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Nominet Best Practice Challenge

The Rt. Hon. Stephen Timms MP,  Minister for Digital Britain, also Financial Secretary to the Treasury
UK Internet Governance Forum,  11 October 2007

I am delighted to be joining Alun at this event. I was the Minister at the time of the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, the Geneva phase, which agreed to establish a Working Group on Internet Governance to try to work out what Internet governance actually meant.

More importantly, the Working Group showed how governments, industry and civil society could work together to address public concerns about the Internet. And key in that process was, how to improve our common understanding of the issues.

The Working Group was also important for another reason: it marked a transition from the outright opposition that some governments expressed to talking to other stakeholders and developing a dialogue, to the tolerance – the “constructive ambiguity” to use the description from the chairman of the World Summit negotiations on Internet governance – that moved us from Geneva to Tunis.

And Alun was responsible for the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, in Tunis. It was his efforts, and the work of the team which supported him, that produced compromise on Internet governance and the creation of the Internet Governance Forum.

The “Tunis Agenda” was a good result for the World Summit. It was a great example of UK leadership in the knowledge economy.

But it also leaves us in the UK with a special, responsibility: to make the Tunis Agenda work.

The Internet Governance Forum is key. It moves us from the uneasy “constructive ambiguity” of the preparation for Tunis, to establishing proper, formal multi-stakeholder dialogue. It recognises that developing consensus beats imposing rules. “Jaw jaw is better than war war,” as Winston Churchill put it.

And it is in working together that we will be able to address the real concerns of citizens, customers, members, constituencies. Whether providing the right environment for businesses to invest and prosper. Or ensuring that our citizens have access, want access and are confident that they and their children are safe on line. Or allowing access to knowledge, and encouraging freedom of speech, while respecting fundamental human rights.

Of course, in the UK we this kind of cooperation and partnership between stakeholders is fairly familiar. It is something to be proud of! A model to show the world that working together helps us develop innovative, imaginative, successful ways of addressing the concerns of users, of businesses, and of society more widely.

For example , as many here know, the Prime Minister announced last month that Dr Tanya Byron will carry out a review into “helping children and parents get the best from new technologies, while protecting them from potentially harmful material”.

Key here is the need to empower and support people to make their own choices about what they see. And to help parents protect their children.

But responsibility for security on the internet, and by extension the protection of children, is the responsibility of all sectors and groups, including industry. Dr Byron's independent review will be built on a dialogue with children, young people, parents and industry – and on a robust look at the evidence – to develop a shared approach.

Governments alone cannot hope to provide the whole solution. The Byron Review is a good example of the “Internet Governance Forum model” at work. It will be looking for an approach based on shared responsibility and action, not just government answers.

Another example of working together is in making the investment in future high-speed broadband. With growing demands for bandwidth-hungry applications – like high quality two-way video or demand for high definition video downloads, for example – the economy is going to need major investment in new infrastructure.

To help us move forward, I will chair a high level summit later this year, bringing together key people from Government, OFCOM and industry to look at the full range of issues. Consensus building. Improving understanding. Addressing concerns.

In so many Internet issues, we can only make progress by working together to find the best solutions. We need to work together to develop consensus; to identify shared interests; to address concerns; to find technical solutions; to improve awareness and understanding among users of how to use existing tools; to adapt to new technologies and applications; to share good practice… Those are what the Internet Governance Forum is all about.

Many Internet issues go beyond national borders. The Internet presents international challenges: it is breaking down traditional boundaries and changing our understanding of national roles – indeed of nations – it is the great enabler of globalisation.

It throws starkly into relief the differences between cultures, different social pressures and values. Many do not share our values of freedom of speech, of access to knowledge, of respecting the rights of others.

The Forum will allow us to share knowledge and understanding, and to compare practice, in an international framework. It’s a model we are familiar with in the UK. And one that we have encouraged others to follow. So we have a special responsibility to show how cooperation, consensus building and partnership can address international issues in the case of Internet governance.

Your work today, your active participation in the process are really important in making the Internet Governance work. In ensuring that we draw the best from the forum. And in helping others to make the best decisions.

I am really pleased that Nominet has taken the lead, showing that this really is not a government-led, top-down initiative, but one grown from the Internet community. It is an initiative that engages with all parts of the social and economic fabric that benefits from, and contributes to, the development of the information society.

The Forum is not a club for governments, not a decision or treaty making forum. It serves to improve our understanding, to help us make better decisions, to find better ways of addressing problems.

The Internet Governance Forum has identified key topics to help orient its discussion: access, diversity, openness and security. As well as concern from some countries about the management of critical Internet resources. These issues are all important for the future of the Internet, and they cannot be addressed in isolation from each other.

Next June the OECD is organising a ministerial conference on the future of the Internet economy. That will see a similar focus: how to increase global connectivity? How to respond to the changes in use of the Internet? How to allow individual choice for access to content?

These things are looked at differently around the world. There are different expectations and concerns. The more we can do to understand the challenges and the opportunities, the better prepared we will be to take advantage of the knowledge economy, of the societal benefits from the innovation and growth of this powerful channel of communications and human interaction.

And that’s where Nominet’s Best Practice Challenge comes in. The UK has a good story to tell. We can use our position as a major knowledge economy to help show others examples of good practice, to help others address concerns. Sharing good practice like this will also help us to identify things that we could do better.

And so to the best practice challenge awards.

First, I’d like to commend Nominet for their initiative: this is really important in helping underline UK leadership.

Second, I welcome the community’s response in coming forward with first class examples of what can be achieved. That must have made Alun Michael’s job as chair of the selection difficult.

And third to commend the selection team for choosing between the really good to identify the excellent.

Competition has been strong. There is a wealth of good examples which we can show the world with pride. Which show the UK off as a forward thinking, Internet economy that cares for its citizens, too.

Perhaps Bob and Lesley could tell us about the shortlist?

Access

It is with great pleasure that I invite to come forward a company that has done a great deal to bring the Internet to people who just wouldn’t have had it without them.

Computer Aid International has is the world’s largest not-for-profit supplier of high quality, professionally refurbished computers to the developing world. In just a decade, Computer Aid International has shipped almost 100,000 computers to over 100 developing countries. This is one of the real challenges facing the international community – addressing the digital divide. Moving from one billion people on line, where we are today, to bring the benefits of the Internet to everyone.

Security

Providing a community-based self-help network to combat phishing, by combining expertise and experience and sharing information, has to be right at the heart of the Internet Governance Forum approach. Netcraft has made a real difference in helping Internet users protect themselves from Internet fraud.

Diversity

This is a highly topical issue! The winner has been helping parents equip themselves to get the most out of the Internet and to keep their children safe online. Childnet International shows outstanding cooperation between all the relevant stakeholders: again a model we should be proud to share with the rest of the world. I welcome the interest shown in this work by schools and the private sector.
I was privileged to know the founder of Childnet International, Nigel Williams who died a year and a half ago. A tragic loss, but Childnet is a wonderful memorial for a great man.

Openness

By giving people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives, and by teaching the most efficient ways to use the Internet to improve their lives, mySociety provides an excellent way of encouraging public participation in democratic processes and public policy. Using the Internet to reinforce democracy and freedom of speech is a message that we should be proud to champion through the world.

Those were the winners of the individual categories. But when confronted by an impossible choice between the brilliant, any good judge would look for a third way. I have pleasure in announcing two special awards.

By helping users take action against those who try to exploit the most vulnerable of our society, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre has shown excellent initiative in combining well-constructed messages dealing with a sensitive subject and the innovative use of delivery channels to put the message as close as possible to the target audience, in a way that is highly visible but not intrusive.

And as the only UK Internet ‘Hotline’ for the public to report their exposure to online child sexual abuse content hosted in the UK, the Internet Watch Foundation is a great example of how industry can design effective solutions to fix problems, without the need for creating laws. It shows how the self-regulatory cooperation between government, police, the Internet industry and other key stakeholders can really work.

Of course, there is no award for the management of critical Internet resources: that would have been Nominet, surely!

I would like to thank Nominet and Alun Michael for taking this initiative to prepare for the next meeting of the IGF in Rio de Janeiro. The Nominet Best Practice Challenge has helped identify examples of world-leading best practice. And the UK Internet Governance Forum that we have seen discussing issues today will help UK participants in the IGF show a strong lead towards a globally open, secure, accessible and inclusive information society.

Thank you.