STATEMENT BY THE DELEGATE OF THE ITALIAN MINISTER OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
TO IGF MEETING IN VILNIUS
Claudio Lenoci, Delegate of the Minister of Public Administration
The Italian delegation and the Italian Minister of Public Administration
attach great importance to the IGF Meeting of Vilnius.
On many questions, as for instance access to the Internet, our Government
recently took concrete actions during the 2009 G8 Meeting under Italian
presidency, and initiatives have successively been taken on by the
Minister of Innovation Minister Brunetta through the promotion of
e-government projects with many developing countries in the Mediterranean
area usefully contributing to strengthen the prospects for access in a
context of cooperation and collaboration.
During all recent years, the strong engagement of our country led,
together with other countries, to the creation of the dynamic coalition on
Internet rights, which successfully works in order to establish and
applying human rights standards to the Internet.
IGF-Italy and Italian government have the same vision of Internet
governance; the IGF Italy 2010 will be held in Rome next November 29 – 30.
It’s quite clear that the way to follow is grouping all the stakeholders
together, strengthening the intuition of the Tunis World Summit on the
Information Society to promote, when needed, a bottom-up regulation
process as a result of concerted efforts.
But, above all, we should collect all principles, orientations and best
practices, in order to progressively elaborate an internationally
recognized method and practices.
In our vision, the international response to the problems of Internet
Governance should take the form of a process of sharing and comparison,
originated from the following historical analogy.
Between the end of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth
century, Napoleon engaged a distinguished Sardinian jurist, Domenico
Azuni, specialised in mercantile law in drawing up an extensive and
innovative code of maritime law which would set in order any systematise
laws, uses, habits and decisions consolidated in Europe.
With a bottom-up approach, Azuni’s work managed to collect widespread and
shared rules, thereby setting the stage for the birth of the first code of
maritime laws, able to face the uncertainties and dangers related to the
navigation in spaces that were not sufficiently and clearly regulated.
Apart from the analogy between “navigation” in Europe at the beginning of
the nineteenth century and the Internet of the twenty first century,
Azuni’s engagement recall the importance of regulating global realities
with shared rules, as well as the need to do so utilizing a method
acknowledging existing and widespread principles and practices.
As in the case of maritime international navigation, today it’s clear that
Internet would not accept a top-down governance, but only a governance
based on sharing of common practises and principles universally
acknowledged.
Mapping of the most common Internet-related problems and identifying
policies able to include different positions and interpretations, we
should realize the perfect balance for a widely shared position.
To sum up, in order to develop our idea we need to jointly draw our own
“Azuni method” in a multi-stakeholder approach, finding the best
instruments and procedures able to manage the proposal described, finding
our way to suit the needs of the individual still compressed and
compromised on the web and giving, at the same time, a clear definition of
Internet-related duties.
In conclusion, this proposal doesn’t claim to be revolutionary, but it
fully reflects the aim of the debate developed during more recent IGF
Meetings.
It’s clear that in pursuing this goal, we need to join other global
initiatives on the subject and to promote a real exchange of ideas and
information. In order to facilitate this process, we plan to open soon a
consultation at global level through the English version of our website.
