[NCUC-DISCUSS] ICANN addressing ITU plenary and a plenipot note

[Dina Solveig Jalkanen]

Dear all,

for your information - International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
Plenipotentiary Conference is meeting for the 20th time in Dubai during
during these three weeks. The conference is the top policy-making body
of the ITU deciding on directions of the next 4 years.

Starting promisingly with telegraph and radio, ITU has evolved to also
include a large amount of governmental powerplay and for that reason is
essential event to be aware of, though discouraging in overwhelming
preference for strong regulation but not without positive highlights,
e.g. in the sense of consideration for end user and open source systems
by some African nations.

Yesterday Göran Marby addressed ITU plenipot plenary requesting
consideration for end user within policy making, mentioning
multistakeholder model and offering assistance of ICANN technical
experts on site to any interested government delegations. Given this is
the first plenary address by ICANN, I think it made excellent points in
a very constructive way.

I hope participating in ITU will further positive dialogue among ICANN
and governments on a high policy level, or at the very least awareness
of major country agendas. At the moment one world, one Internet mission
is strongly incompatible with regulation goals of many.

Interesting links:

ITU Plenipotentiary Conference brings more than 2500 ICT decision-makers
together from around the world:
https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/2018-PR33.aspx
From ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zha:
https://news.itu.int/how-itu-is-changing-with-the-world-of-technology-houlin-zhao/

Documents: https://www.itu.int/net4/proposals/PP18#

Seeing governmental policy work, negotiation and fairly aggressive
lobbying highlights the importance of keeping the non-commercial

work going as a united front. I have done a bit of ICANN outreach and as
I see it, dialogue with governments at high level events should offer
something (ready example of policy draft, implementation links, things
to remember) and be patient and respectful. I will not be submitting a
meeting report to NCUC but I hope present ISOC members will share theirs.

Solidarity,

Thomas

-- 
***
Thomas, friendly geek in Amsterdam Chaos
https://wiki.techinc.nl/index.php/User:Thomascovenant