OECD Adopts Recommendation for Internet Policy Making Principles
URL: http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/site/entry/oecd_internet_policy_making_principlesKaren Kornbluh serves as U.S. Ambassador to the OECD.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) finished 2011 with an important step in international
efforts to ensure the Internet remains an open platform that
is secure and reliable, continuing to spur free expression
and association, innovation, prosperity and job creation. As
part of its mission to promote policies that will improve
the economic and social well-being of people around the
world, OECD members adopted a Recommendation of
the Council on Principles for Internet Policy Making.
The Recommendation was born at a U.S.-initiated
high-level meeting earlier this year. It was developed
through the OECD's multilateral consensus-based process and
is a successful follow-on to the June 28-29 High Level
Meeting on the Internet Economy. A Communique' was agreed to
by the member countries, Egypt, businesses, and Internet
technical advisory groups, setting the principles to guide
Internet-related policy making.
This is an important deliverable on the U.S. open Internet
agenda. In May, President Obama issued the U.S. International Strategy for Cyberspace,
an agenda for safeguarding the single Internet. Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton has developed a groundbreaking
Internet freedom agenda,
a principled approach to preserving the freedom to connect
-- the freedoms of expression, association and assembly
online -- and to ensuring that the Internet can be a
platform for commerce, debate, learning and innovation in
the 21st century.
The stakes are high. According to McKinsey and Associates,
over the past five years, the Internet has been responsible
for 21 percent of the growth in mature economies and has
created 2.6 jobs for every job it has displaced. Its power
to generate innovation is rivaled only by its potential to
help people realize their rights and democratic aspirations,
as the Arab Spring demonstrated. According to McKinsey, this
platform produced more growth in its first 15 years than the
Industrial Revolution did in its first 50. The United States
plans to work with others to continue building consensus for
global norms that promote a free future for the Internet.