The formal announcement (speech) of the group formation was made by its founding president : Louis Pouzin, during the IGF Open Consultations on Monday 3 September 2007, at the Palais des Nations, in Geneva.

Within the overall framework of the implementation of the recommendations of the World Summit on the Information Society, it appears that political and ethical standards demand the formation of a Civil Society working group. The "Civil Society" must be clarified as a group of people sharing such core values as openness, transparency, public interest, diversity, inclusion and a sincere concern for sustainable development, in bridging the digital divide. "Civil Society" shall not be defined “subtractively” as a group of people who neither belong to the government nor business sectors. In this view, "Civil Society" must be differentiated from the "Internet Community", which is increasingly dominated by the technico-industrial complex that manages critical internet resources.

The working group is going to deal with all governance issues related to all information networks, which include not only Internet Governance, but also governance of Telecommunication networks and especially Next Generation Networks. This site Wsis-Gov.org is now the site of the WSIS Civil Society Working Group on Information Networks Governance.

Linguistic Diversity, either with the help of different page versions, or with embedded automatic translation is fully acknowledged, with linkage with the Dynamic Coalition on Linguistic Diversity.