My Internet Governance Journey

My Internet governance journey started when I participated for the first time in the 2011 IGF. After quite a long journey I felt that I needed to be more involved in Internet governance issues for my local and regional community, and also tried to be more involved with the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) especially through the IGF and APrIGF mailing lists. When I was selected as an IGF secretariat fellow, it was a great opportunity for me to learn more about Internet governance principles and the role of various stakeholders.

As an IGF secretariat fellow I was involved in a couple of issues, specifically the collaboration between the IGF secretariat and other stakeholders, and learning how the IGF secretariat works with national and regional levels to build awareness and skills on Internet governance issues.

Here’s a brief list of my experiences:

• Learn and analyze the various stakeholder roles related to Internet governance (IG) issues:

During my fellowship duration I was assigned and tried to learn the roles of various key Internet Governance stakeholders, for example, ICANN, ISOC, IETF, W3C, RIRs, IRTF, ISO, ITU and so forth that play an important role in the Internet ecosystems. I also tried to learn about the present and future challenges of Internet governance, in particular, focusing on the perspective of developing economies.

• Collaborate with the National IGF:

I also worked collaboratively with the representatives of the national IGFs about the challenges currently facing developing economies and the way forward for future collaboration in the global Internet governance space.

• Organize open consultation and MAG meeting:

It was a great experience to help with this type of event as the IGF secretariat representative. It widened my views, specifically how various stakeholders work with the IGF secretariat in organizing this consultation process. There were many comments on future collaboration and improvement of Internet governance issues. This experience really inspired me to work with the IGF secretariat in the future.

• Participate in the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) Inter-sessional Panel meeting:

I also participated as an observer in the CSTD Inter-sessional Panel meeting. This was a great learning experience for me on how the commission provides high-level advice on relevant science and technology issues and gathers information on the mapping of public policy issues. I hope to be able to share my knowledge in my local and regional community.

• Managing the IGF Secretariat website

As a technical representative I also helped to manage the IGF website, working on making the various stakeholder comments on relevant issues more visible.

Finally this experience compelled me to become an active member of the Internet Society, which opened my eyes to their work with other communities, especially our regional communities such as SANOG, APrIGF and APNIC.

I believe our community will be get valuable experience through this program in the future and I will work to build awareness of the program where I can. I’d like to convey my thanks for the support I have received and hope the fellowship program continues to be a success.

 

Md. Jahangir Hossain is a Network Engineer at Open Communications Ltd, a leading solution provider and Earth Telecommunication (Pvt.) Ltd, a leading IP transit provider based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

He has been in the networking industry since 2005 and is an alumni member of SANOG and ICANN.  He has received fellowships from the IETF, ISOC’s Next Generation Leadership, and the United Nation’s Internet Governance Forum Secretariat.

Jahangir is also a founding member and currently the Vice Chair of the Internet Society (ISOC) Bangladesh, Dhaka, Chapter and a founding member of the bdNOG Executive Committee  (Bangladesh Network Operators Group). He also a new graduate student research instructor at  Daffodil International University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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