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Highlighting Technical Community Involvement in Internet Governance
- Internet Architecture Board
22 May 2025
At the IETF 122 meeting in Bangkok, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) held a special session about Internet Governance – specifically, the upcoming World Summit on Information Security (WSIS) 20 year review.
The WSIS review is an opportunity for the UN community to recommit to the Tunis Agenda: the agreement between the countries of the world that the primary mechanism for Internet governance should be multistakeholder – i.e., involving governments, civil society, the technical community, industry, and academia as peers – rather than multilateral, i.e. government-led.
While the Internet Society (ISOC) has been advocating for and informing the technical community for some time regarding Internet Governance issues, the IAB believed that the potential impact of the WSIS review merited a special focus.
During the session, Olaf Kolkman from the Internet Society led with a background presentation that explained what WSIS is, what the timeline for the review will be, and how the IETF fits in.
Then, Ian Sheldon from the Australian government presented a government perspective, explaining one government’s view of how important the IETF is to Internet governance and reinforcing the value that it can bring.
Alvaro Retana followed up with what the IAB and ISOC have outlined as the role of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in the upcoming discussions – why we’re engaging, how we will engage, and what message will be focused upon. Several IAB members and other community participants will be attending the WSIS+20 High-Level Event 2025 in Geneva in July, and it’s important that we highlight that:
- The IETF provides building blocks for a well-functioning, open, secure, trustworthy and unfragmented Internet infrastructure, which is critical to the delivery an interoperable and demand-driven Internet that is needed to fulfill the WSIS action lines and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- The IETF is an open venue with a transparent process, producing freely available specifications and constantly improving its diversity. This enables broad participation that ensures successful deployment through voluntary adoption.
- The IETF promotes good Internet governance by constantly evolving and maturing its process based on community-based consensus, allowing the Internet to scale.
Along with the upcoming Internet Governance Forum in June (where the IAB is holding a networking session), the WSIS review is a critical opportunity to promote open, multistakeholder Internet governance. The IAB and the Internet Society will be there to listen, advocate, and inform about the IETF’s role. We also encourage community members to explain the role of the IETF in their national and regional consultations.
You can watch a recording of the IAB session.