U.S. Sees Multistakeholder Model as Critical Alternative to ITU Oversight, Strickling Says
The U.S. thinks multistakeholder governance offers a clear alternative to more ITU and government oversight of the Internet, as embraced by many nations at last year’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), said NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling Thursday at a forum sponsored by the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. The U.S. has two “enduring values” for Internet governance, “inclusion and participation,” and “it has been the steadfast policy of the United States government to promote these values … through our support for the multistakeholder process,” Strickling said.
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The U.S. government is putting substantial work into strengthening the multistakeholder oversight of the Internet, Strickling said. “First, we are working to strengthen existing multistakeholder organizations … to make them as responsive as possible to all stakeholders,” he said. “Second, we are seeking to expand stakeholder participation in treaty-based organizations such as the ITU. Third, we are working to engage the countries of the developing world to understand better whether their needs to develop whatever new responses are needed.”
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has made significant progress in the past year in ensuring that governments have more input in helping set policy, Strickling said, saying the group is opening regional hubs in Istanbul and Singapore. “I believe that these regional hubs will strengthen the perceived legitimacy of ICANN where there may have been skepticism in the past,” he said. “In addition, there has been a steady rise in the number of governments participating in the Government[al] Advisory Committee (GAC) of ICANN.” As more governments embrace GAC, they are less likely to press to move Internet governance decisions to intergovernmental bodies, Strickling said. “We feel our arguments grow that much stronger."
Strickling said “at the end of the day” only member states have a vote at the ITU. “A treaty conference such as the WCIT can never be a true multistakeholder process where all interests are fairly represented,” he said. “Our view is that the issues that affect all Internet stakeholders should be debated where all stakeholders have a voice.” Strickling said that at an ITU Council meeting Thursday morning, a U.S. proposal to open up the working group on the Internet didn’t pass: “But we must continue to press for more openness in these … proceedings wherever we can."
The U.S. government will soon take applications for the contract to operate the .us domain and multistakeholder governance is a key issue, Strickling said. “The current operator of that domain, Neustar, doesn’t operate in a true multistakeholder way and that’s one of the requirements we're going to put on this new round” seeking bids, he said. “Maybe we can set a good example as the U.S. government that others might want to emulate."
ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Touré defended the WCIT and the International Telecommunication Regulations approved at the conference last December, over objections by the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and other nations (CD Dec 17 p1).
"The WCIT concluded with a treaty in the form of a new set of ITRs, which chart a roadmap that promises future connectivity for all and ensures sufficient communications capacity to cope with the ongoing exponential growth in voice, video and data,” Touré told the forum via WebEx. “It was the first conference of its kind at which the developing world was a fully-empowered player at the table -- and unlike the previous ITRs, the new treaty text reflects many developing-country concerns, and is a richer and more powerful document for doing so. The WCIT was the most open and transparent treaty-making conference ever held -- with millions of people able to participate remotely via webcast in the six U.N. languages; social media and interactive briefings; and stakeholders from government, the private sector and civil society all represented in the negotiations."
Richard Hill, president of the Association for Proper Internet Governance, said during a panel at the forum the U.S. faces a real risk in not signing the ITRs. “If we don’t want this fractured Internet … I argue that the best way to avoid that is actually get everybody to sign the ITRs,” he said. “In the absence of international agreements governments are going to do what they want."
"From the view of the countries that did not sign the International Telecommunication Regulations,” WCIT “was a failure,” said Veni Markovski, ICANN regional vice president. “From the points of view of the ones that signed, I don’t know.” Markovski said the ITU is trying to open itself to more interests and it is a multistakeholder process in that companies and nonprofit organizations can participate as sector members. “The difference is that sector members are not allowed to speak at every event and at some events they are not allowed to even be present in the room,” he said.