In the late 1990s, we were deeply involved on what is today known as “Internet Governance” thanks to the old SDNP programme. Close to 10 national SDNP programmes were either managing national CC TLDs or were directly involved in DNS issues. 10 SDNP managers and staff attended the ICANN meeting in Marina del Rey, California which took place between 13 and 16 November 2000. At the meeting, we played a very active role using the SDNP multi-stakeholder approach as a great presentation card.
By the end of the 2nd phase of WSIS and the creation of the Internet Governance Forum in 2005, our role had significantly decreased due to closing of the SDNP project (although those SDNPs that became independent organizations continued to work on this on their own) and the increasing complexity of the issue -including a heavy anti-UN sentiment which emerged after rumours about a UN takeover of the Internet became fashionable.
At any rate, I have been following “Internet Governance” from a distance and can gather that many of the issues that we discussed in the early 2000s are still on the table. In the meanwhile, ICANN has become a truly powerful non-for-profit corporation.
This until last week when I received an invitation from Nii Quaynor to join one of the Strategy Panels that ICANN launched back in July of this year.
Nii is heading the panel on Public Responsibility. Yesterday, I was contacted by ICANN directly and received the draft note for the panel.
We are scheduled to meet in Buenos Aires in mid-November for the first and only F2F meeting.
Cheers, Raúl
