Effective civil society participation in global cybersecurity debates
The Dutch government have made a serious effort to engage with civil society.
How can we build on this to ensure there is a multistakeholder dimension to future cybersecurity debates & that civil society can play a full role in them.
Q1:
What were the benefits of civil society participation in the Conference?
This Conference provided a key learning opportunity
Civil Society were engaged with to some extent and influenced some issues taken on board - e,g, ethics of algorithms, export controls, privacy etc.
Obstacles:
- Bilaterals
- Ministerial statements (in general government focus of whole conference)
- Dominance of academics rather than civil society participants on panels
- lack of accountability for governments
- lack of resources/finance for civil society
Question 2:
What are the obstacles for CS to engage and have a voice in forums like GCCS2015?
This forum specifically is an intergovernmental gathering, which means that CS inherently has less impact than favorable.
Bilatteral meetings happening behind closed doors.
Lack of interaction with the audience. The amount of input CS were allowed to have was very low.
Governments are able to set the topics, but CS is not. This means that the topics will not reflect CS.
CS Isn't given it's rightfull place in the conversation.
There's a lack of accountabillity; political lingo is usually very non-descript.
There is a lack of financial support, where countries and companies have seemingly endless funds, CS is usually run on and/or by volunteers
- Bilateral meeting happening in close doors.
- Fisical available space to reach the States' representantive so as CS can
share ideas.
- Ministerial conference: primary governmante focuses. Useless. The conpcet
is problematics because the focus is on the goverment. Brings us to an
unequal postion.
- Lack of interaction with the audience. It was more expert+academia but less
civil society
- The themes selected by the conference were selected by the goverments.
- No civil society engagement in the new platform. Global Forum Expertise.
- It cannot be a good cooperation between private and state without CS
participation. The CS isn't give a rightfull place among stakeholders.
- Lack of accountability of the States. The engagement is happening after
(not before or during).
- Financial support.
Question 3:
What are the opportunities for CS engagement in cybersecurity debates in the future, particularly GCCS 2017?
Need to be better at aggregating needs of civil society and organised in a more strategic way.
The comment period on the draft text on civil society participation was too short. We need to be a part of agenda setting
Better integration into GFCE, including that the initiatives launched in GCCS2015 are appropriate for the
Need to make sure that the Mexican conference will be just as accepting of civil society participation as the Netherlands, but also be willing to allow civil society to play a more equal role to government and private sector. This could be through the GFCE.
There were several bilateral meetings off to the side during the panels. If civil society is organised much earlier, with a set of concrete agenda items, we should be able to hold these sorts of meetings with the public and private sector as well.