I sat on the panel of one of the first workshops to be held on the opening morning of the IGF, on Transnationalisation of Internet Governance: The Way Forward, co-organised by the Internet Governance Caucus and the Pew Internet Project. I felt rather overshadowed by some of my illustrious co-panelists; Bob Kahn - co-inventor of TCP/IP, Professor Wolfgang Kleinwachter, Robert Pepper of Cisco, Janna Anderson of Pew Internet, and Anja Kovac from the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

For what I believe is the first time, the workshop room was laid out in a egalitarian roundtable format, rather than with an elevated panel at the head of the room, which augurs well for the later adoption of a similar format for outcome-focussed policy discussions. As it happens, this was the topic of my presentation.

I didn't actually have a pre-prepared talk, but took notes on the presentations of the first two speakers, Wolfgang and Janna, and responded off the cuff. A recording of my session is available for download in MP3 format, but here are some rough notes of what I said, in point form:

• Janna had outlined the results of her research on the most recent phase of the Imagining the Internet project, which showed that there was a demand from many respondents for global policy-making on Internet policy issues. This makes sense because the Internet is inherently transnational.


• But there is no body to make such policies... we are in the same position as in 2005 when the Tunis Agenda stated that a new body was needed to address the "many cross-cutting issues that require attention and are not adequately addressed by the current mechanisms".


• So, there are two possible approaches. One is to rely upon an informal network of coordination and collaboration between the existing institutions of Internet governance that do have policy-making authority, such as those Wolfgang referred to including UNESCO, the ITU, OECD and ICANN... but the problem is that these organisations do not cover the field.


• A second problem is that many of these institutions do not comply with the WSIS process criteria which require them to be multistakeholder, democratic and transparent.


• Admittedly the IGF is supposed to bring such institutions up to that standard, through its mandate to "promote and assess, on an ongoing basis the embodiment of WSIS principles in Internet governance processes". But it hasn't yet fulfilled that mandate in any measure.


• So the second alternative is to rely on a new institution, even if it doesn't have formal authority and can only make recommendations, to fill the policy vacuum. This is, of course, exactly what the IGF was originally intended to do.


• And now - when its mandate is being reviewed - is a pivotal time, when we actually have the chance to reorient the IGF back on that course. In the renewal of its mandate, we have a second chance to get it right.


• Wolfgang had objected that to imbue the IGF with decision-making authority (though, remember, we're only talking about non-binding recommendations anyway) would change the character of the IGF and result in fractious disagreement and strategic behaviour.


• However, that isn't necessarily the case. We wouldn't, and shouldn't, adopt a traditional intergovernmental process for the IGF. A recommendation issued by the IGF wouldn't be one to which member states would have to sign. Rather, they would simply participate in the development of a consensus statement, which would be the product of the IGF - not of any of its members individually.


• The key to success will be drawing on techniques of deliberative democracy, which utilises small table groups to equalise the power of governmental, private sector and civil society participants as they deliberate intensively with the object of producing a consensus.


• This is not merely theoretical. A couple of weeks ago I was in Barcelona, where the Free Culture Forum produced a resolution by just such a process - and governmental delegates (from Brazil and the European Parliament) were included. It was a long process, involving some heated face-to-face discussion and only concluded later online, but we got there in the end.


• So in 2010, why couldn't we do the same at the IGF? I propose that we could decide to produce a declaration on child pornography - not because it's the most important issue, but because it's one on which we can have high confidence that a multi-stakeholder consensus is possible.


• Our success in developing such a joint declaration will build the social capital of the IGF, and raise its credibility as an institution, securing its place in the Internet governance regime for the next five years and beyond.