Creating Tomorrow's Internet.
As someone who has been involved with the international growth of the Internet
since the mid 1980's, and with Internet governance bodies in both professional
and volunteer capacities, I have been concerned for some time that some of the
organisations which are governing and managing the Internet have not evolved
sufficiently to deal with the problems which have appeared as the Internet gets
older and bigger.
I first heard the Internet protocols described as legacy systems in the 1990s,
but, like most people, took no notice and got on with the business of growing
it. However, by the turn of the century cracks were beginning to appear. These
cracks became larger and larger during 2003, to the point where it became clear
to me and others, that something is wrong.
At the same time as some of us were becoming concerned with the technical
issues, the World Summit on the Information Society was beginning to debate
Internet governance - certainly not an unrelated topic. However, here another
concern was evident to me: much of the governance debate was proceeding without
full knowledge of what Internet governance actually involves.
My company, Ian Peter and Associates Pty Ltd, works professionally with large
governmental and private sector organisations that have problems with
organisational structures and old IT systems and uses established project and
change management methodologies to analyse associated issues. It seemed to us to
be appropriate to use these methodologies to look at today's Internet systems,
governance, and user issues.
Searching the literature, we were surprised to find that traditional business
analysis appears not to have been applied to Internet matters. As a result, we
commissioned the Internet Analysis Report - 2004, of which this is the Executive
Summary.
The Internet Analysis Report - 2004 is a comprehensive study of the state of the
Internet in 2004. It contains an in-depth analysis of issues facing Internet
users, emerging issues with Internet protocols, governance bodies and governance
issues, and conclusions and recommendations. Reviewed by a panel of
international experts, the report has been highly praised. Full details on
obtaining a copy of the report can be found here.