The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during an IGF virtual call. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Good very early morning, evening, afternoon to everybody. This is MAG meeting number 17. Yes, we are having it on first of October, thank you people for agreeing to that.
Just the standard reminders that this meeting is being recorded, and transcript is being made, and a summary report will be published after the meeting. Also we will be using the speaking queue and the link has been posted to the chat right now, by Luis, thank you very much, Luis. With that, I hand it over to Lynn to start the meeting.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai. Thank you again to everybody who's calling in very early or very late, some instances, same thing, so we do think it's important to rotate the meetings to support broad participation.
What we want to do today is go through the standard updates and Secretariat and between Chengetai and I, we will put together a update from the Host Country, may join us but he is traveling and wasn't certain his flight was going to support this. But we will keep an eye on him and if he comes in, we will pull him in for his update.
We want to move through the, a update on the Best Practice Forum, dynamic coalitions, intersessional activities and NRIs to make sure we are giving them adequate time. Some of the planning happened fairly recently so looking for a fairly substantive update there. And with respect to the working groups and updates from the main session, looking for more sort of exception reporting, if there is something significant that's changed or some significant support you still need from the MAG, then to bring that forward. Otherwise we have had some fairly in depth reviews over the last several meetings, so I think all that is coming together quite well.
(scratching noise).
We will spend a little more time on the digital cooperation main session, as that is under development now. And also a update on some of the thoughts with respect to the concluding sessions, as again those are newer items.
With that, let me see if there are any other suggestions for the agenda, any edits or any other business?
Not seeing any I call the agenda approved. And just move quite quickly, again I want to make introductory comments in terms of introducing the agenda here in terms of how we want to approach it, I think towards the end of this meeting we will take a quick straw poll to see when we should have the next meeting. I think we are getting fairly close to the end here, but I suspect there may be pieces it's worthwhile coming back together again as a MAG to progress.
I think with that, I'll turn it over to Chengetai for an update from the Secretariat. Chengetai, you have the floor.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Lynn. For the Secretariat for the registrations we now have 2176 registrations. So it's coming up nicely, and there is no real worry there as far as registration is concerned. But I do encourage everybody to please do register early.
For our capacity development, as you know for this year, these IGF Secretariat was able to, through the generous contributions of the donors that there is the Host Country and Finland and the Netherlands, to support their national and regional initiatives processes by giving them small grants.
(clicking noises)
What we have done now is we have put a Web Page on our site and the link is in the chat room, to show what we have done and whom we have given these small grants to. These are just national, regional initiatives especially from the developing countries, global south and least developing countries, that we were able to support this year. Hopefully, we may be able to do the same thing next year, but of course, it all depends on the donors and the money we have in the trust fund.
Now for the travel support, we have now entered the selection phase, we have selected 80 people from the people who have applied for the global south travel support. They have been notified, so there are 80 people who actually receive the funding have been notified, and we are waiting for them to submit the paperwork. We have 26 remote hubs registered so far. We do expect some more. Please if you know of any organizations, be it national, regional initiative, be it a university class, anybody who wants to set up a remote hub, they can please contact the Secretariat, Luis in particular, and he will give them more information.
For the High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, for the review platform, we had the deadline for the end of September. Now we have extended that deadline to the 14th. We have had ten written contributions so far, mostly from governments, but from the private sector as well, and from individuals. But the deadline has been extended until the 14th, and I think we have put that in Facebook. I know I received quite a number of E mails on Monday asking if there was an extension. That extension has been given.
I think that's all from the Secretariat. And yes, I'm in Poland together with Dennis from DESA and we are doing the assessment mission for the 2020 IGF. I think that's all. Thank you very much, Lynn. Back to you.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai. I'm going to come back to you in a moment to kick off the update from the Host Country. I know there was a question earlier about whether it was possible to break down the registrations between in person and online, 2100 figure you mentioned?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. I think we do have a, something on our Web site, if Luis, if you could put the link into the chat, so people could look at it.
>> LUIS BOBO: There are like 109 online participants registered [inaudible] registration is open all the time and when people want to enter to register but I will give you the list of online participants.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Luis. I think putting the link in the chat room when you have a moment will be, will suffice. There is also a question about the 2021 host, do you want to give an update on that, Chengetai?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: We are still negotiating with the host Governments. I think it's better that we don't announce until we have somebody, because some countries are rather sensitive to it before they are ready. So I don't, unless Dennis wants to say or WaiMin want to say something about it, but I would prefer not to at the moment because of sensitivities. But we do have candidates that we are talking to.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: The good news is in fact that there is some, been some interest expressed for 2022, and beyond as well.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah, yes.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: One final question on the 2020 IGF in Warsaw, Jutta is asking for the dates.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: We don't have them yet. We are starting our mission tomorrow. So we might have it for the next meeting, or once I have the dates, I will send them to the MAG list.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: It's likely Warsaw but it's not
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: It is not going to be Warsaw, it is going to be Katowice, the same place for the meeting for climate change took place, the climate age, the climate change conference took place.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai. let me see if Rudolf is on the call.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: He said he is going to miss the first half hour. Maybe we can go back to it at the end.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: He thought he would be able to make the first half hour.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Oh, first half hour, okay.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Maybe you can give an update, high level update based on the meeting we had yesterday, and then if there are any further questions, we can circle back and get an update to the MAG later.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Okay. I'm going to need help with this. There is the meeting that is going to take place on the Monday, which is the high level meeting, the Day Zero meeting, and going to take place in the morning, and there is going to be breakout sessions for that meeting. I think they have a number of, I think the figure that was maybe up to 24 ministers and other highly, CEO level people who are going to be coming in. It's going to be quite a number, and also, going to be one of the highest numbers of ministers that we have ever had at an IGF coming, and they are coming from everywhere, you know, from Europe, from Asia as well, from developing countries, and Africa, so I think as far as governmental high level representation is concerned, it is going to be quite high. Is there anything else you want to add for the Day Zero, Lynn?
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: I think not. It may be higher than that, I think Germany said 24 but DESA said they had possibly ten but there is going to be
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: There is going to be overlap. In any event it's going to be quite a high number, but that also holds for Day Zero, I mean for day one as well for the opening. We are going to have quite a good number of Government representation and also representation of C.O.s of major companies, especially from Germany. They have been invited and they have accepted. And also, high level representations from IGOs so not just the ITU, but from other UN agencies that are going to be there. For day one after the opening ceremony there is going to be the high level panels or high level main sessions and these are going to be three of them. They are still getting the panelists for these three, and I'm not sure what else to say about them.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: I think they are intending to follow the example of the last couple of years, where there is a very small panel, that make introductory remarks. They will be focused around individual topics, and they will work to ensure that there is time for some engagement from the audience as well. And the three topics that they are pulling together is, one is on the future of Internet Governance, the other one is and I don't have the exact titles, I don't know if they are available yet, another one is on the SDGs, and I think Internet Governance, and the third one, Chengetai? I left my notes, or WaiMin, the third one on inclusion?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: We will get back to you with the third one.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Okay. We will get the quick update out, high level update out to the MAG members as well, so that people understand what those topics are as well, and we can build off of them as we go forward. Any updates on the parliamentarian session from yourself or, I think Jutta may be helping with that as well? Any specific questions?
(whirring noise).
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: If Jutta is on, I'll let her start. But we have almost
>> Hello, it's Jutta speaking.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes.
>> I cannot report on the session for the parliamentarians because that is not in the run of myself or my organization, but done by another organization. What I can confirm is what you have said about the Day Zero meeting, that it's now more than 24, 25 all high level representatives from Government, and a number of C.O.s from companies around the world that is around 30, and we have Civil Society and technical community in the same, same numbers for Civil Society and technical communities, so it will be a well attended meeting, with three panel sessions, alike. We have the themes for the IGF which is data governance, Cybersecurity and digital inclusion. Thank you.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Jutta. A question, the link for the program, is actually from the IGF main page, if you are looking for the link from the program to the high level leaders meeting or the other sessions, I don't think they are available yet.
>> JUTTA CROLL: No, they are not available yet, because it's not, not everything is set and confirmed. But I do think it will not take too much time that it will then be out, so maybe for our next meeting, we will have it published.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Jutta. Now, the German Government said they are sort of quite oversupplied for the speakers for the panelist (background noise) for the Opening Session on day one as well. So not surprising and it's good news at the same time. Let's move on, if there are any specific questions, we can put them on the MAG list, and then as Rudolf sends his regrets, but just couldn't work around the travel.
If we move to updates from the best practice forums, again we want all of these updates to focus on just any substantive update from the last report, and specifically if there is anything you are looking for support from MAG members on, please signal that clearly, so that we can all step up and help.
We will go in the order that is there, in the chat room, the best practice forums, usually start with Cybersecurity. Is there someone who can give us a quick update on the Cybersecurity?
>> Hi, Lynn, it's Ben here.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you.
>> Ben Wallis, Microsoft, for the transcript. Yes, the Best Practice Forum we met last week, one of the things we did was get an overview of responses received so far. We have had five responses. They will be incorporated into the draft BPF report 2019, that is going to be sent to BPF mailing list for comments next week and published around the 22 of October, so a month before we get to Berlin.
We also decided to accept contributions and input on a rolling basis, so we will post any further contributions received and we will find a way to incorporate them into the final BPF report. There is a couple, so just a reminder that the BPF this year looks at the various international agreements and initiatives around Cybersecurity, and tries to get a sense of to what extent and how those agreements and the principles therein are being implemented. It's relevant that both the GCSC, global commission security in cyberspace and the Paris call are looking I think to make announcements, relevant announcements in early November. So they are not quite in their position to be able to feed into our call for responses this summer. But we will be able to incorporate those developments in the final report, and the GCSC is in the process of finalizing its final report, and I think was going to aim to launch it a week or two before the IGF.
I understand that the Paris, the French Government will talk about kind of next steps with the Paris call to operationalize the commitments at the Paris Peace Forum in early November. Those were two of the initiatives we look at in our report this year, and so it's obviously relevant to wait and hear from them how they are taking their work forward.
Over the next couple weeks, we will start planning the BPF session that we will hold in Berlin, and the final piece of information to share is that the BPF leadership team is working with WaiMin and the Secretariat on how we can link the IGF work to the two ongoing UN initiatives, the global group of experts and the open ended working group. So we are looking at procedural kind of solutions for enabling the BPF's report to be introduced into the discussions of those working groups, whether that be the intersessional meeting of the OEWG in December, or the next substantive one which takes place I think in early February. We are grateful. It is something we have been thinking about and we had a initial chat with the Germans, as this year's host, but we are very grateful that the UN Secretariat reached out to us and we have had initial call, and we are going to touch base again in a couple of weeks to work out how we can make that happen.
So yeah, that is my update. Thank you.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Ben. Before we go to the next BPF, I want to ask Chengetai if perhaps there is a question in the chat room, Chengetai, which I think will be useful to a lot of the session organizers, that maybe you can either respond to off line or think about, and provide a response later, I'm assuming you have seen it from Paul Rowney, but if you can look at it and let us know how we ought to address that, because I think it would be helpful to many.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Sure, will do.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you. The next BPF, why don't we go to the BPF on local content. Is that Giacomo who is going to comment on? You posted a note in the chat room.
>> Yes, can you hear me?
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Yes, thank you, Giacomo.
>> We have just launched yesterday thanks to Bobo, most of the work on the preservation of culture, because this year this is the main topic that has been proposed by Carlos, and we are trying to follow that. So with this survey we want to identify experience that fit into this description, and we hope that we will get many examples and based on that, we will also prepare the document that we will bring in Berlin for the discussion. That is basically where we are.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Giacomo, is there anything MAG members can help you with?
>> Yeah, I just put in the chat the link to the survey. So if you can circulate among those can be interested to participate, this will be very helpful, because we will be able to based on that to enlarge the circle to those that were not participating to the previous edition, let's say.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: There is a way we can use the social media channels as well, and I know this was close to Carlos' heart as well, so hopefully, they can get some attention to it, the Brazilian IGF as well.
>> Carlos is following the transcript, but he cannot talk, unfortunately, because he is in the session at the moment.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Right, I know that. He was one of the leaders of this particular topic. So I'm sure he will have some good suggestions and should be able to get increased participation there.
Any comments from MAG members or questions on the BPF before we move to the next? Of course everybody is encouraged to use your own networks and respond to the surveys as appropriate. Not seeing any requests for the floor, let's move to the next BPF, is there someone who wants to speak to artificial intelligence, big data, Internet of Things?
>> Hi, Lynn, can you hear me?
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: We can, yes.
>> I will give you a short update about the BPF, we had the last call on the 24th of September, it was quite good discussion about the output document, on how to review it, and we decided to leave the work document open until the 30th of September to review and also to give opportunity to the member of working group to add and suggest concrete case studies. About the survey, the survey is still online. We decided to move the deadline to the 8th of October, as we have received just 11 so far. We also decide with a follow up of the survey, so we decide to prepare a short survey, in order to seek concrete input on some specific element that came out during the discussion, like for instance [inaudible] this survey will be launched ahead of the IGF. We also decide to have the next call on the October the 8th, the same time, so please participate. Okay, thank you.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you very much. Are there any comments or questions from MAG members? Not seeing any requests for the floor, let's move to the fourth and final BPF on gender and access. Just scanning through the participants to see who might speak to that. Anyone on the call who can speak to the status of the BPF on gender and access? Not seeing anybody coming to the floor, let's go off line, and request an update to be sent to the MAG for that BPF, if the Secretariat could do that, that would be helpful.
Let's move to a update on the Dynamic Coalitions, and their activities and main session. Is that Jutta? Or Markus? I don't know if Markus is on the call. He is not. Jutta, are you prepared to give us an update?
>> JUTTA CROLL: Sorry, yes, I am prepared to give you an update on the session, the main session of the Dynamic Coalitions. Up to now, we have gathered information in the template provided for the session from 11 Dynamic Coalitions. We hope to get them all on board and we have appointed our next call for the 9th of October. Then we will try to have analyzed until then all the input we got for the main session, and discuss with the Dynamic Coalitions that have decided to take part in the main session, how the debate will flow, which of the SDGs are addressed by the Dynamic Coalitions, and so on. Thank you.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Jutta. It will be helpful to reflect on the discussions that take place on the Day Zero and day one sessions as well, since both of those are going to feature the SDGs and see if we can tie any specific comments or reflections or questions from those sessions into the D.C. session, but I suspect you are fully on top of that already.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Yes, but it's a very useful advice that you have given, so we will take in the situation.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Excellent. Thank you for everything you are doing to support the DCs as well, on top of everything else you're supporting.
(chuckles).
Let's go to NRIs next. As a heads up, if there are any questions on the open forums or any of the other activities that take place at the start of the IGF we will come right to that after the NRI updates. Anja?
>> ANJA GENGO: Hi, I hope you can hear me.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Very well.
>> ANJA GENGO: On the main session, I don't have a lot of updates compared to what has been given in the last MAG call. But we have closed first of deadline for receiving written contributions for the NRIs main session. For now we have 16 very good contributions, we are hoping to have around 20. And it's going to be, all of those will be consolidated into a unique publication that as you know around ten to twelve NRIs from various countries of the world will set the stage during the first hour of the session. So it's going to be a very interesting and kind of mixed format approach, not really traditional but NRIs were applying in the past years.
Aside of that, I was due to give an update on the last call that I can inform now so far 62 NRIs hosted their annual meetings, we have a estimation internally that that number by the IGF in November will grow to around 75, and that is usually the number on average that goes every year. So I think that would be my update. I don't want to repeat myself from what I said during the previous MAG meeting. But if you have any questions, I'll be happy to respond.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Anja. That is excellent news with respect to the NRI meetings as well. Are there any comments or questions, for the NRIs or for Dynamic Coalitions as well? I'm not sure if I specifically called that out or not.
Not seeing any requests for the floor, are there any updates first from the Secretariat with respect to Open Forums or village or anything else or any questions from MAG members, with respect to any of the other activities, the other Day Zero activities?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: As far as open forums goes, nothing. I'll defer to Anja about the village, but I'll let her speak.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you, Chengetai. Yes, there are a few updates in terms of some of the organizers, canceling their booth requests, I mean three so far. So we are now trying to see who from the pending list should be taken into account to take those slots. And also tomorrow at 3:00 p.m., we have a scheduled call with the team from the Host Country side that is dealing with the village, just to finalize the logistics. We will be updating visual presentation and sharing with everyone, including the MAG, I'm hoping by the end of this week.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Anja. Any other questions or any other aspects of the IGF week that people want to focus on? Sal, in terms of your question in the chat room, last year there were 70 or 72NRI meetings held, so 75 is a slight increase on last year, something like that. Anja can, when she has a moment, put the numbers in the chat room. One other thing to mention only because I've had two calls or E mails on that over the last week, on the Thursday night, there is the equivalent of a full participants event. It's actually Thanksgiving in the United States, as many of you know. The Germans are going to host a Thanksgiving dinner, and again, there are a couple of requests in terms of what some of the plans were. So I don't want to get ahead of the German's announcement. Rudolf announced it on a couple MAG meetings ago but to ensure that everybody is aware of that as well.
Not seeing any other requests from the floor, let's go to item 7, which is updates from the working groups. We have a few working groups that have been active here in the last couple of weeks. We can start with evaluation or coms and outreach, if one of them wants to go first, and we can follow up with ad hoc working group on reporting and also working group on improvements, if they want to provide an update as well.
Any volunteers to go first?
>> Hello, Lynn. This is June. Can you hear me?
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: We can hear you.
>> I'm going to report on the two groups that I'm involved with more than the others, one of them is improvements. Improvements haven't had a lot done during the last two weeks. We are still working on finishing off that work that we started. This should happen sometime within the next few weeks. Hopefully we will have another meeting before the next MAG meeting and then we can give you a better update.
In terms of outreach and engagement, that has been very busy with off the MAG correspondence between us. RC isn't on the call, he is somewhere else I think, and we are very busy for graphic artists, we have three graphic artists in the group.Arsine he sent us out some guidelines on the chart so that we can work on it and in the meantime they are working on graphics. It's not completed. I have a message from Adam I think this morning saying that she is going to do it soon.
(voices in the background).
But in the meantime they are all trying to disseminate, also we got a E mail from them, we are trying to disseminate the E mail, a lot of correspondences is going on between us. By the next MAG we should have something more.
Arsine is hoping to send something soon by Sunday to Anja with what we have been up to, so he should see that soon in an E mail to Secretariat. Thank you very much.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, June, for providing those two updates. Jutta, do you have a update on the working group eval or workshop preparation process?
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thanks for giving me the floor. I'm afraid I don't have an update. Maybe the Secretariat can give us some stats how many people have filled in the survey that was put online for all workshop proposals. I don't have statistics so far.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Jutta. Does the Secretariat have that to hand? If not, we can put it in the chat room a bit later. If we haven't sent a reminder out, perhaps we can send a reminder as well to the past workshop organizers. Thank you, Luis, as soon as you get a moment, put it in. It will be helpful.
The working group fund raising, we reported out on that at the last MAG meeting. We have not held another meeting since then. We are going to just progress that as much as we can with various activities online. The ad hoc working group had a meeting earlier today, a fairly substantive meeting, and the minutes were published a few days ago which I will send to the MAG. I don't believe they were sent to the MAG. I think they were just sent to the working group, just for reference. The work continues. There is a couple of major efforts, just briefly. One is obviously focused on evaluating the three step reporting process that happens with one element about a month or so before the workshop takes place, before the IGF takes place. A short form report, which is meant to be submitted 12 hours after the session, and then a longer form report which is submitted within the following week. So we are looking at stepping up some of the processes around it. Luis is working on some new templates and forms which will facilitate completion of those templates.
We are also looking at some of the guidance and questions and the Secretariat is working on either a webinar or written instructions or both to provide that to the Rapporteurs ahead of time. There is a lot of work ongoing on that. We spent quite a bit of time on that this morning as well, and that work will continue in the background.
We continue to work on the overall process. There is a series of reporting which is sort of formal, more formal UN reporting. There's the Diplo reporting which is the daily activity reporting, and then there is a number of efforts to support press and media both physical and online. The press and media issue, topic, came up this morning, actually got substantive discussion. We are looking at putting a request out to the MAG members to see if anybody has resources or time, obviously expertise, either yourselves individually or perhaps you can access it from within your organization to support beefing up our press and media activities. It was everything from helping to create some, an easy access and easy guide to content and the most relevant sessions. We also are looking at trying to facilitate people who may be looking to interview someone with a specific knowledge, possibly from a specific region or stakeholder group as well, and look at a process to facilitate that, maybe put some additional resources or materials into the physical press media room on site, and of course with all the things we do on site, we will try and find an analog to the online participants as well.
There is a number of other topics under that. But I think the question for the MAG is if anybody, yourself has expertise in terms of supporting press and media, and meeting and material prep, or you would be happy to volunteer some resources from your organizations, that is an area we can really use some additional support, so we will put another request out on the MAG as well. But anybody who has expertise, interest and time, we would much appreciate it. I'm trying to scan through the minutes from last time.
One of the other things the group agreed to do, and this is facilitated by the scheduling that the Secretariat has put up, is to post one or two questions that we would like all the participants, again whether online or physical, to consider having sat through these workshops, for two purposes: One, to give more voice to all the participants. We have a goal of having 50 percent of the sessions be for engagement with all participants, even when we meet that and we are not as good at that as we should be, but even we meet that, that is still only a very small number of people that are able to take the floor or comment.
We want to give people the opportunity to share any kind of thoughts or reflections they have, and at the same time, really try to identify what topics or areas of interest might be interesting for the IGF community to pursue in the coming year. So we are going to start a thread in the ad hoc working group on that as well, to fine tune, I think it should be two questions at maximum, and the idea was that as people enter into the workshop sessions, on the slide up front, there will be the workshop and a reminder of the scheduling app with the two questions posted, so again we do want to encourage people to think about the workshop they are sitting through, what more can be done, what would be of interest to the community going forward, with two objectives: One, to hear from more of the community in the immediate and hopefully not too taxing way, and then second as well, that should inform the future MAG on some of the areas of interest.
How that is actually processed and who sees it or where it goes at the end, there is still a piece of work that is still outstanding. But there was support to try and facilitate that kind of additional outreach channel.
Let me just quickly, scanning the minutes here, we have had two very full meetings, the work continues. The goal is to have the template questions updated and with the Secretariat by this coming Monday, so they can finish their own preparatory work, system work and prepare some of the supporting materials for the Rapporteurs.
Let me stop there and see, first, if there is anybody that is on the ad hoc working group call that wants to add to anything I've said, or add some more background. And then turn it open to the MAG for any questions as well. I'm seeing Sala's comment in the chat room. That is great, Sala. We will pull that in. That would be really good. One of the other things we thought was maybe taking some of the Elon university folks as well and they always do a great job, they usually focus on the future of the Internet, but that possibly we could even ask them to feature one or two questions specific to each one of the main tracks we have, and if we are really beefing up the press section, we could actually have some small entries there as well as one of the things we are doing with the reports coming out of the IGF, apart from the Chair's summary and the individual session reports, we are trying to create three reporting streams, if you will, that will consolidate around the three main tracks, so digital inclusion, safety and security, stability and resilience and data governance, and not only in terms of pulling together a report that talks about what happened in those themes at the IGF, but that maybe we could put some surveys, some of the responses to the questions, perhaps some of the Elon University responses as well, so to really make that as engaging and active as you will. Let me see again, if there are any further comments or questions. I really appreciate Sala's support here, willingness to help.
Slow count to 6, to see if there's anything anyone wants to add. Not seeing any, the work continues. There will be another meeting in roughly two weeks time, for those that might want to jump in on a call as well, everyone is welcome. We are looking for people that have experience in this area, and commit to helping move it forward.
Let me stop there. I think that was the report out on all the working groups. If we move to the next item, which is the UN digital cooperation report consultation and the main session planning, Chengetai reported earlier the deadline has been extended two weeks. We were informed that there were a number of individuals, largely governments, but not entirely, that were still looking to submit comments, just required some additional time, and again I think with the main consultation period taking place over the summer holidays, in North America and Europe, we thought that was a reasonable thing to do.
A couple of days ago, actually maybe it was yesterday, I posted a proposed draft, to kickstart the discussion in terms of what we might do for the main session. We have a three hour main session, the main sessions of course are organized by the MAG. This one, and there is an, analogy to something that was done a few years ago, this one is also at the urging if you will of the Secretary General's office, who of course wanted an opportunity for a fairly substantive consultation with the IGF community on the digital cooperation report, that being the HLPDC, High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation effort. In 2015, the analogy and Marilyn was one of the session organizers, for full transparency, Alfonso from Brazil and I were Co Moderators of the session. We took the 2015 draft document, this is WSIS+10 in 2015 draft document that was available and structured a consultation with the community. We actually had four mics set up in the room plus one to support remote participation but the four mics were organized by stakeholder group. That allowed us to rotate throughout the stakeholder groups, and focus on specific single topics at the time.
What we are proposing and this is still very early stages, so any ideas in terms of how to approve this or additional ways to support it are very very welcome, but what we are thinking about doing is taking the input from the consultation that is under way now, obviously focused on recommendation 5 plus C IGF plus model, and using the input from the consultation in some of the policy questions that were structured as a part of that consultation, identify some areas that we think are substantive enough and would be well suited to basically a discussion amongst the participants. The hope, expectation is that the representative from the Secretary General's office would be on the panel, largely in a listening mode but the expectation is that they would make some opening and some closing remarks as well.
So again, it follows closely the session from the WSIS+10 in 2015. We would have Rapporteurs who would actually capture some of the comments and positions and that would support input to the Secretary General's process.
Let me see if anybody wants to comment on that, or, Hana, I'm assuming you want to come in. I should ask for the hand up link, so why don't you just come in, and then we will go to Susan, who obviously just found it. Hana, you have the floor.
>> Thanks so much. Sorry for constantly forgetting the link. So Lynn, I was happy to see that proposal because I think that is where we met, and I was on the side of the co facilitators that were then presenting the draft text. Thanks also to Veni for putting the finalized document there.
I think it's a great format, because particularly at that time as co facilitators, the focus was on hearing from different stakeholders their priorities. And it was still, I think in the latter stages of finalizing the text, but that was kind of the point at which we really needed to make sure that we understood priorities of different groups and different actors within different groups and could find something that everyone could get on board with.
I think that that was important, but I had a couple of points, basically, also feedback, thinking back to that session, and how we could build on that specific to the report on digital cooperation and the ask from the executive office of the Secretary General. The first point is that in addition to that main session, there were bilaterals or multi laterals that were held with different stakeholder groups, that the host Government had organized for the co facilitators. We met with different actors from Civil Society or one umbrella Civil Society organization that broad on board different actors. We met with different actors from the private sector as well.
I think that it might be a good opportunity to make sure that that happens in addition to the main session, either before or after or somewhere around then, that might even inform the main session itself, or encourage more actors to know about the report, in this case. In the case of WSIS, I think most people knew about the WSIS process because it was going to determine whether the IGF would continue. In this case I don't know that everyone in the IGF community knows about the report, digital cooperation report and what it's trying to do in encouraging further cooperation among, within, between different stakeholders around the world. I think that communicating that and communicating also that they are looking for feedback on the report things and they are looking for champions might be helpful in a bilateral and multi lateral format.
The second comment that I have is that the WSIS process was a intergovernmental process. In that sense, it was interesting because in the room, it was clear that some governments didn't really know what they would say in the room, because they were in the negotiating room. But in this sense I think the format might actually work even better with this report, because this report is very much focused on supporting the multistakeholder model and finding ways for it to work in different levels and with different actors.
So I think it might work even better for that reason. But on the other hand, I think that maybe, and it was posted in the chat room, for it to be something that builds on and we have said this in previous sessions as well, for it to be substantive, ideally we would have the session that perhaps builds on some comments from the floor, or that is not a one off feedback session, but that allows for more of a substantive thing, or that perhaps, I don't know how to phrase this exactly but perhaps organizing, maybe guiding questions and on what specifically we are looking for might help structure the discussion. But also, allowing for the championship, I think, or sharing of good practices of instances where cooperation has worked in any of the models that are listed in I guess it's chapter 4 of the report, I think that would be something that could really add value to what I understand the executive office of the Secretary General is trying to gather right now, and to ensure that the report doesn't just end up as something on the shelf but is something that can really strengthen the IGF and strengthen broader cooperation beyond the IGF.
My third point is in terms of who actually presents. I wanted to ask you, I think it makes a lot of sense for the focal point in the executive office of the Secretary General, I believe it would be Under Secretary General Wolf shield to present and explain the linkage between the report and UN at 75 effort that is going on from now until the 75th anniversary of the UN in September 2020, because they are presented at least together in his portfolio is put together in New York, but I don't know that that is known outside of New York.
But I do wonder if there would be a role for some of the panel members, so in a similar way to the role of the co facilitators, perhaps, I don't know if the Co Chairs might be convinced to join or since their mandate is over, at least to share their views. There was a session held in New York where there were former analysts presenting the report outcomes. But I think it would add value for it not just to be the Secretariat there. But I wanted to hear maybe from you if there would be openness to inviting panel members or finding a way to link them in, even if it's a video message from [inaudible] that could be pretty cool. Those are my main points. Thank you for the suggestion.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Hana, those were all excellent points. I'm sure they will all be taken up, reviewed and I'll be taking up as well. The question of, with respect to the, some of the guiding questions I think that is very much in line with what we were thinking and certainly builds on the consultation that is out at the moment as well, that should obviously be informed by the consultation, and frankly, I think winnowed down somewhat as well.
We will take that up. There is discussion pending with the Secretary General's office where we will work to understand what their needs and requirements are as well, and continue to iterate on this process, and bring it back to the MAG.
Let me go to Susan Chalmers and in the background I'll read Ben's question, see if we can come to that as well. Thank you again, very substantive helpful comments. Susan, you have the floor.
>> Thank you, Lynn. Are you able to hear me?
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Very well.
>> Wonderful. Thank you and thank you to Hana for a lot of the points that she made. I agree with a lot of what was in those as well.
I think just two early ideas in reaction to the draft proposal or the draft outline that you circulated, Lynn, my first question is whether we might consider addressing the title, so I'm just wondering why we are highlighting Internet Governance when we are discussing the report on digital cooperation. I think that if we are discussing the HLPDC report then maybe we should keep that clear in the title. The report itself doesn't cover Internet Governance broadly. So I think it might be confusing to conflate the two.
I would suggest either just digital cooperation, or discussion, or consultation on the report of the High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation.
Secondly, in terms of the introductory and conclusion from the Secretariat, I think that it would be useful to incorporate what next steps are for the HLPDC report and process, and any implementation plans. Also, it would be nice to know what the feedback from the IGF community would be used for, and in terms of the comment that Ben put into the chat, I have the same, I had the same question. In terms of the session format, I was wondering if there will be a full panel with a number of different speakers, or if it is trending more towards a consultation format with the readout and then I'm going directly to the audience participants.
So maybe we haven't decided that yet. But I also have that question. Thank you.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you. I just started responding to Ben in the room, I'll do it by voice mail. It's more, the proposal was more the latter following what we did in 2015. I'll spend another minute on that.
We had brief set of introductory remarks from the Chair which in this case would be somebody from Germany as Host Country. It explains the process overall and there was additional administrative things we needed to do to support people getting to the right place in the room, given the physical line up of mics. We had some high level introductory remarks from the Co Chairs. Then we had the two WSIS co facilitators make some introductory comments, in this case we would be looking for somebody from the OSG's office, our working assumption is it's Rothschild but it needs to be confirmed. It could be either one of the Co Chairs or head of the Secretariat. But that somebody would make some introductory comments, I think that is a good place to incorporate some of Hannah's comments a few moments ago about the overall process, how this ties into the UN process, UN is 75, etcetera.
But then on the basis of what we intend to do is to take the consultation that is out at the moment, the input that we are receiving from that, provide kind of a consolidated set of comments so that's out with the community, but that would we, on the assumption we wouldn't have time to cover each one of those sessions, and maybe we will, but on the assumption that perhaps there is four or five main points that we actually want to draw out, so that again we have a consultation, discussion and dialogue with the community, that would largely be the co moderators setting up that discussion and then going directly to the community. So there would not be panelists, above and beyond kind of the Co Moderators, the representative of the OSG and possibly a representative from the HLPDC effort itself. But again, they would be there in the roles I just outlined, not as what we traditionally think of panelists. That was the format that was followed. This is about setting up a engagement and consultation, and facilitating hearing from the community, but in a manner that is structured enough that we can actually kind of advance some of the inputs more concretely.
So, is there anything that Hana or Susan want to come back on or any other comments from the floor? I also specifically want to see if the Secretariat or WaiMin from DESA have any specific comments or anything they want to come in on. Not seeing any, WaiMin, is there anything you want to add or Chengetai?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Nothing from me.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai. I think WaiMin is still there as well, but we will follow up with him off line.
I guess at this point, we need to have a reading from the MAG with respect to kind of the proposals that currently sits, is this something the MAG would support moving forward and continuing to develop, but along the lines as has been broadly laid out here? Or is there some other thoughts, some other suggestions? Hana is saying support. We will keep it open on the MAG list. And please, if people have specific areas they think we should be calling out or focusing on, please let us know.
This is obviously an important session. There are many, many many important sessions but this one could use some attention at the moment, as we left it to a little later in the process so we could see what was going on with the report, and expectations. I note your comments there in the chat room as well,Hana.
>> May I say one thing? Sorry. Sorry to come back again. Just a slight plea, I notice that some of the that we discussed in our face to face meeting in Geneva, some of the scope of the report covers topics that are very well covered at the IGF. Access is something that the IGF discusses very well.
(sirens).
The questions that revolve around more technical details, are discussed I think in several fora at the IGF. I think that the one place that we don't really have a clear discussion around is sort of the models of cooperation discussion. I know that that is also the area where there wasn't a clear agreement or decision by the panel itself.
So I think that the report is pretty clear, that access is something we are all working towards and that remains a huge priority for us all. But I think where the session would add value is where, is on the area that we don't know how to discuss and that is the models, so if we are able to structure it, particularly structure guiding questions around the models discussion, I think that's where, and I know Chengetai sat in on a lot of those sessions with us, that is really where this session could add a lot of value to the thought work around how we cooperate in the digital space and how it can be used for more the technical applications that the IGF has been working on quite successfully for years, and on building partnerships and all of that.
But what kind of partnerships actually work would be the added value of the session, from what I understand. Thank you.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, those are good comments. I hope we can count on you to help us kind of narrow down the focus and get to some of the guiding questions as well to set up the appropriate discussion. That of course goes to everybody in the MAG, so people should be following the consultation, reading the comments or submissions. You should all feel free to submit your own, whether it's on behalf of your organization or individual capacity. Obviously we don't submit as MAG members.
But yes, we will actually be looking for some additional support once we get to the point where we have got the input and we are ready to start creating the consolidated document and the guiding questions and look forward to your support, Hana, a lot of very good points.
Any final comments on that agenda item? All right. Not seeing any, if we go to item 8, which is update on the thematic introductory or concluding sessions, maybe we can start with some updates from the individuals that are actually driving the introductory thematic sessions, and then I would turn to Timae to talk about the current proposal that is in front of the MAG for the concluding session. That is the one that I think needs some additional work.
But I think we could perhaps build on or learn from some of the aspects of the introductory sessions. So can I look for a volunteer? Timae is saying she can't use her mic. Okay. Thank you. Is there a volunteer from one of the three thematic introductory sessions? (overlapping speakers).
>> Lynn, it's Ben Wallis from Microsoft.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Hi, Ben.
>> Data governance is first alphabetically so I'm happy to go first. I dropped Susan's name there because I was remembering at the outset of this work she provided a lot of helpful prompts for the other groups, and she helped me kick off the work in the data governance working group. So I'm leading this work with Lucio, let me throw into the chat room, we have worked so far on the introductory session. We have circulated some documents to the working group, their comments, I've pasted them in the chat. But I know a lot of people will have received those documents already, because I think we have 29 of the MAG members listed in our working group.
New versions of the document were only created this morning. So they are not yet reflected in the documents posted on the Web Page for this meeting, so the one that was being displayed just then is not the most recent document. Apologies for that. But that is the most recent version of a, I'm looking at the screen now, and this is an attempt to show how the different workshops, open forums, other sessions drop into different sub themes within the data governance theme.
We are looking for six MAG members to moderate breakout sessions. Thank you to Chenai for stepping forward as our first volunteer. We look forward to five more. We are looking for a volunteer to be the session Rapporteur. Once I've finished my brief update here, it would be helpful if the Secretariat could remind us of what is required from the Rapporteur and in what time period. For example, is it just a single two page report? Or is it also necessary to produce a much shorter synopsis? And is the report to you within 24 hours of the session? To be incorporated into daily reporting? Or just within two weeks of the meeting? So it would be good to get a reminder and some guidance on the Rapporteurs' deadlines and parameters.
Finally, we are, Lucien and I suggested a couple of ideas for a scene setting speaker. We have asked for comments on those ideas and other suggestions indeed. Our main idea was to ask Tim Berners Lee to speak as a representative of the contract for the Web, people may be aware of the contract for the Web initiative from the World Wide Web foundation. It has various stakeholder groups involved. It aims to provide a single set of principles to be followed by all stakeholder groups. It has a working group on privacy and data rights, and two of the nine principles that they have set out relate to data, and so we wondered whether that would provide an interesting scene setting speaker. And if Tim Berners Lee was considered too senior to do the session, we could look for someone else in the contract for the Web to speak.
So that was our main idea. As a potential backup we also wondered about the Internet and jurisdiction policy network. The Internet jurisdiction policy network positions itself as a neutral arbiter, it involves all stakeholder groups in its work. It's working in three areas, and one of those three areas is data and in June, it launched operational approaches related to data. So there are specific proposals about steps that can be taken to deal with jurisdictional issues in relation to data. Those were the two ideas we have put out to the working group, haven't yet got any comments back.
But that is where we are at so far. So why don't I pause there, and pass the floor back to you, Lynn.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Ben. One or two quick comments, go to Chengetai and I'm assuming Paul's hand is up to give a update on data inclusion in a minute, if that is not true, Paul, we will pull you in on this topic as well.
All these three sessions take place concurrently. Between the demand for individuals to lead the breakout groups and of course individuals for Rapporteurs, clearly we are going to have to look beyond the MAG members, because that will totally exhaust the MAG members, even if every MAG member was there and available which is not likely to be the case.
Obviously we can look through some of the workshop session organizers or speakers from the workshop sessions to derive some of the breakout groups, it would be a great way for them to get started on the subject as well. But just a note that I think we are going to have to look, clearly going to have to look more broadly than the MAG to support the roles that are required for these three introductory sessions.
I'll ask Chengetai to come in to answer your specific questions on Rapporteurs because I know that will help everybody as they search for the support for their sessions. Then see if there are any questions on this particular introductory session, and again, Paul, if you want to come in on this come in then. If not, we will move to you for the digital inclusion. Chengetai, can you comment on the Rapporteur requirements or someone else from the Secretariat?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, I'm going to hand it over to Anja. But if I'm not mistaken it is not 24 hours, it's 12 hours that we require the report by. But Anja, can you please give a little bit more detail? Also, sorry, another thing about your request for, from getting Tim Berners Lee, we are actually looking for sessions for him. So we will contact you off line and see, and get you in touch with his team, going to invite and see what he says.
Anja, please.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you, Chengetai.
Yes, I can confirm that the first session report is due twelve hours after. For the Rapporteurs, maybe Lynn would, with your permission, I can come in with inputs that we had on a great call with the working group on reporting today.
The IGF Secretariat will produce concrete guidelines on how the reporting should be done. We discussed today, maybe doing a webinar. That is still to be decided within the Secretariat's capacity. But we will do our best to accommodate that also. But the session organizers of course have the responsibility to engage the session Rapporteurs, so not Secretariat or anyone else, just the facilitators, if that was the question.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Anja. Did that answer your question, Ben? Are you looking for some additional
>> Ben: That is very helpful. Anja talked about the first pre session report which suggested there might be a second report required as well or just provide the report and do it within twelve hours which is very simple. (overlapping speakers).
>> Yes.
>> Thanks.
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you, Ben. We actually have, I think we will follow the reporting procedure as last year, so we had a very good call with the working group on reporting today. I'm hoping that by Monday next week we will have the whole process finalized. But for sure what we know is that we will actually have three reports. One will be the so called pre session report, that will be submitted one month before the meeting. It's a very simple report where we want to see basically what are the policy questions or the general expectation of the session by the session organizers, and then we have the first post session report which is relatively short, but effective, so we will share the template also with the MAG once finalized by the working group and Secretariat but it's due twelve hours after the session conclusion.
Then ten days after the session or the meeting itself, the final reports are due. You will see that the questions of that style reports basically are the same as the first post session report that is due 12 hours after the session, just we will just allow for expanding a bit from the overall kind of session and the agreement between the speakers and also taking from the audience. But in general, the questions still remain the same.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you.
>> Thank you very much.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Helani, I know it's very late and very early in some places, we appreciate people making the effort and of course the transcript is provided to facilitate those that weren't able to make the call or have to leave.
By next Monday, the ad hoc group committed to getting the Secretariat the words that would actually structure each one of the reports sections, so the first one would be what is it that we actually expect, or you expect to get out of your particular session. Obviously it should be building on the policy questions that were submitted as well. Then the subsequent reports just continue to add more depth based on the actual session being held and the reports and that sort of thing. Of course they all go to support the key messages and Chair summary and will support these individual thematic streams that we will be reporting on as well but that means by early part of next week, we should all be able to see them in some context. But last year's process is posted, and in fact, this year's process mirrors that closely, literally just trying to make the templates a little easier to work with, and trying to draw out expectations so that we continue to get a focus in the sessions. I don't see anybody else asking for the floor on that. Paul, you have the floor again, if your hand was up for that one, please jump in, if not, I would guess you will go to digital inclusion.
>> Paul: Yeah, thank you. You are right. Digital inclusion, my first comment is never follow Ben. I'll try to get in front of him next time.
Our session, the co organizers, moderators are Susan Chalmers and myself. Our drive is to get as many of the MAG members involved in the running of the session. We do see it as a MAG driven initiative that is a kickoff of the theme that we have been working on throughout the year, in setting the theme, and after the introduction of course, you know we are handing over to the IGF community to drive the workshops forward to the tailing session.
The goal is to make it as interactive as possible and to get the community to provide the input that we are trying to draw out of this. We are competing of course, not only with Internet Governance digital cooperation main session which I think many of our colleagues also want to be part of, but hopefully we can get sufficient participation at this workshop.
One area we need to wrap up is on our Rapporteur, Susan and I are working to conclude on that to get a competent Rapporteur to capture what is being discussed. One thing we want to ask maybe the Secretariat is how best we can reach out to the workshop organizers to try to solicit their participation particularly in the read out sections. We are following the theme that Susan put together, that I believe the three intercessions are following which is the introductions, scene setting, I believe, Susan can correct me on this, but we have locked or are locking down Doreen Martin, ITU, to give the key address on the setting the scene. We have a very short questions and answers and that is not because we want to preclude questions and answers, we just don't have a lot of time. We want to restrict Q and A to maybe five questions, that we want to split between on site and remote participation to ensure that we are being able to bring remote participation in. We have five breakout groups, based on five main themes. We pretty much have mic moderators for each of those, but finalizing one, we have very good mic participation in our workshop. Then we drive it down to a short conclusion, but really as I mentioned in the beginning this is our kickoff session. We want the MAG to own this, and drive this, and get as much MAG participation as we can. But draw in the community that come and get their thoughts on how, what they want out of this theme, and we want to look at the tailing part. I think it's quite important to take inputs from the introduction and then revisit those on the tailing to see have we met expectations, have we addressed some of those key issues that were raised in the introduction session.
I'll ask Susan if she has anything she wants to add to what I've just said. I'm handing the floor to Susan.
>> Thank you, Paul. You have given a great read out. I really don't have much to add, but just to express some excitement that we are nearing a final confirmation to have Doreen Bogdan Martin give the keynote remarks, for those in the meeting who are not familiar with her, she is actually the first woman in the 153 year history of the ITU to hold elected office. She really is a perfect fit for this session, not only because of her leadership in the ITU equals initiative, but also because of her extensive experience in connectivity issues. She is the director of the ITU telecommunication development bureau. We are just waiting on final, final confirmation there. But that would be the only thing that I would add to Paul's very thorough readout.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Paul and Susan. Thank you, Susan, for driving this work. This work came out of the MAG the last physical meeting with a small working group. Susan has been helpful in terms of getting introduction sessions organized. Any comments, questions from MAG members for Paul or Susan or any of the other working group members? Not seeing any additional requests for the floor, let's move to the third thematic grouping, safety, security, stability and resilience. Who is volunteering to speak to that? Chengetai, do you know if we have anybody on the call that can speak to that? Is there anybody on the call who is participating in that thematic working group, maybe not one of the coleads who would be willing to briefly cover the status? We will let everybody off the hook, I know it's really early and really late in significant parts of the world. We will follow up with them off line. Chengetai, my understanding is everybody is following the same process largely, and we have got the guiding documents and the flow charts or issue charts.
One thing I would like to ask, I'm not quite sure who is holding the artwork, but if we could make those three individual flow charts as three separate pieces of work with an appropriate title on, that would be perfect for putting out to social media, for featuring on the Web site, because if you are interested in data governance, for instance, we can use that to reach out to those specific networks and those specific communities and in one chart they get a sense of the overall theme, the overall flow and of course through the workshop titles, a good indication as to the subjects that are going to be covered.
I think that makes it a little more accessible, a little more approachable than the full schedule, if somebody can create those three individual pieces of artwork, and share it with the MAG, post it on the Web site, I think that would be helpful.
Any comments or again, last call, is there anybody who is able to speak to security, stability, resilience, safety? Not seeing any volunteers.
We need to go through a similar process for the concluding session. Again the working group that met during the last physical meeting had put out a draft proposal, which has been in front of the MAG a few times, and we were waiting for the ad hoc working group on reporting and for the introductory session to complete, because I do think it's important that we tie the introductory session and the closing session together, obviously spanning the sessions in between.
There was the proposal, Timae doesn't have voice, maybe she can put something in the chat room to add or correct anything that I'm about to say, the proposal follows fairly similarly the process for the introductory sessions, in that there was a expectation that there would be breakout groups as well, via the main sub themes. We were keen to ensure that we were pulling in all the related topics, whether they were from a main session, from a DC, NRI or Open Forum, we practices forums, etcetera, so that those concluding sessions were pulling in learnings, messages, experiences from across the IGF ecosystem.
That is something we need to continue to focus on there. At one level we could do the introductory session is doing, frankly stop there, and capture it. There was a proposal in the concluding session which said we could consider taking each one of the three main themes and trying to capture the issues according to some high level, like economic issues, technical issues, governance issues, social and cultural issues, and Timae is always careful to say this isn't about putting those issues and driving them towards stakeholder groups. It is literally trying to talk about a data governance issue and thinking about it specifically from an economic perspective, and what are some of the issues or themes or players, organizations that we might want to engage if we are going to continue developing this topic at future IGFs.
Then it wasn't a stakeholder cut. It really was along some of the key societal factors. Timae put in the chat room there, a link to the Google doc. I think what I'd like to do now is to see if, again, this doc has been in front of us since June or July now, we need to conclude fairly quickly so that we can start lining this up and assuming we have got, gathering the right people together to help moderate it and Rapporteurs and etcetera.
Any kind of comments or reflections of a general nature or any specific questions to the working group that's been working on this? Timae said she is apologizing for not being able to speak just now, but she would start to fill in the MAG list as of tomorrow. I think Luis is helpfully putting it in the chat room there as well. I think some things are probably a given. I think staying with a sub theme focus, if in fact that is what the introductory sessions deliver, would be appropriate, so we can carry that throughout all the activities across the IGF week.
(coughing).
Excuse me.
And we could clearly find a format to capture that, which would be a perhaps more straightforward reporting style, if I can say it that way.
There's been fair amount of interest in trying to capture things along this grid, that Timae has laid out. There's also been equally sort of a strong point made that it would be very difficult to try and ensure that we had captured fully, for instance, the economic issues of data governance or digital inclusion, and we wouldn't want anybody to think that whatever was captured out of these concluding sessions was necessarily representative of everything that took place in that sphere for that theme at the IGF. Part of that I think we can manage by being clear on the expectations and what the process is. But I think that is a valid point as well.
Let me call Paul to the floor. Thank you, Paul, for jumping in. You have the floor.
>> Paul: Thank you, Lynn. While some people might kick me but my sense is that people driving the intersessional should be the same people driving the concluding session, that we have some consistency throughout, and really this is revisiting what was begun the beginning of the journey, looking how the journey went and revisiting how it went. That was my only really addition there.
I support pretty much what is being proposed for the concluding format.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Thank you, Paul. I do think that is really helpful. There is agreement, a couple people agreeing in the chat room. Most importantly, it really does stay with trying to develop these themes, these narratives and this progression through these individual topics. So I myself would strongly support the same organizing team, organizing both the introductory and the concluding sessions.
Let me see if there's any counter viewpoint to that. Otherwise we will move forward with that assumption. I think we can continue to look at what, filling out the report out might take and obviously the success of the breakout groups is going to depend on how many people attend each session, and is there adequate interest across all the thematic groups. I think we need to leave it to the organizers to manage that on site at the time. But then I do think that would be very helpful to have that come through to the concluding sessions as well.
There was a suggestion, I don't know if it's possible to take that up or not, from the German Host Country that they find some of the graphic artists that are actually able to capture, there is a word for it but it escapes me at the moment, they are able to capture the discussion in a very graphic sort of flow, which could be another interesting way to capture the discussions as well.
But why don't we, if there aren't any more comments on that just now, maybe ask Timae to post to the MAG I think reflecting the fact that there is agreement that it ought to be the same organizing committee on the front end and the back end, and posing a suggestion as to what sort of report, what format the report out might take. I think the two options that are in front of us, and I'm sure there are more, is the grid that was just there in the chat room in a moment and of course there is also still the requirement for the standard reporting that comes through the Rapporteur process.
Any comments? Paul?
>> I wanted to make is a suggestion, I think maybe the coordinators of the intercessions, concluding, should have a discussion at some point to try and ensure that the sessions are aligned to some extent on how we are driving them and what expectations are, maybe we need to get a doodle poll with those and anyone that is interested to join those discussions, to align all of these working sessions.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: I think that is a good suggestion, Paul. Timae has said she will send the document out first thing tomorrow. That would be a good place to follow up on that as well, and hold those other meetings.
Last call for any further comments or reflections? Thank you again to the small group of people, I think that was Timae and (indecipherable) if I remember correctly, if not, apologies, that worked to advance the particular part of the last MAG meeting.
The final item, penultimate item was updates from the main sessions, and that was mainly exception reporting, we have had substantive updates on all of the main sessions over the last couple MAG meetings. This was more of an opportunity for any of the organizers to call out any areas where they are looking for additional support from MAG members or if you are looking for specific speakers or, so let me just open that up, and see if there is anybody who wants to come in and provide a substantive exceptional update, in other words, building on previous updates and/or any requests for additional support.
I'll wait a moment, give people a minute to all those mailing lists I think they are all coming along quite well. There have been requests for support, I believe are being answered. Chengetai, is there anything from the Secretariat side that you want to add or you see from the main sessions?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Nothing much, but as I said, I will be contacting the main sessions to see if, whether or not they want any high level panelists as we get the confirmations, we will be looking maybe to offer them, to place them somewhere in case the main sessions, organizers are still looking for panelists.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: I'm sure the German Government would appreciate some support, I think they are oversubscribed in terms of volunteers for various session, which is a good problem to have. Any comments or any final remarks then, on the main session? Not seeing any. Last call for any other business?
I'd like to give both the Secretariat and DESA the opportunity as well to add anything or bring anything forward that they think the time is right for. Chengetai, is there anything else you want to add?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Nothing that comes to mind at the moment.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Okay. WaiMin or Dennis, I saw you on a moment ago, anything from DESA?
>> No, thanks for asking, we don't have anything to add.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: One of the things we talked about on the fund raising was setting up a, we need to find the title for it but a session which would focus on basically support for the IGF. It would have as a very small portion kind of an explanation of the IGF's trust fund, how the IGF is funded, a slide or two on the current financial state, but what we were hoping to do and so we will be looking for will be a small number of people who will, that have been very supportive of the IGF financially, and otherwise, to stand up and talk about why they support, why they think it's important, and what they have done, and there are some obvious people that do that, Germany would be good, the Netherlands as well, give them the five year commitment, and they nearly tripled their support over the historical running rates, we do need individuals from some of the other stakeholder groups as well.
So if you have somebody senior from your organization or stakeholder group that you think would be interested in doing that, then please get in touch with the Secretariat or myself and let us know, we will be working on scoping that out as well.
I think, Chengetai, should we hold another one in two weeks time? If nothing else, hopefully, we would have a substantive update from the Host Country on some of the Day Zero and the Opening Sessions and parliamentarian and that sort of thing. I think everything else is pretty much under way, and can largely happen on the mailing list, but it's probably important that we have at least one more call.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Should we have it on Tuesday the 15th, or Wednesday the 16th? Either would
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Either one works for me as well.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Make it the 15th, to make it exactly two weeks.
>> LYNN SAINT-AMOUR: Okay, let's do that. We will work on getting an agenda out soon. Very big thank you to everybody who participated, at something less than, you know, civilized hours. Again it is important to rotate the times. So appreciate the effort, thank you all very much. Have a good evening, good morning. Thank you Chengetai and thank you to the Secretariat for everything you are doing.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Lynn, and thank you, everybody.