An Institutional Perspective on the UN World Summit on the Information Society

source: IP3

13.Dec.03 - The UN World Summit on the Information Society is currently underway in Geneva.

WSIS is hard to understand. The 2003 Geneva meeting of the UN World Summit on the Information Society has brought thousands of people to Geneva to articulate a collective vision about the benefits and potentials of information in society and the policies needed to realize them. Even immediate participants have difficulty understanding what has been achieved. With so many recommendations, which ones will lead to concrete political action and social change? What is important and why? To help answer such questions, this report provides an institutional analysis of WSIS. It focuses on two main features: its characteristics as a policy forum and the mechanisms available to it for policy implementation. This institutional analysis is then applied to a set of WSIS policies to identify those with the greatest potential to lead to social change. Two policies stand out: Internet governance and security. The WSIS forum is well suited to bestow legitimacy on a proposal to alter the existing Internet governance regime, and the available implementation mechanisms are well suited to put such a proposal into practice. Likewise, WSIS is an appropriate forum for promulgating a global agreement on security, and the available implementation mechanisms are also suitable. Other policy topics considered are: free and open software, communication rights, intellectual property, human rights, and funding. To say these policies are good candidates for action is not to say that they necessarily will be endorsed and implemented. Nonetheless, by identifying issues that "fit" the world summit institution, this analysis can help set priorities for action and to gain understanding of outcomes.

Report available at: www.ip3.gatech.edu

The Internet and Public Policy Project (IP3) promotes Internet policy-related research in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. It promotes dialogue between researchers within and outside the Institute, offering forums for debate and discussion.

This report is a joint project between IP3 and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (www.CPSR.org) with funding from the Open Society Institute distributed through the Internet Democracy Project. Additional funding came from the Georgia Tech President Undergraduate Research Award Program.