Good Afternoon, Good Morning Everyone back home!
Right now, it's about 1:55pm here, and I am in the session in room Pardo II.
"Multi-Stakeholder Policy Development - Lessons from actors engaged in institutional processes".
Moderator: Bertrand De La Chapelle, Special Envoy for the Information Society in the French Foriegn Department and Eurpean Affairs Ministry.
Really interesting so far. They are just scratching the surface of this issue, but so far, we've seen the policy development process workflow:
1. Initiation
2. Drafting
3. Adoption
4. Implementation
5. Enforcement
This session is more of a dialogue on the first stage of policy development - Initiation.
How do you engage other organizations to focus on the issue? Who should be included? Governments, NGOs, Civil Society, Education, Industry? Should they all be included in the same group? Just imagine - it seems like this particular topic could be presented in a giant conference of it's own.
Not only that, but it sure is nice to know that there are other people out there wearing multiple hats - being a single person multi-stakeholder. In particular, one lady - Avri Doria, Adjunct Professor at LTU in Sweden - made a really good point that when wearing multiple hats, one is not necessarily able to speak freely in one venue wearing one hat, but then can speak to an issue in another venue wearing a different hat.
Wow. I know exactly how that feels. Sometimes, in different circumstances, I am required to "hold my tongue" as it would be either impolitic, impolite, rude, misunderstood, etc. - yet, in a different time and space I can speak freely as to the issue and what I really think. I really felt this at WSIS - we're there with Industry Canada, specifically allied with the Aboriginal Portal - but... you can't just sound off on that website, even if you do have issues with it. Some of the concerns I had were: The Aboriginal Portal was not designed by an Aboriginal person. The Aboriginal Portal was not administered by an Aboriginal person. AND a non-Aboriginal person decides who qualifies as "Aboriginal enough" to make it on the portal or to be linked to.
All sorts of interesting questions floating through my head - and there was NO WAY I was actually going to say anything there, considering I was sponsored there by the Government of Canada and was taking up space at the Aboriginal Portal booth. But, you'd better believe that I had serious concerns.
Anyways, I will continue this later. Other session coming in.
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