IGF 2014

The growing complexity and significance of Internet governance necessitates addressing the difficult issues that impact, or are impacted by the continued evolution of the global Internet. Capturing these issues requires that the roles played by intergovernmental, and governmental stakeholders in collaboration with Internet technical professionals, private sector businesses and other non-governmental stakeholders be better understood. Successfully dealing with these all-important Internet governance aspects requires connecting several, sometimes-disparate areas of technology, policy, development and civil society to work on solutions and act in concert to ensure collaborative stewardship of the Internet continues.

Program
Each panel member will provide an opening statement regarding the challenges and issues they see with the changing Internet Governance landscape as well as the roles that everyone, including governments, have in the multistakeholder process.

An open discussion will follow with the Moderator providing questions for the discussion.

Specifically, the panel will be asked to address the following questions during the open and interactive discussion:
• The Internet is expanding exponentially - Who is responsible for identifying the Internet governance knowledge gap among the different stakeholder groups?

• What can be done to bridge the Internet governance knowledge gap in terms of resourcing, scaling, and awareness building?


• How should these knowledge gap issues, and discussion be used to improve the global Internet openness and collaborative multistakeholder engagement?


• Where there are issues that may disrupt the roles of existing stakeholders, how should consensus on key principles or outcomes be reached for solutions that benefit the global Internet rather than special interests?


• How should market-specific challenges or issues that are particular to a local community be approached for the global Internet to continue its innovative contributions?