The World Summit on the Information Society WSIS its specificity, its challenges Charles Geiger Spec

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The World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS) its specificity, its challengesCharles
GeigerSpecial Adviser to the CSTD(Former
Executive Director WSIS)Geneva, May 2008
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The WSIS Geneva Summit(Geneva, 10-12 December
2003)

• More than 11000 participants, 4590 from
  Governments, 174 States, with 44 Heads of State
  or Government
• 100 UN and International Organizations with 1192
  participants
• 3310 representatives from 481 civil society
  entities
• 514 representatives from 98 business entities
• 979 media representatives from 631 media entities
• More than 300 Parallel events, and 16.000 m2
  Exhibition space (ICT4D-exhibition in Hall 4 of
  Geneva PalExpo

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The Geneva Summit outcomes

• Geneva Declaration of PrinciplesPara 1 We, the
  representatives of the peoples of the world,
  assembled in Geneva from 10-12 December 2003 for
  the first phase of the World Summit on the
  Information Society, declare our common desire
  and commitment to build a people-centred,
  inclusive and development-oriented Information
  Society, where everyone can create, access,
  utilize and share information and knowledge,
  enabling individuals, communities and peoples to
  achieve their full potential in promoting their
  sustainable development and improving their
  quality of life, premised on the purposes and
  principles of the Charter of the United Nations
  and respecting fully and upholding the Universal
  Declaration of Human Rights.
• Geneva Plan of Action
• Content 10 objectives, goals and targets, 11
  Action lines (17 with the Sub-Action Lines in
  chapter 7)

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The WSIS Tunis Summit(Tunis, 16-18 November 2005)

• 19401 participants, out of which 5857 from
  Government
• 174 States, with 50 Heads of State or Government
• 92 UN and International Organizations with 1508
  delegates
• 6241 representatives from 606 civil society
  entities
• 4816 representatives from 226 business entities
• 979 media representatives from 642 media entities
• 306 Parallel events, and 20.000 m2 of exhibition
  space (ICT4All-exhibition)

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WSIS Tunis Summit Outcomes

• The Tunis Commitment
• The Tunis Agenda for the Information
  SocietyContent - Introduction- Financial
  Mechanisms for meeting the challenges of ICT
  for development- Internet Governance-
  Implementation and follow-up
• All documents of phase 1 and 2 are available at
  www.itu.int/wsis

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WSIS, a successful UN Summit

• Of the 12 UN Summits that were held up to now,
  WSIS is considered to be among the most
  successful ones.
• WSIS has opened also the door more than any other
  UN Summit before for civil society and business
  entities, it was a true multi-stakeholder Summit.
• There were a certain number of specificities that
  made WSIS so successful. Let us look at some of
  them now

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A. The special content (1)

• Previous UN Summits dealt mostly with a specific
  problem that had to be solved (gender,
  sustainable development, population etc.).
• WSIS dealt with the future, with the coming
  Information Society. Some say it was the first
  Summit of the 21st century. In the words of Kofi
  Annan WSIS is a Summit of opportunities.

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A. The special content (2)

• When you deal with a problem, you try to solve it
  by negotiating the core concerns, and you try to
  keep these core concerns as restricted as
  possible, (e.g. in the case of carbon emissions,
  you basically try to negotiate a percentage and a
  time frame).
• When you deal with opportunities, you can accept
  dozens of proposals, recommendations and
  commitments. As a result, the Geneva Declaration
  has ten targets, and more than 160
  recommendations and commitments.

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A. The special content (3)

• By doing so, you can make everybody happy, but it
  is difficult to follow up on so many targets,
  recommendations and commitments.
• And it is impossible to negotiate for every
  recommendation and commitment who should take the
  lead, who should be in charge, and what the
  indicators and the benchmarks could be. This is
  one of the weaknesses of the adopted texts and
  one of the difficulties in follow-up of WSIS (we
  come to this later)

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B. The lead Agency (1)

• The idea of WSIS was brought up for the first
  time by Tunisia at the Plenipotentiary Conference
  of the ITU at Minneapolis, in 1998.
• The original proposal from Tunisia was a World
  Conference on the challenges of the new
  Information Technologies, the globalization and
  the deregulation.

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B. The Lead Agency (2)

• When Tunisia and Switzerland, the two host
  countries, brought the initiative to the UN
  General Assembly in December 2001, the General
  Assembly, in Resolution 56/183 stated that the
  meeting should address the whole range of
  relevant issues related to the information
  society, through the development of a common
  vision and understanding of the information
  society and the adoption of a declaration and
  plan of action for implementation by Governments,
  international institutions and allsectors of
  civil society.
• With this, WSIS had shifted from a more
  technically oriented Summit to a Summit with a
  large social and development component.

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B. The lead Agency (3)

• Nevertheless, the UN General Assembly decided
  also that the Summit is to be convened under the
  patronage of the Secretary-General of the United
  Nations, with the International Telecommunication
  Union taking the lead role in its preparation, in
  cooperation with interested United Nations bodies
  and other international organizations as well as
  the host countries,
• WSIS was the first UN System Summit to be
  organized by a Specialised Agency.
• That ITU was to take the lead in the organization
  of the Summit had a number of consequences. In
  the following two slides, I would like just to
  cite the most important ones

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B. The lead Agency (4)

• The Summit became a Geneva-centred undertaking.
  Advantage Good collaboration with the UN
  Agencies based in Europe, like UNESCO and the
  FAO. Disadvantage WSIS was not on the Radar
  screen in New York. Agencies and programs based
  in NY (e.g. UNDP) did not really get involved in
  WSIS. The same is true for the World Bank.
• ITU as an organization is much older than the
  United Nations and has always had a strong
  collaboration with the private sector. Therefore,
  the first foundations for a multi-stakeholder
  Summit were already laid.

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B. The lead Agency (5)

• Very often, the diplomats dealing with WSIS were
  the same that dealt also with ITU matters. This
  influenced the setting of the WSIS-Agenda.
  Advantage from the beginning, the negotiations
  were less politicised, and it was easier to find
  compromise solutions. This has definitively
  contributed to the good Summit outcomes.
  Disadvantage The social and development policy
  components of WSIS got less attention. The
  approach was often more technical than
  development-oriented. Only few bilateral
  development Agencies participated finally in
  WSIS.

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C. The multi-stakeholder approach (1)

• During the Agenda setting process of WSIS,
  Governments had to realize that WSIS touched on
  several matters where Governments were not the
  first and not the main stakeholder.
• The other stakeholders of the Information Society
  needed to be involved in the process, without
  changing the character of a UN Summit as an
  intergovernmental undertaking.
• Governments had to agree on practical solutions
  to involve the observers in the drafting process,
  without changing the standard rules of procedures
  for UN Summits (these practical solutions were
  called the WSIS practice).

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C. The multi-stakeholder approach (2)

• WSIS was the first Summit to develop a real
  multi-stakeholder approach. This was facilitated
  by several important elements
• - ITU had already experience with business
  participation.
• - Both PrepCom-Presidents (Mr. Adama
  Samassékou from Mali and Ambassador Janis
  Karklins from Latvia) were elected for the
  entire duration of the preparatory process of
  each phase and strongly supported a multi-
  stakeholder approach.
• - Governments agreed to the necessity of
  participation from civil society and academia,
  major stakeholder especially in Internet
  Governance questions.

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C. The multi-stakeholder approach (3)

• Bureau members were elected for the whole phase,
  there was no rotation, and Bureau members, after
  initial hesitation, supported the
  multi-stakeholder approach.
• Civil society organized itself through the Civil
  Society Bureau (CSB), and business through the
  Consultative Committee of Business Interlocutors
  (CCBI). Both entities became respected partners
  in the process.
• Due to the fact that the WSIS process had a
  duration of 2 phases (four years), trust was
  built up among Governments and between Government
  delegations and the representatives of civil
  society and business. This was the single most
  important success factor for WSIS.

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From the Tunis Agenda Multi-stakeholder
Implementation

• In the Tunis Agenda, Governments agreed that
  WSIS-implementation is multi-stakeholder effort
  Implementation is to take place at national,
  regional and international level, and by
  Governments, international organizations, civil
  society and business.
• Let us look now at national, regional and
  international level separately

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Implementation at national level (1)

• Here the full text of the Tunis Agenda regarding
  national implementation.
• 100. At the national level, based on the WSIS
  outcomes, we encourage governments, with the
  participation of all stakeholders and bearing in
  mind the importance of an enabling environment,
  to set up a national implementation mechanism, in
  which
• a) National e-strategies, where appropriate,
  should be an integral part of national
  development plans, including Poverty Reduction
  Strategies, aiming to contribute to the
  achievement of internationally agreed development
  goals and objectives, including the Millennium
  Development Goals.

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Implementation at national level (2)

• Para 100 ff
• b) ICTs should be fully mainstreamed into
  strategies for Official Development Assistance
  (ODA) through more effective information-sharing
  and coordination among development partners, and
  through analysis and sharing of best practices
  and lessons learned from experience with ICT for
  development programmes.
• c) Existing bilateral and multilateral technical
  assistance programmes, including those under the
  UN Development Assistance Framework, should be
  used whenever appropriate to assist governments
  in their implementation efforts at the national
  level.
• d) Common Country Assessment reports should
  contain a component on ICT for development.

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Implementation at regional level

• Upon request of governments, regional
  international organizations and UN regional
  economic commissions should carry out
  WSIS-implementation activities in collaboration
  with all stakeholders
• Overall focus on the use of ICT for development
  and for reaching the MDGs
• Regional level can also include sub-regional
  coordination

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Implementation an international level (1)

• UN funds, programs and agencies should act within
  approved mandates and resources.
• Implementation should take place along the 17
  Action lines defined in the Geneva Plan of Action
  and the tasks defined in the Tunis Agenda.
• Implementation should include intergovernmental
  and multi-stakeholder components, i.e. should
  encompass Governments, International
  organizations, civil society and
  business.Overall review of WSIS implementation
  in 2015 by the UN General Assembly

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Implementation at international level (2)

• Governments decided on a process of
  multi-stakeholder facilitation/moderation by UN
  Agencies along the Action Lines defined in the
  Geneva Plan of Action, to exchange of
  information, create knowledge, share best
  practices and assist in the development of
  multi-stakeholder partnerships.
• ITU, UNESCO and UNDP should lead the Action Line
  Facilitation process
• Negotiation result of Tunis There is no Agency,
  Commission or new entity in charge of the
  multi-stakeholder implementation of WSIS

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Implementation at international level (3)

• A tentative list of possible Action Line
  Facilitators/moderators was annexed to the Tunis
  Agenda.
• Consequence of the multi-stakeholder approach at
  International level Action Line Facilitation
  meetings are informal meetings. No decisions can
  be taken. They are open to all stakeholders. As
  there is no WSIS-accreditation process anymore,
  they are, in all logic, open to the general
  public (this is actual practice).

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Implementation at international level (4)

• Action Line Facilitation Lead facilitators as of
  2007
• ITU for Action Lines C2 Information and
  communication infrastructure and C5 Building
  confidence and security in the use of ICTs
• UNESCO for Action Lines C3 Access to information
  and knowledge, C7 sub-theme e-learning, C7
  sub-theme e-science, C8 Cultural diversity and
  identity, linguistic diversity and local content,
  C9 Media and C10 Ethical dimensions of the
  Information Society
• UNDP for C4 Capacity building and C6 Enabling
  environment
• UN-DESA for C1 The role of public governance
  authorities and all stakeholders in the promotion
  of ICTs for development, C7 sub-theme
  e-government and C11 International and regional
  cooperation
• UNCTAD for C7 sub-theme e-business
• ILO for C7 sub-theme e-employment
• WHO for C7 sub-theme e-health
• WMO for C7 sub-theme e-environment
• FAO for C7 sub-theme e-agriculture

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The special case of Internet Governance (1)

• The Internet is today the backbone of the
  Information Society.
• Governments started to realize during WSIS that
  the Internet has developed outside the Government
  realm.
• Therefore, Internet Governance became the key
  issue for the Tunis phase of the Summit, despite
  the original idea that the Tunis phase would
  rather deal with ICT4D and poverty reduction
  issues

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The special case of Internet Governance (2)

• Time was not ripe to find a solution to the
  question of Internet Governance, as this is a
  very complex issue involving many stakeholders,
  including academia.
• Governments decided therefore to apply the same
  idea of the informal multistakeholder
  facilitation also to Internet Governance and
  asked the UNSG to create a Internet Governance
  Forum. This forum has very successfully held two
  meetings, in Athens in 2006 and in Rio in 2007,
  each with more than one thousand participants
  from Government, civil society, business and IOs.
  

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The special case of Internet Governance (3)

• The experience of the Internet Governance Forum
  (IGF) is exciting, because you can somehow feel
  the emergence of a new governance model, where
  Governments, International Organizations, civil
  society and business sit together around a table
  and discuss important issues.
• But at present, the IGF is informal, and cannot
  take any commitments or make recommen-dations.
  The difficulties will start when this informal
  model should become more formalized. Would a more
  formal collaboration still be multi-stakeholder?
  Or, in other words, will the multi-stakeholder
  process be able to take the hurdle of
  formalization?

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The special case of UNGIS Implementation by
UN-Agencies and Programs

• UNGIS is a new sub-entity within the Chief
  Executives Board for coordination (CEB) of the
  UN.
• Main task is facilitation (read coordination) of
  implementation of WSIS outcomes by the different
  UN Agencies. UNGIS is not a multi-stakeholder
  body and does not deal with Action Line
  Facilitation. It is a formal body.
• UNGIS was launched by the UNSG Mr. Kofi Annan and
  met for the first time in July 2006.
• 22 UN funds, programs and agencies work under
  rotating chairmanship of ITU and UNESCO (UNDP has
  withdrawn).
• The Group should enable synergies aimed at
  resolving substantive and policy issues, avoiding
  redundancies and enhancing effectiveness of the
  system while raising public awareness about the
  goals and objectives of the global Information
  Society.
• Links between UNGIS and other coordination
  efforts like One UN have not been established
  up to now.

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WSIS-follow-up ECOSOC through CSTD

• ECOSOC decided to carry out its responsibilities
  for overseeing the system-wide follow-up to the
  Summit outcomes in the context of its annual
  consideration of the integrated and coordinated
  implementation and follow-up to all the major
  United Nations conferences.
• ECOSOC decided further that the Commission on
  Science and Technology for Development (CSTD)
  shall effectively assist the Council as the focal
  point in the system-wide follow-up of WSIS.
• The Commission should be strengthened in its
  substantive capacity through the effective and
  meaningful participation of Member States in its
  work, as well as enlarged by the inclusion of 10
  new members
• While preserving the inter-governmental nature of
  the Commission, ECOSOC decided that CSTD should
  make use of the successful multi-stakeholder
  approach that was pioneered by WSIS

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WSIS follow-up Tasks of CSTD

• Tasks of CSTD in relation to the WSIS follow-up
• (a) Review and assess progress at the
  international and regional levels in the
  implementation of action lines, recommendations
  and commitments contained in the outcome
  documents of the Summit including the set of
  connectivity targets of the Geneva Plan of
  Action, to be reached by 2015
• (b) Share best and effective practices and
  lessons learned and identify obstacles and
  constraints encountered, actions and initiatives
  to overcome them and important measures for
  further implementation of the Summit outcomes
• c) Promote dialogue and foster partnerships, in
  coordination with other appropriate United
  Nations funds, programs and specialized agencies,
  to contribute to the attainment of the Summit
  objectives and the implementation of its
  outcomes. 

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WSIS follow-up Challenges of CSTD (1)

• WSIS was a Summit on opportunities. Result many
  recommendations and commitments in numerous
  Action Lines
• The WSIS outcome documents are not scientific
  documents, they are the result of a negotiation,
  and therefore have overlaps and gaps.
• In the Geneva Plan of Action, Chapter B with the
  targets and Chapter C with the Action Lines were
  developed at different times and are not directly
  linked to each other.
• The Tunis documents contain additional themes
  Financial mechanisms, Internet Governance and the
  theme of measuring the Information Society, which
  enter also into the WSIS follow-up.

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WSIS follow-up Challenges of CSTD (2)

• While the targets in chapter B are quantified,
  most recommendations and commitments in chapter C
  (Action Lines) are not quantified and sometimes
  not to quantifiable. Also, the recommendations
  and commitments do usually not specify who would
  be the main protagonist, and have no time frame.
• The sheer number of recommendations and
  commitments makes it very difficult to measure
  progress in implementation. There are so many
  actors, at national, regional and international
  level, and innumerable actions and programs.
• Even if the WSIS follow-up of CSTD is limited to
  regional and international implementation, it is
  a daunting task.

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WSIS follow-up Challenges of CSTD (3)

• There are also institutional challenges for the
  CSTD
• Time constraints the CSTD meets only 5 days per
  year
• Budget constraints The CSTD-budget was not
  increased
• A mix of traditional and new issues WSIS
  follow-up is an additional task, the CSTD has
  important other tasks in the field of Science and
  Technology for development (think e.g. in the
  field of Agriculture, especially now with the new
  food crisis.
• We are still quite far away of a systemwide
  coherent approach of ICTs for development in the
  UN System, and CSTD has no mandate for
  coordination, only UNGIS.

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New content challenges

• Digital divide is becoming a broadband divide
• Inequality in access costs (high interconnection
  costs from the South)
• Improvements necessary on the fiber-optic network
• mobile phones play a much bigger role than what
  we thought in the WSIS process
• Privacy issues will become important

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Multi-stakeholder policy discussion space The
Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID)

• In April 2006 the launch of a Global Alliance for
  Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
  and Development was approved by the UNSG
• The mission of the Global Alliance for ICT and
  Development is to facilitate and promote the use
  of ICT in attainment of internationally agreed
  development goals by providing a platform for an
  open, inclusive, multi-stakeholder cross-sectoral
  policy dialogue on the role of information and
  communication technology in development.  It will
  thus contribute to linking the outcomes of the
  World Summit on the Information Society with the
  broader United Nations development agenda.

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Global Alliance (GAID) (2)

• In July 2006 the participants in the GAID Kuala
  Lumpur Inaugural Meeting agreed on a number of
  approaches and decided that the focus should be
  on the following key priority areas that are
  considered most relevant
• Education
• Health
• Entrepreneurship
• Participation in policy debate and decision
  making (governance).
• GAID organized several events in the past 24
  months, which were well attended by all
  stakeholders. Some events were even organized at
  UN Headquarters in NY, one in Silicon Valley. The
  Chairman of GAID is the former CEO of Intel,
  Craig R. Barrett
• Next GAID event Steering Committee meeting in
  the third week of May in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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Thank you for your attention