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1. To what extent has progress been made on the vision of the people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society in the ten years since the WSIS?
As typified by global and local IGF, opportunities of discussions involving multistakeholders have been increasing at global, regional, and national levels. Such movement leads us to a favorable direction that would result in actions reflecting wider community inputs.
Themes of the discussions may be categorized into two layers. One of which is infrastructure layer such as "promoting global development of the Internet infrastructure such as universal access". And the other is human activity layer such as "devising governance model and framework of implementation regarding to information flow or social activities" above the infrastructure layer. Discussions in these two layers have been soundly progressed in a good balance while tackling
the emerging and evolving important themes in each layer and across the two layers.
More importantly, we do not devote ourselves in discussions themselves but take actions to implement the outcome of the discussions, as exemplified by the wide deployment of mobile Internet and the management of Internet core resources through governance framework established by ICANN. In fact, we recognize that the efforts of the organizations that take roles of implementation and their mutual cooperation have made it possible for us to observe major progress in achieving "the people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society".
2. What are the challenges to the implementation of WSIS outcomes?
As we mentioned in the answer to question 1, the development of the Internet is in good progress in various aspects through the involvement of global multistakeholders. Therefore, the existing framework and activities should be maintained and empowered.
If we choose one of the important points of such challenges, it would be the enhancement of bottom-up activities in every country and region. Such local activities are inevitable for the whole global multistakeholders to enjoy the benefit of development of and on the Internet. This impulsion in every single country and region is essential for the prosperity of the global Internet.
3. What should be the priorities in seeking to achieve WSIS outcomes and progress towards the Information Society, taking into account emerging trends?
Sound progress of both infrastructure of and human activities on the Internet is important. As far as this basic direction is supported, there would be no need of priorities defined a priori. Development of infrastructure should go forward anyway. Regardless of the degree of the infrastructure development, human activities above the infrastructure should be enriched with proper governance framework. This kind of activities in diverse scenes will enable us to gather best practices that can be referred to and adopted by other communities afterwards. This will lead to further development of the global Internet as a whole.
If we need to choose one aspect that should be prioritized, it may be to fertilize the flexible basis of framework of both infrastructure and human activity, which will enable us to follow and utilize the dynamic evolution of the environment and users' demand relevant to the Internet.
4. What are general expectations from the WSIS + 10 High Level Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly?
As we have seen in IGF, governments, civil society, private sector, technical and academic community, and intergovernmental organizations have cooperated and collectively have experienced great progress in order to achieve the principle and purpose of WSIS. We expect the outcome of the WSIS + 10 High Level Meeting to stick to this direction into the future.
One concrete expectation from the Meeting itself is that not only governments and/or inter-governmental organizations but also nongovernmental sectors should get engaged properly and reach a conclusion which will draw out the vigor of private sectors that
have proven their strong engagement in the progress of and on the Internet.
5. What shape should the outcome document take?
The content of the outcome document should embrace the dynamism of the Internet and human activities. In order for us to achieve this, detailed description of concrete implementation should be minimized and a small set of guiding principles should be described in a simple and clear manner.
Documents relevant to WSIS that have been published so far were well designed to support the above features and also well written so as to minimize the space of vague or multiple interpretations. In addition, such documents have had a strong support from various stakeholders. Therefore, the outcome document should not be created from scratch. Existing documents, such as Tunis Agenda, should be used as a basis as much as possible.
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