DiploNews – Issue 213 – 3 October 2012

Application deadline extended: 2013 Master/Postgraduate Diploma in Contemporary Diplomacy

You are invited to apply for the popular Master/Postgraduate Diploma in Contemporary Diplomacy, offered through the University of Malta, starting at the end of January 2013. This blended learning programme offers a valuable opportunity for diplomats and other international relations professionals to continue studies without leaving work. The programme consists of a 10-day residential workshop in Malta followed by 16 to 20 months of online learning.

New for 2013: Applicants may select Internet governance as an area of specialisation within the Master/Postgraduate Diploma in Contemporary Diplomacy. Candidates for this area of specialisation will attend several required courses in the area of Internet governance (Introduction to Internet Governance, eDiplomacy, Cybersecurity, and Infrastructure and Critical Internet Resources) and select their remaining courses from the wide list of diplomacy topics. Candidates will write their dissertations on Internet governance-related topics. Please check our announcement of this new specialisation option for more information.

The application deadline for the Master/Postgraduate Diploma in Contemporary Diplomacy is 20 October 2012. For more information and to apply please see the course webpage

IG Capacity Building Programme at CENTR General Assembly

On Thursday, 4th October, Diplo will present its initiative for national and regional capacity building programmes in Internet governance at the 48th General Assembly of CENTR – the association of Internet Country Code Top Level Domain Registries. CENTR gathers representatives from the majority of European ccTLD Registries, as well as from other partner institutions such as VeriSign, ICANN, Afilias, the European Commission, and DiploFoundation. The meeting will also discuss policy developments within ICANN and IANA, the EU Commission, ENISA, the UN's IGF, and ITU's WCIT.

Building on the needs of public authorities and other stakeholders across Europe to better understand the Internet and DNS working principles, cross-border issues, and policy ecosystem, Diplo will present its successful capacity development methodology and suggest a partnership for launching national and regional IG Capacity Building Programmes.

Cyber War and Cyber Crime: Session at the Belgrade Security Forum

On 20 September, Diplo’s Vladimir Radunovic was a panellist at the session Cyber War and Cyber Crime: Responding to the Governance Challenges at the 2012 Belgrade Security Forum (BSF). The BSF is a high-level regional hub for policy dialogue intended to meaningfully contribute to the development of the security community in the western Balkans and to the ongoing European and global security and foreign policy debate. Recognising the importance of security of cyberspace, this year the BSF introduced a session on Cyber War and Cyber Crime: Responding to the Governance Challenges, in partnership with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF).

DiploFoundation was invited to join and present its views about the hypes and realties of cyberwar and cybersecurity. Vlada addressed both the narrow and the broad understanding of cybersecurity, the variety of existing global diplomatic initiatives, and the importance of cooperation as the main component of governance model.

What’s happening in Diplo’s blogosphere?

We’re on an evolutionary roll with a new stream of posts where Diplo bloggers and faculty share their ideas for reading material which is relevant to Diplo's core topics and feeds the mind.  Recommendations so far include Tim Harford’s 2011 offer Adapt. Why success always starts with failure; Thorsten Pattberg’s piece  The end of translation; and Amanda Glassman’s blog on  Rationality in public health care provision.

Aldo Matteucci shares some lessons from positive deviance and questions when do hegemons fail?  He also looks at both  the power of randomizing and the power of evolution. Aldo has  long argued that teaching diplomacy is an exercise in Pollyanna-type thinking as long as one major aspect goes unacknowledged: the darker side of diplomacy.

Pete Cranston shares his thoughts on collaboration – a second essential e-competency for Diplomats, and looks at curation – one of five essential e-competencies for diplomats while Jovan Kurbalija, in an interesting piece on who is friends with whom on Facebook, reckons that when it comes to invisible geopolitics, emotions matter.  Pete also kicks off a new feature called links we liked which collates various interesting links we’ve come across recently, including Turkmeni stallions, voices from South Africa, international cyber-battlefields and 'we can't tweet to freedom'.

It’s all go at Diplo… join in the conversation by leaving your comments or sending us a blog post for publication.

Discussing Internet governance

Last week, Walid Al-Saqaf, a university scholar and activist from Yemen, was the special host of our September Internet governance webinar on Online Freedom of Speech. If you missed the webinar, or would like to follow the discussion again, view or download the audiovisual recording, and download the accompanying presentation here.

Guest blogger Deirdre Williams talks about senior netizens and their role in IG discussions. Given that the potential of ICT to solve some of the problems of an aging population does not seem to feature in discussions, the Internet Governance Forum should focus also on reaching out to older people.

Discussions are picking up among our Internet governance community members, especially since the 7th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the ITU’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) are weeks away.

In WCIT – What is it all about?, Naveed Ul-Haq talks extensively about the WCIT meeting in Dubai, the draft International Telecommunications Regulations (ITR), and the arguments for and against. Keisha Taylor refers to her blog post written for the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, asking Is the UN really trying to take over the Internet? Tom Kizito Mayengo also reflects on the ITR, and asks whether changes to these regulations will have an impact on digital divide. In another blog post, Mr Mayengo discusses the implications of the proposal by ETNO to the ITU on the ‘sender-party-pays’ principle for Internet traffic.

On a different note, in Your phone company is watching, Trevor Phipps reflects on the experience of a German politician who discovered that huge amounts of personal data were being retained by his mobile phone operator. Arsene Tungali discusses the difference between e-business and e-commerce, and Rozalin AlBalushi shares her thoughts on the theme The Internet in 2022, which participants of the IGCB special programme for Oman discussed in one of the online sessions.

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