Multistakeholder model in action: Lessons & Advice for Gen XYZ in leadership for digital policymaking

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Stepping into September 2022 marks my 5th year of being part of the Internet governance community. Since 2017 when I first joined the NetMission Ambassador Program (renamed to NetMission Academy) as a youth advocate on Internet governance and digital policy, I have been actively contributing to encouraging diversity and inclusion, particularly in youth engagement and participation.

As an individual being introduced to a community as a youth advocate initially, it did take some time before you are recognized as a regular member of the industry just like another “adult” in the room. Certainly, 5 years of experience in the field has not turned me into a 100% subject matter expert yet. However, as a young individual working in leadership as an NRI contact person for Asia Pacific Youth IGF and Hong Kong Youth IGF at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the Asia Pacific representative at the Youth Coalition of Internet Governance, ALS representative at the APRALO and member of the ALAC of the ICANN community. and most importantly, as the program coordinator of the NetMission Academy (supported by the DotAsia Organisation), I certainly have a few points I would like to reflect on.

Multistakeholder model in all processes with integration of bilateral model

In the world of Internet governance, the multistakeholder model is adopted for all stakeholders from all sectors to be equally weighted for discussion on issues and policymaking. One of the major platforms for the related conversations to happen will be the United Nations IGF (IGF, n.d.), which is also the model we will heavily refer to and a scope we will focus on in this article. This model will also be related to the examples of conversations happening at the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) and the Asia Pacific Youth Internet Governance Forum (yIGF) later in other sections of the advisory summary.

The Internet infrastructure itself is operated across borders, thus an open, distributed, interconnected, and transnational approach for all stakeholders to make consensus decisions has to be established for Internet governance discourse. However, the model of IGF has been frequently questioned in recent years, as accordingly to the mandate of the IGF is set out in Paragraph 72 of the 2005 WSIS Tunis Agenda (Wikipedia, n.d.). It was mandated to be a discussion forum to facilitate dialogue among different stakeholders to discuss public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance (Singh et al., 2021), but none of the outputs will be directly translated into legally binding policies. Should the United Nations Internet Governance Forum push for a certain level of integration of the bilateral model into the high-level discussion in the IGF to make real changes with reference to policies suggested or proposed by the community?

IGF itself is a complex ecosystem. Without participation from all stakeholders, it won’t thrive as how it is supposed to be, however, the “greybeard phenomenon” is indeed a challenge the community is facing right now. Are we going to be able to find a group of “successors” from our next generation to continue what has been established in the past decade, and do it in an even better way?

As a young individual in leadership who works closely with newcomers in this ecosystem, I could reassure you that empowering our next generation is the key to sustaining the multistakeholder model for our policymaking discussion. But the problem is, often when the relatively experienced individuals currently in leadership trying to approach the matter of youth engagement, it usually tends to appear to be a dialogue instead of a conversation.

Quoting from a session held on Day 1 of APrIGF – a session about including new voices, a question about why fellows won’t “appear” in APrIGF for another year after the fellowship was raised by a Ph.D. researcher, Jaewon Son, from South Korea. Apparently, this question has naturally pointed to the Multistakeholder Steering Group of APrIGF (MSG) members on stage as this is about whether the leadership has done enough on the sustainability of youth engagement in the regional Internet governance ecosystem. Eventually, the question seemed to be misinterpreted, and the answer mostly only reflected some criteria and procedural facts on why a fellow won’t be selected to participate in the physical meeting for more than one time.

The session concluded with a takeaway of “we need more new voices” just like another year, but the efforts on making the environment inclusive are recognized. Although there are many ways for meaningful participation. To stay involved and be able to constructively contribute, is more important than just showing faces in a physical meeting or appearing at a panel to speak for an hour only. We are promoting a multistakeholder model for this ecosystem, yet this approach isn’t fully reflected in all aspects of the community. This mean, there is still a way to go before we could claim that our community is truly inclusive.

Changes made by the community including youth

Meanwhile, a session named APAC Youth Leaders Dialogue (APACYLD) was initiated and organized by more than 10 youth initiatives from the Asia Pacific region at the Asia Pacific yIGF 2022 this year and concluded with a productive discussion process. Clear and constructive outputs with factors that hinder continuous engagement from youth and what different stakeholders could do to engender active and meaningful participation from newcomers were outlined. In the APACYLD particularly, the idea of having a rapporteur was abandoned. Instead, a document is open for all remote and onsite participants to comment in real-time throughout the entire session, because the next generation values and prioritizes collaboration over anything at this stage, to encourage meaningful participation in an inclusive manner, even in the small details of how opinions or comments are reflected.

Collaboration among youth is not enough, other stakeholders should also engage in the process and help youth with their initiative and keep the momentum going. In fact, three fellows from VOY@IG were funded by KISA, two from TWSIG were funded by TWNIC, and one fellow was funded by NIIEAP to attend the yIGF and APrIGF 2022. This practice did not only reassure the importance of support from the traditional organizations in the industry but also suggested a decentralized funding model could be the right approach for Asia Pacific when we are working on youth engagement.

Since the APrIGF 2022 was co-locating with APNIC54 this year, APNIC has also extended the fellowship of ten of their fellows and sent them to attend yIGF 2022. This not only motivates participants themselves by enabling more interaction and collaboration among the younger generation but also creates synergies that will eventually contribute to the inclusiveness of the community in the Asia Pacific region.

The engagement level of yIGF fellows at the APrIGF is observed to be way higher than any other year in the previous five years. This is not only the result of the restructuring of the entire program to get both remote and onsite participants onboard for the APrIGF in such a short time, but collaborations among the community were also one of the key factors that contribute a big portion to its great success.

For the first time in the past five years, this is the only time when there are more than ten youth delegates expressed their interest in joining the MSG and immediately initiated a quick conversation with the APrIGF secretariat regarding this matter. One of the yIGF organizing committee members, Stella Teoh, even joined the drafting committee for the Synthesis Document and co-chair the town hall sessions with Yien Chyn Tan from ICANN APAC Space and Jennifer Chung from the APrIGF Secretariat.

Gaps in knowledge & mutual understanding between “generations” in the Internet governance policymaking community

Youth@crossroad as the opener of the theme of yIGF 2022, gives a context on the transiting state youth is in, and how it influences discussion on sustainability and inclusion for youth engagement. For many years, we have been focusing on closing knowledge gaps and empowering the youth with the capacity to “catch up” with discussion from the majority. Undeniably, it is important for newcomers to have the relevant knowledge to be able to not only participate but contribute to the policymaking process. However, often our community neglected the fact that mutual understanding among different stakeholders, as well as members of different “generations” in the community, is also one of the major factors for sustainability and inclusion of meaningful participation.

During this one week of the conference, I was able to observe how some of the stakeholders started to perceive my role as a young individual in leadership differently, in a positive. It is a big step, generally speaking, for a policymaking ecosystem to include new voices. However, there are certainly more works to be done on a systemic level to erase the divider between generations.

On the last day of APrIGF 2022, I was attending a showcase session about assessing investments in surveillance and technology. While the speaker was sharing how they adopt technology in the process of financial investment, the moderator was inviting attendees to ask questions. Whoever asked a question, will be given a souvenir by the end of the session.

I didn’t care about the souvenirs, because those swag items were from the company I am working for, and I had been handing out some of them in the past few days. There were still a few of them in my bag when I asked the question about their thoughts on algorithmic investment. As expected, the speaker didn’t dig in too much on the question raised. Probably because AI-driven investment with the use of user-owned data is still a pretty new concept, but the discussion at the session was satisfactory. By the end of the sessions, the moderator (supposedly a key person in the APrIGF MSG), reminded the staff, which is one of my closest co-workers onsite, to give me a gift as I asked a question during the session. 

My role in the industry is to mainly engage new people, but I personally have been quite “vocal” in discussions on certain topics or occasions. Thus, I am pretty confident that most people in the industry, at least in the Asia Pacific region, are aware of my existence. In addition, I formally delivered a welcome remark at the opening ceremony as a representative of the Youth IGF on the first day of the event, so I was pretty surprised when I was perceived as a completely ordinary attendee, while I was there to organize the youth event for the forum for 5 years already. Not sure if people were only distracted at the opening ceremony, or if lack of communication between generations is really that significant.

While we mostly focus on the empowerment of the younger generation, we must not omit endorsement of the “legitimacy” of youth-initiated projects and youth representation. Certainly, there are knowledge and facts the youth has to acquire from the experienced, but there are new skills the seniors have to equip or adopt from the new generations in the context of a rapidly changing environment with the influence of the Internet and technology.

Mutual understandings engender trust. And trust is one of the most fundamental elements before starting any conversation in any field. With a better understanding of each other and embracing the differences between generations, a community-driven discussion process can also be effective and efficient for policymaking as well as decision-making. 

Decentralized funding & support model for meaningful participation

Actions from all stakeholders at all levels are needed if we truly want meaningful engagement and participation from the next generation. Staying at the stage of wishing or hoping newcomers to initiate further in the context of lack of funding is a bit too idealistic.

One of the existing methods to engage newcomers is to give fellowships. It could probably bring about 30 delegates to the physical event, but does it equal “meaningful engagement”? Is our next generation given a clear enough path or equal opportunity for continuous engagement? Perhaps, we should work harder on the “continuation” and “consistency” of youth engagement. Great work cannot be achieved without action.

On the other hand, financial support is definitely one of the most immediate factors in deciding whether ones can join the physical event or not, but is a centralized funding model the only way?

Taking yIGF 2022 as an example, a partially decentralized funding model was adopted, which eventually led to a relatively more diverse and inclusive participation so far compared to any other Asia Pacific yIGFs in the past ten years. Certainly, the organizers were responsible for outreach to different sponsors for funding to support the general organization, venue, and technical setup for the youth event. While some co-organizers from Taiwan or South Korea took the initiative to get travel support for some youth in their territories, which eventually allow them to join both the youth event and main event (APrIGF) physically in Singapore this year.

Such practice reflected a genuine bottom-up model in the ecosystem. As well, introduced an additional model for meaningful participation, particularly in youth engagement in the future.

Epilogue

There seems to be a long way before the youth could formally earn a round of applause from every single individual in the room, but I believe all young advocates, as well as young individuals in leadership, are already on board and ready to work on whatever I mentioned above. Nothing can be changed overnight, and no work can be done without effort, but I have hopes of seeing an improvement before I will no longer be identified as a youth.

Reference

IGF. (n.d.). The Mandate of the IGF.  Internet Governance Forum. Retrieved from https://www.intgovforum.org/mandate.htm.

Singh, A., Gusela, R., Kellerhof, L. K., and Lwin, P. T. (2021). 1.5 Internet Governance initiatives and organizations. NetMission Academy 2021 Module 1: Internet Governance Ecosystem & Internet Infrastructure. Retrieved from https://ftp.asia/index.php/s/CiaqTV1PIYEGvNh?path=%2FNetMission%20Academy%202022_Modules#pdfviewer. 

Wikipedia. (n.d.) 2005 Mandate. Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Governance_Forum#:~:text=The%20mandate%20for%20the%20IGF,dialogue%20between%20the%20Forum's%20participants.