Multistakeholder input improves OECD meeting outcomes

ITAC (Internet Technical Advisory Committee), of which Netnod is a member, published the following press release yesterday.

Internet Technical Advisory Committee expresses support for OECD multistakeholder approach 

PARIS - 29 June 2011 - In conjunction with the OECD High Level Meeting on "The Internet Economy: Generating Innovation and Growth" held on 28-29 June 2011, the Internet Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC)--a worldwide coalition of Internet organizations invited by the OECD to provide input on Internet-related issues--today endorsed the communiqué issued by the OECD. The ITAC expressed broad satisfaction with the OECD's approach to ensuring the Internet continues to serve as a platform for innovation, economic development and social progress throughout the world, including OECD countries.

ITAC supported the recognition in the communiqué of fundamental principles, such as the promotion and protection of the global free flow of information; promotion of the open, distributed and interconnected nature of the Internet; and encouragement of multistakeholder co-operation in policy development processes.

ITAC was pleased to be part of the expanded engagement within the OECD, along with the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC), Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council (CSISAC), and the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC), during the process of drafting the communiqué. ITAC noted that the communiqué was developed through a truly multistakeholder negotiating process, and that all stakeholders could participate on an equal footing.

"The tremendous growth and innovation which we have seen to date follows from the openness, lack of central control of the Internet and WWW technologies," said Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium. "And as it continues we must ensure we preserve the human values and technical principles on which it was built."

Vint Cerf, Number Resource Organization representative to the ITAC, said, "The Internet has become a key international infrastructure and the subject of considerable policy discussion. The introduction of IPv6 is crucial to continued expansion of this resource as are international attention to security and multilateral agreements on best Internet practices."

Leslie Daigle, Chief Internet Technology Officer of the Internet Society, said, "The OECD has taken an extremely positive and collaborative approach by inviting the technical community, the private sector and civil society to participate in the OECD High Level Meeting. Involving all stakeholders in discussions of the Internet's future development is vital to ensuring it remains an open platform for innovation and economic development around the world."

John Sabo of CA Technologies, chair of the OASIS IDtrust Steering Committee, said, "The trusted use of personal information is integral to the growing value of the open Internet for business and technical innovation, citizen services and consumer applications. Ensuring that privacy management technologies and risk management practices are also available at Internet scale will require unprecedented collaboration between policy and technology communities, using the structures and expertise of internationally-accepted standards development organizations."

With 25 member organizations from around the world, the OECD ITAC provides valuable expertise, input, and experience to OECD consideration of Internet issues, with the aim of promoting the positive role of the Internet for economic growth and social development. ITAC was created after the OECD Ministerial on The Future of the Internet Economy held in Seoul, Korea in June 2008, in recognition of the valuable and mutually beneficial cooperation with the Internet community.

The ITAC reinforced the critical importance of IPv6 deployment on the future of the Internet, and urges all OECD members to priortise efforts to encourage the adoption of IPv6 at all levels of the Internet to ensure continued growth and innovation.  

Regarding privacy-related issues, the communiqué provides a reasonable starting point by considering privacy protection based on current approaches. While it doesn't directly explore the growing social and economic value of appropriate use of personal data, ITAC recognizes that the OECD is engaging on work in this area and look forward to participating on how to incorporate the findings in future communiqués and related statements.

Hand-in-hand with promoting an open, distributed and interconnected nature of the Internet is the need to give real and tangible effect to fundamental human rights online. While the OECD focuses primarily on policies, laws, and regulations, ITAC stated it will work with the members to understand the very real, positive roles of the international, open, technical standards bodies, and more direct recognition of their participation in the process in future documents.

A multistakeholder approach has helped to encourage the global Internet's tremendous growth and is key to its continued development as a platform for innovation and economic progress in the developed and developing world. The full involvement of the organizations charged with the development, management and operation of the Internet helps ensure its future stability, growth and development. The same approach has proven to be the most effective when it comes to Internet policy development. 

The 'Internet Ecosystem' of organizations and communities that guide the operation and development of the technologies and infrastructure that comprise the global Internet are currently leading the way on the deployment of technologies that will ensure the Internet continues to be a platform for innovation, economic development and social progress. These technologies include DNSSEC, which adds robust validation to ensure that Internet domain names always correspond to their expected destinations, IPv6, the next generation of Internet protocol that provides enough new Internet addresses to ensure the 4 billion people yet to come online are able to fully participate in the global Internet, and HTML5, which defines the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web.

About ITAC
The Internet Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC) to the OECD brings together the counsel and technical expertise of technically focused organizations, in a decentralized networked approach to policy formulation for the Internet economy. The ITAC contributes constructively to the OECD's development of Internet-related policies. ITAC primarily contributes to the work of the OECD Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy (ICCP) and its specific working parties such as the Working Party on Communications and Infrastructure Services Policy (CISP), the Working Party on Information Economy (WPIE) and the Working Party on Information Security and Privacy (WPISP). For more information, see: http://www.internetac.org