• Luca Belli, Senior researcher at Center for Technology & Society at Getulio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro 

• Stefano Trumpy, President of ISOC Italia, former Italian representative in ICANN GAC and Member of the Commission for an Internet Bill of Rights of the Italian Chamber of Deputies 

• Carlos Afonso, Executive Director of Nupef Institute and Member of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee  

• Daniel Kaplan, Founder of Fondation pour l’Internet Nouvelle Génération and Member of the French National Digital Council

• Richard Hill, former ITU official and founder of the Association for Proper Internet Governance 

Openness and collaboration are usually considered as essential elements of multistakeholder processes. Such processes aim at bringing together representatives from different sectors, including business, civil society, government, and academia, to address specific challenges. Over the past years, many examples of multistakeholder processes have been emerging in the Internet governance field. The purpose of this workshop is to analyse concrete examples of the aforementioned processes and initiatives to understand how, and under which conditions, open and participatory multistakeholder processes may lead to the elaboration of concrete policy solutions. 

The panellists will explore the multistakeholder spectrum, analysing a variety of examples of national as well as international policy development processes that exploit different stakeholders’ contributions to elaborate advice and recommend solutions. The extent to which openness and collaboration can be concretely achieved will be debated through the analysis the multistakeholder models utilised by the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br), the French Digital Council (CNNum) as well as other emerging initiatives. These examples will be discussed to identify organisational and procedural elements as well as existing technical tools that allow making true an open and collaborative policy discussion. 

Importantly, this exercise does not aim to provide a celebratory view of multistakeholder processes, nor to merely present them to inform the audience. On the contrary, the goal will be to adopt a critical approach in order to identify best practices, as well as worst practices, and propose concrete suggestions for the definition of core elements for a multistakeholder Internet advisory body. Notably, the panellist will try to stress what mechanisms and conditions may foster the participation and engagement of an ample range of stakeholders, with different interests, and how to translate the results of such participatory exercise into concrete policy suggestions. 

In such context, the Italian scenario will be analysed to identify what challenges exist and could they be overcome in order to encourage the establishment of an appropriate advisory body in Italy. For this reason, the speakers will be invited to provide short presentations in order to dedicate at least 30% of the session to engage the audience into a dynamic debate. 

Workshop participants will have the possibility to provide comments and feedback to the White paper on “Mapping Multistakeholderisms Towards Openness and Collaboration for Internet Policy-making” collectively elaborated by the workshop speakers. 

United Nations Internet Governance Forum http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/ 

Brazilian Internet Steering Committee http://www.cgi.br/about/

French National Digital Council http://cnnumerique.fr/

Internet Governance @ FGV http://internet-governance.fgv.br/ 

ISOC Italia http://www.isoc.it/ 

Association for Proper Internet Governance http://www.apig.ch/ 

Belli L. (2016). De la gouvernance à la régulation de l'Internet. Berger-Levrault. 

Belli, L. (2015). A heterostakeholder cooperation for sustainable internet policymaking. Internet Policy Review. 4(2)

Bollow N., and Hill R. 2014. Thoughts on Best Practices for Multistakeholder Participation Mechanisms. http://www.apig.ch/best_practices.pdf  

Bollow N., and Hill R. 2015. Reflections on Making Internet Governance Democratic and Participative. http://www.apig.ch/democratic_and_participative.pdf

Internet Governance Forum Best Practice Forum (2015). Strengthening Multistakeholder Participation Mechanisms. http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/documents/best-practice-forums/developing-meaningful-multistakeholder-participation-mechnisms/580-igf-2015-bpf-strengthening-multistakeholder-participation-mechanisms-1 

Malcolm, J. 2015. “Criteria of Meaningful Stakeholder Inclusion in Internet Governance.” Internet Policy Review. Vol. 4, no. 4