Dr. Jimson Olufuye, chairman, Africa ICT Alliance, (AfICTA), has said that enhanced cooperation on internet governance would encourage digital inclusion of Nigeria and rest of the African sub-region.
He stated this at the just concluded United Nation Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) open consultation on enhanced cooperation on public policy pertaining to the Internet held in Geneva, Switzerland
According to the former President of Information Technology Association of Nigeria, (ITAN), enhanced cooperation (EC) was about encouraging, deepening and enriching cooperation and collaboration through dialogue on diverse public policy issues pertaining to the Internet.
He added that with enhanced cooperation, developing economies like Nigeria, will be able to climb up the ladder of development through a stable, predictable, secure and sustainable Internet governance made possible by increased North–South, South-South and North-North cooperation in many areas including removal of bottlenecks to access through increased dialogues with all stakeholders on for example IPv6 adoption.
More so, encouragement of innovation by promoting reward system, plugging gaps in the security of the Internet through increased Research and Development, enthroning the rule of law on the Internet thereby mitigating increasing crime waves on the Internet through collaborative enforcement and administration of justice, creation of Internet based jobs to tackle massive unemployment in the developing world through increased adoption of eApplications, eGovernment, eHealth, eBusiness, among others .
According to him, EC should have ramifications not only at the regional and international level but most importantly at the national level where law and policy issues emanate in tandem with the bottom up, multi-stakeholder approach to Internet Governance.
He told the gathering that his submissions above were premised on the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) Tunis agenda paragraph 34, 35 and 70.
“The WSIS Tunis agenda directs that the enhanced cooperation process should include participation by relevant international organizations, including inter-governmental, multi-stakeholder and private-sector led organizations. It is the position of the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) – the voice of the global ICT industry, that dialogue among all stakeholders takes place continuously to sustain the momentous impact of the Internet on the global economy” he added.
He said that, so far at least 10 international organizations handling Internet policy issues have been playing leading roles in demonstrating enhanced cooperation in their operations and policy making as facilitated by the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs through its Division for Public Administration and Development Management.
The ten organizations he said are not limited to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Council of Europe, Internet Society (ISOC), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Number Resource Organization (NRO) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
Of the ten organizations listed above, he informed that five are private sector led, adding that they have all enhanced their collaborative mechanism among their stakeholders with ramifications at the international, regional and national level of decision making.
“Enhanced cooperation therefore infers that existing organisations in their unique roles in the Internet ecosystem enhance their cooperation within their respective organisation and among other stakeholders with a view of building trust, stability and confidence on the Internet” he explained.
On the way forward, he quoted paragraph 71 of the Tunis agenda which clearly states that “all stakeholders” and “all relevant organizations” should be involved in the enhanced cooperation process, and provides that enhanced cooperation should be a multistakeholder process, not a governments-only process, he noted that this principle of inclusiveness is critically important to success in achieving enhanced cooperation.
As a way forward, he said that greater cooperation among existing organizations does not require the creation of new entities or processes, and that such actions could impede progress and our businesses.
According to him, the objectives of information sharing, creating more awareness, and, where appropriate, coherence in work programmes, and collaboration must guide the relevant organizations that address Internet related issues in order to facilitate enhanced cooperation.
He said that all relevant organizations, including those that are private sector-led, those that are intergovernmental (IGOs), those that represent civil society, the Internet technical and academic communities through several organizational structures and those that are multi-stakeholder are engaged in facilitating enhanced cooperation.
He said that a measuring system/ indicators be developed to measure the degree of compliance of stakeholders to Enhanced Cooperation on Public Policy issues pertaining to the Internet.
Such a measuring system, according to him, may have a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest maturity level for Enhanced Cooperation on Public Policies (ECPP), adding that a multi-stakeholder group of experts can determine the parameters for the rating.
As a follow up to the above, he recommended that a yearly meeting can take place to among other things review the ratings which can be assessed by a group similar to the current IGF MAG.