Jari Arkko's speech at the IGF 2016 High-Level meeting on
Inclusivity, Guadalajara, Mexico, December 2016.

> 1. What advantages does the multistakeholder model
> offer to the global efforts regarding inclusion,
> including those focused in reducing the different types
> of digital divide?

Thank you moderator Lagunes. To start, I wanted to say
that I'm pleased to be in Mexico and in this
conference. Our topic today and the many other topics
this week are important for the Internet.

I want to respond to the multistakeholder question by
providing a perspective from the Internet Engineering
Task Force or (IETF). Our mission is improve the core
Internet technology, such TCP/IP or HTTP.

I want to begin by saying how important inclusiveness
is for all of our work. If you let one or few parties
drive a discussion, you will not get the full
picture. For instance, at the IETF we depend critically
on this multistakeholder model, to get the views of
those who build applications, network operators, those
who worry about the privacy of the end user,
governments where regulatory issues are involved, and
so on. The biggest value in our work comes from the
discussion between these different people.

Our model on how we achieve this is special, but I feel
it has worked well for us. The basic idea is to have
very low barrier to participation. All you need is an
e-mail address, some facility with the English
language, and a good idea or good feedback. Everybody
who is interested on a topic is welcome, and
discussions are held together. We try to draw people to
our meetings as well, and for that Internet Society for
instance runs a fellows program. But our primary work
happens online, so the costs of participation are low.

It is perhaps an interesting contrast to many other
organisations that are structured around different
types of participants, e.g., government, civil society,
and business. In IETF, people represent themselves and
their ideas, not a particular sector.

And I'm quite proud about the results, our
specifications have come from people in 76 countries,
from many many different backgrounds, and for tech
industry organisation we have quite good gender
distribution in our leadership group, and so on.

But I don't want to give a view that there are no
challenges, either. We keep trying to draw in an even
broader set of people, and it is hard work. One of the
difficulties is that for any given topic, the
participants need a reason why they are participating
and they need knowledge to engage in the discussion
effectively. Where there is a lot of Internet industry,
academia, or governance experts it is easy to find
participants, but it is harder elsewhere.

> 2. The efforts of the global community are driven
> towards a scenario in which there are more people
> connected to the Internet; Which set of skills should
> the people have to achieve total inclusion in diverse
> aspects, including the economic one?

Other speakers have already talked at length about
the skills needed. Personally, I would like to emphasize
the soft skills as pointed by Lynn and Daniel for instance.
Those skills are the ones that I want my kids to learn at
school.

But I also wanted to return to a what some of you had
said earlier. Malcolm and others highlighted the need
to connect the billions of people that have not been
connected yet. That is of course important and plenty
of work remains.

But I wanted to highlight that it is not enough. We
also want freedom, openness, practical ability to
create local services, and so on.

I heard Dorothy support the idea of local content,
I heard the Minister from South Africa support
local production, I heard others call for ensuring
that there is excessive surveillance or censorship.

We really need these things as well as connectivity
for everyone.