The presentation containing key points from all the sessions at the Geneva Internet Conference 2014

2. One Internet – many policy angles
 Existing ad hoc cooperation among international
organisations
 Nurture bottom-up cooperation – avoid ‘THE’ solution.
 If cooperation is too structured, it may harm de facto
cooperation
 Non-technical organisations still grapple with technical
aspects
 Develop IG toolbox (Swiss knife) which could include:
traditional tools (conventions), innovative solutions
(UDRP), bottom-up initiatives
Global policy silos are replicated on regional and
natoinal levels.

3. Mapping of the IG Landscape –
actors, policies, and issues
 There is a lack of IG mapping. Mapping is important to grasp
the IG field and avoid paralysis by complexity
 Mapping should be dynamic
 Need for simple (but not too simple) access to IG field for
many actors
 Use proven iterative approach: define the problem, identify
options to solve it, chose the best one, implement it, and then
evaluate

4. Same issues, different perspectives:
Overcoming policy silos in privacy and data
protection
 Two eras: Before and after Snowden revelations
 Major focus in human rights community; still low
coverage in trade and other policy spaces
 Problem in communication between engineers and
politicians or diplomats (language, different framing of
problems)
 Use examples such as Council of Europe that has most
of policy aspects under ‘one roof’: human rights, data
protection, cybercrime

5. Legal framework, jurisdiction, and
enforcement in IG
 (Il)legal online – (Il)legal offline
 ‘Enforcement is a nightmare and downright impossible’
 Existing law is not sufficient (data protection)
 Need for innovative solutions in implementation
(innovate with wisdom of legal profession)

6. Inclusion in digital policy:
e-participation and capacity development
 E-participation is not about technology, stupid!
 Ultimate criterion for inclusiveness is effective e-participation
 With e-participation, meetings are not the same any
more!
 Should ‘e’ and ‘in situ’ participants attend event on
‘equal footing’?
Everybody has to be invovled – yet, the key role of
chairperson and moderators

7. How do actors cope with complexity?
 Hard. Complexity often leads to policy paralysis
 But. Complexity is not necessary bad. It is reality
 How do we harness and harvest complexity?
 Difficult. Some emerging tendencies
 Shift of IG to premier league of global politics
 Shift to the highest national authorities (presidents and
prime minister)
 In business, IG emerges at board level - It matters!

8. Aim for full transparency –
accept exceptional translucency
 Transparency can lead towards ‘information overload’ and
potential paralysis by abundance of data
 Need translucency – transparency about not being
transparent in some cases
 Data transparency – Process transparency – Strategic
transparency – Transformational transparency
 Context is the king – you never know in what context
information will be interpreted – how to deal with it?
 Transparency must be institionalised and anchored in
robust processes

9. Subsidiarity: How to make IG decisions at
the appropriate level?
 Avoid unrealistic harmonisation of IG – aim for realistic
decentralisation
 Context is essential – adaptation to local is the key
 Simplify the message and adjust the language
 Can diversity on the edge be translated to diversity in
policy space?
 Subsidiarity will function if there is democracy,
participation, transparency and trust
 Thin line between subsidiarity and fragmentation

10. Evidence in Internet governance:
measurement and data-mining
 ‘More than defining the tools to measure data, it is
important to know what you want to collect and why’
 ‘We don’t know who knows what we need to know’
 Need for simple access to IG field for many actors