Vijhai Grayan | Cyber, Tech and Space Fellow
Image sourced from Marcus Spiske via Unsplash.
In a world increasingly mediated by data flows and algorithmic systems, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has, for two decades, stood as a touchstone for the aspiration that the digital realm might serve as a catalyst for inclusive development, democratic participation, and the equitable sharing of knowledge. Emerging in the early 2000s amid optimism about the internet as a global public good, WSIS championed a multistakeholder approach bringing together governments, businesses, and civil society to set policies and drive initiatives that expand internet access, bridge the digital divide, and promote inclusive digital development.
As the WSIS reaches its 20 year anniversary, the formal review of the WSIS later this year (WSIS+20) has been tempered by the realities of an increasingly fragmented, commercialised, and securitised digital landscape. What was once envisioned as an open and interoperable global common now finds itself under pressure from competing national interests and the growing concentration of economic and infrastructural power within a handful of corporate actors. The WSIS+20 review arrives as a reckoning with whether the foundational aspirations of WSIS remain viable in a world so fundamentally altered from the one in which they were first conceived.
A Moment of Contradictions
The WSIS+20 review takes place amid a landscape of deep contradictions. Since the initial phase of WSIS, global internet penetration has surged, connecting billions and catalysing unprecedented opportunities in communication, education, and economic integration. However, widespread connectivity alone has proven inadequate in mitigating deep-seated structural inequities which continue to shape disparities in digital inclusion and opportunity. The deepest digital disparities stem from uneven capacities to influence, regulate, and harness the benefits of digital systems, evident in Kenya and Indonesia’s limited capacity to regulate and tax Big Tech, while the EU asserts global regulatory influence through frameworks like the Digital Services Act and the General Data Protection Regulation.
At the same time, global internet governance has come under increasing strain. WSIS helped establish the principle that the digital realm should not be governed by states alone, but through a distributed model that engages governments, civil society, technical communities and the private sector on equal footing. Yet, in the years since, alternative visions of digital governance have gained prominence. Assertions of national sovereignty over the internet, the proliferation of data localisation requirements, and the strategic use of internet shutdowns have collectively challenged the notion of a single, borderless information space.
Notably, global digital governance is now characterised by a complex and sometimes overlapping ecosystem of processes and institutions. The emergence of parallel initiatives, such as the Global Digital Compact, has introduced new ambitions for setting global principles on digital cooperation, even as it has raised concerns about the potential recentralisation of authority within multilateral structures. In this context, WSIS+20 unfolds against a backdrop of competing priorities: preserving the participatory, dialogic ethos that WSIS helped cultivate, while grappling with increasing calls for more decisive, formalised mechanisms to address transnational digital challenges.
The Question of Relevance
These dynamics have WSIS’s central institution, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), remains fit for purpose in an era defined by rapid technological change and escalating geopolitical competition. Criticisms of the IGF's inability to produce binding outcomes or enforce global norms have gained traction, particularly among those who see the current multistakeholder model as too slow, too diffuse, or too reactive in the face of urgent governance needs around artificial intelligence, data governance and platform accountability.
Yet, the apparent weaknesses of the model are often inseparable from its strengths. The IGF functions as a critical multistakeholder nexus, enabling civil society organisations, technical experts, governments, and industry leaders to engage in deliberative discourse on an equal footing. Rather than imposing top-down governance doctrines, it provides a structured yet open framework for surfacing the inherent tensions, intersecting regulatory paradigms, and competing normative architectures that underpin the digital ecosystem’s evolution. In a time when internet governance risks are becoming increasingly exclusive, technocratic, or state-dominated, the preservation of such pluralistic spaces is more vital than ever.
An Unfinished Experiment
Twenty years on, WSIS endures as an unfinished experiment—a framework that has succeeded in encouraging multistakeholder participation but has struggled to translate deliberation into concrete shifts in power or material redress of global digital inequities. Its limitations, however, do not necessitate its abandonment but rather its strategic refinement. The review, then, is as much about what has been left undone as what has been accomplished. It invites reflection on whether the original vision of a development-oriented Information Society remains adequate to confront a digital world increasingly shaped by asymmetries of knowledge, infrastructure and influence.
In an era where digital governance is increasingly shaped by state sovereignty and corporate dominance, abandoning WSIS would only accelerate the exclusion of voices already marginalised in global decision-making. The IGF, for instance, has often been dismissed for its lack of enforceable mandates, yet its role in fostering open discourse across sectors remains critical in a landscape where governance risks are becoming more fragmented and exclusionary.
Rather than discarding the multistakeholder approach, the challenge is to enhance its foundations to ensure it remains both relevant and effective in shaping the digital order. WSIS+20 represents an inflection point—one that calls for recalibration, ensuring that multistakeholderism remains a force capable of meeting the evolving demands of global digital governance in an era of fragmentation.
Vijhai Grayan is the Cyber, Tech and Space Fellow for Young Australians in International Affairs. He is a lawyer at a leading Australian technology company and an MBA candidate at the University of Sydney, where he received the Future Leaders Scholarship. With expertise in law, cyber, and technology, he is passionate about the rapid evolution of technology, its profound impact on global society, and its transformative potential to reshape international affairs.
Our 2025 Cyber, Tech and Space Fellow is sponsored by .au Domain Administration (auDA). For more information, visit their website here.
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