What's up re Open Standards at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF)?

The first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is next week in Athens, Greece (Oct 30-Nov 2). The IGF is a product of the WSIS-Tunis Agenda and was given an open-ended and ambiguous mandate. It operates with the support of the Secretary-General of the UN, who has asked for a "process aimed at enhancing cooperation on international public policy issues related to the Internet."

The IGF is a new paradigm as it is a "multi-stakeholder policy dialogue," where civil society NGOs, business interests, international organizations, and governments will interact in contours that as yet have to be clearly defined.

A good example of this multi-stakeholder policy dialogue is the Open Standards workshop (Nov 2) sponsored by CPTech, Sun Microsystems, the W3C and the Yale Information Society Project. The purpose of the workshop is to promote understanding of the value of open ICT standards to economic development and social welfare and to collectively discuss related problems and solutions, including the role of government policies and procurement.

The sponsors believe that the IGF should proactively address issues of openness and interoperability in the Information Society by paying particular attention to ICT standards as outlined in paragraph 44 of the WSIS Declaration of Principles. To help frame this requested action, the sponsors are proposing two statements of principles: one on open IT standards and requested IGF action and the other specific to government policies and procurement.

The intent is to create a "dynamic coalition" in IGF around these principles. This coalition will work to refine these principles and suggested solutions with the intent of spurring collective action in WSIS/IGF and relevant fora.

We invite you to review these statements at (http://www.cptech.org/a2k/igf/athens110206/)
and participate in this "dynamic coalition."

There is a mailing list for this purpose. Details on how to sign up are at: http://mailman.ctyme.com/listinfo/openstds

More details: contact Thiru Balasubramaniam (CPTech) email thiru at cptech.org or Susy Struble (SUN) email susy at sun.com

IGF Website: http://www.igfgreece2006.gr/

More news on this after the IGF meeting.