Remarks of NTIA Assistant Sec Strickling at Internet Society's InterCommunity 2016

I want to talk about a topic that we have made a top priority during my seven years at [National Telecommunications and Information Administration]. I know many of you here in this room and watching from around the world are familiar with multistakeholder processes through the work of [Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers] and the [Internet Assigned Numbers Authority] stewardship transition. However, I want to spend a few minutes going into more detail about why we see this as not just as a tool for global technical Internet issues but also as a potential alternative to address a far broader set of policy issues.

The US government, including our Congress, has long championed the multistakeholder approach as the preferred tool for dealing with Internet policy issues. At NTIA, we will continue to trumpet the advantages of this approach wherever we can, both domestically and internationally. I ask all of you who support the model to help educate others about it and to push back against the ignorance sometimes displayed by opponents or skeptics of the approach, few of whom have ever actually participated in the process. We all want to protect Internet freedom and promoting the multistakeholder model is central to that protection.