Contributions to the Net neutrality debate

IT for Change helped prepare India's submission for the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development's Working Group on Improvements to the Internet Governance Forum (WGIIGF). The submission has some concrete set of IGF reform proposals and helped shape the discussions of the WGIIGF.

IT for Change (ITfC) was one among five civil society organisations invited to make submissions before the Working Group on Improvements to the Internet Governance Forum (WG-IGF) of the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology Development (UNCSTD), in January 2011. The WG-IGF has been set  up to provide recommendations (process related as well as substantive) for the democratisation and pro-poor sensitisation of the IGF, a multistakeholder policy dialogue forum on Internet related issues. The report of the WG-IGF will be tabled by the UNCSTD at the next session of the UN General Assembly.

IT for Change (ITfC) organised two panels at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held in November 2009, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The overall theme of IGF 2009 was 'Internet Governance – Creating Opportunities for All'.

In 2009, IT for Change(ITfC) submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) regarding the imminent expiration of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).  The submission calls for the U.S. to forgo its unilateral control over critical Internet resources, as ITfC considers the Internet to be a global public resource that should have equal participation by all countries and people in its governance.

Anita Gurumurthy (IT for Change) represented IT for Change at the IDRC Public Panel on ‘The potential for open development for Canada and abroad’ held in Ottawa (Canada) on 5 May 2010. The panel discussion addressed issues such as unequal access to technology, threats to privacy, and intellectual property rights, examining the possibilities of ‘openness’ that new technologies bring in for development and proposing ways to manage the potential risks while harnessing the opportunities for collective social benefit.

The 2008 Internet Governance Forum(IGF) was held in Hyderabad, India, between 3-6 December with the  overall theme 'Internet for All'.

IT for Change was at the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) Ministerial Meeting on 'The Future of the Internet Economy', an event held in June 2008 in Seoul (Korea). Parminder Jeet Singh was a panelist on the Civil Society - Organised Labour Forum on a policy round-table titled 'The future of the Internet: The human and political dimension', where he spoke about the democratic deficit in global Internet policy making.

In this article, Anita Gurumurthy and Parminder Jeet Singh analyse the way in which the emphasis on Internet governance and its high visibility in the WSIS process tended to take focus away from the important issue of exploring how the Internet can address long-standing development issues.