A development agenda can be defined as a holistic program of analysis and action intended to mainstream development considerations into the procedures and policy outputs of global governance mechanisms. While there have been concerted efforts to pursue such agendas in the multilateral institutions dealing with issues like international trade and intellectual property, there has been no corresponding initiative with respect to global Internet governance. Hence, a series of interrelated workshops has been organized at the Rio, Hyderabad and Sharm el Sheikh IGF meetings to help foster dialogue on the possible establishment of such an initiative. Over the course of these events, participants have considered the potential value-added of a development agenda; fleshed out its broad institutional and substantive contours; identified some particularly important linkages between internet governance and development that merit further consideration; and in light of the WSIS principles, agreed that the IGF is the most appropriate venue in which to devise an approach to mainstreaming development within Internet governance institutions, as applicable. Building on these foundations, the next step in the process should be to test the general model in a specific issue-area and institutional context in order to identify possible refinements.

Accordingly, the proposed Vilnius workshop would apply the development agenda approach to the field of Internet names and numbers, with particular attention being devoted to the ICANN nexus. In addition to advancing IG4D efforts within the IGF, the workshop also could provide food for thought to the growing dialogue within ICANN on how to better address development concerns. The three main elements of a development agenda to be considered would include: a) capacity building partnerships to enable the effective participation of governmental and nongovernmental actors in technical dialogues and decision making processes; b) institutional measures---e.g. with respect to information overload, working methods and culture, and possibly development-oriented focal points---that could facilitate increased engagement; and c) identification of the substantive policy issues that may raise distinctive developmental considerations and to which a developmental orientation could usefully be brought to bear.