- Thank you, Sally, and thank you, Kathy,
for inviting me to participate in your program today.
In particular, to give me a chance to talk about a topic
that we've made a top priority
during my seven years at NTIA
I know many of you in this room and watching
from around the world are familiar
with multi-stake holder processes through the work
of ICANN and the IANA Stewardship Transition.
However, I'd like to spend a few minutes
to go into detail as to why we see this
as not just a tool for global, technical Internet issues,
but also as a potential alternative to address
a far broader set of policy issues.
Clearly this model has a successful record of accomplishment
when it comes to technical Internet issues
and all of us have watched in awe over the past two years
as the global Internet community,
comprised of businesses and technical experts,
and public interests groups and governments,
has engaged in the one of the most compelling demonstrations
of a multi-stakeholder process ever undertaken
through the work on the IANA Stewardship Transition.
And given the intensive level of effort
that went into developing that Transition plan,
and building consensus for it from all parts
of the ICANN community,
it's no surprise that today we find all sectors
of the community, businesses, civil society,
technical experts, supporting the Transition.
And I want to thank the Internet Society
and Kathy Brown in particular for your
steadfast support of the Transition.
I know you and other supporters want to see
the United State follow through
on its longstanding, bipartisan commitment
to complete the privatization of the domain-name system.
And as I told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week,
we need to show our trust in the private sector
and the work of technical experts from around the world,
global businesses, and civil society who have delivered
a thoughtful consensus plan by supporting
this long-promised privatization.
At NTIA, we have been inspired by the efforts
of the IANA Transition, multi-stakeholder working groups.
And we are putting our time and resources
into adapting the multi-stakeholder process
to address other issues.
Because we know it can help build trust
in the digital ecosystem and can be an effective tool,
not just to make progress on Internet policy challenges.
The process has the ability to produce in a timely way
meaningful guideposts for industry and consumers
in this rapidly evolving technological environment.
As we have thought about how to use the process more widely,
we have focused on two key attributes
we think are critical in the design
of any multi-stakeholder approach.
They are participation and consensus decision making.
Let me start with participation.
Internet policy issues draw a much larger range
of stakeholders than traditional
telecommunications issues.
And one key benefit of a multi-stakeholder process
is that it can include and engage all interested parties.
And as I've mentioned, these parties can include
industries, civil society, government,
technical and academic experts, and even the general public.
The Internet is a diverse, multi-layered system
that thrives only through the cooperation
of many different parties.
And solving or even meaningfully discussing policy issues
in this space requires engaging these different parties.
And indeed, by encouraging the participation
of all interested parties,
multi-stakeholder processes can encourage
broader and more creative problem solving.
The second key attribute is consensus decision making.
For a multi-stakeholder group to succeed
its members must know that they will be the ones
to make the decision, not someone else,
and that it must be a consensus decision.
Some countries, their organizations
have run what they call multi-stakeholder processes
that in reality are only consultations,
because the group is not empowered
to make the final decision.
But we have found that when groups know
that they control the final decisions,
they are more likely to put in the extra effort
often needed to reach a true consensus.
And usually, reaching consensus requires making compromises.
But the group has to feel that reaching a shared decision
is the most important goal,
commanding and requiring making those compromises.
Otherwise, stakeholders who are simply satisfied
with the status-quo can be ultimately destructive
to a multi-stakeholder model.
Participants must also believe
that the multi-stakeholder process
has the legitimacy to reach a decision.
They must have some trust in those
convening the process and a sense
that the participants are representative
of the broader community.
Often, that legitimacy may come from a government
or some other official entity that convenes the process,
but that does not always have to the case.
The Internet Engineering Task Force, in fact,
is an example of a successful multi-stakeholder body
that has gained legitimacy organically over the years
and did not require the blessing
of government agency like NTIA.
Instead it gained its legitimacy by producing
voluntary standards of the highest quality
and through open, transparent, and inclusive processes.
In the United States, the legitimacy
of multi-stakeholder processes that we have convened
has certainly been helped by our involvement
and by their open and transparent manner.
But government does not always
need to be the legitimizing force.
And so while it's a crucial factor in the success
of multi-stakeholder processes,
there may be different ways to obtain it.
So let me tell you how we've been
using the process in the United States.
Keep in mind, that my agency, NTIA, is not a regulator
like our Federal Communications Commission.
However, we have been able to make progress
on issues of privacy, intellectual property,
and cyber security by organizing and facilitating
multi-stakeholder discussions on these issues.
Like ICANN, our domestic processes
are open to anyone who wishes to participate,
and we have carefully circumscribed our role
to act as a neutral convener and facilitator.
We take extreme care not to ever substitute our judgment
for that of the stakeholders.
In the privacy area, we've convened industry, academics,
and others to develop codes-of-conduct and best practices
that implement the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights
outlined in President Obama's blueprint
on Consumer Data Privacy.
After more than a year at work,
stakeholders reached consensus
on a code-of-conduct to provide
improved privacy notices for mobile devices.
And just this past June, stakeholders wrapped up work
on a set of best practices to help protect privacy related
to the commercial use of facial recognition technology.
Last year, the President directed NTIA
to convene stakeholders to develop best practices
on privacy, transparency, and accountability issues
related to the commercial and private use
of unmanned aircraft systems, better known as drones.
And after several months of hard work,
a diverse set of stakeholders,
including privacy and consumer advocates, industry,
news organizations, trade associations, announced in May
that they had reached agreement
on a best practices document.
On the copyright front, NTIA collaborated
with our sister agency, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
on a multi-stakeholder process to explore ways to improve
the operation of the notice and take-down system
for removing infringing content from the Internet
under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
And after many meetings, stakeholders completed
a helpful list of good, bad, and situational practices
aimed at improving the processing of DMCA notices
by both senders and recipients.
And then on cyber security,
stakeholders are working to finish principles and guidance
for the disclosure of cyber security vulnerabilities.
And next month, we'll be convening a new process
to support better consumer understanding
of the need for security upgrades
and Internet-of-things products.
Now, we do not see the multi-stakeholder process
as totally replacing the need
for legislation and regulation.
However, this tool can be an effective way
to address emerging issues in the
evolving technological landscape.
It allows for nimble, flexible approaches
that participants can agree upon and modify
much faster than traditional regulatory
or legislative models would allow.
If we addressed all technological policy challenges
with the typical Washington regulatory or legislative
process, we might still be waiting for resolution.
Worse, by the time laws or regulations were finalized,
we would likely find that the problem
they were tended to solve no longer exists,
or has evolved into a totally different challenge.
But utilizing multi-stakeholder processes, we can minimize
this likelihood of hamstringing technologists
and users from creating the robust,
evolving Internet we enjoy today.
The United States government, including our Congress,
has long championed the multi-stakeholder approach
as the preferred tool for dealing
with Internet policy issues.
At NTIA, we will continue to trumpet
the advantages of the this approach
wherever we can, both domestically and internationally.
And I ask all of you who support the model
to help educate others about it,
and to push back against the ignorance
sometimes displayed by opponents or skeptics
of the approach, few of whom have ever actually participated
in a process.
We all want to protect Internet freedom,
and promoting the multi-stakeholder model is central
to that protection.
Thank you, for listening.