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FYI - Report on US State Dept. WSIS meeting, Feb. 10
Hi,
FYI, here are some notes from William Drake (CPSR) on the meeting organized on Feb. 10 by the US State Department. Meryem
Début du message réexpédié :
-----Original Message-----
From: infosoc-admin@lists.cpsr.org [mailto:infosoc-admin@lists.cpsr.org]On Behalf OfWilliam Drake
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 4:12 PM
To: Infosoc
Subject: [Infosoc] Report on US State Dept. WSIS meeting, Feb. 10
Hi,
As there were a number emails on infosoc in advance of yesterday's State Department meeting saying someone from CPSR should attend, having done so I thought I'd pass along a few observations.
State's International Telecommunications Advisory Committee (ITAC) is one of two AC's dealing with ICT-related issues (info at http://www.state.gov/e/eb/cip/c293.htm). I've attended these meetings off and on since the 1980s, and yesterday's felt totally different in two respects, one of which matters. First, because the US is on Code Orange alert for terrorist attacks, access to State was blocked off, and the meeting was held across the street at the National Academy of Science. The forty plus attendees were seated in an auditorium that must hold 10 to 20 times that number while the three State reps were seated far away on a stage, so there was no real chance for give and take, as per when the meetings are around a table. After introductory remarks from State, a small number of us lined up in the aisle to pose questions that were often dodged and that was it. Determined follow-up in this context seemed pointless.
Second and more importantly, while an attendance list wasn't provided, the usual suspects seemed to be thinly represented. Historically, committee meetings have been mostly attended by a group of corporate reps one sees at all ICT policy events in D.C. (noteworthy turnout by non-profit advocacy people and academics is a fairly recently development). These folks usually come pretty charged up to ensure that their views are well reflected by U.S. policy, and when there are upcoming negotiations of consequence in ITU, WTO, WIPO or whatever, the conversations can be quite intense. But in contrast, if US-based companies are keenly interested in or concerned about WSIS, it wasn't obvious yesterday. One can't help noting in parallel that the official PrepComm 2 website shows pretty light turn-out by businesses; just 47 people from "private sector entities" (of course, there's some private sector people among the 552 "Administration" attendees). In contrast, there are 643 NGO registrants. The meaning of this should be clear enough.
If the private sector doesn't think WSIS matters much---and none of the corporate people I know seem to feel otherwise---it'll be an absolute miracle if governments from the US and other industrialized countries eventually agree to make hard commitments to do very much. Look what happened with the global digital divide process and you have probably seen the future.
Anyway, State's presentations were, um, brief. David Gross, the US Ambassador, recalled that the US priorities are just three---infrastructure development, human capacity building, and network security. And he reaffirmed that the PrepComm's task will be to agree language that draws on and reconciles any differences between the regional declarations and the Glion non-paper. (In other words, those attending may be in for a two-week line-by-line drafting exercise. Having been on two US delegations to prior ITU conferences, held in the same room, at which 5-700 people spent days line-by-lining texts that had no impact whatsoever on anything, I predict that people are going to spend a lot of time networking in the hallways and at Cafe Roma.)
Dick Beaird, State's very experienced lead guy on ITU affairs, then gave a very quick overview of the regional and sub-regional meetings and their outcomes. He stressed the broad commonalities of focus and language that emerged from these. In particular, he said that access, openness, network security, local content, and good governance were consistently mentioned as priorities.
That was pretty much it.
Then we played Q&A, sort of. I pointed out that while the US government keeps saying it wants to consult widely etc., its actions leave at least some people with bad impressions of its intentions. That the Bush Administration opposed doing WSIS in the first place and hasn't bothered to provide the WSIS website with a formal input paper or otherwise taken a positive, pro-active approach invites varying interpretations that might not be in the US' interest at this particular juncture. Hence, I invited them to clarify publicly two things: 1) What would the US like to come out of the process, and in particular are there any areas at all on which it would like to see hard commitments undertaken; and 2) what would the US like to avoid happening.
Gross prefaced his reply by saying it would sound like a punt; at least he's honest about what he won't reveal. He said that if NGOs want to understand the US position, they should look on State's website at the US remarks offered at previous meetings (these say almost nothing, e.g. http://www.stategov/e/eb/rls/rm/2003/16762.htm). In terms of things the Bush Administration would like to happen or not, he reminded us that WSIS entails a pair of short summits at which high-level politicians will gather to express broadly-framed common views on a narrow range of issues. It is not designed to agree on treaties, and it won't. Nor is it designed to get into any particular issues in any detail, or to review and second guess decisions taken in other forums like the ITU, WTO, WIPO, ICANN, and so forth.
This goes back to prior list discussions about Utsumi's speech. As I said, absolute zero chance that this is going to happen, no new global regulatory regime with the ITU at its center.
In short, the outcome envisioned seems to be something like the 2000-01 G-8 summits' declarations regarding the global digital divide. Broad proclamations of concern and good will, maybe a few projects with little bits of funding attached (probably from Canada and the UK, maybe Japan if they don't back off again when the press lights go off), blah blah blah. A bullet to be dodged, not an opportunity to be grasped.
Further to the point, someone from the private sector asked about the progress benchmarks at the back of the non-paper, which she regarded as overly ambitious. Was this just an ITU effort to build a new role for itself? Gross replied that the benchmarks reflect a desire in some circles to have commitments to concrete and verifiable steps, but underscored that these were just informal ideas from the Glion group (I previously passed along some info about this).
In a follow-up, I recalled that Gross had mentioned in passing that the administration hadn't been decided yet who would represent the US at WSIS. Of course, how high or low the level of the delegation is tells you something about how seriously it's taken. I asked whether the White House has been involved in the process, and if so specifically how. Gross replied that yes it has been but that's all he could say. You have to wonder how this works, since nobody in Washington seems to know of anyone in the White House who has an interest or expertise in ICT policy matters, other than the security aspects (and even there, Dick Clarke's leaving). Clinton era wonkery is just a distant memory. Accordingly, telcos looking to influence policy at the FCC (a nominally independent agency) and elsewhere have reportedly taken to meeting with Karl Rove instead. Given that the WH is generally all politics and no policy, I suspect these conversations had more to do with calculating future campaign contributions than with total long run incremental costing models for interconnection.
A few other highlights from Q&A. Manon Ress of the Consumer Project on Technology asked about the US role in shaping the Tokyo Declaration's language on open source. Beaird stated that the US wanted the softer language that OS should be "encouraged, as appropriate" to ensure that governments did not attempt to mandate a particular technological solution through an inflexible administrative edict. There are some cases where open source is the right solution and some cases where it is not, and it should be left to the market to decide this, he said.
Someone from the Electronic Privacy Information Center asked why the US specified that it wants to ensure "network security" but not "information security," including privacy and the confidentiality of messages. Gross replied that some people use the latter term as code behind which to hide restrictive policies toward content, so focusing on networks is safer.
Other participants encouraged the US to speak up more loudly for freedom of speech (I added that the US could lead an effort to move the second WSIS from Tunisia---blank stares in response); asked what the future role of the ITU would be given it's due to take massive cuts in its budget and authority (response: TBD); urged the US to support the private sector, etc.
In sum, procedurally, the Bush Administration and probably most transnational corporations are not wild about WSIS and are unlikely to undertake real commitments to many of the goals civil society groups might express. Any strategic choices have to confront these realities, e.g. by building coalitions with the Canadians, Brits, and others who might agree to spend some money irrespective of what the US does or doesn't do. Substantively, it might make sense to focus on the non-paper's benchmark proposals, and seek to preserve and expand those in the text for the summit. How far beyond some new money for technical assistance and such things can go---for example, into enhancing developing country and civil society participation in global governance matters, or even thinking about the substantive policies of governance---is very unclear. So we should think about where to spend what little capital we have.
Basta,
Bill
**************************************************************
William J. Drake
Visiting Senior Fellow
Center for International Development
and Conflict Management
University of Maryland
0145 Tydings Hall
College Park, MD 20742
Tel: (301) 314-7706 Fax: (301) 314-9256
Email: wdrake@cidcm.umd.edu
http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/people/wdrake.htm
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