Nominet has been engaged in a European IGF process – EuroDIG (European Dialogue on Internet Governance) – as part of the process of preparing for the Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad. This gave an opportunity to share with European colleagues the messages from, and information about the work of, the UK IGF, in particular the role of the Best practice Challenge in identifying solutions. (Our ability to share practical experiences with other delegates is a real bonus for UK participation in the IGF and generates lots of interest.)
In Strasbourg, John Carr from the Children´s Charities Coalition on Internet Safety and Kathleen Spencer-Chapman took an active role in the discussion on security, privacy and openness on the Internet. And Mark Carvell from the Department for Business presented the work of the UK IGF. There was some MEP involvement in the discussions, including from the British MEP Malcolm Harbour. I co-chaired the session on critical Internet resources.
The aim of EuroDIG is to be a platform to discuss and shape European multi-stakeholder perspectives on Internet governance. Europe has a good story to tell the world about using multi-stakeholder discussion to shape policy forming. And we have strong messages about values – human rights, freedom of expression, privacy, competition and security – that we should be sharing with the IGF.
The “messages from Strasbourg” are available on http://www.guarder.net/kleinwaechter/images/eurodig/messages_eurodig_221108.pdf and the EuroDIG website is http://www.eurodig.org/
I understand that the European Parliament is planning an event in late March 2009 and the next EuroDIG will be in the autumn. We should be thinking about themes for the discussion and looking to making sure that we have good engagement at the regional, as well as the national level. In Hyderabad, we heard from Kenya about how national IGF processes feed into the regional (in their case, East Africa) initiative: a model to imitate!