Last month, an edited compilation of the mailing list discussions of the Advisory Group on the issue of its own rotation was posted to the IGF's Web forum. Now the IGF's Web site tells us that this was not simply a one-off:

Digests of the discussion held within the Advisory Group are available on the Forum Section on a regular basis.

Sure enough, a second such document has just been posted, covering the Advisory Group's own views of the calls for improvement of its transparency.

Both documents have been anonymised, though it takes very little effort to connect the anonymous comments with public comments made by the same speakers, and thus determine exactly who "Writer A", "Writer B" and so on are. (In fact, even without doing so, the identity of many of the writers is obvious.)

Although the release of these compilation documents is a pleasing (and long overdue) development in itself, which builds upon the release of notes of the face-to-face meetings that began last September, the second of the two documents heralds the tantalising possibility of further reform. And much to my surprise, the suggestion came from Marcus Kummer:

This makes me wonder whether we should not go a step further. Daniel explained to me how the W3C works .... Much of the W3C's work is based on online work that is made public. ... We could create a second [public] list - say AG-discuss - and keep the present list for more mundane communications, such as registration details or dinner arrangements or, as the case may be, for postings a member would prefer to keep private.

The fact that the proposal to open up its mailing list is traced to an Advisory Group member, rather than to any of the other stakeholders (including myself) who have calling for this for over a year is a little disheartening. However, at least the proposal has now been made.

In the space of a few messages, the proposal is just as swiftly rejected, however; Kummer summing up by saying:

While there is considerable support for more openness and for the proposed two-list-approach, there were also some concerns expressed that need to be taken seriously. My feeling therefore is that the time is not yet ripe for this approach.

Nonetheless, the fact that "considerable support" has already been shown from within the Advisory Group for the opening of its mailing list to the public should only galvanise the rest of us to maintain our demands that this should occur.

Once that has been done, we can then ask that the Advisory Group follow other institutions of Internet governance (such as ICANN's GNSO and ALAC, as well as CGI.br) and publish audio recordings of its face-to-face meetings as well.