Mapping Internet Governance

The workshop on mapping Internet governance has emerged from preparatory discussions for the 2011 IGF in Nairobi, where it became clear that there is a significant need for a “Map of Internet Governance” that empowers representatives of stakeholder groups to effectively navigate the complex landscape of Internet governance issues, fora and institutions.

So a Dynamic Working Coalition for Internet Governance Mapping has been formed with a website and mailing list at http://idgovmap.org/, and a workshop was organized at the IGF to begin a public multistakeholder process of discussing various perspectives and needs in relation to such a Map. The sponsoring organizations for this workshop were the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus and Consumers International.

A variety of perspectives on effective participation in Internet governance, and on how a Map of Internet Governance can help with this, was presented by the various panelists. Here are some key points of the discussion that has emerged from this approach of starting from the perspectives of potential users of the Map:

Successfully mapping the realm of Internet governance will not only describe the realities of Internet governance as they exist, but it will also contribute to shaping the perception of these realities and thereby to shaping these realities themselves. In particular, a Map unavoidably contributes to the process of legitimization: Perspectives that are described in the Map will be perceived as legitimate by the users of the Map.

It is important to map not only those topic areas and institutions that have traditionally been identified or tagged as “Internet governance”, but to look also at the flows into the system, and provide some kind of picture (that may well be “painted with a broad brush”) that shows who is truly involved in the various areas of Internet related decision-making.

From the perspective of Consumers International, mapping Internet governance is important for providing consumer representatives with a better understanding of what issues are being dealt with by what institutions, and what opportunities exist for them to effectively participate in those institutions without duplicating the work of other CSOs.

The Map of Internet governance should not center around the Internet, but around the topics that the users of the Map are directly interested in.

This relates to the question of what the appropriate measurements are for measuring the sucecss of Internet governance activities. For example in the context of TLDs for cities, it is not so relevant to ask how many domain names are sold, but what matters is rather how the city TLD is contributing to improvement in children's education, to the efficient provision of health care to residents, to increasing the number of local communication channels, to reducing the digital divide, etc.

There are many stakeholder groups with widely different perspectives regarding the Internet. The Map should aim to be inclusive of this broad variety of stakeholder perspectives.

In this way, the workshop has initiated a bottom-up process aiming at developing a shared understanding of what the Map should be like.

In addition, David Souter reported on Internet governance mapping work that he has done for the Association for Progressive Communications. He showed how various kinds of graphical representations including in particular mindmaps can be used to facilitate an intuitive understanding of some aspects of the structure of the Internet  governance ecosystem. His mapping work has also revealed that some categories of stakeholder groups, such as for example religious communities, are so far not actively participating in the process of Internet governance policy deliberation.

Furthermore, Jeremy Malcolm of Consumers International outlined some preliminary findings of an ongoing survey of public interest representation in the information society, including the fact that there are over 100 distinct policy issues on which respondents worked to raise awareness, mainly at the national level, and that amongst the institutions in which respondents would like have a greater chance to participate were WIPO, the UNDP and UNESCO.

The discussions at this workshop have confirmed the importance of going forward with the project of creating and then maintaining a Map of Internet Governance that must be designed to be useful for a broad variety of stakeholder groups in developing an effective strategy for their participation in Internet governance policy processes. Participation in the process of creating and maintaining this Map must be solicited from all kinds of stakeholders including governments,  civil society and businesses.