Meetings
OECD Ministerial 'The Future of the Internet Economy'
Date: 6 February 2008
Time: UTC 20.00
Chair: Bill Graham, Stategic Global Engagement
Draft Agenda
- Progress Report, Ministerial Agenda
- Upcoming document review
- Chapter delegate participation and input requested
Minutes
Attendees
- Sebastien Bachollet - ISOC France
- Tony Hill - ISOC Australia
- Franck Martin - PICISOC
- Holly Raiche - ISOC Australia
- Bill Graham - ISOC staff
- Anne Lord - ISOC staff
- Drew Dvorshak - ISOC staff
- Introduction
- OECD background and themes
- Host a one-day forum on the "future of the internet economy";
- Produce a communique or declaration from ITC to provide input to ministerial;
- Help the Ministerial organizers identify some speakers and panelists from the ITC.
- Discussion
Bill introduced himself to the group as it was his first opportunity to speak with the Chapters on a call like this since joining.
Bill described the background to the OECD Ministerial conference in Seoul, which is a follow-up on an e-commerce conference in Ottawa. The focus is creativity, confidence and convergence. ISOC was asked to co-ordinate what they call the Internet Technical community (ITC). Fairly unusual request - in the past it was business and trade unions. 10 years ago they also invited civil society. Now they have added the ITC, which is 13 organizations including ISOC, and ISOC is taking the lead.
There are 3 major components of the Ministerial:
Tony asked whether there will be a ministerial communique coming from the Ministerial part of the meeting. Bill confirmed that there would be and commented that there may also be a discussion of a policy paper. [Anne lost connectivity]
Sebastien commented that ISOC is not only the ITC. He felt that the Chapters are active in CS and need help in this area to reflect that in this conference. Bill replied to say that despite the fact that ISOC is co-ordinating the ITC, he did not feel isolated from the business community (BIAC) or from Civil Society (CS). ISOC has been in touch with these two groups and is co-ordinating with them especially vis-á-vis the forums. Also have agreed to peer review papers to identify synergies etc. The forums are also not closed, so it is possible for people to go back and forth between the two rooms during the day and take part. On the same day there are the 3 forums taking place.
Sebastien further asked who was taking care of the business and the civil society forums on behalf of ISOC? Bill commented that formally no-one but there is a great deal of informal co-ordination and it is early days in terms of organization, planning and collaboration. Sebastien commented that it is a pity that ISOC as a whole is not involved in the two others.
Tony wanted to check what arrangements there were for attendance? Is ISOC planning to endorse any people to attend? Bill explained that registration is open, in theory. However they have heard that there will be registration opened on the Korean government website and people will be asked to identify themselves as part of an organization. ISOC will be asked to vet people from ITC. Because of facility limitations, room will hold 200 people and that is the limit to attend the ministerial. Felt that 200 was a good number for this community.
ISOC will send out an invitation to ISOC membership to see who is interested to attend. ISOC will also send out invitations for people to speak at the forum and to a lesser extent, round table speakers.
Tony said that he would be interested in attending if possible and ISOC AU would be interested to have input. They have worked with ICT sector closely which focusses on innovation. Also have been working on IPv6 and its value to economy and society.
IPv6 will be a major focus of conference. OCED is preparing a paper on it.
A draft agenda for the forum will be sent out to the lists. So far the agenda is shaping up well. When next draft is done it will be shared more broadly within the ISOC community. The forum will be around the 3 main themes. A Minister will be invited. A keynote will be someone from ITC. Talking with BIAC and CS in a preliminary way about the concluding session. May try to hold the concluding session as a joint session. Bringing all 3 together would also add more weight to communiques.
There will be 3 or 4 panels, 15 to 20 speaking or chairing opportunities. The chapters were invited to make suggestions for speakers and to contact Constance or Bill. A more formal invitation will also be sent out. The Speakers for the ministerial itself so far are Vint Cerf, Paul Twomey, Paul Wilson and Leslie Daigle. The organizers have also requested Tim Berners Lee. Either Lynn or Bill will read the communique.
The host country sends out invitation to member ministers plus other countries which are in line to join OECD or important developing countries. Probably in range of 45 countries are invited. Once they know which ministers accept they assign speaking slots to ministers. If this does not fill up, CS, ITC and BIAC will get leftovers.
Tony commented that AU Govt did a study on communications and information technologies and its impact on productivity and growth. This could be an interesting information to this community.
Franck commented that perhaps some speakers from Africa and Asia could also be put forward. Bill agreed and said that Nii Quaynor, Jun Murai and others are there.. diversity is important.
Franck asked what ISOC's main message for this meeting is? Bill said 1) promotion of the Open standards development process, end to end architecture and retaining ability for innovation at edges and 2) specifically, importance of IPv6 rollout, and discussion about need for support to research programmes, infrastructure roll out and access. The current thinking on communique will be that it will list things important (as mentioned above), openness, impartiality etc. Another section will list things we commit ourselves to doing, like maintaining and open and collaborative community, to offer a platform for creativity. He further commented that there are two angles on confidence 1 - network more resilient and 2- measures to give end users confidence while using the Internet.
Tony wanted to re-iterate importance openness and architectures in context of Australian government. Suggested one other item for consideration. Whether users of networks get access to transport protocol. Often users are insulated from this. Franck commented that pricing models were an important aspect of access. Franck also indicated it is as important to speak of the good Internet than of the bad Internet to ensure that politics have trust in the technical people to work on the issues that are part of "Internet Trust and Identity". The suggestions were noted.
Bill said the next meeting with OCED in in March. Will also speak with other communities to see how we can co-ordinate more.
Bill thanked everyone for their valuable comments, input and time for the call.
