ICC representatives participate in summer school on Internet governance

Herbert Heitmann, ICC E- Business, IT, and Telecommunications (EBITT) Commission Chair and Chief Communications Officer, SAP; and Ayesha Hassan, ICC Senior Policy Manager, EBITT will teach the course jointly.

“Our workshop will provide an important opportunity for students to see how business views Internet governance,” Mr Heitmann said. “It is also an opportunity to raise awareness about how policy approaches impact business and the need for consultation with business at national, regional and international levels on policy issues ranging from telecoms liberalization to data protection.”

Students come from varying backgrounds and include professionals with extensive experience in Internet related areas seeking to deepen their knowledge. The one-week course covers the political, legal, economic, socio-cultural, technological and business dimensions of Internet governance.

ICC/ BASIS have consistently stressed the importance of Internet governance issues that promote economic growth, build human and institutional capacities, and address development needs.

Specifically, ICC/BASIS has expressed strong support for the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in its current format, believing it allows an open dialogue among all stakeholders concerned with Internet governance issues.

The Euro-SSIG is an initiative that has now spread to Latin America and the Arab region with summer schools on Internet governance in Buenos Aires and Cairo that took place this year, which compliments the national and regional IGF initiatives spreading to many regions. Wolfgang Kleinwachter, University of Aarhaus, is the SSIG founder.

The European Summer School on Internet Governance, takes place in Meissen, Germany, is housed in the St Afra Monastery, which was founded in 1205 and remained a monastery until 1942. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the father of the German Enlightenment, went to school there.