Internet Governance can be defined as the evolving policies and mechanisms under which the Internet community’s many stakeholders make decisions about the development and use of the Internet.
Internet governance covers a wide range of issues, from day-to-day technical and operational workings of the Internet to public policy issues such as combating crime on the Internet. Internet governance discussions occur in many forums. Technical and operational Internet governance discussions have long been discussed in multi-stakeholder bodies developed for these purposes.
Key global and regional forums and organisations include:
- Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
- Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
- Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC)
- Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
- Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
- International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
- Internet Society (ISOC)
- Global Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
- Asia-Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (AprIGF)
- Internet Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC) to the OECD
- World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
- Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs)
Key domestic organisations include:
- .au Domain Administration (auDA)
- Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)
- Communications Alliance
Terms of Reference
This Working Group will be responsible for monitoring internet governance issues, participating in conferences, external working groups and external policy development processes, particularly including Internet Governance Forums (domestic, regional and global).
The Working Group will report back to the Policy Team on issues and developments relevant to EFA’s objectives, and to facilitate the production of submissions and policy position papers as and where appropriate.
These issues will include those relating to:
- critical internet infrastructure, including, net neutrality, domain names, DNS, IP addressing
- development of global standards, especially by the IETF, W3C, IAB and ITU
- UN-sponsored activities such as WSIS
Working Group Members
- David Cake (Lead)
- Sandra Raub
