Plan to Establish a Wisdom Task Force
draft-bollow-wisdomtaskforce-04
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draft-bollow-wisdomtaskforce-04
WisdomTaskForce.org N. Bollow
Internet-Draft March 22, 2013
Intended status: Informational
Expires: September 23, 2013
Plan to Establish a Wisdom Task Force
draft-bollow-wisdomtaskforce-04
Abstract
This memo calls for the creation of a new governance forum named
"Wisdom Task Force" (WisdomTF). The main purpose of the WisdomTF is
to facilitate consensus-seeking strategy-oriented discussions
regarding governance actions that may be decided by national
parliaments.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on September 23, 2013.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Avoidance of Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2. Start-up process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. Draft Scope Statement for WisdomTF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Draft Working Directives for WisdomTF . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1. Fundamental Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2. WG Working Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.3. "E-gathering" electronic communication infrastructure . . 9
4.3.1. Software freedom requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.3.2. Accessibility and compatibility requirements . . . . . 10
4.4. Request For Balance (RFB) Publication Procedures . . . . . 10
4.5. Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.6. WG Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.6.1. Initial Informal Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.6.2. Terms of Reference Endorsement . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.6.3. Secretariat Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.7. WG Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.7.1. WG Dissolution by Rough Consensus . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.7.2. WG Dissolution due to Disendorsement . . . . . . . . . 12
4.7.3. WG Dissolution due to Dysfunction . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.8. Sustaining Members and the Secretariat . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.8.1. Categories of Sustaining Membership . . . . . . . . . 13
4.8.1.1. Country Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.8.1.2. International Organization Members . . . . . . . . 14
4.8.1.3. Sustaining Industry Members . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.8.1.4. Sustaining Civil Society Members . . . . . . . . . 14
4.8.2. Committee of Sustaining Members . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.8.3. Secretariat Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.8.4. Changes to the WisdomTF Working Directives . . . . . . 16
4.8.5. Further Responsibilities of the Secretariat . . . . . 17
5. Draft Terms of Reference for Some Initial Working-Groups . . . 17
5.1. WG on limiting greenhouse gas emissions . . . . . . . . . 17
5.2. WG on the roles of the Internet in anti-poverty
strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.3. WG on standing documents on the deliberative process . . . 18
5.4. Internet Rights and Principles WG . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.5. WG on Government Activities to Further Sustainable
Digital Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.6. Directives WG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.1. Inappropriate Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.2. Denial of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.3. Human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
9. Endorsements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
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10. Request For Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
11. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
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1. Introduction
While local and national political challenges remain important,
global challenges of humanity are now increasingly recognized as
being at least equally important.
These include:
o The need to limit the emission of greenhouse gases in an effective
manner.
o Ensuring international fairness in regard to economic development,
especially concerning poor communities and empowerment to overcome
poverty.
o Shaping information societies according to human needs, see
[WSIS-CS].
The present proposal provides a practical mechanism that is designed
for effectively addressing such global challenges. The fundamental
idea is to enhance the existing decision-making processes of
democratic parliaments by means of developing relevant information
and strategy documents. The mechanism for developing these documents
is inspired by how solutions to global technical challenges related
to the Internet are developed in the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF, see http://ietf.org/), and by the practices and philosophy of
the Free Software and Open Source movements.
Analogous to the name "Internet Engineering Task Force", but
reflecting the different area of subject matter (policy topics as
opposed to topics of technical engineering related to the Internet),
the name "Wisdom Task Force", or "WisdomTF" for short, can be used by
the group of people developing these information and strategy
documents.
Naturally, for any policy question there are different ways in which
it can be framed. Such different framings correspond to different
perspectives on how the question should be addressed, and in many
cases people's views on what is a reasonable answer to a question
depend very much on this framing. Furthermore, there are always
difficult questions in regard to how the interests and unrealized
human rights of those who are disadvantaged by the status quo should
be balanced relative to the interests and economic and human rights
of those who benefit from the status quo. The Wisdom Task Force will
not attempt to be the decision-making forum for these questions.
Rather, the goal of the Wisdom Task Force is to work out policy
options and supporting documentation, in order to empower national
parliaments to make good, well-informed decisions on what is a
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reasonable balance between the various legitimate interests.
As practiced by the Internet Engineering Task Force, everyone is
welcome to join the Wisdom Task Force, without any formalities
whatsoever. It is a key goal to enable effective participation of
all stakeholders, including interested citizens who are not subject
matter experts. At the same time, it is also a key goal to structure
the deliberative processes so that at least a significant percentage
of subject matter consider participation a reasonably good use of
their time.
One significant difference to the practices of the Internet
Engineering Task Force is that in the Wisdom Task Force, all
substantive work is conducted electronically via the Internet. This
is important to ensure that all participants, including those who do
not have the financial means to travel to in-person meetings, are
able to participate fully effectively.
Furthermore, "machine translation" technologies are used to support
inter-language inter-comprehension, in order to facilitate the
effective participation of people who do not have strong skills in a
working-group's primary language, see section Section 4.3.
Like in the Internet Engineering Task Force and in the Free Software
and Open Source movements, the key success factor for work in the
Wisdom Task Force is to work by means of genuine deliberative
processes rather than by means of some kind of power politics.
Such deliberative processes can make use of techniques for strategy
development and reasoning in complex systemic contexts by means of
logic trees, as described e.g. in [Dettmer].
Even more important is that all working-groups which develop one or
more documents needs good chairpersons or coordinators who facilitate
the deliberative and consensus (and, where applicable) rough
consensus processes. In this context, "consensus" does not mean a
requirement for full and absolute agreement of every participant in
the working-group. Rather, the definition of consensus which is
applicable here is "absence of sustained opposition", where the only
kind of opposition that matters is opposition which is sustained by
means of valid and legitimate arguments. When necessary, the
criteria for accepting text can be further relaxed to "rough
consensus".
Similarly to how in the Free Software and Open Source movements, the
power of the maintainers of software is balanced by everyone having
the right to "fork" (which means to change the name of a copy of the
software and then to start publicly maintaining that "forked" version
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of the software), in the Wisdom Task Force it is allowed and
reasonably easy to "fork" a working-group and the documents which it
develops.
In this way, it is possible for different substantive viewpoints to
lead to competing policy recommendation documents, each of which will
be published in the same way by the Wisdom Task Force, provided that
a minimal threshold of interest among the so-called "sustaining
members" of the Wisdom Task Force is satisfied. This rule about the
minimal threshold of interest is designed to minimize the risk of
damaging the reputation of the body of documents of the Wisdom Task
Force as a whole, which would happen in the absence of a mechanism to
prevent the publication of documents of poor quality.
Also, working-groups may develop recommendation documents that
describe several possible policy choices and the respective
advantages and disadvantages.
In any case, it is ultimately the responsibility of parliaments to
make the hard decisions that choose between policy options.
What the Wisdom Task Force can provide is:
o An international perspective, based on a broad logic-based
deliberative process, to help ensure that those decisions will be
well-informed.
o International coordination to the extent possible while
maintaining the freedom of each national parliament to make
substantive policy choices.
The Wisdom Task Force is in many ways analogous, though
complementary, to how inter-governmental cooperation can also benefit
from enhancement through international multistakeholder dialogue, see
[ECTF].
While it may appear audacious to attempt a reform of international
cooperation by means of a private initiative, this is justified by
the urgent need for an effective process to develop solutions for the
important global challenges. International treaty-making processes
are not only too slow, but they are also not likely to succeed in
developing solutions that differ significantly from the status quo of
current practice.
1.1. Avoidance of Requirements Language
This memo requests and recommends actions, but it does not define
requirements. The use of the keywords of [RFC2119] describing
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requirement levels is therefore deliberately avoided.
The participants in the start-up process Section 2 should not
consider themselves bound by any of the text in this memo, but rather
they should feel free to reconsider and revise all of these
recommendations.
2. Start-up process
The Wisdom Task Force will be initiated by means of a relatively
informal process in which the draft rules as described below are
tried out and potentially modified before they are formally adopted.
One possible start-up strategy is to start with just two substantive
working groups on the topics "limiting greenhouse gas emissions" and
"the roles of the Internet in anti-poverty strategies", together with
supporting working-groups developing and maintaining the needed
standing documents as well as the directives.
3. Draft Scope Statement for WisdomTF
WisdomTF's scope of work shall be to empower national parliaments to
make good, well-informed decisions on information society issues, and
on global issues of any kind.
4. Draft Working Directives for WisdomTF
This section provides a draft set of rules that should be carefully
considered and revised during the start-up process, with the goal of
creating a good initial Working Directives document for WisdomTF.
During the start-up process, the draft working directives are not
formally in force, but when they are not not followed, the reasons
for acting differently should be carefully documented, and the
discrepancy between the draft working directives and actual practice
should be resolved as quickly as reasonably possible. In this way,
the start-up process provides an initial test of how the draft
directives work in practice, and any unreasonably burdensome rules
can be recognized and fixed quickly.
4.1. Fundamental Values
The fundamental values of the WisdomTF are the vision for shaping
information societies for human needs [WSIS-CS] and that the human
rights, as defined in the various international human rights
treaties, shall be upheld and implemented in every way possible.
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Evidence-based arguments on how these objectives can be best achieved
shall be given precedence over more speculative arguments. WisdomTF
has a number of Standing Documents providing guidance for the
deliberative process; these shall be treated as incorporated by
reference into these Directives.
WisdomTF Working-Groups shall seek to provide, by means of the
Request For Balance documents that they publish, the best possible
information input to the decision-making processes of national
parliaments. The Working-Groups shall seek to collect, by means of a
balanced multistakeholder process, information about needs, concerns,
cause-effect relationships, and available evidence, and to process
all this to the extent possible into recommendations. The Working-
Groups shall particularly pay attention to any relevant proceedings
at existing fora for global policy dialogue, such as the Internet
Governance Forum (IGF) for Internet governance topics. At the very
least, every Working-Group should be able to reach rough consensus on
recommendations of the form "Public policy regarding topic X should
take into consideration the following needs and concerns... ."
Ideally (but with greater difficulty of reaching rough consensus)
specific proposals for laws and others kinds of public policy
decisions should be developed in a form that explicitly suggests a
choice of options for possible choices of the balance between
conflicting legitimate interests, together with information on what
is known about the advantages and disadvantages (from the public
interest perspective) of the different options.
4.2. WG Working Procedures
WisdomTF Working-Groups are generally free to define their own
working procedures subject to the constraints that everyone without
restriction must be welcome to participate as long as they
participate constructively, and that disagreements must be addressed
by means of consensus-seeking deliberative processes.
Unless foreseen differently in the Terms of Reference of a Working
Group, or the Working-Group decides otherwise, the WisdomTF
Secretariat (see Section 4.8) shall use its discretion in setting up
electronic communication infrastructure for the Working-Group (see
section Section 4.3 below), and in reminding participants, when this
may be necessary, of the principles of professionally respectful
conduct, or of international human rights law, or of the section on
fundamental values in these directives (section Section 4.1), or of
the Terms of Reference of the particular Working-Group.
If and only if such reminders prove ineffective, the Secretariat
shall request the Committee (see Section 4.8.2) to decide an
appropriate sanction which may take the form of barring specific
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persons from participation in WisdomTF for a specific amount of time.
The Committee can decide to impose such sanctions only by consensus
or rough consensus but not by majority voting.
All substantive discussion and decision-making of the Working-Groups
shall be conducted exclusively via the Internet, in order to ensure
fairness of participation also of people who do not have funding for
international travel.
All WisdomTF Working-Groups shall seek to interact with the broader
professional community for the respective governance topics by active
participation in the relevant global policy fora, such as the
Internet Governance Forum (IGF) for Internet governance topics.
All WG documents and draft documents shall be licensed under a
Creative Commons license with a note that a link to
http://wisdomtaskforce.org/ suffices as attribution. Textual
components which are developed as a joint effort by WisdomTF
participants using the consensus-seeking processes of WisdomTF
working-groups are licensed under a simple Creative Commons
Attribution license, while WisdomTF documents may also include
textual components from external sources which are licensed under a
more restrictive Creative Commons license. (In that case, the
compound document as a whole will also be under the more restrictive
Creative Commons license.)
4.3. "E-gathering" electronic communication infrastructure
The Secretariat shall provide WisdomTF working-groups with electronic
communication infrastructure which provides functionality similar to
that of a an email mailing list, but with added functionality to make
use of "machine translation" technologies to support inter-language
inter-comprehension, in order to facilitate the effective
participation of people who do not have strong skills in a working-
group's primary language.
This kind of an enhanced variants of an email mailing lists is
referred to as an "e-gathering".
4.3.1. Software freedom requirements
With the possible exception of "machine translation" technologies
sourced from outside providers, the software for the "e-gathering"
electronic communication infrastructure shall be publicly available
for download free of charge under a license which makes it Free and
Open Source Software (FOSS).
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4.3.2. Accessibility and compatibility requirements
All electronic communication infrastructure used in WisdomTF shall
fulfill all of the following requirements:
o It shall be fully accessible using a variety of computer operating
systems.
o It shall be fully accessible using Free and Open Source Software
(FOSS).
o It shall be fully accessible using assistive technologies for
persons with disabilities.
4.4. Request For Balance (RFB) Publication Procedures
The Secretariat shall process requests for publication of draft
documents as Request For Balance documents as follows:
o Unless the Working-Group made the decision to publish the draft as
a Request For Balance documents in the presence of a
representative of the Secretariat, the Secretariat shall make
reasonable inquiries to ensure that this decision has indeed been
made by consensus or rough consensus and in accordance with the
Terms of Reference of the Working-Group.
o The Secretariat shall verify that the Working-Group which made the
request has Active status. (All Working-Groups have Active status
initially, this status can change to Inactive in case of
Sustaining Member disendorsements, see Section 4.7.2.)
4.5. Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement
The Working-Group which has made the decision to publish a Request
For Balance document may instruct the Secretariat to issue a
Consensus Call for Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement by WisdomTF.
In this case the Secretariat shall communicate to all WisdomTF
participants a request to review that Request For Balance document
and communicate any objections within 90 days.
If any objections are received, the Working-Group shall review the
objections and decide whether it wants to revise the Request For
Balance document.
If no objections are received, or if the Working-Group otherwise
decides not to revise the Request For Balance document, it may ask
for a determination whether there is Overall Rough Consensus of
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WisdomTF. Overall Rough Consensus means that there must be rough
consensus among each of the major stakeholder categories:
Governments, civil society and industry. The determination of
Overall Rough Consensus is made by the Committee of Sustaining
Members, see Section 4.8.2 below.
If it is determined that there is overall Overall Rough Consensus,
the Secretariat shall add information to this effect to the concerned
Request For Balance document. Furthermore, the Secretariat shall in
this case issue a press release.
4.6. WG Creation
This section outlines the process for the formation of new WisdomTF
Working-Groups. The objective of these rules is to make it as easy
as reasonably possible to create such Working-Groups as soon as there
is sufficient interest, while avoiding the creation of Working-Groups
that would violate WisdomTF's fundamental values (see Section 4.1) or
that would not attract a sufficient number and variety of
participants that output documents of high quality can be achieved.
4.6.1. Initial Informal Discussion
The WisdomTF Secretariat (see Section 4.8) shall make "e-gathering"
electronic communication infrastructure (see Section 4.3) available
for the purpose of informal discussion of ideas for new WisdomTF
Working-Groups.
The Secretariat shall use its discretion in reminding participants,
when this may be necessary, of the values of WisdomTF including the
principles of professionally respectful conduct and international
human rights law.
If such reminders prove insufficient for achieving a reasonably
pleasant working atmosphere, the Secretariat shall request the
Committee (see Section 4.8.2) to decide an appropriate sanction which
may take the form of barring specific persons from participation in
WisdomTF for a specific amount of time. The Committee can decide to
impose such sanctions only by consensus or rough consensus but not by
majority voting.
4.6.2. Terms of Reference Endorsement
After at least one month has elapsed since an idea has been initially
proposed for information discussion, a WisdomTF Working-Group can be
formed by three or more Sustaining Members endorsing Terms of
Reference for the new Working-Group. The Terms of Reference shall
specify objectives and guiding principles for the Working-Group.
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4.6.3. Secretariat Actions
The Secretariat shall verify that the Terms of Reference for the new
Working-Group do not violate WisdomTF's fundamental values (see
Section 4.1), and that the Terms of Reference uphold these values at
least as well as any other Working-Group addressing a very similar
topic area for which the required Endorsement has been received
earlier or up to two days later. For any Terms of Reference document
which fails this test, the corresponding Working-Group shall not be
created. The purpose of this rule is to ensure that if different
groups of Sustaining Members propose different frameworks to address
the same problem, so that one of them is clearly better from a human
rights perspective, then precedence is appropriately given to the
better framework.
When it has been decided that establishment of the Working-Group is
appropriate, the Secretariat shall set up the "e-gathering"
communication infrastructure (see Section 4.3) and add the new
Working-Group to the list of WisdomTF Working-Groups, with Active
status. Furthermore, the Secretariat shall inform about the new
Working-Group all registered participants including the sustaining
members, as well as the general public, and all known civil society
organizations with relevant expertise.
4.7. WG Termination
This section outlines the procedures for closing down a Working-
Group. These procedures are intended to be used not only when the
tasks of a Working-Group have been completed, but also if it becomes
clear that progress is only possible by creating a new Working-Group
on essentially the same topic but with Terms of Reference that
provide more specific guidance which makes it easier to reach rough
consensus.
4.7.1. WG Dissolution by Rough Consensus
A Working-Group has the power of making the decision to dissolve
itself.
4.7.2. WG Dissolution due to Disendorsement
Sustaining Members which have endorsed a Working-Group can at any
time withdraw their endorsement. If this causes the number of
Sustaining Members which endorse a particular Working-Group to drop
below three, the status of the Working-Group changes to Inactive; as
long as a Working-Group has Inactive status, it cannot decide to
publish Request For Balance documents. The status changes to Active
again if the number of endorsing Sustaining Members again increases
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to three or more.
A Working-Group which has Inactive status for a continuous period of
six months or more is dissolved.
4.7.3. WG Dissolution due to Dysfunction
As outlined in Section 4.8.5, the Secretariat will if necessary take
corrective action if a Working-Groups fails to function. In such a
situation, a Working-Group may be dissolved if no-one is willing to
serve as chairperson.
4.8. Sustaining Members and the Secretariat
A Secretariat for the WisdomTF shall be established with seat in
Zurich, Switzerland. A host country agreement shall be established
with the country of Switzerland which ensures that if the Secretariat
should not act fairly and diligently according to its various
responsibilities, injunctions to correct the behavior of the
Secretariat can be obtained from Swiss courts of law. Any natural or
legal person, internationally, without restriction, shall have
standing to sue for an injunction for correction of the behavior of
the Secretariat.
The WisdomTF Secretariat shall be funded, and decisions of budget and
staffing of the WisdomTF Secretariat shall be made by a Committee of
Sustaining Members, as described in Section 4.8.2 below. In
addition, Sustaining Members have a special role in regard to
Working-Group formation (see Section 4.6.2) and dissolution (see
Section 4.7.2).
4.8.1. Categories of Sustaining Membership
This section defines categories of Sustaining Membership and
corresponding eligibility criteria. All Sustaining Members have
equal rights in regard to the endorsement of Working-Groups (see
Section 4.6.2). The categories differ only in regard to the
responsibilities for funding the WisdomTF Secretariat, and in regard
to representation on the Committee of Sustaining Members.
4.8.1.1. Country Members
Any country which is recognized by the UN as a country may become a
Country Member of the WisdomTF.
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4.8.1.2. International Organization Members
Any membership organization of which at least three members are
recognized by the UN as countries may become an International
Organization Member of the WisdomTF. Alternatively, any organ or
other subentity of such an international organization may become an
International Organization Member of the WisdomTF.
4.8.1.3. Sustaining Industry Members
As long as WisdomTF is not funded by Country Members, it is possible
that funding may be provided by organizations which thereby become
Sustaining Industry Members. This process is described in detail in
Section 4.8.3.
There are no Sustaining Industry Members when this mechanism is not
used.
4.8.1.4. Sustaining Civil Society Members
Individuals and civil society organizations will upon request be
recognized as Sustaining Civil Society Members if they fulfill all of
the following three conditions:
o They provide proof of their identity.
o They provide a credible assurance of seeking to promote the public
interest.
o They have participated constructively in the WisdomTF since its
beginning or for the past two years.
The Secretariat checks whether these conditions are satisfied.
4.8.2. Committee of Sustaining Members
Decisions of budget and staffing of the WisdomTF Secretariat shall be
made by a Committee of Sustaining Members, as follows: From each of
the four categories of Sustaining Members, up to five representatives
may be delegated to the Committee, so that in total the committee
consists of up to twenty persons.
When in any category of Sustaining Members there are five or less
Sustaining Members in the category, they shall each be invited to
delegate a person to the Committee.
When in any category of Sustaining Members there are more than five
Sustaining Members, they shall attempt to agree among themselves on a
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way of selecting five representatives (for example by adopting a
system of rotation). If they cannot agree and more than five want to
be on the Committee, the Secretariat shall randomly choose, for a
two-year term, five from among those who want to be on the Committee.
The Committee shall attempt to make decisions by consensus or rough
consensus. If this fails, decisions regarding the Secretariat may be
taken at a meeting at which decision making by majority vote is
allowed, which may be convened no earlier than 16 hours after the
rough consensus process has failed.
The Committee shall review any proposed changes to the WisdomTF
Working Directives before publication as a Request For Balance
document. It shall communicate any concerns to the Working-Group
which is proposing changes to the Working Directives.
The Committee is also responsible for the determination of Overall
Rough Consensus, see Section 4.5. The decision of determination of
Overall Rough Consensus needs to be reached by rough consensus of the
Committee; if the Committee fails to reach rough consensus, the
Request For Balance document in question shall not be considered to
have attained Overall Rough Consensus. This applies also to the
Consensus Call in the context of changes to the WisdomTF Working
Directives (see Section 4.8.4 the difference being only that that
Consensus Call involves only the Sustaining Members.
4.8.3. Secretariat Funding
Organizations which are interested in being Sustaining Industry
Members shall make, for a specific number of years, a commitment that
they are willing to contribute to funding the costs of the
secretariat up to a specific amount.
If this commitment is actually called upon (see below), a maximal set
of Sustaining Industry Members is chosen so that the yearly
commitment limit of each Sustaining Industry Members is greater or
equal than the budget of WisdomTF divided by the number of Sustaining
Industry Members.
The Country Members as a group have the right to organize a way of
funding WisdomTF which is independent of the mechanism outlined above
that involves Sustaining Industry Members. In that case the
commitments of the organizations interested Sustaining Industry
Members are not called upon.
Unless the Country Members make use of this right, the Secretariat
and the Committee shall seek to ensure adequate funding by means of
one or more of the following sources of funds: Voluntary
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contributions, grants from foundations and/or other grant-giving
institutions, calling upon the Sustaining Industry Members to each
contribute an equal amount.
If there are no Sustaining Industry Members and the operations of the
Secretariat have also not been adequately funded otherwise, the
Secretariat shall have the authority to suspend some of its
operations, according to its sole discretion.
If the Committee intends to increase the budget of the Secretariat,
the Committee shall, before making the decision to do so, secure
commitments that sufficient funding will be made available.
Furthermore, the Committee shall regularly assess the risk of
available funding potentially dropping below the level of the current
budget, and appropriate contingency plans shall be made.
As long as there is neither funding from Country Members nor from
Sustaining Industry Members, the founder of WisdomTF may seek funding
from other sources, including from charitable foundations and/or by
means of funding from a company which he owns in whole or in part,
and which would thereby gain (for the duration of this sponsorship)
the exclusive right to advertise on the WisdomTF website this
sponsorship, together with the fact that it is the company of the
founder of WisdomTF.
4.8.4. Changes to the WisdomTF Working Directives
If a WisdomTF Working-Group proposes a new version of the Directives,
the Secretariat shall organize a Consensus Call among all Sustaining
Members. If and only if there is rough consensus among each category
of Sustaining Members for adoption of the revised Directives (as
determined by the Committee, see Section 4.8.2), the Secretariat
shall put them in force by publishing a Request For Balance document
that gives the details about how the new version was adopted, and
requests the new version of the Directives to be followed from now
on.
As ECTF Standing Documents are treated as incorporated by reference
into these Directives, see Section 4.1, the same requirement for a
Consensus Call among all Sustaining Members applies also any changes
to the set of Standing Documents.
Country Members or International Organization Members may propose to
make WisdomTF part of the UN or another existing or new treaty-based
international organization. Such a proposal needs to be approved in
the same way by rough consensus of all sustaining members of
WisdomTF, in addition to whatever other steps may be required to
create a new umbrella organization for WisdomTF.
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4.8.5. Further Responsibilities of the Secretariat
The Secretariat shall seek to ensure an official presence at the
Internet Governance Forum (IGF), for example by means of a booth.
The Secretariat shall provide guidance to WisdomTF Working-Groups on
how to self-organize on the basis of the principle of rough consensus
decision-making.
If it is brought to the attention of the Secretariat that a WisdomTF
Working-Group has, for an continuous period of three or more months,
failed to self-organize or otherwise failed to make any substantive
progress towards its objectives, the Secretariat shall take the
following steps: First the Secretariat shall verify that this is
indeed the case. If yes, the Secretariat shall solicit nominations
and self-nominations from among the Working-Group members of
potential chairpersons who could organize the work of the Working-
Group. If at least one person is nominated, the Secretariat shall
appoint a chairperson. If no-one is nominated, the Secretariat shall
dissolve the Working-Group.
Working-Groups may also by means of a rough consensus decision
request and empower the Secretariat to execute this process of
chairperson appointment. The Secretariat shall honor such requests.
5. Draft Terms of Reference for Some Initial Working-Groups
This section provides draft Terms of Reference statements for some
possible WisdomTF Working-Groups (WGs).
5.1. WG on limiting greenhouse gas emissions
This WG shall develop strategy and information documents that empower
national parliaments to make decisions which create appropriate
global incentives to avoid greenhouse gas emissions.
5.2. WG on the roles of the Internet in anti-poverty strategies
The WSIS Declaration of Principles, "Building the Information Society
- a Global Challenge in the New Millennium" [WSIS-2003], states that
"under favorable conditions", ICTs can "be a powerful instrument,
increasing productivity, generating economic growth, job creation and
employability and improving the quality of life of all." That is
especially important in the context of economic development of poor
communities, where the goal is empowerment to overcome poverty.
This WG shall develop strategy and information documents addressing
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the following questions:
o What roles can the Internet play in anti-poverty strategies?
o What are the relevant "favorable conditions" under which Internet-
based technologies, services and/or community tools provide
significant empowerment to overcome poverty?
5.3. WG on standing documents on the deliberative process
This WG shall maintain the standing documents which explain the
deliberative processes used in WisdomTF, including in particular
logic trees and consensus and rough consensus processes.
5.4. Internet Rights and Principles WG
This WG shall compare and discuss the various existing statements of
Internet rights and principles (see for example the list of links on
the website of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus [Links]),
and publish, as a Request For Balance document, a consolidated
version which provides reasonably detailed guidance on interpretation
of human rights in the Internet context and on guiding principles for
Internet governance to further human rights.
Rationale: The current situation with so many independently developed
statements of Internet rights and principles is not very helpful in
practice.
5.5. WG on Government Activities to Further Sustainable Digital Culture
This WG shall follow up on the Workshop on Standards for Sustainable
Digital Culture taking place at the 2012 IGF in Baku, see [Culture].
The WG shall publish, in the form of one or more Request For Balance
documents, appropriate recommendations regarding government
activities aimed at the furtherance of culture.
Rationale: As outlined in the Background Paper for that workshop, see
[Bollow], this is important in regard to the human rights of artists
and the general public.
5.6. Directives WG
This WG shall continually observe the progress of the work of
WisdomTF, in particular in view of the need for progress in regard to
practical realization of human rights, and discuss any suggestions
for changes to the Working Directives. Whenever the WG has rough
consensus that a change to the Working Directives may be desirable,
the WG shall publish a Request For Balance document with revised
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Working Directives and an appendix that explains the rationale for
the changes. This document shall not be phrased as definitely
containing the new Working Directives, but rather as a request to the
body of Sustaining Members of WisdomTF to adopt the proposed new
Working Directives. (Adoption of such a revised Working Directives
document is done by rough consensus among the Sustaining Members of
WisdomTF.)
Rationale: Every organization needs to observe its own performance,
and to take corrective action when necessary.
6. Security Considerations
Similarly to security considerations for technical systems (see
RFC 3552 [RFC3552]), governance fora and processes need to be
designed for robustness against attempts of "inappropriate usage" and
"denial of service". In addition, the integrity of WisdomTF work
with regard to human rights needs to be safeguarded.
6.1. Inappropriate Usage
Clearly WisdomTF needs rules governing the interaction between
participants. In the absence of appropriate rules, participation in
WisdomTF cannot be expected to be effective, time-efficient and a
pleasant experience.
These rules need to be designed so that bona fide well-intentioned
newcomers with reasonably good communication skills will be able to
quickly learn how to participate effectively, while on the other hand
there need to be effective disincentives that discourage and penalize
disruptive and non-constructive behavior.
6.2. Denial of Service
It is particularly important to avoid vulnerability of WisdomTF and
its working-groups to the political equivalent of what is called
"denial of service" attacks in the technical realm: It must not be
possible for beneficiaries of the status quo (who may fear a
potential loss of power) to disrupt discussions that could lead to
new forms of enhanced cooperation.
6.3. Human Rights
The rules of WisdomTF need to ensure that all recommendations
published by its working-groups are designed to uphold the
fundamental principles which are internationally recognized as human
rights, and to improve as much as possible the practical ability of
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people everywhere to enjoy their human rights.
7. IANA Considerations
This memo includes no request to IANA.
8. Acknowledgements
This memo has been inspired significantly by postings on the mailing
list of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus [IGC] from
various participants, including Bertrand de La Chapelle, Avri Doria,
William Drake, Anriette Esterhuysen, Andrea Glorioso, Michael
Gurstein, Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, Jeremy Malcolm, Lee W McKnight,
Parminder Jeet Singh, and Roland Perry. This acknowledgment of
inspiration is not intended to imply that any of the named persons
endorse the contents of this memo.
9. Endorsements
Endorsements will be solicited at a later stage.
10. Request For Comments
Comments and other feedback of any kind regarding this Internet-Draft
are requested in the form of postings to the mailing list of the
Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus [IGC] (preferred) or in the
form of personal communications to the author.
11. Informative References
[Bollow] Bollow, N., "Standards for Sustainable Digital Culture
(Background Paper)", 2012,
<http://bollow.ch/papers/SustainableDigitalCulture.pdf>.
[Culture] Bollow, N., "IGF Workshop: Standards for Sustainable
Digital Culture", 2012,
<http://wsms1.intgovforum.org/node/21>.
[Dettmer] Dettmer, H W., "The Logical Thinking Process", ISBN 978-0-
87389-723-5, 2008.
[ECTF] Bollow, N., "Request For Action to Establish an Enhanced
Cooperation Task Force", Work in progress , 2013,
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<http://enhanced-cooperation.org/RFA/1>.
[IGC] Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus, "Mailing list",
<http://igcaucus.org/membership>.
[Links] Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus, "Links",
<http://igcaucus.org/links>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC3552] Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC
Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552,
July 2003.
[WSIS-2003]
UN World Summit on the Information Society, "Declaration
of Principles. Building the Information Society: a global
challenge in the new Millennium.", 2003,
<http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html>.
[WSIS-CS] Civil Society, "Declaration to the World Summit on the
Information Society", 2003, <http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/
geneva/civil-society-declaration.pdf>.
Author's Address
Norbert Bollow
Weidlistrasse 18
CH-8624 Gruet,
Switzerland
Phone: +41 44 972 20 59
Email: nb@bollow.ch
URI: http://bollow.ch/
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