The synthesis paper summarizing the substantive contributions made earlier in the year for the Athens meeting of the IGF has just been released (warning: proprietary document format). It is required reading for anyone attending the meeting or intending to be involved in it remotely.

The 16 page report (excluding annexures which take it to 22 pages) divides into four main sections:

• An introduction which surveys the brief history of the IGF;
• General aspects which covers the nature of Internet governance and the role of the IGF;
• Coverage of the four broad themes of openness, security, diversity and access selected for the first meeting; and
• Institutional aspects, which covers issues of procedure and structure.

Overall, the Secretariat has done a good job putting this document together, without manufacturing consensus where none exists (for example acknowledging that there was "no common understanding on how these [intellectual property] rules should be shaped to protect the openness of the Internet and the free flow of information").

I am also pleased that they characterised mine as "a widely held view that the IGF could learn from technical bodies already involved in Internet governance, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), with regard to collaborative governance and decision-making and deliberative democracy", though nothing else was said of my contribution.

What remains unsettled is how the agreement on the various views set out in the synthesis paper might be reached in Athens, since it does not yet have an appropriate structure within which for such decisions to be made. That should be the IGF's most urgent priority.