User:Solstag/E-participation and Internet Governance

Diplo IGCBP 2010 Research Phase

Working title

E-participation and Internet Governance, towards more open evaluation and improvement of IGF's remote hub model.

Author

Alexandre Hannud Abdo

Executive summary

By opening up participation through remote hubs, the Internet Governance Forum stands up to its mission of inclusiveness, diversity and legitimacy. Given their strategic importance and the sheer volume of the hubs respective to the size of the forum itself, a lot more can and should be done in terms of remote participation, but we still do not publicly make sense of their role right now. Despite all the effort of the volunteer-driven Remote Participation Working Group to promote remote participation and the workshops held at the IGF, they lack the resources to do a broad and comprehensive assessment. Here it is proposed that further and deeper research be conducted in terms of the success, effects and expectations belonging to remote participation, while building a dialogue that already explores paths and paves roads to fulfill its greater promises. In agreement with principles of evidence-based and participatory policy research, we pursue a combination of methods which brings together interviews, hard data and the exchange of ideas between participants. In addition, we expect that our research will assist in the continuous improvement of the organization, transparency and publicity of the remote participation working group.

Introduction and objectives

This is a proposal for research on e-participation in the Internet Governance process, focusing on the performance and potential of the remote participation hubs during the Internet Governance Forum. Today, a great amount of effort is put worldwide in remote participation, yet resources are scarce to properly and openly evaluate their performance, exchange best practices and innovate the model, thus jeopardizing its long term goals.

Internet governance is an international and multistakeholder endeavor. However, the balanced participation of people from all nations and sectors of society is not inherent to it. To ensure the existence of a force pushing towards this balance, the Internet Governance Forum was formed. It is structured to give voice to a large number of countries and players, but requires global mobilization and, as much as it constitutes an event that takes place in a specific time and place, it will always lack conditions to accommodate everyone involved. Recognizing that, remote hubs were formed as a form of engaging people worldwide and to extend the physical location of the discussions, promoting a more inclusive debate.

During IGF 2010, the number of remote hubs surpassed thirty, with an average expected attendance of about 37 people. They evolve in number, but also in form. From simple distributed audiences into effective participants, organizing pre-meeting activities and joining debates taking place at the main event in real-time video. From momentary side projects with an expiration date to research and advocacy groups revolving around Internet Governance issues. With possibly over a thousand participants, the hubs already rival the main event, and are likely ahead in terms of diversity.

Given that, it is quite odd that there seems to be a lack of in depth evaluation of the hubs' organization, either in terms of their local ties to society and governments or their global connections in the IGF arena, regarding its effectiveness to advance the IGF's mission. Beyond that, there is also little public discussion about their future directions, and no effective common platform exists to assist their intercommunication and knowledge exchange, which could help build stronger ties between hubs and help them recognize shared agendas in preparation for the IGF and other meetings.

This research proposal aims to fill some of those gaps, bringing forth the structure of relationships between hubs and other stakeholders in order to evaluate their overall performance both in terms of connecting the IGF to their local realities and of ably articulating their interests within the forum.

Background and questions

Over the years, the websites for the IGF and Remote Participation Working Group have been publishing information about the state of remote participation and reflecting its progress. Still, the only broad report available is a rather technical and outdated one, while more current efforts to establish an evaluation of the process are fragmented, such as the individual remote hub reports and a survey conducted by the working group. There is also a mailing list of hub organizers, with discussions centered around issues pertaining to the hubs' preparation, training and later reporting.

In addition to online records, the working group holds a workshop at the IGF, as a moment of open, concerted discussion on the issue, with the direct transcripts of such being available.

However, as remote participation is recognized as a requirement for broader inclusion, achieving the IGF's goal of a global forum demands more dedicated, and accordingly inclusive, research on this topic.

This study proposal concerns unveiling and organizing unknown or unexplored information and ideas about the IGF's remote participation process. Therefore, its questions are initially very open-ended. "How far have the hubs influenced the IGF?", "How can we better organize them so the input is more thoughtful, representative, and has more impact in the forum?", "What technological advances did actually help, and when did they just get in the way?", "What kind of innovative socio-technological practices could the process incorporate?", "When are general conclusions possible and when do regional differences play a more significant role in the previous questions?".

The material available and the information gathered so far by others tends to focus on narrower issues and single-actor approaches, so little structured insight can be drawn regarding the questions just mentioned. To facilitate the cumulative exchange of ideas and reflection on the process by and between its participants, our proposal is to address these issues by designing a strategy of participative research based on an interplay between real-time interviews, data analysis and open construction of knowledge that will attempt to provoke participants into reflection - and action.

IGF's pending mandate and the EuroDIG

It must be noted that the IGF is currently undergoing review by the UN Secretary General, and its mandate is pending renewal. This can be seen as a source of uncertainty for this proposal, but also as an opportunity, or even necessity of it.

Despite the success of remote participation, it is officially still in its infancy, being carried out as an informal activity within the IGF. Sprung from years of struggle by devoted volunteers, it has become something to be recorded, stimulated and applauded, yet nothing in the formal process requires it. A new mandate, even if renewed, will have a new secretariat which might, or might not, understand its importance.

Therefore, at this point, the outcome of this research proposal can be of major importance to establish remote participation as a indissociable constituent of the Internet Governance Forum.

However, and specially regarding its participatory aspects, there would be no able time for that. It is therefore suggested that this might be adapted, more immediately and on a smaller scale, to the European regional process currently running towards EuroDIG, which, inspired by the IGF, has incorporated remote participation in much the same way.

Research methodology

Before establishing methodologies, it is important to describe more specifically what data do we need to gather and what kind of analysis is expected. To reach our aforementioned goals we require to know, for participants of each remote hub, what other players have they connected to, for what purpose and in what manner; how much did they care about creating a learning or politically meaningful environment - both locally and within the IGF - and how they thought they could achieve that; how they evaluate these accomplishments in terms of their strategy, and what were the main obstacles encountered.

In order to get that data, interviews are necessary, either by voice or in writing but preferably live. Then, in particular for relationship data, analysis should be carried out with standard methods of social network analysis and combined with the other data, treated with usual statistics, to extract correlations and test models based on the findings.

In parallel, more participatory involvement will be sought by making each interview available, or as much of it as the interviewed permits, to the other interviewees, letting them comment on each other's impressions and inform the directions of future interviews and analysis.

Since there is little officially reported data on the subject of remote participation hubs, this research relies on interacting with both the IGF's Remote Participation Working Group plus coordinators and participants of the hubs. Beyond those, it may be interesting to also reach participants of the main IGF event not involved in the remote participation process, and members of IG related institutions local to where hubs exist.

Besides the interviews, sources of research data include currently unpublished documents by the working group, historical remote participation records kept by the IGF organization, and the records described in the Background section of this proposal, such as workshop transcripts, hub reports and mailing lists.

Evaluation and dissemination

This research proposal aims at investigating the views and ideas of actors involved in the IGF to capture the want or need for organizational innovation in the process of remote participation, given its current dimensions. Therefore, it does not present a closed set of alternative policy choices. In its context, evaluation can only be understood in the broad terms of achieving that objective. Indicators would be the number of actors we manage to involve, their diversity, and if they manage to communicate, reflect and implement ideas regarding the future of remote participation in the IGF.

At the core of this proposal is the dissemination of this vision, and within it that of the actors themselves. So the methods for dissemination are those same methods described in the methodology, plus any shared organizational needs pointed out by the community or observed by the researcher. That may be, for example, the need for a permanent aggregator, wiki, blog, or forum serving the purpose of this research.

In regards to previously available material, one concrete expected outcome is to provide a systematic presentation of all pertaining documentation, together with its context and an overall history of remote participation in the IG process.

Budget and work programme

Spending for this research project would depend on its scale and depth. Here we will consider the case where data collection takes place over a period of seven months, starting with preparations for the IGF and finishing with its aftermath. The analysis of the data and should then take another five months, during which the consequences of engaging participants in the research process, regarding sustained exchanges between them, can also be evaluated.

The main steps of this programme, and respective costs, are:

1st month

getting inside information and deciding how and whom to interview

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

US$2,000.00 » travel to IGF Open Consultation, may happen later on

US$500.00 » customization and hosting of web applications

2nd month

interviews with IGF leaders and the remote hub working group

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

US$500.00 » customization and hosting of web applications

3nd month

interviews with former remote hub leaders and participants

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

4nd month

more interviews with former remote hub participants and leaders

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

5nd month

organizing the call for remote participation hubs; collectively deciding on a communications platform

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

US$2,000.00 » customization and possible development of web applications

6nd month

assisting the process of remote hub preparation; assorted follow-up interviews

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

7nd month

final preparations; IGF 2011; remote participation data collection

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

US$3,000.00 » travel to IGF

8th month

post-IGF interviews; data processing

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

9th month

post-IGF interviews; data analysis; seeding continuity through remote exchanges

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

10th month

data analysis; facilitating and evaluating community exchange

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

11th month

writing of report; adjusting the environment for the community"

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

US$500.00 » customization and hosting of web applications

12th month

entrance to the next cycle; writing a second, more forward-looking report

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

Totals

US$24,000.00 » Salary

US$5,000.00 » Travel

US$3,500.00 » Infrastructure

Sum

US$32,500.00

Small-scale pilot for EuroDIG

This is a small scale pilot directed towards EuroDIG, as discussed in the Background section. If diplo is to provide tutoring and mentoring for the project, this is what it should be looking at. The proponents of this proposal have no current source of funds, but would be willing to do part of this work, specifically the month and a half preceding the tutoring period, on a voluntary basis. However, it would be welcome if Diplo and the assigned mentor could assist in fundraising for this project.

1st half-month

engaging the ongoing process and interviewing remote participants

December 1 to December 15

US$1,000.00 » salary of the researcher

2nd month

seek and publicly organize documentation and data on remote participation in the EuroDIG

December 15 to January 15

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

3nd month

interviews EuroDIG oragnizers and participants of remote hubs from previous EuroDIGs, calling for input on the documentation organized

January 15 to February 15

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

4nd month

analyze and summarize the findings, producing a report

February 15 to March 15

US$2,000.00 » salary of the researcher

Totals

US$7,000.00 » Salary

Sum

US$7,000.00