The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Just to let you know we are going to start a few minutes late. 10 minutes late. Don't go anywhere is the key message.
We'll start in a moment, folks. But we don't have a huge number of people. So if you'd like to join us at the table, please feel free. If nothing else, it will make us feel less lonely.
Thank you, everyone for joining us. We might kick off here with our workshop. So the title of this workshop that we put together, working with GSMA as well, is Bottom‑Up Meets Top‑Down: When Governance Systems Intersect. If we used the word, collide, we might have had a fuller room.
The idea is basically that in a world where the Internet is coming into contact with a lot more industries where we are seeing the Internet of Things and the Internet intersecting with banking or energy or trade or all sorts of other traditional governance structures, which are much more top‑down, and we in the Internet community are pushing a more bottom‑up strategy.
So we wanted to have a little bit of talk about where the fault lines are between those two and what it means for the people whether it is operators or users or organizations like GSMA, who have to negotiate both those sides of the coin, who are working with the Internet and supportive of the bottom‑up kind of process, but are also having to deal with the fact that at the same time, influencing a lot of these decisions are these traditional top‑down kinds of structures.
So I think there is some sort of overarching questions that we want to look at in this process. I think at the very beginning obviously is some sort of definition of what is bottom‑up and what is top‑down? And I think that is something that certainly is not clear.
When you throw in the other word, multistakeholder it becomes less clear. But I think coming from the RARs, I work with the RCC. We have our own idea of what bottom‑up means in terms of policy development. It is open. It is transparent. It's inclusive and conscious.
So if you take a opposite view of that, I guess what that would mean top‑down is closed and restrictive, opaque, taking place behind closed doors, and restricted to certain players, not really designed to facilitate universal participation, and maybe using other systems like voting, which aren't based on consensus.
So I'm sure there have been a lot of people who would disagree with that characterization and I don't put it out there as the definitive one only noting that being at the IGF and with some people coming from the Technical Community, we might have our own biases about what those terms mean.
So one of the other questions I think is really important to look at is what is Top‑Down Governance? And are there areas or times when that kind of Top‑Down Governance is appropriate? It's important to have one stakeholder making the decision, taking responsibility. Perhaps without the broad consultation that we push for in multistakeholder world.
So, our Panel has shrunk somewhat to what we initially planned. I think we have been hit by the fact that we are in the graveyard shift here. I'll do a quick introduction. We have Thomas Lamanauskas from GSMA. Thomas is from the ITU, Megan Richards is from the European Commission, from the IETF and Deborah Brown is from APC.
I'm sure each will provide some introduction to themselves when they speak. We are obviously at the tail end of four very long days, very interesting days and that is I think, reflected in sort of the maybe the low turnout as people go to the beach. But I think it is also a bit of an opportunity for us in that we now had four days worth of really interesting discussions and workshops, which are looking at a lot of these issues in more specific detail. So I certainly welcome any of the speakers and obviously anyone in the room to call back to some of the work that has been going on this week. If you heard anything or can speak to anything that has been discussed that reflects on this topic, that would be great.
Certainly encourage everyone in the room to speak, be part of the conversation and as I said earlier, if you like to join us at the table here, we are friendly people. More than happy not to have everyone at the back of the room.
With that introduction, thank you for being here. I'm going to throw to the first speaker who is Dominique Lazanski.
>> DOMINIQUE LAZANSKI: Thank you, Chris and it's been a really good week. One of the things before I start discussing governance and sort of governance from a GSMA perspective, one of the things that is important to highlight and one of the things I have been listening to or hearing this week, is a lot of discussions and a lot of calls if are more discussions and more collaboration on access and connectivity, which I think in the context of this particular session needs to be done in a way that is inclusive and multistakeholder and definitely has to involve the Private Sector as well as especially, I would say, the mobile industry. That is something to put out there that might be something we can talk about and maybe ways going forward or how next year or over the next year we can think about that.
I was given the question of governance and different governance models for the mobile industry, which I'll talk about briefly. There is two different types of governance within the industry. There is the Internal‑facing Governance, Corporate Governance, as well as Governance Membership organizations like the GSMA, which are very different than what I'm going to primarily spend my time on which is the External‑facing Governance.
So there is different areas of that I'd like to cover. Obviously within the context of Internet Governance, the GSMA and its members believe in multistakeholder approaches to Internet Governance and to different policy making areas. And that is our position with certain stakeholder groups obviously and acknowledging that certain stakeholder groups have different roles and responsibilities, which are reflected in who is just sitting here around the table.
But as you probably know, we have seen a lot of different stakeholder groups here and the Private Sector this week is well represented but still seems to be one of the smaller stakeholder groups. So there is really a challenge, especially in the mobile industry to balance the, what needs to be done from a Private Sector perspective in running networks and doing all of that kind of thing versus participating in these kinds of forums. It's a challenge. A definite challenge.
But is there also approaches and other work we do because we have to be external‑facing. One is another stakeholder we work with is governments. It's really challenging but really important that we work closely with all governments in terms of needing to get spectrum and working on regulatory policies, because every market is extremely different.
So when you think of the multistakeholder model in the context of government, mobile industry and governments work very closely together on those particular issues or come to loggerheads over them as well. And our Capacity Building Program, we spend a lot of time just training young policymakers and regulators to start a dialogue early on a number of different issues, policy issues, and technical issues. And just to put in a brief plug, we will be offering a course on Internet Governance as well with the mobile industry perspective, which is hugely exciting and it will start next year.
But we also spend a lot of time working with other institutions like the OECD, ITU, 3GPP. The list goes on, in different areas and different forms from capacity building to standards building to discussions on policies and best practices.
And that's another aspect of governance and multistakeholder governance we are engaging on those particular levels. And standards will be extremely important, always important, but extremely important going forward as industry lends standards for Internet of Things and various other aspects that we want to have come out of those standards organizations as well.
I think the last group of stakeholders is probably the most obvious one, Civil Society but it is really consumers and users. So the point about all of this is that is what we are here to do, to provide access, and various other things to all of us to consumers. And so, just thinking about that in the more general context, we really as a mobile industry engage across all stakeholder groups and when I was starting to think about it, it became evident and clear we don't talk about as much as we probably should but it's an amazing thing that we carry on with what we are doing in this context and I'm glad that we are starting to have a lot more discussions, especially again as I think on the access is going to increasingly become important.
And I also think that just finally, in the context of the WSIS+10 it's been great to work with so many different stakeholders and newer stakeholders, new to the Internet Governance policymaking area both from a government perspective and also from institutions and other perspectives as well. And I think it will be great to see where those relationships go in terms of trying to meet the sustainable development goals and obviously meet the accessory acquirements for connecting the next several billion. I'm going to stop there.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Okay. Thank you. I probably have a couple of questions but I think I'll probably better to move on, unless others from the floor have questions for Dominique? No? Okay. So we'll move on next to Thomas who can speak from I guess, as one of the other key stakeholder groups that Dominique spoke about GSMA is engaging?
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKAS: And also speak as a forum and platform for discussions as well as about some of those topics. And here I think it might sound a bit of a controversial especially challenging the topic of the meeting, but I think it is a bit of illusion this is different from bottom‑up and top‑down and also illusion that is over arching in terms of government framework where we have a one framework, one set of rules and principles and then we can use this to resolve all the issues. Especially these days when online governance is increasingly in distinguishable from off line governance.
So let's say if we want to talk about intellectual property, is it about intellectual property online or so different from online? Or want to talk about child protection or e‑Health or education? Do we always say this is different one framework off line or online? So I think and I like a paper that was published in the ACG, where he said, maybe we should start looking at different platforms and different topics and different stakeholder groups to start addressing issues. Because it is also not this illusion but also by trying to maintain that illusion we make a lot of progress because then we always keep looking for the best governance framework for everything while we spend our time resolving issues.
And that maybe the time to have that discussion as well. But also now from the other angle from the traditional framework if you will, change is inevitable and everyone recognized. We have an item ‑
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Very good lesson for us of how what are the new challenges in the world about the topics and about the process, how different stakeholders engage. But not only about IPRs and whatever topic. Look at the recent processes governments try to negotiate anything related to the Internet related topics.
Even if you say in this closed-room door deals but still have all these stakeholders from outside engaging to say stop that. You shouldn't stop that. They have a valuable opinions but they also have to kind of somehow filter that noise and again this IGF has like many some people followed gender balance online work and it is so how progressive good work have a lot of noise that makes that work very difficult. So how do you filter that constructiveness out of the noise? And that is not only for bottom‑up and top‑down. It is for everyone. Whatever process we have. So that is why I think it is a conflict between multilateral and multistakeholder and the Brazilian's government was strongly maintaining including the President and I think we agree with that. How the different systems interact for different purposes.
And also how do we have checks and balances for different systems and different purposes?
How sometimes a mental process can provide checks and balances to multistakeholder process, and vice versa. Because we learn and I'm calling myself a recovering lawyer. So those who study law, there is nothing above. Two governments come and agree. There they still have to agree on that call. There is nothing to check on them. But having the system with checks and balances and the same with multistakeholder. So trying to gain is see how the systems interact and how to make that interaction into the better process.
There is also technological changes just so easy to participate. So much Democratic, so much easier to get opinions. So how do you harness that? And also substance. Some of the rules and for example you deal with the spectrum. It's very strong and challenging but even in that area we have a new technologies coming up like white spaces that say maybe some things can be done differently like further looking we talk about quantum engineering. We say maybe spectrum will become unlimited in 50 years time.
So naturally we have to adapt to those technological changes. At the same time we talk about multistakeholders, it is also changing or needs to be changing. Look at the NETmundial statement about inclusion, meaningful participation. On do we have the right people at the table? Can they participate meaningful? Not just saying the door is open come in. But then you show up if you want to be in the room. So have to ‑‑ can everyone afford that? How we achieve that? What is accountability of representation? What is representativeness? Do we have as Dominique mentioning some stakeholder groups but we talk about this a lot. Do we have people representing all these big discussions, how do we ‑‑ from both ends and also because this is changing. So multistakeholder model 20 years ago was multistakeholder model among people who knew each other, face‑to‑face in many cases now it's about 7 billion people. Is it the same? So needs change.
Just making case we need changes. Where we are and what we want to go and how we change. So first of all, we are very unique organization based ‑‑ few times we regret that showing up. Whenever we do we always know this is good decision‑making. So we have the no only member states, we have sector members and some of them are around this table.
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And also academia members and so on. Our study groups where we develop standards are basically led by Private Sector and Private Sector is leading. National deligations. Yes but when you look at the composition you will see various stakeholders there. Plus and minuses how they come with own voice, government voice but they come at least.
So we change in 150 years. So this year as well. So we adapt change. So this time recent changes opening the doors to more membership, academia membership with cheaper participation and potentially discussions and non‑for‑profits memberships and innovation to entrepreneurship. We have to build a partnership having the right people around the table. Increase documents webcasting, remote participation, electronic working methods. So including people. Opening the groups.
We have the ability to have some people know about it very well here. Groups are open. We have specific areas like standard development of how focus group is a new topic. So for example, we have now focus group with finance inclusion where we say everyone come and contribute and we will see what needs to be done. So our council Working Group is fully open to everyone as in the area we felt we should start testing but it is very positive test shows how different stakeholders work together. Open consultations. And last but not least, multistakeholder events.
For example our WSIS forum where proudly helps to convene where all the stakeholders come to have a discussion and at last year's high level event able to produce very tangible outcomes as well. So I think if one message out of this conversation is, I think it's not about two binary models and a choice about them. It's how to we need to adapt to changing and complex environment? It's not how do we need to adapt today and the work is done. No. How we need to continue adapting to meet the needs of Internet Governance and the challenges we are facing. Thank you.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Thank you Thomas. A lot to digest there I think. Certainly if anyone has questions. I think some of the things that ‑‑ as representative of an organization who has been now working with ITU for the last nearly decade, which is obviously not a very long time in ITU terms but we certainly we have seen efforts by the organization to evolve and that has been a very interesting process to watch, I think, to see where there have been accommodations made. Obviously while still being Intergovernmental Organization.
I think it sort of ‑‑ I think this is interesting also what you accepted about the multistakeholder model and starting out really as multistakeholder being a bunch of people who knew each other and how that had to evolve and scale up. And I think that has been a challenge for the multistakeholder model as well and bottom‑up perhaps is a more old‑fashioned term perhaps that refers back to those sorts of days. And is it scaling up to what we now see as the global Internet? So I think that was very interesting.
I think the other question, and this comes back to Dominique's points earlier is the capacity building and GSMA doing capacity building for governments, public sector about Internet Governance and about governance generally. Is there a sort of ‑‑ is our ideal here is what we are looking to make government structures more bottom‑up and getting away from the binary ‑‑ as Thomas said. Are we trying to infect those more traditional structures with our bottom‑up multistakeholder class? Any response?
>> DOMINIQUE LAZANSKI: I just think it's not sort of changing governments but like just the evolution of how things work. Because we see multistakeholder models in various forms and other industries as well. So I think it sort of everyone is kind of moving in different ways and sort of changing and shaping as the world does in the communications do.
One other question I just wanted to throw out there, since it was interesting. One thing that Thomas said which was interesting s who represents whom? Who is the representation for SMEs or Civil Society? That is a question that is not ever going to be answered but I think it is something we need to think about in the context of today.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: I might sort of change sides of the table as well here. I think obviously as discussed plenty of times this week, one of the key examples that we see in terms of multistakeholder model in action and maybe bottom‑up process in action at the global scale recently is the stewardship transition.
And so Yuri is here as his role as part of the ICG. I guess what perspectives do you have or do you see sort of have been at play there in the IANA process where there have been bottom‑up processes but now we are at a point where it is butting up against the more top‑down U.S. Government processes?
>> YURI: That's a good question. So, obviously the whole process is about changing top‑down thing into more bottom‑up process. And we just have to get through that stage and at least in some sense, fair that that is happening. Or that there is some aspects of top‑down in that as well. But I think it is still about the community opinions. So whatever the global Internet Community decides. That is what we can do. And I don't think any government including the current oversight government has really any practical say in that if we all are of some opinion. So, I think the real question is, how do you actually get to that consensus and it looks like we are on the way to do that. So I'm very happy about that.
During the preparation process, someone asked if some aspects of this just beyond the U.S. government part is somewhat top‑down. I wanted to go through a little bit of my thinking because this kind of shows up some of the different ways of approaching organizations.
So when I look at different organizations, I categorize them in three general buckets. The first bucket is the ones that have little or no structure that operate in kind of creative chaos mode, where individuals who know what to do moving things forward. Open source organizations are like that. And I kind of find like this discussion a little bit funny because we are discussing like top‑down organizations versus consensus‑driven community organizations where organizations that are in creative chaos mode are actually doing the code out there we discussed.
And I think that is actually where we are moving. Not so much a discussion of top‑down government versus something else. That is the reality out there of the code. That's what is important. And we do have community event organizations and IGF one example of those and there is structure there but it's the formation of communities opinion and sort of record that. So I don't get to make decisions as IGF Chair about what the IGF thinks. The community thinks what they think and I try to make sure I understand what it thinks and we have enough discussion and declare that this seems to be what the community thinks.
But we of course have some elements of this creative chaos as well. Or at least chaos. And then the third class of organizations that are led from the top. CEO makes decisions and they get implemented by underlying layers. This is the true top‑down model.
Some governments obviously are like this. Not all. And as well some traditional companies are like this. I think most modern companies have realize they also need elements of the creative chaos and community to get the best performance that that is how they are current business just works best.
And then a distinction between organizations that are open to everybody in various ways, of course ability to participate as noted but if the other extreme is that you are closed organization where not everybody can participate, this limitations and participation or some people don't get the same kind of a voice that others do, that is a very different setting, again. So if we look at some processes for instance, the transition design thing, this is obviously not a process where we are doing this closed room thing.
This is truly a process that is open to everybody. And varying levels of success, how many people we can draw in. It's primarily a time sync issue. For all of us whether you're from a developing nation or developed nation or whether you work for the industry or work for academia. Can you devote time? And lots of us have been devoting time out of our own goodwill.
And then we have structure in this process. We have coordination group. We have the ICANN was the initial facilitator but they created the ICG and then the ICG and then they developed communities asked by ICG to do the work. So the question is, is there some top‑down element in there as well? And my argument is that there is not.
This is really truly bottom‑up work. It's about facilitating the discussion. The ICG is not making any decisions about how you should design your part in a particular community. It asks people to do their design work, puts the parts together and makes sure that everyone fits together and everything is looking realm and sometimes asks can you coordinate a little bit more these parts don't seem to be fitting each other. It's not about top‑down driving up the process.
So, a multistakeholder process is using a community‑driven organization where the structure provides facilitation, not top‑down leadership and at least from an IGF perspective, I think we are really feel like we are for our own part in charge.
And we in some sense we build many of these mechanisms before. We are more or less transitioned and like the U.S. Government top‑down part that is still there. It is more of a ceremonial thing that they have to recognize that the reality is no different and not that we have to do anything in particular. So, I think the communities are in charge now not the governments and I think that is a great place for the world to be at and will be continuing that. Thank you.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Good optimistic note there. So, I think probably makes sense then to throw quite smoothly over to Deborah partly because I think the IANA stewardship is an example where obviously it involves both bottom‑up and top‑down but it has been very explicitly from the moment of the announcement, an effort to be a bottom‑up process. That that is what was asked for by the U.S. Government that it be bottom‑up and inclusive. I think there are obviously other areas and this sort of gets into the issues we talked about of the Internet moving into other areas and perhaps unexpected places where there hasn't been explicit call to make it all bottom‑up but there are the traditional governance structures where perhaps there is more an effort to bring the Internet and its bottom‑up processes into contact there.
So Deborah, I believe will speak about some of the U.N. processes and how Internet Governance is intersecting with that.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Thank you very much for inviting me. I work with the Association for Progressive Communications which is a Civil Society organization and also a network of members both individual and organizational. We engage in many different areas in governance and work on Human Rights as well and we probably define Internet Governance as broader than the typical Internet Governance institutions like the ITU, IGF and others. We also work at the Human Rights Council and to a certain extent the U.N. General Assembly increasingly taking on Internet Governance issues but not necessarily always in a multistakeholder way.
I'd agree with Thomas that the distinction between bottom‑up and top‑down isn't binary and in addition to being a spectrum, there is also a spectrum within processes. And for example, the WSIS, World Summit Information Society 10‑year review has gone in a few different phases and within different times has been more inclusive in bottom‑up than in others.
And I'd also add that within the institutions we are seeing when they start taking on Internet Governance issues or basically talking about Internet policy, there is more of a push to open up and I'd like to go back to what Thomas said about the ITU conference. I think that was a real contentious moment where there was a lot of push back against some of the policies the ITU and then in the next year you saw the world telecommunications policy forum and you saw the ITU multistakeholder prepatory platform for WSIS review which was quite open and it started without a process where basically anyone could contribute and then those who could attend meetings could speak, could contribute text.
And at the end, there wasn't a vote or anything. It was more on a member state setting, governments clearly had higher level representation but because earlier on there was more inclusivity, I think the outcome was considered more legitimate than the process we are going in now at the General Assembly where it is really we have opportunities as to Civil Society input but we really is an intergovernmental negotiated text at the end of the day.
So I think that effort to really bring people in early on at the NPP helped improve the document and helped to legitimacy among Civil Society in our views.
I think also we engage at the Human Rights Council. And that is a place, in general engaging on Human Rights issues is accountable. So the technical community and private sector don't have a natural way to engage there. So when the Human Rights Council or the General Assembly's Third Committee is dealing with Human Rights talk about Internet policy issues, we actually have an opportunity to be there are where other organizations as well can attend some of the negotiations and can engage as Civil Society because we have a role there. That's a traditional Human Rights context. And sometimes they are talking about things like Net Neutrality and the June 2014 resolution talked about multistakeholder and governance. And there was no one from the technical community in the room. I know ISOC engages a bit and maybe a few others but it is really a traditional Human Rights organization structure.
So maybe there is ways that in terms of how communities could work together in more ways when we have a space in a Human Rights setting that tech call communities and others would, and maybe that's an opportunity to collaborate more.
And I just want to pick up on a point about equal playing field and bottom‑up governance. Of course open processes are good and important and something we welcome, but simply having open playing field doesn't mean that if there is bottom‑up governance or Civil Society end users could have input. Those who have the most resources and aware of the process, those who have the ability to engage have more influence than others. And the fact that it is open doesn't necessarily mean that those who are more marginalized or simply don't have the resources to engage can influence the discussion.
And I think that is one role that Civil Society organizations can play in terms of bringing in users and bringing in people who have a steak in this, who don't have a seat at the table, but there is much more that needs to be done in terms of knowing the rules of how to engage. Knowing where there is opportunities and where there aren't and how to push those. So, I think I'll end there but again I agree with Thomas this isn't necessarily a binary and maybe we can have a discussion about ways to keep opening some of these processes more.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Thank you. I think that the question of being more open doesn't mean equal footing. I think it is very interesting as part of the evolution of the bottom‑up process to maybe what we now see as we call multistakeholder in that recognizing it's not just a matter of being open for everyone but there may be need to be other processes.
We actually had another Panelist who was hoping to join us, Nick Ashton‑Hart, to speak a little about trade and trade agreements and how this is another area. And there were actually some workshops on trade, trade agreements and trade issues earlier this week. I'm not going to speak for those workshops and I'm not an expert this area, but one of the interesting thing is I guess didn't come up, there was discussion how to make them more open and how that can ‑‑ there could be more bottom‑up participation there. And one of the things that wasn't said and I wonder if others were thinking about it is that the IGF obviously over its 10 years and particularly recently, has put a lot of work into defining what multistakeholder processes are and how they can be better and maybe some principles. And do we see those as perhaps a basis for better engaging either with top‑down processes or changing those processes to be more bottom‑up?
So the last speaker who hasn't spoken yet is Megan Richards from the European Commission. So I think we could get your perspective.
>> MEGAN RICHARDS: Thank you very much. It is very interesting discussion and I think it is absolutely not binary. It reminds me a bit and I'm sorry to be culturally specific here. But it reminds me a bit of the animal farm discussion. Four feet good, two feet bad or ‑‑ bottom‑up, top‑down. And your description that bottom‑up was inclusive, concisive, open, transparent whereas top‑down was opaque, and closed and restrictive. If I just think about the structure of the European Union, now don't worry I'm not going to give you a long boring description of it, but the organization or the institution, the organ that thinks it is most Democratic and most representative of the citizens of Europe, is the only one that votes.
And that's the European Parliament. It votes on everything. The Council on the other hand, which is representative of the member states, has qualified voting so ways of voting for certain things. But generally speaking, they try to avoid that. And it's only on very rare occasions that they vote. It's very limited let's put that way. Rare is perhaps an exception.
The Commission of course works on the basis of collegial decisions so everything that is decided by the Commission that is proposed is by definition consensus. Everyone agrees and they go forward. So if you put it in that context, the description doesn't fit. But I think the problem is too that we use the word, bottom‑up to mean different things to different people. And it's not really necessarily bottom‑up.
It involves the right players at the right time in the right circumstances. And I think the whole multistakeholder model is a bit like the Internet itself. It's a whole network of networks and so different groups and different organizations, different organs work in their own way and bring things together. Because let's use absolutely controversial topic, Net Neutrality.
If you think about it, the consultations with people and the role and the discussions in forum like this or in others, is extremely important. But at the end of the day, if you want to have binding rules within a jurisdiction, again there is the nice word, someone has to take a decision. And that is most likely going to be an institution or a government or someone.
So, that's certainly not top‑down because there has been consultation and decisions et cetera. But the government certainly has a role in that activity. So, again, I appreciate very much the comments of all the other speakers.
But I wanted to use also another example of standardization. The IETF does a lot of work on standardization. We always call our ICT standardization processes bottom‑up because they involve industry and it's the industry that gets together and discusses and looks at what is going on but also with standardization organizations with institutions as well. We don't often include Civil Society in that context. But, the standards and the terms and references are certainly out there. So, does bottom‑up mean that every single group has to be included? And I'm not saying that in standardization Civil Society shouldn't. Don't get me wrong. So I really think that it is a question of adjusting the terms and circumstances and cases to what fits best and then bringing the whole business together.
And I think that just like multistakeholder has a certain meaning to some people and unfortunately, it's not always appreciated, I think bottom‑up is also has different meanings to different people. I think everyone else said almost everything I wanted to say.
The only other thing I could think of, which is perhaps a better way of talking about bottom‑up top‑down, is perhaps organic development. If you think about the way the IGF developed over 10 years, or the way the IANA transition discussions have been going on. Or any other area or NETmundial, whatever else it might be. It is more of an organic development, isn't it? It's not something that ‑‑ I wouldn't want to have to do a Ph.D. thesis on how bottom‑up multistakeholder governance works. I know there are thousands of them out there but I don't think it is as simple as we think. It's a question of everyone working together and bringing their best together. Thanks.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: I actually quite like the ‑‑ and I want to pick up on the analogy you made of the Internet as a network of networks and this ecosystem as a sort of network of different governance structures. And I guess the question that springs from that then is, the idea of a network of networks working to form the Internet is the interoperability between those networks. And I guess another way of framing this discussion is, the interoperability between these different governance structures and are they interoperable? Are they operating together in the most efficient way? And to actually provide checks and balances on each other as Thomas also mentioned?
And I guess then also you come to the idea of again perhaps pushing this metaphor a little further than it can go, but the idea of fragmentation and is there a risk that these governance structures become too fragmented or too unable to interoperate? So I guess an open question for anyone.
But that was all of the speakers we have in their opening statements or initial statements. So, hopefully we can move to a bit more of an open discussion now. Certainly I'd open up the floor and encourage anyone to come to the mics. I think Thomas has something I'd like to add. Join in.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKAS: Quickly, sometimes we see tension in the system. We say it is bad. Like we say which one is better because we are part of the one system and they are from another system and it tension is bad. Actually tension is good because tension show work is progressing.
Previous gentleman was saying from friction comes heat and light. So, because that is where actually these checks and balance dos arrive from the fact that for example, we all know that if we want resolve issue right in inclusive way of something else, there will be another forum to pick up that issue and do it. So it keeps us all on our toes and I think that is what sometimes is good to step back and recognize that while we may not like different kind of systems and different tensions, we depend on each other more than we think about.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Just to quickly respond to that. Do you think organizations and the ITU is the one you're most qualified to answer on but the more traditional organizations, are they prepared for that kind of tension? For new governance structures coming through and how do you see them? I guess you told us how ITU is responding but is that something they are equipped to do?
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKAS: The first human reaction is no one likes change but that is everywhere. Whichever environment. We also recognize very well now that this increasing debate and change ‑‑ the change, yes some of them we kind of had a visionary foresight but actually a little bit more to be more realistic, change happened because the environment is changing and you see the rules and who aprises different models. That's where the real change comes. You may not like it when can comes but when you see hindsight, you do recognize that it was good and you needed that and that is you how you now better equipped to address new issues.
So in that regard, I definitely being from Telecom world we always say competition is good. But not only good in the market. Competition between different models of governance is also good because that makes everyone's governance better. Not just one of them but all the governance models become better because of that.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good evening. Mark Dotsca from the State University of São Paulo. What I like to add to the discussion which has been touched upon but I like to bring it a little bit further is the question of fragmentation. If you want to have a lows look at the Internet Governance debate across a year, you have to attend to at least 10 meetings or so, 10 key meetings that take place all over the world. And on top of that, you have the diversity of the Internet Forums in which the discussions are taking place talking about the same topic but in different manners and different communities that interact in very loose ways.
And as such, it seems to me that is a very important difference that the bottom‑up approach has in terms of when we compare to the top‑down approach. Because when it comes to top‑down approach, if we think about the way that the TPP was negotiated, it was a closed‑door meeting and they all reunited with the same purpose with the key stakeholders and to us it's more of a loose discussion that we base together in important forum but it's still a loose set of arrangements.
So, complimenting what was being said at the table, perhaps the next step for Internet Governance is that a more permanent body is established where a discussion can take place. That is what I have to add to the discussion.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Thank you. You're touching on a very hot issue there in terms of the establishment of a new body, new structures. But I do think you raise an important point about perhaps bottom‑up structures scaling and that sort of comes back to the issue of sort of small communities initially and the Internet fostering that model and now as we move to a much more global community, do those bottom‑up measures scale?
Yuri, coming from the ITF background, does the IETF process see that sort of tension in terms of ‑‑ does it scale up or is it able to accommodate all the new players?
>> YURI: I think that there has been times when I had trouble with the scaling where overnight read several hundred e‑mails about encryption and what we should do about that. So, some of these discussions are big. But it also does seem to scale to some extent. We have mechanisms. Usual organizational mechanism that you guys discuss thing and this other thing is discussed over there. That kind of technique can be used and I don't see a big problem in scaling in that sense, and most of the organizations dealing with various Internet of Things today seem to be just working fine. And I don't think scales as such is a problem. And just to continue a little bit, previous discussions we had, different modes of operation and it's not black and white.
That's true. And in a sense, I think any of these models can work well if the right people are present.
That's a key thing. And the right decisions are taken. But the question is maybe how do you get to that place? How do you ‑‑ what is the optimal way to get all the people present? And I think it is just plain obvious that if you said some kind of borders, that this, you only include these people and it is more difficult to get everyone in the room and many of the Internet topics we deal with are global.
So, there isn't like an obvious entity that can deal with these things and make a decision and you also have to have like ‑‑ much of the decisions, one of the problems is you might have some people who have no clue about this particular technology or topic, will be forced to make a decision. Of course national governments is one example for many topics.
But, on Internet matters, they truly are global and you can actually find some people who are interested in the topic and have experience. So taking advantage of that is really key.
>> MEGAN BROWN: Just to comment on governments not having a clue. Which I feel obliged to come back on, of course. It is true up to a point obviously, but they rely on information. They rely on analysis. They rely on input. I just take the European Union as an example. Virtually everything goes to public consultation as any legislation, any proposal for a legislation, even before it is proposed, goes to full public consultation. I won't bore you with all the details but there is impact analysis, there is economic assessment, studies are done. So I think it is a bit too easy to say governments don't know what they are talking about. I know you weren't saying that exactly. And more and more, in the Internet itself, and in the Internet space, governments are becoming much more interested because they realize the power of the Digital Economy and the impact on communication for citizens, democracy, access to health care ‑‑ all the things that you all know very well.
So I think that perhaps -- (Indiscernible)
>> YURI: I did not mean to imply that the governments are clueless. All of us are clueless on some things and some of us might know something about some topics and that is good. I think the key thing once again is the ‑‑ when you do the consultations and when you do the preparation process then when you follow the results of that, then everything works great. That is how it should be. It doesn't always happen like in any organization.
I want to point out a difference in some of these true bottom‑up organizations and perhaps others that indeed I cannot make a hearing at the ITF opinion. It's not possible because I can only sort of record the ITF Opinion and that is fundamental. Whereas other types of decision processes you could actually like you get a lot of input from the citizens and then you make a decision that is different. So, but I think there is a difference there.
>> MEGAN BROWN: There are checks and balances as well. Just take the example of Swiss Democracy for example and the way the Swiss have a referendum on just about everything now. Crossing the street. I don't know. Everything. So you have one example the government a pretty open system that really takes into consideration the wishes of the people, which sometimes is not very good. Sometimes the wishes of the people are not even Democratic in some cases. The argument that is often made is that if you sent to some societies even modern, western, developed ones, shouldn't we go back to drawing and quartering people and egregious circumstances?
You could well have a majority saying yes, yes, let's do that. We don't want to do that kind of thing. Those are principles that have developed over millennia of human development. Anyway, an interesting topic.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Can we see principles as the ultimate top‑down structure as it relates to bottom‑up processes? Part of the spectrum, okay. Network of networks.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: If I could respond to the comment. I think the challenge you raise is one we struggle with a lot. How do we maintain an effective presence in all the different spaces and do all of our work? It's quite challenges and a love of them involve ongoing input, attending meetings that are very expensive and also trying to do work that is not related to them as Civil Society we don't often have people dedicated to following governance policy and especially those from non‑North American European context. So it is important to say that the issue of a centralized body, it sounds very appealing in terms of coordination but then if you think about how Internet Governance or policy is an issue, it requires a lot of different sets of expertise.
So it is not that governments are ill‑informed it's that you have to have a really broad set of expertise to deal with standards issues, Human Rights issues, you don't want necessarily the people at the ITU negotiating Human Rights. You don't want the people at the Human Rights Council talking about Net Neutrality. You want informed discussions across spaces. I think the challenge of having one body to deal with these, there is a participation issue because the natural place to go is the U.N. and I don't think in any case it is as open as a lot of Internet Governance spaces.
And the other challenge is the issue of expertise and relevant expertise for the discussion at hand. So being there isn't any simple solution but some efforts have been made to map out the different Internet policies spaces to map out where issues are being discussed and how to get engaged. I'm speaking from a Civil Society perspective. I'm sure the Private Sector have ways of doing this. But we have been trying to find if you're interested in surveillance and the trite privacy, whereas being discussed in the ITF, what working groups are doing it at the ITU.
On ICANN there is a working groups on Human Rights end and there is a new special repertoire on privacy and different resolutions going O more needs to be done and it is something that maybe there is more collaboration available around but I don't think that putting everything in one body would actually get us where we need to be because such different expertise is needed to deal with different issues and different people need to be at the table.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you for the answer. Maybe you should clarify. I do respect very much the work the individual bodies do. It is actually great to work that IACA does and ATF and I don't think in any way the role should be minimized. But what I think from especially from the perspective of Latin America is that if we had a body that would help those institutions interact more than focusing the work on a single body, but more of a wider collaboration platform. Something that would make more sense in the sense that those discussions could be all brought together to the same place. Not in the sense that we do here, which is more of a wider discussion that we try to coordinate ideas, but, I do get your point. Thank you for the answer.
>> MEGAN BROWN: I understand the problem that you have too and it is very difficult to keep up with everything as well. But, I have a proposal for you. Instead of having a single organization, or body that does all of these things, which I think would be very difficult; what we have proposed in Europe and many others have proposed similar actions and NETmundial Initiative has a similar one too is to try to bring the information together on a single platform or make it available to everyone and we have something called the Global Internet Policy Observatory, which we are still developing but it is ‑‑ I can't remember if it's in beta version or zeta version. But anyway, it's making progress and my colleague is making a presentation on it right now.
So these are the kinds of things that help people become more aware, that send them in the right direction to give them the information, and I think it is particularly important for Civil Society representatives and participants and also people who don't live close to Joao Pessoa, for example, or who don't have the financial resources to get to meetings like this and as you say it is not the only one. There are many, many littler going on with different bits and pieces.
So those efforts we are taking and we believe so much in the importance of a multistakeholder model and that everyone, not everyone should participate but everyone should have the chance to be represented in the discussion, that we have put money into developing such a thing and of course are working with all sorts of other groups to try to make sure that similar smaller or slightly different actions are all working together.
I think Thomas made a point earlier which was a really, really good point and that is like the ITU acts in many other capacities but acts as one that convenience, forms and acts as a platform and what is important about that is governments tend to feel better in that kind of environment because it is U.N.-based multilateral environment but it brings all stakeholders together once a year. I think it's in May next year, the WSIS forum. It's a great example.
But so there are actually a lot of places where the convening power is quite ‑‑ and the U.N. with the WSIS+10 and the U.N. with this mandate for the IGF and I know you mentioned about that, that it is more of a round conversation in talking but it is true.
On a more basic level, I'm still frustrated by the lack ever remote access in a lot of these meetings. I think that is going to have to change. I think the most successful remote access platform I have seen in this kind of context has been NETmundial who is very, very good. It was really good and the interactiveness of people who were in different hubs like around the world was great. And I sincerely hope all of us can try to figure out how to make that work better because I don't want to travel as much as I have been traveling. But also just from an affordability pointed of view.
It makes sense if we are talking about the Internet and people can't get to different places that we really try to integrate remote access a lot better. I hope the technology will get better too. But I think that will help a lot.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: I wonder we are in a good position to answer this possibly, I think the IANA stewardship and the ICANN accountability process are in some ways an example of the ultimate remote participation where so much of the work has taken place on calls, perhaps not with video streaming or more high‑tech things but it has allowed people to work globally without actually coming together that many times.
>> YURI: That is a good example. The other thing I wanted to mention is part of the reason why the bar for the discussion is high because we have a particular format for this discussion and I trust we are here where we are having meetings and we are having full meetings like a week‑long thing together. We at the ITF mostly work over e‑mail and over the net and over time, and it is like in small pieces and so if you're interested in this political thing, you go to them. The same thing we did in this transition process people interested in a particular let's say the numbers world and arrangements, they were able to be on one mailing list and they had reasonable amount of traffic. But if you tried to read everything, you would be doing two jobs just to keep up on the list.
So being able to focus and being able to do it over the Internet is a key. And I want to follow‑up on the idea about more coordination. I really loved the idea of bringing information together it's really important.
The other point I wanted to make is that coordination usually works better when people on the floor discuss with other people directly or joint participation and we certainly have found that with the ITF and we do a lot of work together with others. We just had a workshop on the encryption issue and I think I meet my colleagues ICANN and the RAR and so forth on a weekly basis at least. If not a daily basis. I'm on a five‑week trip for this time for instance.
And but just like the leader said, indeed, the real participation and cooperation is when people when they do the work. I don't think that can be replaced by any boss at the higher level or any organization that would do the coordination. You just vat do it direct because otherwise you lose information.
>> MEGAN BROWN: I'm going to make a plea now in the context of ‑‑ I don't want to mention names but in the context of some of these discussions and the way discussions work, I think it is really important that everyone exchanges information and ideas et cetera. But, I think one of the most important aspects is that the experts give their expert opinion on the issues about which they know best. And one aspect that drives me crazy, off the record, is when the lawyers give technical advice, the engineers give legal advice, the Human Rights experts give mathematical advice. I'm making it up now. But so you get the point. I think that is the beauty of the multistakeholder model.
You have people who really know what I that are talking about saying, if you do this, these are the consequences. For my particular area. And it's nice if you have an opinion about, I don't know, constitutional issues, or whatever it might be; but if that's not your specialty or expertise, you can ask what will happen or will this have an impact? But it wastes a lot of time. Let me put it that way to have some of the discussions. Not all of them, of course. I would never say such a thing. But I think that is what we should all concentrate on. What do we do best and know best and what can we bring together to make things work even better and be even more rich and useful?
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: I think this is summery sounding like the work that has gone on in the IGF in terms of identifying how best multistakeholder work versus how can this work. Finding ways that those people with the different expertise or areas of expertise can actually work together.
If I sort of step back from the Moderator role here and momentarily to speak as ‑‑ I think coming back to Deborah's point earlier about the mapping the spaces and that being a useful process to help engagement and help people engage, I think that is certainly something we have been engaged in and related to that, the last decade really, I think, since WSIS and since the launch of the IGF, we have seen a very key part of our role as been a bit of an interface for the Technical Community with governance processes, with governments, some obviously working with getting to know the Commission, working with the Commission a bit, working with other governments our service region, which also includes the Arab states and includes the Russia and CIS states. So very different kinds of situations there.
And I guess coming back to the sort of idea of this spectrum and different government structures on different points on that spectrum, it's about providing the connective tissue between those different governance structures to allow them to interact more effectively.
So I should put my Moderator hat back on. We probably ‑‑ quarter of an hour left. We certainly don't need to necessarily get to the end of the time but I think are there other questions or any other points that people wish to make? Anybody in the audience that would like to make a comment?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Michael Oghia, ISOC Ambassador and I wanted to clarify because I think one specific point about the collating of resources. And I have got a copy with me, but the Geneva Internet Platform, which is a collaboration between the ‑‑ in part between a collaboration between the Internet Society and DiploFoundation, publishes every month now something called Digital Watch.
Digital Watch is a fantastic resource ‑‑ you're familiar? Good. It coalates all of the information that is related to Internet Governance and Internet Governance activities each month. And it has become basically -- a go-to resource for explaining what is going to in the IG world. So I wanted to make sure that that is out there and seeing it is somehow pertinent to the conversation.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indiscernible)
I came here because I finally found this Panel has no Asian people.
(Laughs)
That is not the point. But my point is that I like to have your advice that in case of the multicultural discussion then for example, when I started the activity in the arena I was very struck because I am Japanese and not multistakeholder but bottom‑up approach to where I need to say something to argue my point is a totally phony concept to me. And I am doing that for 15 years. And I finally get accustomed to that. But it is really hard to have the Asian people speak their say and construct a discussion to bring very sound outcome T is very hard. And in that case, sometimes top‑down approach does work in very different way. So I like to have your experience or some suggestion for us to have a better discussion in my region. Thank you.
>> PANEL MEMBER: I don't want to keep speaking but that is actually a really, really good point and it's something we should think about here but also maybe carry forward as well.
I think one of the things or one of the reasons why I enjoy attending events within the U.N. system or even attending events that ITF holds is that it is so International and then it is a way to talk to people about the different experiences that they have in their countries and that or even just in their communities. And that you get to understand within different cultures the different ideas don't actually even have like a word for that.
So, I'm not a Russian speaker. Thomas might be able to help me but I understand multistakeholderism is a combination of six words in Russian. Very, very long because they don't have a word to describe it. You'll have to tell me later.
(Laughs)
But I think that is something that is not being considered, actually that much in this context. And I think it is something we should maybe try to draw on other people's experiences from it.
>> MEGAN BROWN: It's a very good point. I made the comment ‑‑ I was on a Panel where we had to say the best word we liked in Internet Governance and the worst word. And I used multistakeholder for both. First because it says everything to everyone and includes everyone, but also because it's bloody hard to translate. So it's not understood by many people. So we have all of these catchwords. It's like bottom‑up. They mean different things to each of us and we use them but it's a pity.
>> PANEL MEMBER: Just to add, one thing when I was reading the description of this Panel, five months to me really means many things but community driven, sort of from the grassroots upward to the national, regional and global. And
I think something that is missing in particular in the WSIS process follow‑up is really having that National and Regional input into this global process and I think very, very good point and I'm glad you raised it. Maybe one approach is also to do more regional consultations more regional in fought various global events or national ones as well.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: A guide point is actually the one very explicit regional input to the process actually came from Southeast Asia.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKAS: Thank you. I think how we include people from different parts of the world is a big challenge everywhere. So for us, even now symbolizing importance from everybody from everywhere to be at the table.
That's how do you it. And it doesn't come just by opening the doors. It comes by seeing what prevents people from participating and some of that is not only ‑‑ some is logistical and some linguist call and some of that also understanding different cultures. And also understanding having different aspects of the same terms. It is interesting in IGF in Bali, you have this discussion about open consultation at that time on public policy issues and that was the governance model issue. And what was interesting what came out of that discussion is like a diverse audience and for example role of government. Sometimes, and a lot of times, we talk about role of governments is something that needs to be limited because it is overimposing and overbearing and we kind of see that government or something that is ‑‑ if we don't impose it will reach out.
So people will do it and let government do minimal thing and then someone from the audience pretty new says what are you talking about? In our country, if we want infrastructure to be developed, we ask the government and discuss with the government. Then someone else here was saying yesterday about equitable participation and again someone was saying, I like multistakeholder model and that was person from Civil Society about you they believed convening role in our national environment is government. So government needs to convene multistakeholder discussion. And I seen that in other countries.
We also sometimes need to avoid understanding that our concepts of how the governments work, how the Civil Society interacts with the government are actually translatable. It's not only about language translation, it's our conceptual translations and these are rather different and that we are not stuck into some specific model and we say this model should apply to everyone.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you, Chris. My name is
(Indiscernible) and I was the Chair of the At‑Large Advisory Committee in ICANN for four years. I'm now the Chair of the European At‑Large Organization. At-Large is the part of ICANN that brings the input of Internet and users into the ICANN processes and I guess having been in those positions for a while, I have got some experience about the gathering the input of end users and certainly when my friend mentioned the whole problem of the different cultural aspects of bringing this input into the system, that rang a bell because I was faced with this for a very long time.
The way that we have managed to try and even up the balance in the at large community is to actually have five different regions, each operating pretty much independently with its own leadership and therefore much more knowledge about the people in their regions than we would know on a central basis. And therefore we have been able to actually weigh the input from the different regions where in Asia it's hard tore get spontaneous input and other parts of the world it's harder to get people to shut up. So there is some real checks and balances that you can introduce at regional level for these things. And of course some regions participate a lot more than others and some you really have to extract the information from them.
ICANN is an interesting multistakeholder system, and what rang a bell of course speak being top‑down. You have got a staff top‑down system and you have got a volunteer bottom‑up system and note that it is ‑‑ I like the fact that you all used bottom‑up. Maybe you could tell somebody at ICANN it's not bottoms up. That's the sort of thing we did in Dublin for a few nights. But, the whole system of having the mix of top‑down and bottom‑up is the friction takes place between the Board and the senior staff and that is where it goes all the way up. At some point, some bridges were implemented and I guess some way to ease the friction is to try and get some crosslinking or discussion between staff and volunteer communities at lower levels than having to go all the way to the top of the pyramid.
That said, I would really hope that someone somewhere has the time the determination, the amount of ‑‑ the determination I think is the right thing. I was going to say they have to be a masochist as well. But the amount of drive to study that multistakeholder system. Because it is a special multistakeholder system. I think there are a lot of lessons that can be learned from that and on top of that, I think it is quite fascinating because it is something that is evolving slowly. It went through various geysers, ICANN Version 1, Version 2, it looks as though there might be a Version 3 coming up soon. And this has got a lot of lessons that could be learned by the wider IGF community and I'm sure that some improvements could be made as well to it. I really hope that some historians or scholars could take this and the only way they will know about it is to actually be part of it.
That's why I said they have to be masochists as well. So thank you.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Thank you. And I think that also comes back to the point I guess I was making a bit earlier which is that the IGF perhaps in its obviously have a very strong achievement in bringing people together to discuss Internet Governance specific issues, technical, operational, policy issues, but also clearly devoted a great deal of time discussing what it is to be a multistakeholder governance process and this obviously, the ICANN example plays into that and perhaps the IGF can be a facilitating role in studying that, studying the successes.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Another point I like to make is I have been helping with the streaming and remote participation team throughout the week and helping to coordinators. I have been leading that team. And what I would like to see in future forums is in the U.N. provides a better structure. Because not enough structure has been employed. And I can say because I have been doing that for five days now. And it is not enough. There is not enough attention being paid. Not enough resources being devoted and to be truthful, it's actually quite appalling the amount of attention they are paying to that in an Internet Forum. The amount of resources being devoted to remote participation and to remote hubs of which there are none.
It's basically something that needs to be changed. I don't know at what venue this sort of discussion needs to be taken but whatever it is, it is something that we need to be a wear of because I have been there doing it so I can say for sure, it is not something I have heard. I can say for sure it's not enough. It could be much more as it is. There is no need to change anything, any different platform. It could be different as it is.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: I'll say at least I know that the conversation has gone on for many years but I'm not arguing with your characterization of it. Dominique you want to say something? Also any final commented from the speakers, we probably have to start wrapping up.
>> DOMINIQUE LAZANSKI: Part of the problem with that, I completely agree with you and this is my call for more technology here but part of the problem is funding quite frankly. So the funding is very limited as it stands right now. So I think there needs to believe both need to go hand‑in‑hand. There needs to be more devoted funding to the particular issue and I definitely support that.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Leads us nicely into the closing ceremony where I'm sure there are calls for that. Do any of the speakers have final points?
>> PANEL MEMBER: On the last point it's not just the U.N. or the IGF Secretariat who has to provide. The host country has a huge obligation as well and it is very expensive so expensive for everyone and we are all calling of course for improved and continued financing for the IG.
And a continuation of mandates. So the two go together.
>> CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Okay. Two minutes to go. I guess I'll give a couple of bullet points to summarize or some of the key points I sort of got out of this discussion and obviously the first point was echoed by numerous people is that this is a spectrum rather than a binary top‑down, bottom‑up characterization and I think that was the point we were hoping to get out when we put this workshop together anyway that there are many different models. And I think that one of the reasons and I think it came out quite a lot towards the end here that that spectrum is important, is that any single model, any single structure or way of governing is very limiting.
There are obviously cultural limitations there but there are also limitations in terms of people's understanding of concepts, the role of government. And also the evolution in these governance structures is constant. It's been happening before the Internet came along and perhaps Internet Governance has pushed that in certain directions in certain race but it's a constant evolution. And I think the final and we will come back to it numerous times.
A useful analogy to think of this as a network of networks of governance structures so we need to pay attention with the technical engineer between the different government structures, how they work together, what the points of tension are or points of difficulty are and how do we resolve that?
So thank you all for coming along here today. I hope it was a useful conversation for everyone. I found it useful. Thank you very much to the speakers who are leaving as we speak. So, yes, please enjoy the closing ceremony and see you next time.
(Applause.)