Framing WSIS in Global Governance Processes: Linkages and Followup

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Framing WSIS in Global Governance Processes
Linkages and Follow-up

• Professor Robin Mansell
• President, IAMCR
• London School of Economics
• ITeM Parallel Event, 10.45-12.45, 17 November,
  Room Mehdia, Kram Centre, Tunis

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Why focus on ICTs global governance?

• Assembling the tools is only part of the task
  Measures must be taken to assemble the human
  capabilities and related technologies to make the
  best use of the new opportunities offered by
  ICTs
• (Knowledge Societies Mansell Wehn 1998 at
  http//www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/1-4-9-1-1-2.html ).

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Mainstream approaches promote -

• A strong ICT diffusion agenda.
• On-line as superior to off-line services.
• Top-down policy rather than bottom up
  participatory agendas.
• Information commodity exchange rather than
  cultural exchange and peer to peer sharing.
• Claims that
• broadband connection is essential
• knowledge management proprietary tools are
  needed
• generic best practice models can be fitted to
  local contexts

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Contested power relations in WSIS official
documents

• Resistance to the right to communicate.
• Resistance to the need to fully support new
  financing mechanisms.
• Resistance to more inclusive governance
  mechanisms.
• Inevitable progress of science and technology
  and neutral in its impact.
• Weak acknowledgement of the role of the media.
• Strong emphasis on security issues.
• Efficiency and productivity gains assumed to be
  associated with ICTs use regardless of context.
• Intellectual Property protection is important.

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Alternative approaches promote -

• Knowledge societies are highly differentiated.
• Some ICTs are valued others are not.
• Legitimate forms of resistance to
  technology-driven agendas.
• Valued uses of ICTs grow out of local initiative.
• Need to tackle unequal power relations.

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Essential Actions

• Promoting open source and open exchange.
• Relaxing the grip of intellectual property rights
  managers.
• Creative thinking and acting to promote new
  financing mechanisms.
• Promoting recognition of fundamental human rights
• Fostering both political and economic momentum.

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Mistrust is not a foundation for better governance

• The combined effects of technological limitations
  together with the fact that new ICTs, especially
  the Internet and email, tend to become part and
  parcel of and new expressions of existing
  relations of inequality (Community-based
  specialist)
• Governments are as adept (as we are) at speaking
  development lingo, they know that participation
  has to appear in the project log frame Peoples
  participation requires a re-negotiation of power
  and those with power rarely want to relinquish
  it. There is often a deep chasm of mistrust
  between governments and civil society, NGOs,
  universities, etc. (UN agency officer)

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Key questions for future governance

• What values are being embedded in our knowledge
  societies?
• Which are the predominant values and what
  structural or procedural means are there to
  resist or change them if they are inconsistent
  with equity?
• What interventions are realistic, where, and how
  do interventions shape the social, cultural,
  political and economic environment in specific
  cases?