For all the tranquility at the end of last week’s World Technology/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF), E.B. White’s words come to mind: “there is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.” One also has to wonder though what a literary stylist like White would think of the linguistic gyrations demanded by the compromises reached at the WTPF in Geneva, and what they portend.

Past as Prologue

The management of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and a number of influential Member States made best efforts to recalibrate the dialogue at the WTPF towards mending political fences battered by the ITU’s last major gathering back in December, and delegates of all stripes found a decent hearing for their concerns. But attempts by governments of Brazil and Russia to heighten the prominence of governments and the ITU itself in Internet governance still clashed with traditional defenders of the multistakeholder model. Where the clashes could not be resolved, we are left with gems such as this: a formal recommendation dealing with the role for governments that “invites all stakeholders to work on these issues.” Where, if anywhere, do you go from there?

Where to, ITU?

Uncertainty exists about how the next stages of the Internet governance debate will play out, but we at least know on what stages they will be played. Stakeholders in need of determining which venues to attend can choose among plenty of meetings and acronyms, IGF to CSTD to UNGA’s 2C. The next opportunity for the ITU to consider the issue of Internet governance will be their own Council Working Group on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in June that take place alongside the ITU’s larger Council meetings, where a broader discussion around the organization’s budget may prove more important in determining priorities for the organization and how much resource it should spend in traditional areas of expertise, like satellite and spectrum allocations, and Internet policy.

In the coming months the ITU will also host a series of regional meetings in preparation for the World Telecommunications Development Conference (WTDC) from 31 March – 11 April 2014 in Sharm el?Sheikh, Egypt. The ITU is colocating that meeting with its own ten year review of WSIS (called WSIS+10), as well as its annual WSIS Forum, in which it has traditionally served to review the WSIS action lines for itself and various other UN institutions.

Heralding what?

These meetings, and some of the new voices in them, imply that the ITU continues to position itself as a key forum for governments to come and make their views heard on Internet matters—a welcome if redundant function. So if the process of getting the agreement struck at the WTPF suggests anything, it is that stakeholders can agree to disagree. This will not mean a stalemate or halt a discussion, in this case, but rather an evolving debate about the role for government in Internet policymaking. The steady pace of ITU-sponsored engagements will provide further opportunities to agree, disagree, and in the end, hopefully create a set of shared understandings and brokered solutions that actually advance the debate to the benefit of people and countries around the world.