June 22, 2023, 11am-12:30pm
Function Follows Form: The Proposed UN Digital Cooperation Forum
On June 5, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres presented a policy brief on his Global Digital Compact initiative to the General Assembly. Among the brief’s ideas is a proposal to create an annual Digital Cooperation Forum (DCF). This new UN forum would not be a negotiation body, but would instead foster action-oriented dialogue and analysis concerning international cooperation on digital policy issues. A proposal like this has been anticipated since the SG’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation issued its report in 2019. The case for a DCF is being championed in particular by the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology. The proposal has yet to garner support but will be discussed by a ministerial meeting in September 2023 that is to help prepare the groundwork for the UN’s 2024 Summit of the Future.
The policy brief states that the DCF would coexist with existing bodies and processes like the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in an integrated hub and spoke system. However, aside from its presumably broader scope, in many respects the DCF appears to duplicate the IGF. Given that the IGF has long faced challenges from those governments that are unhappy with its multistakeholder character, the existence of a comparatively intergovernmental DFC could complicate the renewal of the IGF’s mandate at the 2025 WSIS+20 review. In addition, there are a number of other issues raised by proposing a new forum without specifying its substantive focus and institutional modalities or assessing the demand for one. The experiences over the past twenty years with failed proposals to create new institutions for global Internet and digital governance merits consideration in this context.
An inclusive dialogue is needed to determine whether the DCF vision can overcomes the potential barriers to its realization or at least contribute to strengthening international cooperation in other settings. To help with that task, this webinar assembles a panel of expert participants in the debate about the United Nations’ role in global digital cooperation and governance. The group will assess the driving issues and interests, potential negotiation dynamics and outcomes, and larger digital governance implications of the DCF proposal.
As always, the panelists’ conversation will be followed by an open dialogue among all participants.
Introduction:
Eli Noam is Paul Garrett Professor, Emeritus, and Director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information
Moderator:
William J. Drake is Director of International Studies at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information
Panelists:
Fiona M. Alexander is both Distinguished Policy Strategist in Residence in the School of International Service and Distinguished Fellow at the Internet Governance Lab at American University. Previously, for close to 20 years, she served at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in the U.S. Department of Commerce where she was Associate Administrator for International Affairs. (USA)
Anriette Esterhuysen is Senior Advisor for Internet Governance at the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). She was APC’s Executive Director from 2000 until April 2017, and served as Chair of the IGF’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group from 2019 to 2021. Anriette was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2013. (South Africa)
Nigel Hickson works on Internet Governance at the United Kingdom’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) where, among other roles, he is the UK representative on the Government Advisory Committee at ICANN. From 2012 he worked for ICANN in Brussels and Geneva before returning to the UK government in 2020 to work on Brexit-related data protection issues. (UK)