Working Group on Internet Governance

The Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) was a United Nations multistakeholder Working group initiated after the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) first phase Summit in Geneva failed to agree on the future of Internet governance. The first phase of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) agreed to continue the dialogue on Internet Governance in the Declaration of Principles and Action Plan adopted on 12 December 2003, to prepare for a decision at the second phase of the WSIS in Tunis during November 2005. In this regard, the first phase of the Summit requested the United Nations Secretary-General to establish a Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG).

The main activity of the WGIG was "to investigate and make proposals for action, as appropriate, on the governance of Internet by 2005." The WGIG was asked to present the result of its work in a report "for consideration and appropriate action for the second phase of the WSIS in Tunis 2005."

It was asked, inter alia, to deal with the following issues:

A few weeks before the release of the WGIG Report the U.S. reiterated its claim of ICANN and stated that it wished to "maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file".

The chair of WGIG was Nitin Desai, and the executive coordinator was Markus Kummer.

The 40 official members are listed in the final report; in addition, there were many people attending informally to contribute their views.

The report of the WGIG divided Internet Governance into four sections:

Four options for the management of Internet-related public policy issues were proposed in the Report of the WGIG, finalised during their fourth meeting, and presented to stakeholders on 18 July 2005 in preparation for the November 2005 meeting in Tunis, Tunisia. These proposals all include the introduction of an open multi-stakeholder based Internet governance forum to give greater influence to stakeholders around the world, including civil society, the private sector, and governments. Each model included different strategies for the oversight role, currently held by the United States Department of Commerce.

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