Dynamic Coalitions
Dynamic Coalitions
Dynamic Coalition on Innovative Approaches to Connecting the Unconnected
Introduction
As the theme of the 2015 Internet Governance Forum recognizes, one of the central problems confronting the world is increasing the number of people connected to the Internet. According to estimates, only 3.1 billion of the 7.3 billion world inhabitants were connected to the Internet as of July 2015. The adoption problem is particularly acute in Africa and Asia, where adoption rates continue to lag behind the global average. Of equal concern are the facts that in recent years, the growth rate of Internet users has started to flatten and that women and other segments of the population are often excluded from Internet connectivity.
The IGF has already begun to identify new strategies for connecting the next billion as part of its intercessional work. The IGF would benefit from a Dynamic Coalition that would consolidate, extend, and share this work by collecting and disseminating information about practices that have proven effective in improving broadband adoption. It is a task to which a multistakeholder forum like the IGF, which brings together representatives from such a broad range of communties and countries, is uniquely well suited.
Dynamic Coalition on Blockchain Technologies
Introduction
The rapid emergence of blockchain technologies, often compared to the rise of the early Internet, presents revolutionary opportunities and challenges to the future of modern society as we face the 21st century world of ubiquitous connectivity, decentralized networks and interconnected devices. At its core, the emergence of blockchain technologies represents the possibility of decentralized immutable records, where tokenization and zeroknowledge proofs offer the transformative potential for P2Pbased economic and social coordination, granular control of identity, reputation and data, disintermediation of third party intermediaries and central authorities, and new opportunities for enhanced governance and participatory networks. Yet, in the first few years of these nascent technologies, the public and political discourse surrounding these technologies have been colored by private economic interests and journalistic sensationalism. The fundamental lack of understanding of these technologies has impaired exploration, innovation and deployment at unacceptable cost to society.
The blockchain discussion is gaining great political momentum as it lies at the very nexus of the core issues we face in the 21st century: Internet policy (identity, trust, reputation, privacy and security), the Internet of Things (and corresponding implications for responsive architecture, smart cities, selforganizing and autonomous entities), government and corporate accountability, challenges to traditional oversight mechanisms and the adaptation of legal paradigms to distributed architecture, emergent monetary/economic policy and challenges to loss of sovereignty of central banks, financial inclusion and fair access for the developing world, new metrics of value for information economies that transcend GDP measures of market growth, deployment of P2P commonsbased production, and local coordination and scalable development of new social and incentive structures. Indeed, many legislators around the globe are currently scrutinising the opportunity to elaborate and adopt legislation on blockchain technologies such as Bitcoin, Ripple, Stellar and Ethereum. In view of the confusion and sheer complexity surrounding the various ways to approach these multifaceted, multidisciplinary technologies, it is vitally important to address blockchain policy issues through a multistakeholder approach.
Dynamic Coalition on Accountability
Introduction
Many of the Internet governance venues that deal with critical policy making issues on Internet governance should be subjected to a set of concrete criteria to be accountable to the broader Internet governance community. Not only should the private corporations that deal with Internet governance policy development be accountable, international organizations that also claim to have a non-binding and neutral process should uphold certain values and accountability standards.
With increased visibility and international focus on Internet Governance these discussions are taking place in an increasingly diverse selection of venues. We believe that the discussion on the accountability of these venues is a critical one and that the time is right for a forum to be established to bring together the stakeholders involved.