should like to put it clearly that my government does not have major difficulties with our RIR registry model or with our regional NIC but we are exploring the issue and have not decided yet whether we are in totally in favour of that. In any case, we are having internal discussions.
The first thing registries should do with these movements, with these international movements, is to increase coordination and communication with governments and the governments should look for better relations with registries. They have to listen here to initiatives from RIPE and AFRINIC in this regard.
Asking what are the problems in terms of the solutions of IP addresses and how they can be jointly solved is the first step. Maybe communication among registries and governments has not been appropriate. If ITU is not accepted as a registry then it may not be the best way. This is something that must be well stated, at least collaborative work can be done, for instance, training and exchange of practices.
We face here a common objective, which is the smooth deployment of IPv6 and the effective and efficient use of the remaining IPv4. Here again, we can realize the regional problem regarding the governance of the Internet. When a problem occurs, when there is a lack of information or absence of trust, organizations and governments turn their backs to their own walls and criticisms by both sides appear.
So it is time to think outside the box. Try to collaborate more and create alternatives to deal with current problems.
These are my first impressions about it. Thank you.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Thank you. Actually, it illustrates even better than I expected two facets that we can go on exploring a little bit further. One facet is the arrangement from the global to the local. It is very interesting that when we talk about enhanced cooperation -- and I think it is a good evolution -- we are now including things that were not necessarily included before, but we set about the creation of NIC and the ITU RIR is a model at a national level of enhanced cooperation. We are talking about the RIRs at regional level, including their cooperation with governments and also enhanced cooperation.
We get the global level with ICANN in a restricted space, which is just naming and addressing, dealing with enhanced cooperation, and then we have also the other issues that have to be addressed, maybe with other mechanisms, maybe new mechanisms. What I like is the notion of diversification and adaptation of the objectives to the different layers.
The second element is the issue by issue approach. You picked one in particular here, which is the address allocation; another thing can be the programs that ICANN develops, and another issue can be related to privacy or to freedom of expression. The notion that cooperations have different relevant stakeholders on an issue by issue basis is probably one thing we can explore.
In that regard, I would like to go to Markus now, who has a sort of triple credit for being on this panel on this topic, almost a quadruple credit. The first thing is that he was the animator of the working group on Internet governance that contributed strongly to the definition of Internet governance. He was, after the summit, the executive coordinator of the Internet Governance Forum, and we have great credit to him for what it has accomplished. He is now with ISOC, where he leads the policy aspects, and ISOC is also the supporter and the host of the IETF process. He has now been confirmed as the interim Chair of the IETF MAG, which is another responsibility.
One question to you regarding what has been said, and your past experience: how do you feel that this debate about enhanced cooperation has matured, do you think it has matured, and, if yes, in what direction?
Markus Kummer: Thank you. Let me start by saying it is a great privilege to be on this transcontinental panel, connected with colleagues in Singapore.
I would also like to pick up on what Janis has said to us, and make the point that the debate has evolved; we don't talk any more about starting the process, we talk about enhanced cooperation as a process that is happening.
I would also like to recall that we had organized a one-day pre-event in Baku to discuss that, and there again, Janis, in his historical capacity as chairman of the pre-conclave which led to the agreement in Tunis, recalled the discussions and recalled the outcome that was at the time a diplomatic compromise, full of creative ambiguity, as diplomats like to call it. It allows everybody to claim victory. Janis gave us anecdotal evidence of how people who are diametrically opposed to each other with their respective positions were all extremely happy with that particular outcome. In other words, it can read into this agreed language whatever they want to read into it.
However, our reading of it was always very clear; that it was enhanced cooperation within existing organizations and between existing organizations, and I think this morning's panel has given us ample evidence of how progress has been made within existing organizations.
Looking again at the relevant paragraphs, a lot of interpretation has been put into it about the governments on equal footing and panel stakeholders with their respective roles. I would also like to recall, there is another paragraph which tends to get overlooked. In Tunis, heads of state of government actually agreed that existing arrangements work well and are effective, and that is paragraph 55. I think it is also a paragraph that should not be lost sight of.
OK, we have the view that there was no particular need to have a special dedicated working group, but that has now happened and we will have a dedicated working group under the chairmanship of the CSTD, to look into enhanced cooperation. We are committed to participate in that working group, and leading up to it, and also the GA resolution points to the fact that it should be a fact-finding working group, mapping existing gaps and looking at what is missing. There, I think, it will be important that organizations will be given the opportunity to report and to say what has happened since Tunis. Since Tunis, much has happened.
We will have another panel on enhanced cooperation this afternoon, at 2.30. We will continue the discussions there and there will also be recommendations feeding into the final report on the sessions.
Again, to report back to your question, I think, yes, the discussion has evolved. At the same time, we have to recognize that there is clearly a perceived need by governments to be more involved. I think the existing institutions have taken up the challenge. The question is: have they done enough, should they be doing more?
Presumably, nothing is ever perfect, but perfection is a difficult goal to attain. More can always be done, but I feel that a lot has been done, and let's discuss what more needs to be done.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Thank you, Markus.
In terms of proceeding, I would like in closing, to prepare the closing of this panel, to ask each of the panellists here and in Singapore to think about a few brief messages or sentences that can be gathered, and that I could, as a facilitator, wrap up as contributions and recommendations.
Before we do this, and allow still a little bit of time for conclusions and discussions and lessons from all those aspects, I would like to open the floor both here or in Singapore for questions, brief comments. At least here -- I don't see the room in Singapore -- but at least here I see many familiar faces.
If there are comments, additions or inputs -- not so much questions, because it is a contribution in itself -- please don't hesitate. We won't devote the whole full time, but I would be happy to entertain.
Paul, do you have any questions on your side?
Paul Wilson: We don't appear to. But I remind everyone here, if you are interested in making a question or a comment, there are microphones here.
From the panellists we have Kuo Wei Wu.
Kuo Wei Wu: I would like to say, as you know, I was appointed by ASO from the RIR and NRO, these kinds of communities, at the same time I come from the Asia Pacific region, so no matter in the ICANN enhancement I basically have two or three functions, as I personally promise to myself; first of all is to be a bridge between the RIR with ICANN; and second is the Asia Pacific truly global space. Of course, the third functionality is as ICANN Board and make sure I can continue to enhance and continue to improve to meet the global expectations.
I think this is the only way for all of us to continue to work on this one, to make sure in ICANN RIR, in all the Internet community, really commit the requirement from everyone. So I think that is one thing we still need to work on and continue to improve. Thanks.
Paul Wilson: Thank you, Kuo.
By way of final remarks which you requested, Bertrand, in the RIR world we have traditionally referred to ourselves as bottom-up organizations, and in my mind that is a reference to the comment you made about global versus local and the fact we have activities, either diverging or converging, between that global and local level.
The RIRs have always been open and we hope very responsive to the local conditions which happen. In five regions, with this sort of approach it might sound like a recipe for divergence, and it can be, but not in practice, because of the level of cooperation and cross-fertilization that happens between regions, and as time goes on.
We look with a huge amount of interest, here in the APNIC region, at what is happening both at RIPE NC and at AFRINIC in terms of the cooperation that is happening with governments. I think we are moving in the same direction ourselves, and that kind of divergence and convergence is happening across the system continually. It is leading to the sort of variety and vibrancy that I hope we have at least explored a little bit here, in the sorts of examples.
As I said earlier, I think what we see of enhanced cooperation can be illustrated through the many examples that exist across many dimensions and in many stakeholder groups within the RIRs.
With that, Bertrand, I hand it back to you. If there is any further time at the end of the session, we would be happy, again, at this end to participate.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Any questions or comments by remote participation?
Speaker: Yes, we have one. It is about if there is a need to also include parliamentarians and legislators into the enhanced cooperation process.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: So, including parliamentarians and legislators in the enhanced cooperation process. I think that dovetails with the question I was raising earlier, on the diversity of public authorities.
Any comment, Raul, Adam?
Raul Echeberia (LACNIC): Let me introduce myself: Raul Echeberia of LACNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for Latin America and part of the Caribbean.
As the only RIR that has not provided information in this session yet, I would like to say that our organization is very proactive in the relationship with governments in our region. In fact, I think that LACNIC was the first RIR to join informally to an intergovernmental organization in our region. We are very active and very proactive in the two main intergovernmental mechanisms in Latin America, the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission and the eLAC, the ministerial conference on the information society.
We have a very fluent relationship and we provide information and also we are always putting forward topics for discussion in those forums. We have, at least currently under LACNIC, the management that is composed of more than 100 governmental officers from all the countries from our region. I share the Chairperson's concerns, in the sense that we always try to look for more exchange and cooperation between these kinds of organizations, like LACNIC and governments of the region.
I am sure that, working together, we will figure out how to address the concerns that have been expressed. In fact, we have a very fluid relationship with the Brazilian Internet committee and the NIC Brazil. We have a very strong cooperation, especially in matters like IPv4 and IPv6, and in fact some of the services that LACNIC provides in our region are located in the NIC Brazil facilities.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Thank you, Raul.
I note a thread to keep in mind, which is the interaction with international or intergovernmental organizations in the different regions as well.
Adam.
Adam Peek (GLOCOM): Adam Peek, from a research institute in Tokyo called GLOCOM.
It is interesting to listen that the affirmation of commitments is very clear, a quite significant, positive development in enhanced cooperation. A question and observation is really: can we take this and cram the same sort of progress we have made with the other United States Government contracts that we have with the IANA function and route service? Can we look at the affirmation of commitments and try to enhance our cooperation in terms of the IANA contract as to how the route is managed, I suppose? Can we continue the progress, is my point.
I was not in Dubai for the WCIT, but observing that particular meeting, I think the tensions are still there. There are tensions over the IP addresses and there are tensions over the US Government's particular role.
I was thinking about the principles on the domain name system that the United States Government introduced in June 2005, which I think are still in operation and are somewhat now out of date in that they do not reflect the new situation of ICANN.
Could they be updated in some way to assign new principles; that perhaps the root server and IP addressing would not be used in any way to deny access to other countries? Could the United States Government, for example, say that it will defer to the ISTAR organizations in their policy development processes, so it would respect the processes of IP address allocation that come out of the Regional Internet Registries, and not try to impose any particular policies through the IANA contract; so following a new principle that the United States Government would support the bottom-up processes as they exist in the Internet Community.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Clearly, this issue of the role of the United States Government has two components: one is the relationship of the contract with ICANN, the other one is the IANA contract and the role in what can be called the root server modification zone file work flow. This is clearly something that is still pending and available. I think it, unfortunately, is beyond the next 10 minutes to solve, but this is duly noted.
Adiel wants to make a comment on this regard.
Adiel Akplogan: Just to make a comment on the IP address management within that contract with IANA, I think it is very important to highlight some important aspects of this, which is that under the new contract, that contract fully recognizes the policies of each region as being from each RIR. That means that that contract respects the fact that global policies that govern all IANA, such as allocating IP addresses to the RIR, is based solely on policies developed by each region in terms of global policy. I think that is already something which is there, and I fully agree we need to continue to work, so that all the responsibilities will go back to the bottom-up process.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Pablo.
Pablo Hinojosa: Two questions from remote participants: how active are the African governments in AFRINIC GAC? The second question is: are metrics able to measure progress on enhanced cooperation, can metrics be developed?
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Before going to the gentleman here, maybe a very brief comment, Paul. You heard Adam's question. If I remember correctly -- maybe Adiel can also chime in -- the NRO made a comment when the IANA contract renewal call for contributions was made by the NTIA regarding the evolution of the IANA contract. Would you want to restate or comment on the position that the NRO took at the time?
I am sad that Fadi Chehade is not here because, as he is with ICANN, he has recently addressed this issue as an important topic.
Paul, do you want to comment on this?
Paul Wilson: Bertrand, yes. The NRO, which is the organization that represents and speaks for the five RIRs when we all have something important to say, the NRO has made formal contributions into a whole series of US Government inquiries and calls for comments and contributions on ICANN and IANA matters. All of those contributions are available on the NRO website.
We have had a series of contributions regarding the relationship between ICANN and the US Government, and we have generally made similar remarks along the lines that we are observing the steadily increasing independence of ICANN from the US Government arrangements through a number of steps.
Most recently we reiterated a call for the IANA relationship to be visibly moving in the same direction, although I suppose we understand it is at a slower pace. We are expressing an expectation and a hope that it does follow a similar path.
I think that is probably the most relevant question and the most relevant part of those contributions to this discussion, so I will leave it there.
Bertrand, while I have the microphone, there is a link that is useful to make here between the enhanced cooperation and the IGF. At the last IGF meeting, on behalf of the technical community I was asked to make some closing remarks and one of the remarks was one which calls for enhanced cooperation to be tackled in a multistakeholder fashion, for instance, through the IGF.
The next IGF meeting is coming up in this year in Bali, in Indonesia, and I have a representative of the local organizers for the meeting in Indonesia, and he would like to make a couple of statements as well.
If I could just have a minute or two for that, Bertrand, we will hand back after that. Thank you.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: If you want to do it now, go ahead. I will try to wrap up, because I want each of the panellists to make a comment. Please go ahead.
Parlindungan Marius: Thanks, Paul. My name is Parlindungan Marius, as one of the committee of the host country for the 8th Global IGF in Bali, Indonesia. I am also with IDNIC, so this is part of APNIC doing in the IGF.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to say the milestones that we have done in regard to the 8th Global IGF meeting on behalf of the 8th Global IGF 2013, host country committee.
As we know, Internet has started getting into every corner of our lives, so it is not about business and technical commerce alone any more. It has come to the attention of government and our social life, thus we need the Internet governance model to reach the optimum or if possible the best way of it.
So in regard to this effort, the 8th Global IGF will be a truly new model for the multistakeholder approach of funding and management.
How and why is it? Indonesian Government and business and civil society groups under the ID-IGF, Indonesian IGF chapter, multistakeholders forum which were declared in November 2012 in Jakarta, which is initiated and funded by the IDNIC.
The ID-IGF plans to pioneer a new and truly multistakeholder model for hosting the Global Internet Governance Forum in 2013. We believe the success of this model will ensure the sustainability and opportunity for underdeveloping countries and all emerging countries as they are the most in need to get more from this event.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Sorry, I have a very unpleasant and delicate situation here, to have to request that you make your statement as short as possible, because we have about seven minutes to finish and I would like to allow the different panellists time to make some last comments. If you could please quickly wrap up, and apologies for saying that.
Parlindungan Marius: OK. Thank you. This decision of stakeholders is in support of IGF and commitment to the principle of openness and inclusivity. This multistakeholder model of hosting requires a new approach of covering the cost of the event also. As the Government of Indonesia does not allocate specific funds for the event, so we are arguing that all of us to globally participate in the funding.
Paul Wilson: Thank you very much.
Back to you, Bertrand.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Thank you very much. Apologies for having to cut you.
Just briefly, if the gentleman who has the floor has one comment, then we will go around.
Speaker: Thank you, Mr Moderator. My name is (unclear) from Saudi Arabia.
In terms of what are the policy issues, if we look at the ITU resolutions that have inspired the public policy issues, there are many of them, and if we have a look at the ITU Council resolution 1305, which has inspired a number of public policy issues, so I think the issues of enhanced cooperation and linking them together, to give us the way forward, how we can have enhanced cooperation with the working group.
Thank you, Mr Chairman.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: You are reminding us that there is a list of policy issues, which doesn't necessarily distinguish where the day-to-day management stops, but the list is clearly indicated.
Trying to stick with the timeframe, as Markus indicated, there is another workshop on enhanced cooperation outside of the naming and addressing stage.
Maybe we can go along the table. Adiel, why don't you start? We have a few minutes. Would you have one or two comments on the basis of what was said, that you would like to see in the messages that are transmitted?
Adiel Akplogan: I would just say the obvious: we need to continue to enhance enhanced cooperation. I believe that this is a key element for the Internet governance in general, the cooperation among all the stakeholders, and making sure that all stakeholders really participate in the process and creating the proper framework to allow that.
Markus Kummer: I fully agree with Adiel, and in addition I think it will be important to document the progress made.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: When you say "document", this is a message for the enhanced cooperation CSTD working group, if I understand the subtitle. Thank you.
Janis.
Janis Karklins: There are a couple of things. The Secretary General has issued several reports on enhanced cooperation since Tunis, which is in a sense the documentation of what has happened in different parts of the world, what has been done by different organizations or secular groups.
Point number 2: the public policy issues to which I referred, I am happy to learn that there is a list which was developed by the council, but I am afraid this is not the full list because the public policy aspects relating to free speech, I'm not sure that falls within the mandate. But we can talk about that issue.
Therefore, I was more referring to the global list of public policies which is developed by different governmental or intergovernmental organizations, and where we have an agreement among governments about those issues; but then there is a second step which is absolutely necessary, which is that all other stakeholders, if we are talking about multistakeholder engagement, that other stakeholders also accept that those are public policy issues and work together with governments and agree on those.
I will stop here. I forgot the last point I wanted to make.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: If it comes back you can come again.
Jefferson Feud Nacif: The first thing is to recognize that problems exist and we must improve organizations and increase engagement so that better structures can be found and that real and equal participation can be reached. This will lead to better policies and reach more exactly what we are looking for to reach a conclusion.
Tarek Kamel: My message is enhanced cooperation by outreach and inclusion. I think we have touched on the role of the GAC and the effectiveness of the role of the GAC. If we want to improve the role of the GAC, it is not only by procedural issues and ATRT and affirmation of commitments and revisions and things like that, but it is via an effective participation with governments from the developing world and from various parts, active and effective participation.
I know it is easily said, but it may not be easy to implement, because simply in order to involve the governments from the various developing countries, we need to convince them that with the new model of the multistakeholderism, that it is functioning, and that they are aware of other players in the private sector and civil society in equal footing within this multistakeholder model. They were used within ITU and other UN organizations, one country one vote model, with different mechanisms; now they have to be part of a different framework and a different dialogue.
I think it is our responsibility as a community to reach out, to continue to reach out to the ICANN, the RIRs, ISOC and the rest of the community, to promote the model, to invite them more and more and to involve them. This will solve many issues automatically, even the evolution of the relations between ICANN and the United States Government. By active participation and wider participation from the developing countries within the GAC, this will be partially a GAC and we will have more voices and a more active participation.
Our internationalization program and outreach program is focusing on that and I think that all can happen.
Finally, as Markus said, nothing is perfect, we need to work on the model and improve it and make it function.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Paul, do you want to give us one or two or three points?
Paul Wilson: Thank you, Bertrand.
I would like to say that for us in the RIR world, cooperation is a daily activity, it's a way of life for us, and enhancing that cooperation is something we have tried to do continually, and I think we have got new guidance and new requirements and add a new challenge here. I hope this session, as I mentioned earlier, is yet another good example of that. I think it has been reasonably successful.
Thank you to you, Bertrand, for your chairing as well, and let me just quickly hand the microphone leftward for quick final comments.
Dr Govind: I hope that the enhanced cooperation, setting up of a working group is the way forward to deal with all public policy issues on the global Internet governance. We expect the working group to look at these issues holistically and propose a system of global Internet governance which is truly democratic and transparent and, above all, gives a sense of participation and ownership to all.
Thank you.
Bertrand de La Chapelle: Thank you very much, Paul.
I would like to finish by taking the privilege of the facilitator to share some of the things that I picked up in the course of the discussion, and I will look at the transcript as well, because we are lucky enough to have advantage of the transcript in Singapore, that will be sent to us.
A few very quick points. One, it is clear for those of us that have participated in this discussion that the discussion has evolved, that there is an impetus now in particular to take into account now, as we discussed with Jefferson earlier, this cooperation, this enhancement of cooperation is working or is expected at the global, at the regional and at the national level; that it involves, when we talk about governance, a greater diversity of interlocutors and actors than just the one representative in international processes, that we had in the past, which is usually the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There are many other actors, and on daily questions.
Another point that is still present, and clearly, is the difficulty to make the distinction between what is purely public policy and what is purely day-to-day implementation. There is usually a continuum that people experience, also at the national level but also in international procedures, between the two.
Regarding ICANN, the understanding is that when we talk about the equal footing -- and it is not that we have a perfect solution -- there is this question of the equal footing of governments regarding the relationship between ICANN and the US Government, the interaction between governments within the GAC and also the role of the governments in comparison to other stakeholders.
One thing that I sense in the evolution and in the discourse is this notion that there is a sort of desire to fully balance the participation of the stakeholders in all the different structures, some where governments have to be strengthened, some where civil society or private sector has to be strengthened.
I think this is an interesting evolution because it understands enhanced cooperation as really cooperation among all the stakeholders, and not exclusively between the governments.
Regarding the interaction with the RIRs, one interesting message is the notion that on a daily basis this interaction with governments is going through almost ad hoc structures. It can be a working group for allowing interaction with government, it can be interfacing with intergovernmental organizations that exist, using them to reach out to governments, and it is also on the organization of events, training or capacity building and all sorts of different interactions.
Finally, beyond the fact that there is this challenge of making sure that developing countries or authorities fully participate in the international processes, there is a capacity to reach out to those actors through the regional entities, to the actors who are based locally, including the national governments themselves, to facilitate interaction with their local actors.
So, to pick on what Markus was saying earlier and what Tarek was highlighting, when we talk about enhanced cooperation there are basically three elements that can be taken into account. One is enhancing the cooperation between actors, including governments, within existing organizations; the second is enhancing the cooperation among the existing organizations, including intergovernmental organizations but also ISTAR community and so on; and the third element is, in some cases, as Jefferson mentioned, there are probably new procedures or new frameworks or increased interactions needed for some of the issues that do not have a particular home today.
One of the challenges will be, for instance, to see how the IGF can capitalize additional issue by issue cooperations.
That being said, we are almost stuck with the timing. I want to thank you all for having spent this time here.
The interaction with Singapore was, I hope, good on your side and you received our discussions correctly. It's an attempt at having a balanced exercise, instead of having just remote participation. I hope we will repeat this exercise.
You are encouraged to go to the enhanced cooperation session that Markus is organizing this afternoon at 2.30 in room whatever -- it is on your program.
There are also, for those who are interested, sessions related to principles in Internet governance, that clearly have a relation with this discussion, immediately after this session, organized by (unclear).
Thank you so much for having attended. Have a very good day.
Paul Wilson: Thank you very much.
I think we can take the webcast down, and I feel I can relax a bit, with a local audience, being able to speak without the time pressure.
Thanks to everyone. I hope this was a useful exercise. I think what is quite interesting is to sort of note the different level of discussion. I wouldn't be surprised if the terminology and the abstract nature of what's being discussed in this environment is really quite difficult and quite surprising for a lot of people who are interested or used to talking about DNSSEC and address policy and simple things like that.
This is the sort of world we are getting into, and I think it was really nice to be able to connect. Pablo has gone offline, but I would like to give credit to Pablo for conceptualizing and driving this and also to the APNIC staff, both here and there were a couple in Paris en route also to working at RIPE NCC, who helped put it together. Not a trivial exercise, but if it seems to have been useful then I think doing similar things again would be great.
About the IGF -- apologies as well for the short time available there. There will be an opportunity for you all to hear more about IGF possibly in the member meeting on Friday, we will make some time for a bit of an announcement and an introduction to what's happening. The IGF meeting in Bali is really an important thing on our calendar for this year as well, so I would like to think that everyone will take an interest in that.
Before we finish, I think Kuo Wei, you might have had a couple of remarks that you might like to share, since we don't have Bertrand keeping time as we did.
Kuo Wei Wu: I think people are ready for the social event, but first of all I would like you to know that actually in the Asia Pacific at this moment we have a couple of the ICANN Board members. I am one of them, from ASO, and from Taipei, Taiwan, and then another one is Judith, from the nomination committee, from the Philippines.
Of course, we have now two ICANN Boards, one is Chris Disspain, from Australia, and he is from the CCNet, and another one is Bruce Tonkin from the GNSO.
For those of the ICANN Board, particularly myself, since I was from the APNIC and also from Asia Pacific region, I really wanted to be the bridge for RIR and also for the Asia Pacific region. If you have anything about what is ICANN, how it can improve or work together, I think I can do my work, and let me know, and I welcome you.
Of course, I am working with APNIC and RIR for a long time, since I was APNIC EC for 12 years. I always welcome your input, and I am more than happy to carry it into the ICANN structures. Thanks.
Paul Wilson: Thank you. That's great to know. Axel, anything final?
Axel Pawlik: Basically, we need to work together in this cooperation thing, which is the meaning of the word cooperation.
We might be tempted here and there to think, oh, I have a business to run or what are they talking about, we have a policy process to go through. That is all right. But I think in this emerging world we are more and more co-dependent really, and this is never going to go away. I think the IGF is a great thing and I will certainly be going to Bali to see what you have in store for us.
This is of exceeding importance to keep in our minds whether we are from the business community or technical or from the public side, this is important that we do this together, to make it a success. Thank you.
Dr Govind: Thank you, Paul.whether at ICANN, IGF, IETF or APNIC, is the participation. Unless we have good participation from all communities from the developing world, the enhanced cooperation comes next. Unless we have good participation from all walks of life, be it civil society, private sector, technical community, governments, all has to first meet at one place, and then only the cooperation will start. What are the issues, what are the issues which need our addressing?
Even what we said from the 2000 to 2013, the Tunis process, we see more and more organizations are participating in the whole ecosystem of the Internet. Even if you see the law enforcement agencies, which came very late, in the beginning only the governments were there, but the law enforcement agencies, the data security issues, the security agencies, even in each sector of the economy, more and more participants of different stakeholders within the government, whether it is the regional government, the national government or the international government or organization, they are coming together to see that because the Internet is evolving. Nobody can control the Internet, it is a free system.
Unless you have the cooperation, consultation and consensus, it is the only way forward to deal with the Internet. Unless we all actors, whether small or big, come together to see that, whether it is RIRs, whether it is the domain system, whether it is the critical Internet resources or public policy issues, all actors have to come together and see how we solve the issue. It is not one person alone who can solve the Internet issue. Law enforcement agencies need the technical expertise of the Internet community, the governments need the help of law enforcement, they need the help of Facebook and Google and all actors who are there in the content provision.
Unless we address and cooperate with each other, the Internet will not move forward, and the 2.5 billion Internet today, when it reaches 5 billion, then this cooperation has to increase much more because the population is increasing exponentially and it is affecting every -- the social life, commercial life and governments, and all society is affected by the Internet spread, and we have to see how more and more participation, the active role and active way of consultation with each participant actors is taken to the enhanced cooperation and move forward in that. Thank you.
Paul Wilson: Thank you so much. Thank you all for your patience and forbearance. I think we have run out of time finally, well and truly.
I would like to call an end to the session. Thanks again. Sunny, some housekeeping about the social tonight.
Sunny Chendi: The bus leaves in 10 minutes. We will see you at the social event. Thank you.
APPLAUSE