Barbara Wanner Archives

ICC Identifies Business Priorities for Digital Economy

Published on October 23, 2014
L-R: Eric Loeb, chair of USCIB’s ICT Committee and chair of ICC’s Task Force on Internet and Telecommunication, and Christoph Steck, co-chair of ICC”s Task Force on Internet and Communications.
L-R: Eric Loeb, chair of USCIB’s ICT Committee and chair of ICC’s Task Force on Internet and Telecommunication, and Christoph Steck, co-chair of ICC”s Task Force on Internet and Communications.

Gathering 34 business experts representing companies and organizations leading the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) policy work on information and communication technologies (ICTs), the biannual meeting of the ICC Commission on the Digital Economy identified next steps on priority topics for global business including Internet governance, privacy and cyber-security, and trade facilitation – and linking these specific priorities to overall strategic ICC messages. The event took place at ICC global headquarters in Paris on September 30 and October 1.

In remarks to the commission, ICC Secretary General John Danilovich said ICC plays a leadership role on behalf of world business in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) through the ICC Business Action to Support the Information Society (BASIS).

“While attending the last IGF in Turkey, I was able to see first-hand some of the issues carried by this commission and how, through your work and that of the BASIS initiative, ICC is able to lead global business engagement in the forum,” he said.

In the context of a strategic discussion on Internet governance, Alhadeff and Eric Loeb, chair of the commission’s Task Force on Internet and Telecommunications and chair of USCIB’s ICT Committee, suggested that the preparation of the commission’s Global Action Plan – a compilation of business positions on digital economy policies – should strive to highlight the relevance of these issues to all sectors, as well as their relevance to the work of other ICC commissions and top-line business messages.

Staff contact: Barbara Wanner

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USCIB Calls to Strengthen Improve the Internet Governance Forum

Published on September 5, 2014

Digital Globe

When the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 60 years ago, negotiators had no idea that Article 19 would speak directly to Internet governance years later: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and important information and ideas through any media regardless of borders.”

The annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a conference under UN auspices that serves as a neutral space for all stakeholder groups to discuss policies affecting the Internet. The IGF gives stakeholders the chance to understand how to maximize Internet opportunities and address common challenges.

Nearly 3,500 stakeholders from business, government, civil society, the technical community and academia representing 135 countries gathered in Istanbul for the 9th Internet Governance Forum. Barbara Wanner, USCIB’s vice president for ICT policy, attended this year’s IGF along with USCIB members and global business colleagues under the aegis of the International Chamber of Commerce’s BASIS (Business Action to Support the Information Society) initiative.

The global business community supports extending the authorization of the IGF beyond its five year mandate. Business also called for improvements to the IGF aimed at preserving its essential “DNA” as a unique multistakeholder laboratory for thoughtful, useful and non-binding considerations of increasingly complex Internet governance issues. The week culminated with strong endorsements from virtually all stakeholders for the continuation of an IGF that is evolving to address the challenges of an ever-changing Internet.

The business community’s main messages and initiatives are summarized below.

IFG is not NETMundial

The 9th IGF found itself at an important inflexion point coming as it did four months after Brazil’s well-received NETMundial meeting — which produced negotiated, non-binding Internet governance (IG) principles. Some stakeholder groups have urged remaking the IGF in the NETMundial mold, but the business community maintains that the IGF does not lend itself to producing unitary, negotiated outcomes.

While the NETMundial is focused on two objectives, the IGF enables discussion of dozens of different Internet governance issues yielding tens of dozens of different recommendations. ICC-BASIS emphasized that while IGF improvements might include tangible deliverables, such as best practices and more “portable” capacity-building lessons, the IGF was not designed to be a forum for negotiated outcomes.

Letter to the UN General Assembly

Another important initiative that evolved during the week was the development of a multistakeholder letter to the UN Secretary General. The letter advocated an “open-ended mandate” for the IGF, which would facilitate the strengthening of IGF procedures, enable participants to secure long-term funding for projects, and support the IGF Trust Fund.

ICC-BASIS supported the concept of the letter. However, BASIS withheld formally signing on pending further work on language that business believes will offer a more compelling message to the UN Secretariat. The letter ultimately went back to the drawing board to address the concerns of business and other stakeholders.

Financial Support for the IGF

On September 1, the Internet Society (ISOC) announced the launch of the IGF Support Association. This organization will support the continuation of the IGF through increased funding. It will also seek and promote exchange and collaboration with national and regional IGFs, among other initiatives. USCIB Members Cheryl Miller (Verizon) and Virat Bhatia (AT&T) were elected to the Executive Committee.

Bolster Regional and National Internet Governance Forums

Participants largely agreed that an important means of bridging the digital divide and bringing the Internet to “the next 500 billion users,” is fostering more robust Internet governance discussions at both national and regional IGFs. BASIS concurred, urging an “omni-directional dialogue” across national and regional IGFs.

Workshops

USCIB Members made important contributions to several workshops focusing on topics as diverse as evaluating multistakeholder mechanisms, privacy and trust, ICTs and trade, and the potential of cloud computing for emerging economies.

Read full reports of IGF workshops.

ICC BASIS also weighed in at other sessions of interest, which addressed issues such as IGF intersessional work, net neutrality, the transition of the stewardship of IANA Internet domain name management functions, and enhancing the institutional accountability of ICANN.

More coverage of the Internet Governance Forum (ICC website)

Staff contact: Barbara Wanner

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Global Business Says Policy Decisions Don’t Fulfill Internets Full Potential

Published on July 10, 2014

green globe keyboardThe International Chamber of Commerce has reasserted its commitment to strengthening the Internet as an enabler of business and economic growth, saying that more needs to be done today to ensure its continued development as an open platform for innovation, creativity and the free flow of information.

ICC BASIS (Business Action to Support the Information Society) will use its presence at the 9th annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF), taking place in Istanbul, Turkey from September 2-5 to address how Internet policy decision-making is not going far enough to capitalize on the Internet’s potential for creating new commercial and social opportunities for users around the world.

USCIB, which is a member of ICC-BASIS, will participate in the IGF 2014 in Istanbul, supporting BASIS’ efforts to promote an approach to Internet governance that enables business to reap the benefits of the digital economy. As part of its focus at the September meeting, ICC BASIS has also affirmed its belief that the existing multistakeholder model of governance is the best way to ensure the creation of policy that maximizes opportunities for future Internet innovation, and is the most effective means of informing Internet policy decision-making at the government level.

ICC Secretary General John Danilovich said: “The world is becoming ever more dependent on the Internet to drive social change and attain regional economic growth and prosperity. Global business is dedicated to doing all it can to encourage the adoption of policy that supports the use of the Internet in new ways to connect people with ideas, create jobs, boost trade and reverse the cycle of poverty. At a time when management of the Internet is under scrutiny, we urge the policy-making community to not lose sight of the continued need to focus on creating pro-growth, socially proactive policies designed to keep the Internet open for future generations.”

BASIS welcomes the opportunity offered by IGF to galvanize thinking among the multistakeholder community through consensus, and to engage in dialogue on central issues. These include the protection of the Internet as a vehicle of innovation, respect for the rule of law, access, enhancing digital trust and the importance of maintaining cross-border and global flows of information.

Read more on the ICC website.

Staff contact: Barbara Wanner

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Multistakeholder Internet Governance Model Lauded at OECD

Published on June 23, 2014

Reports

4766_image004Coming on the heels of the stock-taking meeting of  the World Summit of the Information Society earlier this month, The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Committee on Digital Economy Policy (CDEP) met last week in Paris to review policies affecting the development and use of information and communications technologies (ICTs). The committee held several sessions on the OECD Internet Policy Principles, the planned 2016 OECD Ministerial, revisions of the OECD Internet Security Guidelines and other issues relating to Internet governance.

USCIB is the American affiliate of the Business and Industry Advisory Council
to the OECD, which supports a multistakeholder model for Internet governance that upholds freedoms of information and expression, as opposed to a framework that would allow for unnecessary government intrusion and censorship.

USCIB’s Vice President for ICT policy, Barbara Wanner, reports that the CDEP meetings from June 16 to 20 focused on the relevance of the OECD’s 2011 Internet Policy Principles given current international developments in Internet governance. In addition, representatives from at least 30 OECD member states as well as the EU, BIAC, the Industrial Technology and Assistance Corporation, and Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council of the OECD forged a new path to revise the 2002 Security Guidelines, discussed plans for the ministerial, and determined work-streams that will support ministerial preparations.

High-Level Session on Internet Policy Principles

A special high-level session on the OECD’s Internet Policy Principles (IPP) featured senior government officials from the United States, Germany, Brazil, the UK, Sweden, and Korea, all of whom extolled the value of the IPP as providing a stable framework to use in addressing Internet governance issues in various domestic and global forums. The IPP promote the global free flow of information and seek to ensure an open and interconnected Internet.

Virgilio Almeida, Brazil’s secretary of information technology policies and chair of NETMundial pointed out that proponents of the multistakeholder model need to develop a compelling narrative for global Internet governance. This will help to broaden support among developing countries for a bottom-up approach to governance aimed at keeping the Internet open, stable, and resilient. In this regard, Almeida said the need for such a narrative presents the OECD with a unique opportunity to tap its core competence in evidence-based research. The OECD should undertake economic analysis that highlights the economic and developmental benefits that can be realized through access to the Internet, Almeida urged.

A related theme in several speakers’ remarks concerned the importance of institutional capacity building aimed at enabling more developing countries to understand and implement an IPP-based approach to Internet Governance. Olof Ehrenkrona, senior advisor to the Swedish minister for foreign affairs, observed that “those of us who believe yesterday is better than today will never prevail tomorrow.”  He cautioned that while the IPPs have “become main-stream” in only three years, there still are countries – he called out Russia, in particular – that are considering legislation that will open the door to censorship and other principles and practices antithetical to the OECD Principles. OECD members therefore need to do a better job of engaging developing countries and help them to understand the economic, developmental, and societal benefits of maintaining an open Internet.

2016 Ministerial

The three day conference, which will be along the lines of the OECD’s 2008 Seoul Ministerial on the “Future of the Internet Economy,” will be held in either late April or mid-May 2016 in Cancun, Mexico. It will be preceded by one-day parallel forums for stakeholders including BIAC. The proposed theme for the ministerial is “Digital Innovation Transforming Societies.”

BIAC urged that non-government stakeholders participate on the special steering group that will formed to plan to Ministerial.

Revision of the 2002 OECD Internet Security Guidelines

During a special drafting session on June 17, USCIB members who participated in the BIAC delegation made important contributions aimed at clarifying conceptual elements, improving definitions of key terms and addressing potential ambiguities in the second draft of the revised Security Guidelines. Earlier in the year, USCIB had submitted a number of substantive comments and editorial changes to the first draft.  Key points of the June 17 discussion included:

  • The Guidelines should apply to both the government and the business. BIAC noted that, unlike the earlier version, the second draft offers a less “top-down” approach to the development and implementation of frameworks for managing risk in a digital ecosystem.
  • More work is needed to clarify scope and definitions.
  • A new principle on international cooperation is warranted, with greater emphasis on public-private cooperation, particularly in the development of strategies for managing risk in a digital economy.
  • The term “participants” should be replaced with “stakeholders.” BIAC clarified that “stakeholders” include a range of people providing inputs “as appropriate to their role.”

OECD members will consider at least three more drafts and hold a second, in-person drafting session sometime in October with the goal of sending a final version to the CDEP for approval in December 2014. USCIB, through BIAC, will utilize these additional opportunities to help further improve and refine the revised Guidelines.

Staff contact: Barbara Wanner

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WSIS Success Despite Controversy Over Freedom of Speech

Published on June 12, 2014

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4756_image003Government officials, business leaders and members of civil society and the technical community assembled in Geneva from June 10 to 13 for the stock-taking meeting of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) to review decade-long progress on promoting the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) as engines of economic and social development.

USCIB’s Barbara Wanner, vice president of ICT policy, attended the event as a representative of private-sector interests in WSIS’s efforts to maintain a multistakeholder model for Internet governance and to bridge the digital divide between developed and developing countries.

“The WSIS review process provides a unique opportunity to share and evaluate local and national initiatives that advance the Information Society, putting in place actions to improve and replicate those initiatives,” explained Jean-Guy Carrier, secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). “It offers a valuable forum for reviewing progress made across the past decade in implementing outcomes from those initial meetings in Geneva and Tunis.”

Coordinated by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and co-organized by UNESCO, UNCTAD and UNDP, the summit convened high-ranking officials who endorsed a proposal that presents a vision of bridging the digital divide by unleashing ICTs as engines of development. Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of ITU, said the proposal was developed in an open process than involved the participation of all stakeholder groups, including business.

A recurring theme throughout the discussions was that a multistakeholder model is the best way to address Internet governance. Daniel Sepulveda, deputy assistant secretary of state for international communications and information policy, captured this sentiment in his remarks: “No one country, no one institution, no one stakeholder can succeed alone. We will have to fulfill the WSIS goals together, acknowledging our success to date and overcoming remaining challenges together.”

Controversy Over Freedom of Speech

Participants hit an impasse regarding an important element of the WSIS document that addressed the role of ICTs in promoting freedom of the press.  A coalition led by the UK, which included the United States, Sweden, ICC-BASIS (Business Action to Support the Information Society), Cisco and Microsoft, promoted language that affirmed that: (1) the principles of freedom of expression and the free flow of information, ideas, and knowledge are essential for the knowledge society and economic development; (2) the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, including the right to privacy; and (3) the safety of all journalists, media workers, bloggers and their sources must be assured.

Iran, Cuba and Saudi Arabia strongly opposed this language, leading to an impasse. But in an eleventh-hour effort to salvage a consensus on the document, UNESCO offered a compromise: the UNESCO proposal eliminated language extending protections to bloggers and sources, but continued to ground the right of freedom of expression in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In spite of this and other disagreements, and thanks to appeals made by Toure and Multistakeholder Preparatory Platform (MPP) Chair Vladimir Minkin, all participants eventually endorsed the WSIS post-2015 Vision Statement, which incorporated the UNESCO compromise. The final outcome reflects a consensus among stakeholders throughout the world on the importance of the WSIS Action Lines in catalyzing economic development through ICT, according to Wanner.

Nevertheless, some WSIS participants remain concerned that certain countries may seize on the disagreements that emerged during the MPP process and the eleventh-hour manner in which the final agreement was reached as demonstrating the limits of the multistakeholder model. It is possible these critics will further argue that such discord warrants greater governmental oversight of Internet governance.

“It will be ever-more important to continue to actively engage in initiatives and outreach aimed at building bridges with developing countries that fortify support for the multistakeholder model of Internet governance,” Wanner said.

USCIB Helps Shape Course of Internet Stewardship Transition

USCIB’s comments have been cited in a document released by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) regarding the transition of Internet stewardship from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to the global mulitstakeholder community.

USCIB’s comments appear to have helped shape the decision to expand representation of business and other stakeholder groups in the IANA Transition Coordination Committee, according to Barbara Wanner, vice president of ICT policy.

ICC-BASIS (International Chamber of Commerce – Business Action to Support the Information Society) was assigned a seat on the coordination committee to serve as a representative of the larger business community.

Read ICANN’s “Process to Develop Proposal and Next Steps.”

 

Staff contact: Barbara Wanner

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NetMundial Conference in Brazil Debates Future of Internet Governance

Published on April 28, 2014

4717_image001At last week’s NETMundial Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance in Sao Paolo, Brazil, a diverse array of Internet stakeholders reached agreement on a non-binding document, the “Multistakeholder Statement of Sao Paulo.” This followed two days of intense work to develop a set of Internet governance principles, as well as a “roadmap” for the future evolution of the Internet governance ecosystem.

Barbara Wanner, USCIB’s vice president for information, communications and technology policy, attended the event along with scores of USCIB members and hundreds of business representatives from around the world. All told, over a thousand Internet stakeholders from business, government, civil society and the technical community – from nearly a hundred countries – took part in NetMundial, many from remote hubs set up to facilitate participation.

NETMundial Chair Vergilio Almeida, Brazil’s secretary of IT policy, hailed the two-day event as a “threshold of a new beginning,” not an end destination, and a “milestone in the history of Internet governance.” He said the multistakeholder statement might not be a “perfect document,” but nevertheless represented a significant achievement having been produced by a bottom-up process that encompassed input from literally all over the world.

Wanner said the multistakeholder statement reflected important discussions on key aspects of Internet policy of interest to USCIB members and global business. On net neutrality, for example, despite strong support from civil society and some governments to include a specific reference to net neutrality as an Internet governance principle, business and its allies advocated effectively for inclusion of net neutrality as a “point to be further discussed beyond NETMundial” requiring better understanding and further discussion.

On intellectual property, Wanner said business successfully advocated for the inclusion of language on IP as part of the statement’s Human Rights principle, which states that everyone should have the right to access, share, create and distribute information on the Internet, consistent with the rights of authors and creators as established in law. In addition, business and its allies worked to secure key language upholding IP rights in the principle calling for an “enabling environment for innovation and creativity.”

Other parts of the multistakeholder statement addressed protection of Internet intermediaries, privacy and surveillance, and the future of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Wanner said USCIB is monitoring follow-up to NetMundial closely and will coordinate the elaboration of additional business views with members, the International Chamber of Commerce and our other global business partners.

Staff contacts: Barbara Wanner

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Geneva Conference on Facilitating Trade in the Digital Economy

Published on April 18, 2014
The ICC attracted more than 125 participants from 24 countries.
The ICC attracted more than 125 participants from 24 countries.

Business and government representatives from around the world came together in Geneva on April 8 and 9 to investigate how electronic systems can replace paper-based trade and administrative processes in key business areas such as customs, taxation and public procurement.

Leading experts from governments in emerging and industrialized markets, companies, law firms, and business and intergovernmental organizations gathered to share their vision on how stakeholders can work together to develop Internet governance, and apply practical standards and principles needed for efficient paperless trade.

“A more coordinated international approach to digital interactions would improve trade flows considerably,” stated ICC Secretary General Jean-Guy Carrier in opening the conference, a timely follow-up to a March 10 USCIB/OECD conference in Washington, D.C. focusing on growth, jobs and prosperity in the digital age.

The overriding conviction shared by conference participants was that paperless trade can help governments and companies reap substantial savings, while increasing the security of transactions and contributing to economic growth and social development.

Statistically speaking, paperless trade was said to increase productivity by more than 20 percent on average. However, this represents only part of the potential savings, the lack of coordination among regulators using different approaches to control digital trade continue to hamper solutions that could make massive savings available to all parties through improved efficiency in e-customs, e-public procurement and e-tax.

“Governments worldwide use ICT to work more effectively with business,” said Joseph Alhadeff (Oracle), chair of ICC’s Commission on the Digital Economy. “Regulations and processes, however, often vary, even within countries, meaning that the ways in which countries approach electronic trade procedures and e-government is increasing in variety and complexity.

“This comes with its own set of challenges and results in many different – and often conflicting – approaches to the ways businesses and governments interact electronically. Business and government regulators need to collaborate and coordinate more effectively in order to improve electronic trade procedures in a mutually beneficial way.”

Read more on ICC’s website.

Staff contacts: Barbara Wanner

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Business and OECD Plan Major Conference on Internet Policy

Published on December 11, 2013

At this week’s meetings in Paris of the OECD Committee on Information, Communications, and Computer Policy, OECD member states learned details of a major conference being developed USCIB, BIAC (the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD), and the OECD. The conference, “Growth, Jobs, & Prosperity in the Digital Age: OECD Shapes the Policy Environment,” will be held March 10, 2014 in Washington, D.C.

In opening remarks to the OECD Working Party on the Information Economy, Anne Carblanc
of the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry (STI) urged member governments to participate in the conference, which will highlight the OECD’s work on challenges and opportunities in growing the digital economy. “Through this program, we hope to increase the visibility of OECD work in context of Internet commons,” she said.

The half-day conference, which will be held at the Microsoft Policy and Innovation Center in Washington, will feature commentary by STI Director Andrew Wyckoff, senior U.S. officials, and leading industry experts. Their remarks will build upon topics explored during this week’s OECD meetings, including: enhancing trust and boosting innovation in the digital ecosystem, jobs and entrepreneurship, defending stakeholder principles in Internet governance and ensuring cross-border data flows. (The conference agenda will be available soon.)

By mid-week, OECD members had made progress on a number of important initiatives, according to Barbara Wanner, USCIB’s vice president for ICT policy. These include:

–          further work on a survey study on the economics of, “Copyright in the Age of the Internet”

–          agreement to revise the OECD 2002 Security Guidelines, building on the year-long work of the Security Experts Group – to which USCIB members directly contributed\

–          possible work on new study on the economics of the transition to IPv6 – the latest revision of the Internet Protocol, which provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet.

BIAC and USCIB representatives provided informed commentary on each of these projects and will monitor them closely as they progress.

Staff contact: Barbara Wanner

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USCIB Members Enrich Discussions at Internet Governance Forum

Published on October 25, 2013

4625_image001USCIB co-organized two workshops at the 8th Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which took place October 21-25 in Bali, Indonesia, enabling USCIB members and other stakeholder groups to make important substantive contributions on Internet governance, mobile telephony and use of the cloud in emerging economies, and the economic engine of digital trade.

At the IGF, some 2,000 participants from business, government, civil society and the technical community participated in nearly 250 workshops aimed at exploring such varied topics as the principles of Internet governance and the multi-stakeholder model of governance, the Internet as an engine for growth and sustainable development, and human rights, freedom of expression, and free flow of information on the Internet.

Mobile communications’ expanding reach

On October 22, Jacquelyn Ruff (Verizon Communications), moderated a standing-room-only workshop on “Mobile & Cloud Computing in Emerging Economies.” It featured commentary from speakers representing a broad cross-section of regional and stakeholder interests, including Verena Weber (OECD), Rohan Samarajiva (LIRNEasia) and João Barros (University of Porto, Portugal). The session focused on the developmental promise for emerging economies from mobile telephony and cloud computing capabilities due to their enormous potential in the next five years, when 90 percent of the world population is expected to have access to mobile coverage.

Key points raised at the workshop included:

  • Cloud computing services can be provided in emerging economies at a low cost and an energy-efficient way. However, cloud computing services can only be used if an Internet infrastructure wired or wireless broadband is in place providing a low latency and robust Internet connection to cloud users.
  • Greater efforts have to be made to connect more individuals, businesses, and government agencies to the Internet, so that developing countries can benefit from cloud computing. Another major infrastructure challenge is the lack of electricity or a reliable electricity supply in many regions to move content to the cloud and to run computers.
  • Trust among nations was also underlined as crucial for cloud computing development. Ultimately, though, the customer is key, along with technology, bandwidth, electricity and the need for redundancy or remote location as sources of confidence.

Spotlight on trade barriers

The following day, Richard Beaird (Wiley Rein) moderated another well-attended discussion on “Global Trade, Local Rules, & Internet Governance.” It featured commentary by Joseph Alhadeff (Oracle), vice chair of USCIB’s Information, Communications and Technology Committee, as well as Ruff, Samarajiva, and Sam Paltridge (OECD). The panel focused on the importance of supporting internet-enabled economic growth and how the erection of trade and regulatory barriers can impede such developmental benefits.

Workshop highlights included:

  • The proliferation of smart phones has caused an exponential rise in the use of data, but some solutions aimed at upgrading local telecom networks to meet these demands – adaptations of the sending-party-networks pays (SPNP) approach – work at cross-purposes by creating  unnecessary barriers to content-sharing across borders and operators.
  • Market-driven solutions remain the best approach. In an analysis of phone calls (frequency and duration) made from the U.S. to Africa and India, it was found that the traffic to India has increased tremendously over the last 10 years. This is due to the competitive market forces in India that have driven down termination rates, which at the same time have increased in Africa. Such actions create barriers for communication and trade in Africa.
  • The digital ecosystem is complex and overlapping. A change in one element creates a reaction and possibly a constraint on another aspect. While localized strategies may seem beneficial to an economy (or are security- or capacity-driven), they may in fact have negative effects on innovation and contain an underlying constraint.
  • Active multi-stakeholder discussions are of utmost importance to break the silo effect and create necessary agreements and polices from the trade world that support digital products.

NSA surveillance revelations

According to Barbara Wanner, USCIB’s vice president for information, communications and technology policy, the controversy surrounding revelations of unauthorized surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency informed much of the commentary of the IGF, particularly in light of new reports of NSA surveillance of countries such as France and Germany. She said that, in the wake of the NSA revelations, Brazil’s recent proposal to host a meeting in May 2014 to consider new ways of Internet governance dominated formal program discussion at the IGF as well as informal “hallway” consultations.

In an October 24 meeting with members of the International Chamber of Commerce’s BASIS (Business Action to Support the Information Society) initiative, which includes USCIB, Brazilian officials said that the conference would include all stakeholders. A goal they would like to see is the development of a set of new principles for governance of cyberspace.

Details concerning the Brazilian initiative changed and evolved throughout the IGF week – and likely will continue to evolve in the coming weeks. ICC-BASIS, USCIB, and other business participants are still assessing what the May conference will mean and how to shape its development. Click here to read more about ICC’s presence in Bali on the ICC website.

Staff contact: Barbara Wanner

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