The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Second Open Consultations and Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) Meeting for IGF 2016 in New York, USA, from 12 to 14 July 2016. 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 to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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13 July 2016
New York, USA
(Scribes have indiscernible audio.)
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Our interest there was to redevelop a difference for the ask of support that we are getting from the industry already. Our priority, as I mentioned many a time, is to have a very well-balanced event. In doing so, we have actually taken a step back as to even how we fund it as government. I mentioned it yesterday. It's not because we actually have the money to fund it all because we don't. It gives us the opportunity to really engage in those conversations with different stakeholders and ask for their support because we believe in our core that it should be done in such a way.
But to be very clear, the voices will be there. We will be heard as many states we have. If I take the hat off the current official I am today, I'm civil society, we all are. I have the same concerns. I bear the same responsibilities, and I would like those concerns to be addressed in a similar way.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I would just like to make another quick administrative announcement. I think everybody is filling in seats in the middle. And I can appreciate how awkward it is to have your back to a significant portion of the room. So you should feel free to find any other seat that works for you, and we will adjust the name plates.
And then I also want to make sure -- because I don't have a great line of sight with Anja who is managing the online participant queue.
I think probably the best thing, Anja, is if you get a request from online participant, Skype or just press your button to speak.
For those who aren't in the room, we are actually using highly automated queuing systems. So it automatically recognizes who was the next in the queue and what that particular order is. And that would be the fairest way to ensure online participants are inserted into the queue appropriately.
Having said that, if Chengetai and Anja can figure out a better system, I'm all for it. I just want to make sure there is a really clear, strong route for online participants to be heard. So with that, we have Marilyn Cade in the queue. Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. My name is Marilyn Cade. I am a member of the business community. I would like to make a couple of comments, first of all, by thanking our host for the work they are doing. I'm also very excited about how well things are progressing. I'm also very excited about the new and unique opportunities that this IGF presents.
I would just make a couple of comments. I mentioned yesterday -- and the reason I take the floor, yesterday I mentioned that the NRIs might ask for a day-zero event of 90 minutes to do an admin management discussion. That might put them into the day-zero lineup. I hope everyone would think that would be keeping with our interest. I'm also working on a separate possible day-zero event.
I have a lot of faith in the secretariat and in the host. I think I agree with Avri that rather than bringing day zero directly into the MAG, let's just ask for an update and a briefing and then be able to better understand whether there are core principles that we feel very strongly shadow into the IGF and deal with it in that way. But try to be as open and inclusive and maintain the perspective that the secretariat and the host country have as much investment in a positive outcome of the day zero event and a reflection into the IGF as all of us do.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I'm hoping we can wrap up the day-zero comments quite quickly and move on to some other parts of the session.
Having said that, I have Cheryl Miller in the queue.
>>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Madam Chair. I definitely wanted to thank the host country for being such an innovative approach to day zero. I know historically day zero has been a day for the host country to kind of shape and mold. So I do agree with Avri's comments about keeping the MAG logic out of that, although that's the first time I have heard that phrase. It scares me a little bit.
But I really look forward to seeing what the host country and the secretariat have put forward and definitely would appreciate updates. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Cheryl. Next is Segun in the queue. Segun, you have the floor.
>>SEGUN OLUGBILE: Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to found out if there will be a provision to still make an update on the national IGF initiative maybe later in the course of the meeting.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Segun, there's time on tomorrow's agenda to come back and kind of revisit any kind of open questions or items on those. So maybe we can touch base with you offline and understand a little bit more about the request. But there is time on the agenda tomorrow.
I think Victor wanted a short remark before we go to Mourad.
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Thank you, Madam Chair.
Just to be very clear, when we talk about seats -- I hate the word -- it's not about the entrance to the event itself. The entrance to the event is open. It's the same format. But we are just talking about the gala dinner. That's a little bit different. That's for the industry to acknowledge. The event itself is an open event. You'll have full access to day zero. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Victor.
Mourad, you have the floor.
>> MOURAD BOUKADOUM: Thank you, Chair. Good morning, all. Mourad speaking. The event is not part of day zero. But, however, would you like to update us on the preparations regarding the high-level event, I mean the level of participation, the standing of invitations, the main topics which will be discussed there and how -- do you plan to attract more participants from -- on the level of ministers and the level of executives from the private sector? Thank you.
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: As I mentioned, we will be sharing the agenda we're building for day zero. And it's -- and we'll be expecting really feedback from your end. We don't want to do this alone. We don't want to set the agenda by ourselves. I really believe that we should build it together. Yet we definitely have an interest to develop like a regional approach and a national approach towards that. There's going to be many events happening, many, we believe, interesting speakers coming forward for different topics. And that's what we're going to be sharing as soon as possible.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Victor.
I have -- I will go to the next individual in the queue who at this point in time, I would like to make the last intervention and then ask the room whether or not one more trip through the actually facilities themselves and the set up of the conference rooms would be helpful for today, if you have a clear enough picture from yesterday's presentation? And I believe the presentation is online, then we can obviously skip that. Just so you can think about it, I will come back to a question whether or not as to whether that would be helpful.
At the moment, I would like to give the floor to Elizabeth.
>> ELIZABETH THOMAS-RAYNAUD: Good morning, everyone. This is the first time I'm taking the mic. I wanted to say I'm happy to be amongst all of you and so far so good on the productive meeting. Thank you, Chair and secretariat, for facilitating that for all of us.
I also would like to thank the host country for the efforts that are going into the preparation. It's been a long road that you've already accepted to do this and have been moving this forward. And I know there's a lot of planning and hard work going on behind the scenes. So I would like to thank you for that.
I participate on the MAG from the perspective of myself as an individual. I work for an organization, the International Chamber of Commerce, which represents the private sector across the globe. And so while I have members who come from large corporations who are able to fund sponsorship packages and things like that, I'm also a little bit concerned from the perspective of my members who are small business people or people from wanting to engage in the IGF and participate and be present and seen and recognized on an equal footing. So I just wanted to share that not all of the industry and business has the capacity to engage in the funding model. And so a lot of people that aren't able to fund their seats would probably want to be able to access the seats as such in the same way that civil society and others would be able to. So I just wanted to share that perspective and speak a little bit for them because they're not necessarily in the room or able to do something.
I also wanted to share the idea that the IGF isn't the same kind of event as other events around the issue of industry funding or sponsorship. There's a concern I think if we perceive it in the same way, that we're missing the idea that we are working all together in a community-oriented fashion. And so I think it's worth having a deeper discussion and we can do that through the course of the meeting with each other and I think talk about the role of the different stakeholders and supporting and helping to make sure that the host country is able to do what it needs to do and isn't carrying the load alone and doesn't feel alone in that. But I just wanted to caution the idea that we might see this as an event like other events that can have branding of large players because the implications of that, I think, are quite -- are quite significant to the way the event would be perceived, the inclusiveness within which all of the communities but including other members from the business community could participate and engage.
So I'm really interested in having further dialogue and making sure that we can help and support your efforts and look at how we can do that. But I would like to explore that within the unique and I think worthwhile principles and understanding of what the IGF is as an event.
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: And we share exactly your same concern, Elizabeth, and first let me -- like I want to be thankful and I want to say thank you to you because, you know, the way that we -- that you reached out to us yesterday and the conversation that we've been having so far.
We want to make it the most inclusive IGF, and that's basically -- we're bearing that very close to our hearts, if I can say so that way. So -- and within Mexico, even the ecosystem is one of many diversities and many gaps, so we're reaching out and we're trying to bridge those gaps between, you know, either socioeconomic, size of businesses as well, gender gaps, and accessibility-related diversity, and we're developing each of those aspects as we speak.
We do not want to change the format. We believe there is an absolute value in maintaining the core spirit into how the IGF was created, so we -- definitely we acknowledge your feedback and also your input into the developing days.
We are setting -- or we're sharing ideas, and also we're new to IGF, and I said so on my first day. I've attended three IGFs and I'm cochairing now, so it's very unfair to many of you because you've been here 10, 11 years and you're deep experts into what you're doing and the people that you represent and the companies that you represent, and the organizations.
So within that, we're very humble.
On the other side, we do have, because we're probably not that knowledgeable, an opportunity to put forward certain ideas and we definitely acknowledge and are very open to this debate, but we want this debate to happen here and let's discuss it in an open way, in a way that basically you're bringing it forward. We're extremely open and it's in our best interests to have this discussion happen very quickly so that we set out and we understand that the actions that we're taking are in the best interests of IGF as a whole. Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: There are two more speakers in the queue, but, I mean, I'd like to try and move on to another subject. I think this has been covered in full. Chengetai and I have had a number of meetings with Victor and Yolanda and I am completely convinced that they understand the spirit of the IGF and I actually appreciate the fact that they're exploring some new initiatives such as how to improve the high-level ceremony and those sorts of things.
I'm fully confident that we will come to all the necessary agreements and arrangements. Certainly appreciate all the comments, questions, concerns, people have shared and they should continue to do that, but, I mean, I think at this point they've probably been covered fairly well and we should try to move on.
So I have three people in the queue.
Sala? Sala, you have the floor.
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Madam Chair.
First of all, I'd like to thank you, Victor, for the clarification. Yesterday when we were at the open consultation, there was some feedback from the floor in relation to the sale of slots, and so that raised some concerns among several members of the MAG, but you've clarified that pretty much.
We also -- speaking in my individual capacity, it's encouraging to see the immense effort that you're putting into the logistical preparations for Mexico, and even during the discussions of some of the challenges of the funding of the IGF, one of the -- one of the things that came up from Shita, if you don't mind me mentioning your name, when they had the Indonesian IGF, they had similar challenges as well, and so this is perhaps something that the NRIs -- and I'd like to draw the substantive coordinator, Marilyn Cade's, attention to, you know, one of the challenges that potential host countries might face in terms of hosting future IGFs, and I know in previous mailing list discussions there was an email thread generated -- initially generated by Wisdom Donkor, who is not physically present but is with us in spirit and he mentioned early this morning that it might be useful to perhaps look into, if not this year, Madam Chair, certainly something that the future MAG would look into, potentially creating guidelines around the area. Not hard guidelines but soft guidelines. Because we don't want to -- we don't want to necessarily antagonize or to break the spirit of host countries, but essentially how can we help the proliferation of IGFs, so that it's not only the rich countries who can host it, you know, but you can certainly move it across the global landscape. So thank you, Madam Chair.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sala. I do hope we can start to move on to some additional topics soon, though.
Jivan, you have the floor. I think it's because they're looking at your first name, which I'm sort of loathe to pronounce. Ljupco Jivan.
>>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI: Thanks. So, yeah, just quickly, just like there are small NGOs and small businesses, there are small countries, so, you know, small countries also have -- might have an issue of affording something that is like that.
So I think that we're all kind of clear that there is a great idea here brewing and I think that this room is quite ready to contribute to a great idea and I think that something that would be quite useful would be, for instance, a concept note, like a one-page, two-page concept note of how exactly that could -- so that we can all kind of contribute, and -- if we can with our knowledge, perhaps by next week or something like that. Next Friday. Just an idea. Something that could center the discussion.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jivan.
UNESCO, Xianhong, you're in the queue.
>>XIANHONG HU: Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I'd also like to thank Victor for this interesting and useful presentation.
Actually, UNESCO is sending a very large delegation to Mexico, headed by our assistant director general and also we're getting our office colleagues involved to attend the event. I'm concerned that if the -- the facility of interpretation will be provided for also Spanish because I will imagine there will be many local participants from the region, so we like to know if the -- how many languages will be translated on the ground in the event. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's actually a question for the secretariat, so maybe Chengetai can -- or Anja. Chengetai is stepping to a mic, or running around the room to a mic.
[ Laughter ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: The question was about interpretation, specifically would Spanish be available, but what is the -- the plan for interpretation at the IGF?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: So at the IGF, only the main room has got the six languages. Well, it's six languages are required. The host government may want to put in Portuguese or whatever. It's up to them. But the six U.N. languages are required. And then there's also another room where there's three interpretation booths but then these booths are at the request of any workshop organizers that might want to have another language there, but then the workshop organizer is responsible for hiring the interpreters and they can do that through the host country.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Do you have a follow-up question, UNESCO? Mic, please.
>>XIANHONG HU: Chengetai, thank you. Still I'd like to confirm, at the workshop room is all the -- all the room Spanish and English available for all the workshops?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: No. The requirement is that only in the main room --
>>XIANHONG HU: Okay.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: -- there is the six U.N. languages.
>>XIANHONG HU: Yes.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: And then in one other room, there's three booths, but then all the other rooms, the requirement is that it's just the floor language.
If there's any additional, that's up to the host country, but usually no, because it's -- the expense gets quite high.
>>XIANHONG HU: So yes, I understand it's expensive to provide interpretation to all the rooms but something when we were proposing workshops to the -- to the IGF, we received some request from the speakers and the participants, they said they only want to speak Spanish or they're only able to speak Spanish. Is it possible that they can be sitting on the panel. So simply I imagine there will be also many participants in the room from regions, they only understand Spanish, so it seems quite, I mean, beneficial to provide, if we can have this resource, to make the Spanish available in the room for all workshops. And then from my experience last year from the IGF in Brazil, I thought that sometimes the local language was very useful to help with the debates.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, I agree with you. I'm just telling you the standard requirements we have. We have another room. If we have any additional requirements, the question goes to the host country. The question goes to Victor.
Just for the main room alone for interpretation, it's $100,000. So, I mean, it kind of adds up just to give you a kind of idea of the amounts involved. But it's really up to the host country about the other rooms.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.
Sala, you have the floor.
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: I'm just wondering if we have any sort of ratio or some sort of mathematical analysis in terms of using the information that the host country gave yesterday. I noticed when you were presenting the rooms, room sizes, I can't remember off the top of my head but it's something like 16/24/48.
Do those numbers mean that depending on the type of session, those are the numbers that the room can actually take or -- and then I have a follow-up after you answer.
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: There's -- small numbers that you saw were for the bilateral rooms. We also have some figures around the workshop groups. They go higher and, of course, depending on the topic, it's up to these rooms to decide where they should be hosted.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: From memory, I think there are two rooms between 250 and 300 people, depending on the setup, the chapel and the cinema. And then there were eight rooms that could support between 70 and 100, again depending on the setup. That's separate from the plenary hall or the main hall session.
Sala.
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Yes. Thank you, Lynn.
Just to follow up, it would be useful to see like within the slot of, say, one hour 45 minutes or within two hours, how many rooms would be occupied and in terms of capacity. Those figures can be given to us in a table form. That would be useful.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: In fact, we have them. We'll get to them. We will get to Chengetai's -- the secretariat's presentation in a moment. We both have a draft schedule that's been prepared by the secretariat for review by the MAG. And in that information, it does actually indicate how many slots are available for which workshops at which time. I think we'll go to that in just a moment. And maybe if there are any more questions on the venue, we can just leave Victor and Yolanda to answer specifically and/or put up any other schematics that might help. But I think there's probably enough information in front of us now to move to the next topic.
First, I have Avri and then Chengetai, if you can start to move through the overall presentation.
>>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. I don't know if I'm actually asking -- it was about venue that I wanted to ask something.
One of the things that I don't understand since we do have some flexibility -- some workshops that require flexibility, is which of the rooms allow for the people inside the room to readdress chairs, to put them in circles? In other words, when they come into a room -- a lot of workshops come into a room and they want to deconstruct the nice little rows and make that -- how many of the rooms will allow that kind of flexibility is the question that I had. Thanks.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thanks, Avri.
Reconfiguring the rooms is -- well, I think the best thing to do is to wait until we see how many workshops there are which require which type of configuration and then we can build it to those specifications.
But there's also some other issues with reconfiguring the rooms. First of all, we have the power running through the chairs, underneath the chairs for the laptops. So it's a bit difficult for people to change the layout of the room.
And then the second thing is the security and safety because there's quite some strict standards that after every five rows, there should be a gap, et cetera.
Well, no. That's why I'm saying if we know beforehand, then we can configure the rooms. Or if we know beforehand that in this room, they want to start off in theater style and then go to a circle and then come back or something like that, then we can try and make some adjustments to that. But we have to know beforehand what's going to happen.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. 2850 participant has requested the floor. Not quite sure -- is that you, Anja? Online?
>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: Yes, I think that's me. So Ginger would like to speak.
Ginger, you have the floor.
>>GINGER PAQUE: Thank you very much. This is Ginger Paque, civil society.
I would like -- I think it's very, very important that we go back to the intervention from UNESCO. I personally don't feel that we have addressed this adequately. I appreciate the (indiscernible), and I understand the requirements. But I think that it's very important that we note the comments that must (indiscernible) about what really will be. I think that to not include Spanish translation in every work room is backwards, if we're not even totally including the host country. Spanish is also a very, very important language, probably the premiere (indiscernible). That's another reason to include it. Spanish speakers dominate not only in Mexico, not only in South America but the world. So I think we need to have -- back to that, and I would ask that could we ask Victor to (indiscernible). Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Ginger. I have to admit the sound was quite choppy. But I think we managed to hear most of it, and the transcribers did quite a good job of capturing it. So your point was that you feel it's very important to have Spanish translation in every one of the rooms given the majority of the world's speaking population and specifically asked Victor if he would address that.
And I assume she's pointing that towards you, Victor, given Chengetai's earlier responses about what the minimum expectations are from the U.N. So this is clearly above and beyond the specs you were given before.
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: What we're doing as we speak is we -- understanding the funding that we have, expanding into how many rooms can we actually have the whole translation facilities deployed. So we're not ready today to give you a solution or to answer the question fully. I hope we will be ready I guess very soon.
We do acknowledge that both English and Spanish, you know, should, in essence, as a best practice be in every room. But the specific answer and the (indiscernible) answer I will be ready to provide to you very soon.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Victor.
Anja, is there another online participant?
>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: Virat, you have the floor.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Can you hear me?
>> ANJA GENGO: Yes, we can hear you.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Hi. Am I audible?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We can hear you, Virat.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, everyone. It's my first intervention. This is Virat Bhatia, MAG member.
First, I just wanted to quickly thank the host for the excellent presentations yesterday and the work that has been done so far. I also want to say we understand the particular difficulty faced currently (indiscernible) and work towards a solution that would be (indiscernible) and we can move this process along.
I just wanted to remind ourself that almost all IGFs (indiscernible) not obligated on any country to host an IGF.
In the main room, we made a request -- for the most part, main room participants usually require a U-size -- U-shaped table which has about 10 to 15 seating and four or five in the front on the face and the capacity of about 500. I wanted to check if the main hall or the main room where the main sessions will be held has the configuration to accommodate such an arrangement or is it different than what we have had in the previous IGFs. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Virat. I'm just looking to Chengetai to confirm. The last question specifically was whether or not the main hall could support a U-shaped format similar to what we have done in past years.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Just recalling, yes, but it's in the (indiscernible).
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think the answer is yes. Chengetai is just identifying if people will recall from yesterday that, in fact, the main session is in a courtyard which will be covered, but there is flexibility there for the structure.
There are three people in the queue know. I will take these three and then I really want to close the queue and move to Chengetai's presentation which will give some additional sort of contextual framing for the workshop proposals we have seen, the slots that are available, the overall scheduling grid which I think is really important before we look at the workshop evaluation. But I would like to move some of this forward.
So we have UNESCO. UNESCO, you have the floor.
>>UNESCO: Thank you. I'll be very brief. Just about the translation, I understand it's really, really costly to provide simultaneous interpretation like we have here. But one option we can consider is to have some volunteer students from local university to help in the room with translation when it's necessary. I think we had good practice in some previous IGFs in country. It works.
Secondly, I also want to ask if I missed it. Is there any security measures be in place in town? Because we also receive some concern from some speakers. They said they couldn't make it because they receive some security concern, that it seems not completely safe.
So I wonder if the organizer has put in a particular measure to secure -- security for the international guests as you know
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Victor, do you have a response?
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: We are working with alongside our foreign affairs ministry to ensure that visas are issued promptly and that there is special treatment for all the guests that we receive into the country. We see this more than a security approach. We are seeing it as a diplomatic approach. We are working very closely with that ministry to ensure that the visas get issued in time, and there's no issues around that.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think the issue was also whether there are any precautions in the city or the village itself.
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: We'll be working within -- the U.N. security has a foothold on the venue itself, and then the state and municipality level enforcement has responsibility for the surrounding area, but it's going to be monitoring more than securing or building another wall around the event. So really it's -- it's U.N. security detail, the ones that will be ensuring and protecting the venue itself.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I mean, of all the places we've been to, yes, we do have the venue, but there's also increased security patrols within the city itself and where the participants are, you know, by the hotels and et cetera. I --
Let me leave it at that. I mean, there is increased awareness, and just as long as you also, you know, don't go down a dark alley and et cetera, I mean, it's fairly safe. I mean, I've been there. I didn't see anything that worried me. I didn't hear any gunshots or anything like that. It's --
[ Laughter ]
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: You know.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: If so, you might have thought you were in L.A.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I just like to always bring perspective back to these questions of security and safety.
We have an online participant in the queue, and maybe we could also ask them to change 2850 to online, and then Victor and Yolanda, there were some requests, as I understand it, to take another quick look at the actual room possible configurations and layouts from the presentation you showed yesterday so perhaps we can get that queued up.
So Anja?
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Yes. Ginger would like to follow up on her question.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes. We'll come back, Anja, then if there's a problem. The connection really isn't very good. There's a lot of interference. So, I mean, while it's always better to hear people's voices, if they could perhaps type their question in well, then we can at least make sure we get the full essence of the comment.
Jac, you have the floor.
>>JAC SM KEE: Do you have to press anything?
>>VIRGINIA PAQUE: This is Ginger.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Hello, Ginger. Go ahead.
>>VIRGINIA PAQUE: I would like to follow up (indiscernible) with the host country (indiscernible). Thank you, UNESCO from (indiscernible) Venezuela. I do know that (indiscernible). I do have (indiscernible) however. (indiscernible) language available in the rooms (indiscernible) I suggest it can be (indiscernible) speakers (indiscernible) consider that the language to be spoken should be Spanish. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Ginger, I'm very, very sorry but I'm not sure we heard your comment well enough. Could you type it, to make sure that it's actually captured fully, and we can ask Anja to read it out here.
Anja?
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: I'm going to read Ginger's comment.
"Thank you very much for addressing my point. Coming from Venezuela, I do understand that these things are more complex and difficult than they often appear. However, if only one language is possible, please consider whether it should be Spanish, not English."
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Ginger.
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Madam Chair? So within all the workshops, there will be three languages available. So that's as far as I can -- as I can go today, but in all the workshop rooms, there will be three languages.
I was punching, right?
>> (Off microphone.)
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: I was very happy.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No. I think the fair way to say it is everybody's happy but somewhat surprised.
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Within all the workshop rooms, there will be three languages available.
[ Applause ]
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: So...
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Victor. Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. Marilyn Cade.
I just wanted to make a quick comment for those who have asked questions about security.
I have done two industry events with WITSA in Guadalajara, both of which brought CEOs from major corporations and ministers, and the security situation was absolutely fine and the national government, as well as the federal government, was really excellent to work with. And some of the corporate CEOs have corporate security officers. They were the pain to work with, but all worked out well.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Marilyn.
Bianca, you have the floor.
>>BIANCA CAROLINE HO: Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to echo on the UNESCO rep's point on, like, you know, having youth there and I also wanted to clarify whether there will be a youth IGF like the one last year that goes congruent with the Mexico global IGF.
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Yes. We're engaging fully with our younger generation. We're building the program as we speak. So, so far, we are actually inviting a lot of, you know, on the one hand, volunteers, but we're engaging the local universities and national-level universities to be able to bring them closer to us and to the conversation.
So that in itself, I think, will make a very valuable -- more valuable IGF.
And on top of Marilyn's comment, and I apologize. Living in my country -- and I've been away for so many years but living in my country, you lose the sensitivity as to the security issues that, you know, we hear. And some of them are true, some of them are only heard outside because we usually just -- you know, news usually travels faster if it's bad news. So I wouldn't -- I wouldn't worry about it. That's what I'm trying to say.
We have full support from the state level, federal level, and local authorities. We have response teams. We're used to organizing these type of events and these level of events. We just hosted the OECD ministerial digital economy meeting in Cancun and so on.
So in essence, we're not relaxed. We will be deploying fully. You'll have all full support of the local authorities. Nonetheless, I do urge you to, of course, as Chengetai says, do not go into that dark alley because then, you know, we won't be able to really ensure what could happen.
The area and the neighborhood are quite open. They're open to the public. I mean, you'll be walking to your hotels, of course. It's not a -- it's not a neighborhood that will be, you know, blocks and blocks secured. So you'll see that you'll be part of the city which we will feel very proud for you to enjoy even, you know, the local restaurants and the local -- in the vicinity. So within that, you'll see more security detail in the area itself.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Victor. Jac, you have the floor.
>>JAC SM KEE: Thanks, Lynn. Sorry to go back to the organizing of the main session room.
One of the things that we found out last year was really the flexibility of the room is quite important. So more than just the U shape. If you wanted to have a more participatory main session where the main session is not just a series of talking heads in a U shape, then some flexibility of moving the chairs and thinking through how this could be possible would be very usable.
So that's one.
And secondly, I think the IGF is also like an important space, as we've seen in many previous IGFs, for I guess local communities to raise their concerns and issues, and I would like to ask a question maybe like -- I guess as -- maybe we can think about how IGF can provide an opportunity for protesters to kind of raise their concerns at the event itself in a peaceful way so that it doesn't become sort of, you know, disruptive or dealt with in too disproportionate a way as we also have experienced also before. And perhaps this could be a slot at the closing session, that that could be something that we could think through, because it's really -- and I think the openness of the host country would be quite important to ensure that this could be something that could be materialized.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I fully understand the request or the desire for flexible rooms but it's also a balance, as I said. If you want flexibility, then you won't have power and, you know, things like that. So -- you know --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Electrical power.
So it is a balance. And then also the cameras are there. I mean, it's a lot of things to set up. And the Webcasting, et cetera.
So it is a balance, but I'm sure, I mean, that the host country will work towards that, and of course the IGF secretariat.
Sorry. What was your second point?
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. I mean, so spontaneous protests are not allowed because, I mean, it is an event. The U.N. security is there. If they see something happening that they don't know about, of course they will react because they never know where it will end.
So if there is going to be any type of protests, they should come to the secretariat and state that they want to do something and then we can discuss and see maybe there's a little area or something, but there is a very, very low tolerance for, you know, protests, as such, because you never know which way they're going. If some people start doing something that the security are not aware of, their primary role is the security of the participants and they never know what's going to happen.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Will you give Jac the mic, please.
>>JAC SM KEE: Thanks. So given that spontaneity is something that's a little bit like, you know, you worry about, if we can plan it, I think that would be really good. If you can say like the closing session, let's have like, you know, this particular period. If you have issues that you might want to raise, this would be a space. That might be possible then.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. I'm not ruling it out, but then again, this is my view, saying that people protest if they're not allowed to voice their opinions.
Now, I have a feeling that -- I mean, this is my view, which I hope is shared by everybody else, is that at the IGF meeting, everybody has a chance to have their say, correct? But this is a conversation we can have off line, but, yes, that's my thing.
>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Can I pitch in?
IGF in Mexico is giving us the opportunity to actually address many, many topics, and we've been doing so already with I would call them special interest groups or different interest groups or -- and I shared, you know, their concerns.
In essence, part of what we want to do, even at day zero, is to have that conversation closer, but we're not -- we believe we're not waiting for that event to happen to engage in, for example, freedom of speech conversations, privacy conversations, and other human rights concerns that are deeply rooted into what we believe is kind of the highest priority agenda within the country.
But we're engaging in those conversations as we speak, you know, to have that as a goal within the IGF.
That's what we call strengthening kind of the IGF conversation in the country and in the region.
So that -- that is already happening, and we've already engaged with many groups within the country that were in many ways confrontational, if I can call it that, or we didn't -- we didn't have -- we were not sitting at the same table which we are right now and we're deeply grateful for that.
On the other hand, I think there was some mention yesterday around having -- someone called it an unconference, I believe, or -- there was a key word that -- that I may actually propose to call it open mic sessions and we could definitely build that into the agenda so we can have an open mic session within the MAG, if you deem appropriate.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Victor. And Benedicto, I don't want to put you on the spot but is there anything you want to share from any learnings or experiences?
>>BENEDICTO FONSECA: Thank you. I was just thinking that if I should also comment in regard to the demonstrations because in Joao Pessoa there were some instances in which there were some spontaneous demonstrations, as you have said, and in the context of the meetings of the plenary, the U.N. security, they have protocols and they have to apply those protocols in a way that takes into account not only the need to ensure the freedom of expression but also the security of the event. Because as Chengetai said, once something unravels in that, you don't know what can happen, so there are protocols that can -- must be applied.
Nonetheless, we worked together, Brazil -- the Brazilian government, together with the Brazilian civil community and the U.N. staff, together with those who demonstrated, and I think there was a solution that was found that was appropriate. I think at the end, everyone was satisfied.
I think the basic thing is to make sure that all participants are aware of those rules of engagement, and also that any unexpected situation that can emerge can be dealt with in the best spirit with very good will. We counted on the part of the U.N. staff the best of wills. Also, there was very reasonable reaction on the part of the demonstration. So we think there -- those things, there are protocols, there are rules to be followed, but I think working in a very good spirit and cooperation, we can solve anything that can emerge in that regard. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I think that was a very good conversation.
The slides are up behind you. I don't think there are any behind me. Maybe we can just walk through again the layout, the venue, some of the slides, so that people have a refreshed idea, and then we'll move to the next topic.
I'm not sure if Yolanda or Victor will speak to them, but...
>>YOLANDA MANCILLA: I'm just going to go very quickly into the main venue. Accommodations, formats, everything follows U.N. rules, so basically outside the venue will be the village area, and that's basically secured by local security, government -- state government and municipal government security.
Inside the venue is the entire U.N. territory complex, so everything inside Institute Cabanas is U.N. territory and follows U.N. rules.
Inside the Cabanas, we have a major patio just at the entrance, and in that patio is going to be the registration area.
Oops. Okay. Sorry for that.
So as we commented yesterday, we're going to make a note on how the registration could work, to make sure that we commit with the U.N. rules of checking passports against the badge of every participant.
The patio is big enough, we're going to make sure that we also recall on the recommendations of the MAG yesterday regarding having enough security arcs so we can have a lot of people flowing into the venue.
All totems for information will have the six U.N. official languages and the (indiscernible). We have a lot of signs on the floor so people can find their way into the different workshops and bilateral rooms.
The conference area is the major patio. We have the layout that the U.N. requires. In that patio is also going to be the main meeting room, which can allow 500 people, at the max.
We have all the bilateral areas, and bilateral rooms provides enough capacity. We have rooms for bilateral meetings that can handle 39 people. Some other rooms can handle 47 people.
We can play with the layout. I think Chengetai was clear on his point regarding that he has to deal with power and to having all the connections ready so people can work during the meetings.
And in the workshop areas, we have different layouts decisions to make.
If we have a layout like this, we provide enough space for people with disability. Basically a wheelchair.
If we want a different layout, we need to have less people because a round table requires more space and we still need to respect entrance facilities for people with disabilities.
And in the major workshop areas, we have a capacity between 150 and 300, which is in the chapel and the cinema, and within those spaces we can definitely play with the accommodation. We just need to take into consideration that if we want a very different format, we need to schedule that so the agency can work at night in changing the layout that the workshop may require.
And remember that we have 11 workshop rooms, so usually it's 10 and we have one that we can use for different formats.
And this is just an example. I mean, we're going to leave the presentation to the secretariat, if everyone want to take a look.
And that's basically it. I don't know if you have any specific questions. Is that okay?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Yolanda. I'm hoping that that serves well enough that we can actually move to the next topic on the agenda, which was, Chengetai's going to walk us through the overall grid that the secretariat is proposing, obviously based on past IGFs, a little bit about the number of workshop format slots, and a little bit about some of the statistical evaluation that the secretariat -- specifically, Eleonora -- prepared yesterday. So we'll turn the floor over to Chengetai and then we'll come back to the workshop selection review process.
Miguel, you have a question?
>>MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA: Just a little clarification on the -- on conference format. This is something different at the open mic sessions. I don't want this to be confused. This is a different format. There are different ways of doing that. That's just a clarification.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That's a good clarification. Thank you. Chengetai, you have the floor.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Chair.
Okay. So I sent out this morning the files that Eleonora prepared, so the first thing that I would like us to look at is the PowerPoint. It just has a breakdown of the statistics. Just because I think we are a little bit over time so we have to rush a little bit, this is basically the basis of how are we going to select the workshops.
If we start at slide number 11, please.
Sorry. Let me just jump around. Yeah. Slide number 11. There's ways of selecting the workshops. We can say, okay, by merit. If we select them by merit, we just take the top and then say, okay, those ones who scored the highest. But then, again, we have to make allowances for newcomers, developing countries, et cetera, who don't -- who may not have as well-written proposals as the other people who are long timers in the proposal game. So we have to take that into consideration.
The other thing as well is the number of topics because I'm sure we all want to have a balanced IGF meeting with a fair range of topics to interest the greatest number of people.
So those are just some of the things that we have to take into consideration when selecting the workshops.
Usually in the past, we've taken a mixed approach. So one of the things that we can look at is either start with the top 60 and then select the rest -- top 60 by merit and then select the rest just to fill in the gaps which we see are in the workshop selection process, whether or not we want to add more people from the technical community proposers or more people from developing countries or more first-time proposers.
So these statistics, we've made the dividing line the top 60, the top 85, and all of them. So the first slide which we're going to look at is slide number 11. Slide number 11, if you have it on your computer. This is just by the tags, how people self-identified what kind of theme or topic area that their workshop proposal falls under. And as we can see for the top 60, top 85, and all, they more or less correspond in all three of the categories except for human rights comes first in all. But in the top 85 and the top 60, it's access and diversity.
And here we have the percentages. So, basically, we have in red the top -- I think the top five access and diversity, human rights, multistakeholder cooperation, freedom of expression online, and Internet for ICTs for sustainable development. In the top 85, the bottom one is -- cybersecurity comes up there. And overall -- there's no cybersecurity in the overall one for the first five. But that's just an overview of it.
If we go to slide number 12, these are just the session tags. Other, of course, comes on top because it's an amalgamation of all the other types. We have in the top 60 debate panel. But in the overall, it's the breakout sessions. But panel comes number three here. So that's one thing we can also look at and compare.
For slide number 13, which I think is the most important slide, it's compared -- based on whether or not it's developing or developing country. As we can see for the top 60, it's 60% from developing countries and 40% developing countries, which more or less aligns. For the top 85 it's 40/60, which is the same as the top 60. And for all, it's 54/46. So in my view, that's not a great variation. So we can choose to make the cut either the top 60, top 85 to carry on.
For the first timers, there you see a little bit more of variation because for overall, we have 43% of the overall proposals are from the first-time submitters. But for the top 60, it's 22. And for the top 85, it's 27%. So whichever way we make our cut, we do have to make some allowance to include more first-time proposers when we go through the workshop proposals.
And then the comparative view as we're looking at from the stakeholder groups, I think it's more or less the same from the overall -- well, if you compare the top 60 and the top 85, I think it's more or less balanced. 59% of the proposals came from civil society. That's in keeping with the current trend. And, I mean, of course, civil society is the largest stakeholder group.
Government, of course, is the smallest, so we may want to make allowances for government. And it's fairly standard for the intergovernmental organization, it's 5%, 5%, and 6%. And private sector, it's 13, 12, and 10.
I beg your pardon? Sorry.
I'm almost finished. Just almost finished. I'm just going through very quickly.
Then for the other slides, 14, 15 and 16, it's the standard deviation. I would actually defer to Mike who loves this stuff better than I do. I lost my quantitative methods a long time ago.
So if Mike can just say a few words about -- you know what to say, Mike.
[ Laughter ]
>>MICHAEL NELSON: Thank you very much, Chengetai. And thank you for doing all the extra calculation that is involved in doing the standard deviation.
The reason I advocated for making that calculation two years ago was because we really want to get those proposals that are very controversial, and the very controversial topics may be the ones that don't get rated very well. If you can imagine a topic that half the people in the room just don't want to talk about and give -- they all give 1s to that proposal, Whereas the other half of the room is really excited about the topic and they give it 5. So by doing the standard deviation, we have a very non-biased, very effective way to quickly spot those proposals which may not have made the cut except that a whole bunch of us think it's really important and the standard deviation flags that.
When we did this in the past, it was useful. There were a couple of proposals that people got talking about. And there were a few people who took -- put up their hand and said, hey, this is really important and they explained why it was really important to the people who hadn't understood and hadn't realized why it was a new topic worth doing.
So, again, thank you for doing this. And I do also think that this exercise is one more reason why we don't want to just arbitrarily take the first 85 proposals because that doesn't leave much room for some of these more controversial topics or some of the topics which may be of interest to a niche community and a real interest to that community but not to the overall audience. Thank you.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you, Mike.
Then there's two other files that I sent in the email. One file was the top 60, 85, and all which has the top -- which has the statistics in it. And then, also, if you go to the third tab which is the overall evaluations.
So these are rated by order; and you can sort them out by the average grade, standard deviation, total grade, and also by whether or not it's a new proposer, stakeholder group, et cetera. So we can use this file when we're going through the proposals.
So the two cut-offs that we are proposing is either on row number 61 or row number 86. So that's one thing that we can look at.
And then the other file is just a schedule, the schedule grid, which is just a proposed schedule grid which is IGF's 2016 sample grid.
For the workshops, it's -- as we can see, there's different types of workshops. There's 90-minute workshops, there's one-hour workshops, and there's 30-minute workshops. Now, if we just take it by the top 60 or top 85 and if you look at the bottom of the sheets there, I'm mainly looking at day four. But it's fine, you can look at any other sheets. It's the same information at the bottom.
I get 110 slots. And we can see that's 81.5 -- 80 90-minute workshops, five one-hour workshops, and 25 30-minute workshops. And then we have the open forums which is -- 30 open forums. And we have the 11 dynamic coalitions, and then we also have the best practice forums, which are five of them, and the main sessions which are seven. That is a total of 163 sessions in all. But for our workshops, we're dealing with roughly 110 slots. I say "roughly" because depending on whether the timings are different. So we have to calculate that at the end. But it's roughly 110 slots.
I will stop there for questions.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Sorry. One second. And Sala had had a small question. She wanted to get in the queue. So we'll come to that in a moment, Sala.
What we've done the last couple of years is there's been a brief discussion with respect to where there should be some line drawn with respect to a reasonable expectation would be that the bulk of those proposals, the top 60 or the top 80, are taken into account because of the breadth and diversity of the reviews, et cetera.
We do go back and look at them through an exception report which is if some of the MAG members have questions or believe something is too redundant or inappropriate or the format doesn't really match the description, those sorts of things, we do review those. And there have been a couple of different processes, I think, used over the years to pull those out.
And then past MAGs have actually looked at what are some of the other aspects of diversity that we want to ensure reflected appropriately in the panel and identify if there are any concerns or shortfalls or sometimes perhaps overemphasis and look to adjust those as well.
So I think we want sort of general reactions at the moment in terms of is that a reasonable process. If anybody has a better process, we're certainly up to it. That's the process that has sort of emerged over the last couple of years. I have to admit, it's not always the smoothest process because it's an awful, awful lot of material to go through.
I think we need to start with some base assumption that says we have to assume that these proposals are thoughtful, are well-supported because of the number of reviewers, because of the high rankings and then find some other way to cull out those that other MAG members feel are an exception. We can't start with a baseline of zero and expect to get through a 100-workshop selection here.
I put that out there for people to think about. We have Sala in the queue and then a few others.
Sala, you have the floor.
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Testing. Thank you, Lynn. First of all, I'd like to commend the secretariat for putting up the statistics and also thank the working group that dealt with the guidelines that help make our work easier.
It was an easy probably hardest thing I ever had to do. Grading, what, 274? 274 proposals. But by the time they got filtered, it was 260. Yes.
One of the things -- you know, I started off grading it one by one. And then I realized I was better off grading apples with apples. So I used the hashtag in terms of I looked at all the privacy workshops and compared them to each other. And so when I suggested mergers, it was stemming from that. And I'd also like to take the time to acknowledge the incredible aggressive outreach done by Juan because there were lots of Cuban proposals.
[ Laughter ]
It was amazing. So there was some workshops -- I would find that if you go through the guidelines, they would get a low score because they would not meet the representation guideline. But, however, they would be new entrants. But in terms of mergers, they would be fantastic with other mergers.
So, yes, the scoring helps. But, again, going back to what Mike mentioned, if you can imagine, like, a bell curve -- if you can imagine a bell curve where you have the fringes and you have the density that is sort of centered in between from the mean, from the average, and so as I begin to compare the human rights proposals to each other or the gender proposals and that sort of thing, what I found was there was interlinkages to other subthematic categories that may not necessarily fall within the epicenter but would intersect with some other ones.
And so this is just a thought, Chair. It might be useful to consider having maybe breakout groups where we could, like, yes, take the standard deviations but, before we are quick to cut, to also look at ways where we are not letting new voices go that might have low scores but might fit very well into mergers. Because there were lots of potential mergers. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sala.
Peter, you have the floor.
>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Chair. Peter Dengate Thrush. Just a question, when I was looking through them, I found that people had called their proposals a debate, and it wasn't a debate and they had given it a title that seemed to have nothing to do with the content and so forth.
What I didn't look at was how accurate the tags were. And I wonder if anyone has had a look at that because if we're going to start using the tags as a grading or classification or aggregation system, I'm just a bit concerned. But if someone has looked at how accurately people have tagged their proposals, then I'll have more confidence in using tagging as a sort of aggregation method.
Has someone looked at that? Does somebody have a view about how accurate the tagging has been? Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Sala, to that point specifically.
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: I would say that whilst there's some tags that were accurate, there were additional tags that were on the fringes. So I would say that probably roughly 75% accuracy.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sala.
Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. Marilyn Cade speaking. I have several comments that are going to be of concern. I'm going to start out with the first one, which a few years ago, I was part of an international organization where we had an elected officer who came to all the meetings, public meetings. But it turned out when the report card was published, the participation in the conference calls, he had a 40% attendance and participation rate overall.
The highest number of raters is 44. There are, I think, 55 MAG members. This means that 11 MAG members -- our job as MAG members is to do this work, and this means that we have a gap in fulfilling the work. I say that to look forward to future improvements in making sure that MAG members do the work.
Secondly, like Peter, there were many debates that were not debates. There were many panels that don't have background documents. And, yet, I look and they are rated very high. Some of them in the top 65.
We agreed if you proposed a panel and didn't do a background paper, you're disqualified or at least you're penalized. I have a strong objection to the fact that the people who did the work -- and it's not fair to say I'm a newcomer, I didn't know I had to do a background paper. That was very clear.
There are some other situations which, if you didn't open the background paper, you didn't notice that it wasn't a background paper. It was just a republication of the workshop description. That's not a background paper.
So, guys, like all of you, we're all out trying to encourage submissions but we're also responsible for being fair in the ratings, and if we rate people who propose panels and didn't do the background and let them stay in the top category, I'm very concerned.
I'm happy to move them to the category we debate about and let them -- and I said in my comments, give them a week to submit a background paper. But I think it's unfair to the people who did the required work, and particularly because we have limitations in the size of the -- some of our time slots are going to be 30 minutes.
So that's generally the concerns I have.
I do think we need to be careful about balance of some kind. Rough balance. I don't think it's exactly the same number from each stakeholder group.
Then the final comment I'm going to make is, I can't comment on flexibility for government or IGO workshops when those same parties may have open forums, and I'd like to have the overview of the open forums and the topics before I support the idea that we adjust the number of workshops, because overall we have a program. The program is the entire meal. And if I'm serving part of the dessert, I might not deserve to get to also make the salad. I'm so bad at sports analogies.
Thank you, Chair.
[ Laughter ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Let me try and see if there's support for one or two of the points that Marilyn just brought up before going back to the queue.
So the first comment I'd like to bring up is, Marilyn made the point that some of the sessions that were -- in fact, really didn't fit the criteria for a submission, is it worthwhile to take those proposals that didn't submit a background paper?
It sounds like Marilyn has a list of those that didn't. See what the room thinks about them and we can certainly ask them to submit a background paper in a moment, but, I mean, to me that's a matter of was it a strong criteria that people feel strongly about and it ought to be one we uphold and they're ruled out and at the same time given a chance to come back in and supplement the paper or do we show some flexibility and move forward?
So if I can just get comments on that position.
So I have Juan in the queue and then Mike Nelson in the queue. Juan, you have the floor.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Raise your hand, then, so they can -- there you are.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Yeah. I'm sorry to disagree with Marilyn because we always agree. Or almost a hundred percent. But I think that during the -- the virtual meetings, you know, the telephone meetings, I stressed that it's very hard to ask people from other languages to present descriptions of these workshops, and to -- on top of that, to ask them to do the background paper. I think that we have to have flexibility with people that their original language is not English. Otherwise, we should accept them in some other languages.
So I think that we should not put that as a go/no-go criteria.
I think that we have to do -- exert our criteria in terms of the content of the workshop. The tags, as Peter said, is a good way because it's a guidance to the content. But I think that we have to exert our criteria.
Having said that, I don't think -- I've only been in the MAG this time and last time for Joao Pessoa, and I think that this time we have gone a little bit backwards.
Last time, our selection of the top 85 or top 60 was more balanced. I think this year we have gone backward in this.
This means that this numerical grading only on the merit, I -- I like -- I don't like to use the word "on merit." It's numerical. Because that is not the same. To see that is -- because I think that Michael explained what is the deviation or whatever. It's about the number that was given. Because that number can be given for many reasons. And I think that merit deserves a discussion.
Having said that, having said that, Chairlady, I have a proposal that is a hard one because it means a lot of work for us.
I think that we have to do -- maybe begin with a small selection that it has to take into account not only the grade but also the standard deviation and to select a group -- maybe 40 -- that could be already in, and the rest I think we have to take a closer look in -- order we have to -- we have to balance not only the stakeholder that proposed but also the topic.
This is being held in Latin America, in a developing country that has their own challenges and processes that are going on, and so we don't -- maybe I'm going to be now a little blunt but there's many topics there that are only a concern in a first-world country, in a developing -- in a developed country. All those things of Internet of Things and many things are very arcane for the three-fourths of the population of this earth. And on the other hand, this is the year that we are linking this with Millennium Development Goals, with development, and so I think that we should be -- exert -- that's our role of the MAG. To put some sense on this. And maybe there are things that are very well written and that but that are only for developed countries, even for the rich people in developed countries, that can have all those gadgets and things like that.
And so we -- I think that we should exert as a MAG. I think it's a hard way because I told in the -- in the meetings, in the telephone, that this is always subjective. Of course it's always subjective. So we have to argue on that.
For instance, let me put an example. I was ethical enough not to vote for any of the Cuban submissions. Apparently I had a very successful outreach in Cuba because there was a lot of submissions. Not the big amount that was there. That was a mistake. It was not 32. There were 18 submissions of workshops and two were retired by the secretariat because it really -- the topic was really not for that.
But of the 16 left there, none are in the top 85. I know that. And I've checked that the redaction that the description is not very well done and all that, but maybe it's not the moment but I could argue -- I didn't vote for any of them, but I could argue that at -- for instance, one of the -- one that I think is the -- three of the last of the -- of the points average grading that it has, of the whole list, is one of the last. I can say -- and excuse me because it's -- I am defending a particular workshop from Cuba. I think this one is more relevant in all this Internet Governance Forum, and not only this, but many Internet Governance Forums, because you know what it's about? You know that Cuba helped more than a hundred countries in the world with medical personnel that goes. It went to fight the Ebola in Africa. It has -- in many Latin America, it has a lot of -- (off microphone). Do you know what the way that the doctor helps to use each other which diagnosed and that is through Internet? With the Internet? And that is there? The medical collaboration? And it only took 2.29 points.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Juan, thank you. I really appreciate your -- your enthusiasm --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. And I always appreciate your enthusiasm and passion.
What I heard specific to the question that I asked was for those panels that didn't submit background papers, should we pull them apart and look at them by exception.
I would say from what you just said your response to that was yes because you said there are some exceptional circumstances where maybe English isn't their first language and they found that too difficult but it's still a reasonable proposal.
But I want to go to Michael and then we'll come back to the queue. There's quite a long queue now.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: Just very briefly, yesterday I started off by agreeing with everything Marilyn said in a particular intervention --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>MICHAEL NELSON: -- but not today.
First, her criticism about some MAG members not rating, I think, is a concern but some of the people who didn't rate are here not actually as -- as -- more as liaisons to particular organizations, and perhaps they didn't feel that it was their place to do it. I'm not sure.
But the more important issue, the one that you're asking us about, is whether we should reject those panel proposals that did not have a background paper, and I think the answer to that is simply no.
There were a whole bunch of proposals that clearly could have been a panel or could have been a breakout session or could have been a debate, and for whatever reason -- and I think the reason was they didn't want to do a background paper -- they chose another format.
So I think it would be unfair and -- to just pick on those people who chose to put down a panel proposal without a background paper.
I also think that for some cases it was very easy for the proposer to put down a background paper that may have been something they published a year and a half ago about a topic that they've been working on for many years. That is a minimum amount of effort. There are people who put in very impressive brand-new topics which they haven't explored for more than a couple months and those people could not have pulled together a good background paper.
So we'd be punishing ourselves, I think, to grade those -- or to eliminate those proposals.
I just think we should, again, look at the top 60, assume that those are well critiqued, well reviewed, and then work from there.
I do think Juan has made a point. There are a number of interesting proposals that dealt with one particular project in Cuba. In many of those proposals, I suggested how they could be merged with some of the very impressive proposals that are in the top 60.
I also think it's important that we -- by taking the top 60, we have a platform to build on, and as we look at the other proposals, we can look for places where we might be able to plug in panels or panelists to those 60.
It's very hard to do that if we are actually going to start and build from the very start and just assume that we haven't approved anything. I hope that's clear and I hope that's helpful.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Michael.
I'll go to the queue in a moment but I do just want to correct one thing.
In fact, there are 55 MAG members. The other liaisons that you mentioned, which I assume you're talking about some of the other international organizations, are not counted as the 55 MAG members.
So still, though, the 44 that did review out of the 55, Chengetai said yesterday, was significantly higher than in past years, and I -- I know that UN DESA actually looks at the participation, many different components of that of MAG members, and that's certainly taken into account with subsequent-year renewals.
So I just -- just for clarity there.
Let me -- the next in the queue is Avri Doria.
Avri?
>>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. Thank you. I want to sort of cover several of the things that people have spoken of, but also go back to some of the criteria.
First of all, when I look at these, we have 40 some-odd that got 4 or better.
Now, I think that we should pretty much trust the aggregate scores that we've gotten because I think a lot of us took these issues into account, whether it was deducting for absence of paper or for mislabeling a debate a panel. Those things are pretty much already in the mix.
I think to apply them now in any sort of hard-and-fast manner would be problematic because it's already in the weighting in a lot of things.
I think that when I look at these, this almost seems to fall in a pattern of three where we've got essentially a third that are above 4, they can't have gotten a lot of deductions, they can't have a lot of standard deviation, because they're clustered towards the top there. And they seem the kinds of things, to me, that should pretty much be accepted unless someone has a strong objection to them.
Then you look at another third group there and you start to see where there's a break and you could say that these are ones that perhaps need to be dug into a little bit deeper. What were the issues? What was the standard variation? When was the balance? And so on.
And then you finally have the sort of lower scored set where you really have to go looking for how do we use these to make the balance.
But I think if we could sort of start dividing things.
I'm very much against telling people that, "If you submit a paper now, in two weeks we'll give a better score."
I think that we should come out of this with deficiencies that we expect people to fix and certainly say, "Hey, you know, you scored really high on a panel but your paper was not really panel quality and you really got to fix this." That kind of thing is good. But --
So in terms of your specific question, I'm kind of saying "no, but," you know, or "yes, but." I'm not sure which one comes first, but yeah. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And thank you, Avri. That was very helpful.
I've got quite a list of speakers now and I'll just go through a few of them quickly so you know where you are in the queue. If people could speak specifically to the sort of process you want to move forward, we've got about -- less than an hour left before the lunch break and we need to leave this morning with that process agreed.
I suspect it's going to require people to go back and look at their scores and figure out which ones they'd like to call out for exceptional or more detailed review here in the room, so I really think in terms of what we have in front of us, we need to agree the process before we break for lunch.
So I'll just go through the next three or four quickly. There's about 10 in the queue. We have Julian, Jac, Cheryl, and Peter as the next four.
So Julian, you have the floor.
>>JULIAN CASASBUENAS: Thank you, Madam Chair.
Going through all the review of the proposals, I found that it seems that most of the proposers are not aware about the facilities for remote participation, and in general, remote participation proposals lacks of good strategy for that. So I think it's important to highlight to the proposers the resources that IGF offers for remote participation because most of the proposals are just based on social media but not really on the -- on the tools that we have on site, and it would be very important to increase the participation, so probably to organize some online workshops for the -- with the proposers to enhance that will be important.
I will mention also some issues regarding the evaluation process, and I think it will be very important in the future to have some kind of filter of the proposal -- proposals by subteams so they will be easier to evaluate similar proposals for -- that are candidates to merge their proposals.
Also it was very difficult to evaluate gender balance because we don't have the gender specified in the participants of the workshops and it will be very important to have gender specified so we can better rate this kind of gender balance in the proposals.
And also to clarify where the proposers come from. A lot of participants came from Afghanistan. I thought that Omar was doing a good job, like Juan probably did in Cuba, but it was not the case. I mean, it's a lot of proposers that are not linked to their countries.
And also encourage proposers to include from different sectors and regions.
There are proposals that are only for -- all the speakers are from the same country, and it's important then to recommend to have perhaps an online meeting for interested parties to prepare their proposals in advance so they will have more chance to be selected.
As I said, highlighting remote participation tips and requirements from the IGF in order to have stronger proposals. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Julian.
Jac, you have the floor.
>>JAC sm KEE: Thanks, Lynn. I just wanted to say I agree with Avri. I think we should accept the ones that got four and above and just say sort of, okay, this should be fine and accept that.
And then for the middle basket, to also include those that ranked really high in the standard deviation. I think that's a really interesting thing to actually put into the mix as well, to look through really opposing points.
And while thinking through the middle basket, some things to bear in mind, in relation to the background paper, I think some of it is also very loosely defined. Like, some is mainly an iteration of the workshop proposal itself and then PDF and then turn it into a background paper. So I think that's also something to think -- to bear into consideration on top of all of the other very good points that's already been raised by first-time proposers and stuff and how difficult that might be or different periods of going through a particular thematic area.
And, also, to raise that first-time proposers had quite a lot of challenges with the submission. I think there were some technical glitches that was being raised in relation to the submission platform. And you couldn't, for example, remove the name of an accidentally -- you click on someone's name, you couldn't remove it. You had to do the whole thing all over again.
I think I also heard another feedback that the name was not actually selected, but then it appeared in the final proposal -- in the final proposed workshop. So that could also explain why some names kept appearing all the time. Like, there were really a few names that just kept appearing in every single workshop which was a bit weird. And that might have counted against some of the scoring as well. So maybe that should be borne into consideration.
And then also to just re-emphasize the point that the criteria is -- I guess is a basket effect that we take into account, that sometimes you can't really adhere to it so strictly. What that would inevitably end up doing is privilege those who are very familiar with submitting IGF workshops. And we want to also be guided by end objectives which is to promote diversity and participation and encourage newcomers, developing countries, and diversity in stakeholder groups. So I think that can be very useful to help us just think through some of this.
And, finally, to agree with Julian, I think for future proposals for the submission, it would be really great if we can have gender specified the same way as we do with stakeholder group as well as geographical location, to have that as one of the things that you need to kind of just put forward.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jac.
Cheryl, you have the floor.
>>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Madam Chair. I also think right now that looking at those that have four and above, I think we can probably trust the scoring thus far and let those go through. For the middle ones, I do think there's a lot to be said, that there are some significant language barriers, and there are barriers to entry if you are a first-time proposer really not understanding and knowing. So I think we should be a little bit flexible with the fact that perhaps not everyone had a background paper where they should have. I think if it is overall a good proposal, and we think it would really enrich and benefit this IGF, then, you know, we should give that consideration. So those would be my comments for moving forward.
I know there's a long queue. So I'm sure we can come back to this maybe in terms of thinking about next year how we can do better and make sure that we get -- we kind of improve on what we've done. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Cheryl.
I am going to come to Peter in a moment. But then the next four or five speakers are speaker 2840 -- I don't know if that's online or not -- Xiaodong, Renata, and Laura. And then there's a few more after that.
Peter, you have the floor.
>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Chair. Peter Dengate Thrush.
I think this is a really important topic, and I think we've got to be very careful about just coming to a quick, easy solution. This is actually quite hard, and we have to think it through quite carefully because a lot turns on it.
So my position is largely in support of the principles that Marilyn Cade put forward except perhaps as to remedy. And I'll come to that, Madam Chair, because you've asked for a process. And I will finish with what I think we should do.
But along the way, I think the first thing you've got to notice is you have to reward the behavior you wish to see repeated. If you ignore infringements and you ignore people who don't follow your rules, then nothing good happens. They don't get better at it. You don't get better. And nobody has any respect for you, the process, or the institution. So although I'm a lawyer and I tend to have a rule-based approach to many things, in this case the reason why we have rules is so that we can create things so that people know where they are going so they can put energy and time into things and other people can benefit from it.
So these are constructive, if you'd like, rules. These are not punitive rules that we create to try to punish people. These are rules that we create so that people know what to do so that we can have a good outcome. And if you don't follow those rules, then you don't have a good outcome.
Sorry. Let me just make sure I don't repeat myself. I think in this case, these rules were very clear. I think it's been -- there's a couple of publications in the process that said the secretariat will go through and will eliminate people that don't comply and said what compliance was.
And in relation to the background paper issue, there's a special page on the Web site that tells you not only must you put together a background paper but what it has to consist of. It's not a language issue. There's a whole set of criteria that a whole lot of people put time and energy into thinking about and publishing. And it's not good enough just to publish an abstract. And most people haven't done that. The rules say it has to have a title. It has to have a middle. It has to have a beginning and so forth. And you can look it up on the Web site. You've got to say why it's relevant. You got to put time into showing why you've done this. And, again, that's a constructive rule that we need so we can help do evaluations and people can put in proper proposals.
And not to do it and not to suffer any kind of a penalty when you don't do it seems to me is backwards. People were clearly on notice. And a lot of people did do it and followed it through, and it's unfair that having done the work and complied with the rules that they have then treated the same as if they were disobedient.
I have a great deal of problem with Juan's suggestion that we should now change the selection criteria to develop -- to favor proposals that are good for developing countries. While that might have been something that we could have decided, that's the whole point of creating a theme and subthemes and tags is for. Not now.
I want to add to the list of admissions that I think should be punished, if you'd like, and that's the failure to do a report from a previous workshop. That's a really serious, obvious point. And I think the secretariat really doesn't need any decision from us. The rules are quite clear. The rules say the secretariat will eliminate from consideration anyone who has done a proposal, done a session before and not done a report. It's hard to think of a clearer sort of obvious point that if we ignore, we just make ourselves look completely foolish.
I don't think that saying -- and this is Avri's point. I think there is some people -- some people will have reacted subjectively to some of these admissions, but I don't think that's the point. These are clear breaches of clear rules. And if we don't do something...
So you can't -- the other thing my experience tells me, it's very hard to creep up on discipline. It's very hard to slowly introduce and expect that you'll slowly -- you actually have to just start. You have to start having your meetings on time if you want people to show up on time. You can't just say, look, it's not good enough. Please turn up on time next time. You just start the meeting on time. And after a while, people realize that you mean what you say and they show up on time. And, similarly, you have to publish a background paper. If you don't publish one, your proposal won't go through. It's very hard to keep saying we're going to have these rules, we are going to enforce them, and then not enforce them. This goes by a variety of names. Sometimes "tough love" is one of them in some areas. But you actually have to start discipline to actually get the benefits of discipline. Talking about discipline is actually not discipline at all.
So what I suggest we do is we mark all these ones that don't comply with our rules and we put them on hold. We go and we develop 80% of the program. And then we include them when we go back to do the diversity, gender, other balancing process because some of them will have contributions that we want to do. But we make it very clear that that's what's been done with them and that only on this occasion will they get the second reconsideration. In the future, all of the rules will be applied strictly. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So I think that was very well-said, the last part specifically with respect to the remedy. And where I was trying to get to earlier when I said we note that there are exceptions and then we look at whether or not we allow them in exceptionally.
Maybe there's quite a long queue. And I'm not quite sure what people meant to talk to. But if people could just give me a quick reaction in your speaking comments as to whether or not you would support that again. So whether it's the top 40, the top 60, the top 80, if some of those proposals have not met specific criteria that they be flagged, be set aside for an exceptional review a bit later in the process. I hope the ask is clear.
And I'll take a few more comments and then see if we can get support from that in the room and then move on to some of the other subsequent steps.
So 2840 is in the queue.
>> KONSTANTIN KULIKOV: Good morning. My name is Konstantin Kulikov. I'm from the permanent mission of Russian Federation. I have a question on MAG rating and selection process. I noticed that the topics are preselected according to their popularity only.
Will the final workshop agenda formed by the MAG also take into regional balance apart from the thematical balance in order that some topics which are of utmost interest to some specific regions won't be totally discarded?
As long as the IGF is under the auspices of the U.N. and our work here is all about leaving no one behind, I believe this criteria is also very important. I heard that certain members may find some topics of low importance. But in that case, it would be really great aside from the hot topics, there should be at least some regional quarter. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I think we do try and ensure diversity and a good regional balance as well in the workshop.
Xiaodong, you have the floor.
>>XIAODONG LEE: Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thanks for the (indiscernible). It's very clear for us to figure out the issues which need be improved in this year. What's most important for us is to work together to improve IGF and make sure IGF's success in the next decade with big influence on comprehensive support by the stakeholders.
But I still remember last year in Geneva when we select the proposals, I think it was lack of participation from the technical community. But I'm very happy now in this year, the proposals from technical community in the top 60 and also in the top 85 is almost double than last year. That's very good.
But the balance issue is still a big problem. If we look at the top 60 and also top 80, the lack of the proposals from private sectors and government and intergovernmental organizations only around 20%. It is very small number. If they prefer to improve the influence of IGF, it's not exactly right for us MAG members to consider to increase the proposals from those stakeholders, to encourage them to join the IGF discussion and make contributions.
So my suggestions has two points. One, if we treat government and intergovernmental in the same categories, we can allocate maybe 14 or 15 for each stakeholder categories. And then we have another 25 additional proposals which don't belong to any categories and give the 25 proposers to the best proposals by the ranks. Another suggestion is try to merge as much more proposals into the selected proposals and to encourage more people to join the IGF. It's a lot of first proposals. It's very good. But how to make sure those proposals were selected all merged into the proposals selected to encourage them to join IGF discussion. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Xiaodong. Can you just give me a short reply as to whether or not you would support the remedy that was put on the table before which said assuming there's a top 40, 60, 80 or so, that those proposals that didn't met the criteria be set aside and looked at on an exceptional basis?
>>XIAODONG LEE: I will try and will give you a response later.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Thank you.
Renata, you are next in the queue.
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Thank you, Madam Chair. Renata Aquino Ribeiro here from Brazil, MAG member.
I would like to address some of the observations before. First question, are the slot numbers definitive or can be changed from the spreadsheet of the evaluated -- sorry, from the spreadsheet of the sample grid? There were a few numbers, slot numbers, workshops. 80 workshops --
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, they can be changed because depending on the timing. If it has got more 60-minutes, then we can have more. If we have more 30-minutes, we have more, et cetera.
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Thanks good to know. Thank you, Chengetai. Because some observations we can see that there are real issues that we should flag of the proposals that were approved. For example, the background paper standards, some background papers were just description of panel routines. Is that acceptable as a background paper? Speakers come in, five-minutes presentations. That to me should be a background paper that is not really acceptable.
Also, I'd like to readdress the issue of merging country and regional workshops and the importance. New proposals from our (indiscernible) Brazil also were not on top 100 as it happened with Cuba. This brings up the suspicion that new proposers and new developing country regions are not getting the priority they should. This point needs to be addressed by MAG members.
Also, we should address the issue of reviewing who the author is in the proposals, which shouldn't be a criteria. The usual suspects as IG voices has already been pointed out as an issue in IGF. Yet, we see them again in the selection list.
Also, it should be noted that some proposals claiming to be from developing countries, these proposals were not from developing countries. So -- again, new proposals. So, again, this review is very necessary as well as platform challenges from new proposers.
The inclusion from speakers from developing countries should be noted. I was included in a workshop as a proposed speaker, and I could not even check what the workshop was about so I did not confirm.
Afterwards, I found out that a name similar to mine had been confirmed. This is probably an error. So how do we address it?
So, mainly, I would like to first take another look at excluded developing countries workshop. If you look at the stats of the top 60 proposals, 40% only are from developing countries. The IGF has as part of its main mission to include developing countries in the decisions about Internet future. If this is exactly the audience being left out, what is there to go on with? Thank you. That concludes my intervention.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Renata. And I do think those are some other categories. I think we had a few proposals which have commented that we should look at those proposals that are in the highest standard deviation for inclusion. I think the same thing with respect to the new proposers, and the developing country issue that you and Juan mentioned is another category that we should look at and potentially look to bring in.
Laura, you have the floor.
>> LAURA WATKINS: Thank you, Chair.
Thanks to the secretariat. To be honest, it has been really helpful to see the grading breakdown in this way.
I think in theory I agree with looking at the top 40 and accepting them, but I would strongly support Peter's comments. We can only judge -- as the MAG members, we can only judge the proposals on the information we have been supplied with. We set the requirements that people needed to comply with for a reason and I think it's unfair that people haven't complied with these don't get penalized in some way.
I would strongly agree there should be a severe penalty for lack of providing a report in previous sessions. It's a clear requirement. I would think regardless of how dynamic or exciting the sessions were in person, if they haven't provided a report, then it means that conversation dies straight after the IGF and it's not accessible to anybody outside of that room.
Just picking up on Xiaodong's comments on mergers, there's a huge, huge number of proposers this year. And maybe we need to focus more on mergers than we have in previous years where we didn't have such space limitations.
There could be sort of similar process -- similar suggestions in that top other 60 top 40 that have quite a lot of overlap in them and cover maybe the same ground. So I think it would be helpful if we could see a list. I know when you went through the grading, you had to suggest mergers. It would be helpful to see a list against with which topics -- with which other suggestions had been -- which other workshop proposals were suggested for mergers just so we can have that in our mind as we're going through the proposals.
Also, a number of people have spoken about grouping by themes, and I would support these comments. I think it's important that we've had quite a spread of thematic workshops. And I think that when you look at the breakdown by the top 60, that spread is not necessarily reflected and I think we need to be conscious of having a spread of themes in these sessions that are accepted.
I personally worked in a very similar way to Sala and grouped things by sort of apples and pears so it was easy to compare and I think we can then compare like with like and work on merging to then make sure we have a spread of things. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I've got quite a long queue of speakers here and I really do want to urge us to try and come to an agreement on the proposal before lunch, which is 30 minutes with a sharp finish at the top of the hour.
So let me try and put a chair's proposal out and see if we can get sort of acceptance for that.
With the assumption being that those -- for the moment, let's just say top 60 -- those proposals that didn't meet the criteria, such as the background paper or a report out after the last IGF, are marked and set aside and are not at this point part of the assumed accepted workshop proposals, I have no idea how many that would reduce the 60 from.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Quite a lot.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Quite a lot, Chengetai says.
Then, you know, possibly Peter's point is even more important about setting hard criteria, if in fact, they're not really being assumed by most.
So if we said the top 60 and quite a lot comes out, I don't know, that's --
Assume 20 are set to the side, so that says we have a fairly solid 40 that we could start with as a base.
The secretariat actually prepared a list of the top 30 with the greatest standard deviations, which if you buy that that means there's a great range of, "We strongly support this" or "We think this is a particularly bad idea," as opposed to perhaps not well written, but if you accept that premise, that would seem to be a reasonable group that we might review and see if we want to pull in -- pull those into some of the accepted workshop proposals.
I think the other category we've heard was those that -- from developing countries or first-time proposers, which from my own personal perspective are the sort of things I'd like to look at and give a little more attention to and see if there's something we can do to mentor or support those coming up to the standard that the MAG actually thinks is appropriate for a workshop proposal.
You know, failing -- so let me just stop there for a moment. Is that a proposal for which we could actually move forward on? And maybe instead of looking for comments, we can look for if anybody has a clarification or thinks they can phrase or word that better, happy to hear that, and then what I'd like to do is to go for sort of a show of hands from MAG members as to whether they would support that or not.
So it looks like Jivan has a clarification or question and Mike has --
Oh, show of support.
So Mike has a worried look on his face, as does Marilyn, so let me take Mike and Marilyn in the queue and then Rasha.
Short comments, though, please, so we can move forward.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: Just a practical question.
Are we also going to eliminate those people who submitted a background paper that wasn't really a background paper?
I -- I would argue we've found out that this doesn't work. This is a broken rule. We should have just told people they could submit a background paper and we will give them extra points if they do, but it's very clear this hasn't worked. People have gamed the system and we don't have a way to correct for that. So I just -- I'm curious, as a matter of practicality, would we actually eliminate poor background papers as well?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yeah, I guess that's a key point. If -- let's say the top 60. If the top 60 said that, "We now are ruling out 40 because they didn't really have a background paper or they didn't share a report or they didn't"-- then I would agree with you, Michael, that that's not -- you know, it's not something which was specifically ruled in. I don't know what that number is, though.
I -- I find it hard to believe that they would get 4s and above if they had really poor background papers or no background papers from such a wide number of MAG members, though, so I think there's some law of numbers here that I think certainly helps correct some of that.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>MARILYN CADE: Thanks. Chair, thank you for that proposal. Marilyn Cade speaking.
I have a -- perhaps a mild suggestion.
Let me defer to Peter, who made a more concrete proposal that would respond to this last question, but I want to address the idea that we need to reward some of those who did the work.
So I'm happy with taking the first 60, pulling out those who didn't do reports. People have been told over and over and over, "You don't do a report, you don't get in."
So pull them out. Pull out the ones that didn't do background papers when they said they were going to do a panel. The instructions were clear.
I'm going to defer to Peter on whether, if you fudge the background paper, we're going to give you a skate on that. I'm not going to comment on that.
But I am going to comment on the fact that before we go overboard on moving first-time proposers and developing country proposals up, let's also look at the next 20 or 25 who really did the work and realize we need to reward -- and I liked what Peter said. I probably would have used a different word than you did, Peter. I would have used the word "integrity" about our process.
We said we were going to do things. We published criteria. Let's show some integrity about our process.
Let's show some humanity as well.
But I think if we realize that when we pull out the guys and gals who just frankly didn't do it, they didn't put in a background report from last year, and I would just say that in my view, I expected the secretariat to not put them into the spreadsheet.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We're going to make this really short, people. We need to -- Rasha, you were in the queue, and then Peter, and then I'm going to try again.
>>RASHA ABDULLA: Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you hear me?
There are lots of good points being raised and I think it's important to keep going back to how to try to make this a better process next year, and I think again one of the important points to keep in mind is that this is all happening because we don't really have a clear process of how are we grading the workshops.
And so, again, you know, I mean, some people probably did take into account the fact that background papers were supplied or not and how well they were written, but some people clearly didn't. As a matter of fact, the number -- the number 2, the second highest ranked entry, is a panel with no background paper. And I understand it's about disability and diversity, and of course that's a buzzword, and so we need to keep in mind is it enough for people just to throw a buzzword that we obviously welcome a session on that topic but then there's really no information whatsoever in the proposal other than that two people are proposing to speak about their personal experience?
That got through the second highest ranked workshop, so clearly there is something wrong with the evaluation process and we need to take that into consideration for next year.
I'm not sure if we're all speaking the same language when we're grading workshops, and that's the problem.
The standard deviation, while I do appreciate the concept, I don't think is going to make much difference this time around because I'm not really seeing much diversity in the numbers, so I'm not sure if that's going to help us.
And, again, I completely agree that people have sort of steered away from writing that "This is a panel" even though it could be because they don't want to submit a background paper.
So should we be -- should we now be penalizing those who did not submit a background paper but then letting those pass who said, you know, "This is a debate" when it's really a panel because they didn't want to do a background paper?
So, I mean, there are lots of -- it's a complicated issue, so if we're going to penalize those with no background papers -- and I'm kind of leaning towards that -- I think we should also penalize those who submitted an inaccurate format for their panel and those who submitted a background paper just copying and pasting what they submitted in the proposal.
So unfortunately, practically speaking, if we need to do that this afternoon, I'm not sure if the secretariat has a very tough job to do during lunch, but I'm maybe suggesting that we take maybe 40 or 50% of the highest ranking proposals who did do everything according to the criteria that we have established and then consider a larger margin of maybe 60 -- 50 to 60% of those who sort of didn't really follow everything through, based on what topics we would need to see, inclusiveness and diversity of topics and gender and geography and other aspects. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Thank you.
Chengetai actually just quoted me a figure which I think puts a different spin on this discussion.
If I heard him correctly, he said out of the top -- it's actually 46 that were 4 and above, but out of the top 40 or 46, only 9 submitted background papers that should have submitted background papers, is that right?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I'm just asking for a double-check.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That's what I said. "That should have."
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah, yeah, sorry. Panels. Sorry. I got it wrong.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: He's --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yeah. No. Exactly. If it's 9 out of 10, that's perhaps not bad, but...
Peter, let's make a point. Peter, you have the mic. And then really we need to try and agree a way forward. We cannot leave -- and we must finish sharply at 1:00, both for the interpreters and also for another meeting that's going to be held in here. Peter?
>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Chair. Peter Dengate Thrush. Just a very quick response to the suggestion that we move to grading the quality of the background papers. I think that's a sophistication for future years.
At the moment, our rule is you have to have a paper, and people who have that -- so we've got a pretty binary, you either have or you haven't. Nowhere in the rules does it say you will be fired if your paper is not a good paper. That's a sophistication we can grow to future years. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Peter.
Elizabeth, you have the floor.
>>ELIZABETH THOMAS-RAYNAUD: Thank you very much. I am really uncomfortable with the way this conversation is orienting itself, and I'm going to go to the subjectivity of words and meaning that we all have, and that we choose diversity amongst ourselves in order to balance that in and have the awareness that we all have different views and perceptions about words.
And when -- so when in a discussion we're using words like "fairness," I always see fairness from, you know, that 360 point of view and I think it's really hard for us to say that it's fair when you cut somebody off at a rule, as such, when, is the rule in itself fair? Is the -- are there aspects of, you know, deviating around the rule fair?
So I -- I take the point and the perspective, but I want to go back to what our role is and the work that we've done.
As Sala said, we have spent a lot of time and effort evaluating these, and I am very uncomfortable with the idea that we would extract certain ones out because of certain rules that we might perceive a certain way, and then in a face-to-face meeting by whoever is willing to speak or not willing to speak, we're going to then re-evaluate them.
I think that's not a good use of our time.
I accept and support very strongly the proposal that Avri had made earlier in the day about continuing with the process that all of us evaluated with that sort of perception that we will do this three-tiered process, and I -- and I also recognize the points that other people made about the large number of workshops that we have and the need to look at how we -- we might propose mergers or talk about supplementing weaker proposals with, you know, contents and ideas and cooperation with other workshops. But I would say that it's -- I'm exceedingly uncomfortable with this idea of selecting out the panel sessions, and I think that there are more people in the room that don't have time to speak but that would echo that concern.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So thank you, Elizabeth.
Chengetai just said -- well, give them the figures you were --
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Oh, yes. Sorry. Yeah.
Okay. So what I get is that we have 5 proposals who got 4.0 and above and are panels, and 3 of them did not submit --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah. Okay. Good. Thank you. It's always good to double-check. Yeah.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So let me go back, then, to the proposal that I actually made.
If we assume, again, the top 60, I guess we can ask everybody to look through the top 60 and if you think there's an anomaly or they didn't follow the process appropriately, let's all agree that by the end of lunchtime, you send that -- those figures to the chair and we can just asterisk those and figure out when we come back and review them.
I think what's almost more important is not spending so much time on figuring out which ones we're going to kick out that were highly related by a very diverse group of people. I would prefer we spend our time on those proposals where we're looking to get a better balance in the entire program and figure out what we do to actually help support the developing country, the first-time proposers, and the other areas where we recognize there's -- not well enough.
So I'm not saying those that didn't submit a panel would be ruled in or ruled out. I think we note them, put them to the side, and then I would suggest we go away and look first at --
If some people want to look at those that are in the standard deviation group and suggest that these are ones that we call out for review with the whole MAG, we can do that. I'm sure Michael will.
I think the other important category, again, is the new proposers and the developing countries.
And I also agree -- and we did this last year -- was we determined to look at the next sort of 25, because if you're rated 4 versus 3.98, I mean, it's so qualitative, what do we think about that next batch of 25.
Last year we put a process in place which said we asked people to be a champion for a proposer, so somebody would say, "In the next batch of 25, or in the first-time proposers batch, I think these -- this proposal warrants consideration for the MAG," and would basically give a very short intervention as to why they thought that proposal was worthwhile being a part of the program and we took a reading from the whole MAG.
You know, so that's sort of where I am on the process here.
Can I see if there's support for that or any significant -- Marilyn has a question. Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Chengetai gave the information that there are only three in the top 46 that should have submitted a background paper that didn't, right? But I didn't hear the answer on how many of them, if any, should have submitted a workshop report and did not. Can we have that back, please?
>> (Off microphone.)
>>MARILYN CADE: -- follow the chair's suggestion.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Can we ask the secretariat to go away and do that and asterisk those in the same manner they will asterisk those that didn't actually have a background paper?
Michael, you have a --
>>MICHAEL NELSON: This is a question about the workshop reports.
We might have to have a double asterisk because in some cases people spoke eight years ago and they didn't -- we didn't have a requirement about workshop reports back then and so when they answered the question, "Did you submit a workshop report," they said, "No. Didn't know I had to."
So it's -- we have to watch out for that end case.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Jivan? Sorry. Jivan, you have the floor.
>>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI: Sorry. There's a lot of green lights that are here. We keep on circling with three people who keep on saying -- I mean, I'm sure there's wisdom in this room for other people to say other things, right?
I think that much of this room actually agrees with what you said, and I think that we can come in the next 13 minutes to a formula and perhaps that formula is, cut out the ones without a background paper, put in the 60 with the best marks, work on the next 40 and see if there's something from the other ones that needs to be renegotiated, so let's --
[ Applause ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. And that's why I haven't been following the queue is I have been trying to get the sense of the room and the support on the proposals, specifically, so apologize if that wasn't clear.
Let me try and close on that now, then.
So I -- the proposal we put forward said accept the top 60 provisionally, if we want to use those words, because we're going to note those that didn't submit a background paper or a report.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: For a panel, for a panel.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So we will -- we will identify those, and when we come back after lunch, we will have some signal as to whether or not that 60 is, you know, now 40 or something significantly lower and adjust from there.
I think it would be very helpful if -- and, I mean, you said something about diversity, Rasha, but that's the beauty in this MAG and in all of us being here, is that it actually does hopefully reflect a significant piece of the world at large as we actually try and develop this Internet Governance Forum. So all those differences of opinions, I think, really enrich the whole rating. Which is not to take away from the fact that we certainly need to find a better way to --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: -- to do this.
In just one second, then.
So the other categories, I think, we really wanted to ask people to go away and identify those workshop proposals that they'd like to put in front of the MAG for inclusion in the program, and there were three categories we've come up with so far.
That was the top 30 standard deviation group, which is in the documents that Chengetai circulated this morning.
The other one was first-time proposers or developing country proposals specifically.
And then there was also a notion that we move to the next 25. So in other words, 61 through 85.
Certainly the difference between the 85th and the 60th proposal was not an awful lot, in terms of the aggregate rating, so it's probably safe to assume that there are some reasonable proposals in there that we should pull in.
What we had -- I can't remember how much we processed this before last year.
I thought all the specific workshop numbers that people wanted to review in those categories were sent to the secretariat and we worked through them. Failing that -- and that may be a little too much processing given the other things we have going on over lunch.
Failing that, I think we can probably just say, okay, now we're going to open up the floor for first-time proposers, developing country individuals. Who would like to speak in favor of some of those workshop proposals? Was that clear? Does that work? Is there support for that as a process? Any significant concerns with going forward in that manner?
Hossam.
>>HOSSAM ELGAMAL: I think, first of all, whether subjective or not, MAG members did vote -- did score. So if we are going to enhance next time, this is good. But already we rated and we had good rating for some proposal, so we should somehow stick to it.
Now, second thing is -- which I think is very important, if we could have with those top 60 the potential other proposals would be merged which already all of us put some of it, this will help us in making shorter steps because if we are going to choose other proposals that are already a duplicate of the top 60 list, then we are again doing duplication and not leaving room for potential new proposals that may come in.
So maybe if the secretariat can help us putting the potential merged proposal with the top 60, this will eliminate some of what we are going to choose after that.
Now, another point is what about the proposal related to where there is no -- well, first of all, the report thing, I think the reporting was extremely crucial because this is the way we have the knowledge base. Now, if during the last couple of years people had submitted a proposal around their workshop and did not submit a report, I don't think this is appropriate to carry on with the same. So proposed paper is something, but report is very important. Not submitting a report is really crucial and should not be included moving forward.
The last point is related to specific workshops submitted with very non-diversified stakeholder. So is there one stakeholder only or a very specific, narrow geographic location only? Are we going to suggest to those proposers to enlarge at least -- if they are selected, enlarge their stakeholder diversity or geographical diversity or are we going to accept it as is? Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: To your last point, I would hope that if there were sort of a singular diversity, that it was rated low. And there are very few instances of that in the top 60 or the top 85. But if, in fact, there are instances of that, I think they should be encouraged to pull in other diversity. And I think we can maybe make that as an overall statement when we go back to those assumptions.
Chengetai did have an answer to one of the questions earlier.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. To Marilyn's question, there are none. For those that have not submitted a report, it means that they were first-time proposers. But everybody else has been weeded out.
I just want to make a comment on mergers. It's always very, very, very difficult to get two parties to merge. I mean, they always say -- even if they have exactly the same title with a difference o a full stop and a comma, it's totally different.
[ Laughter ]
That's one thing. And then the other point is that: How do we do the mergers? Because we have a very strong workshop, let's say it's rated 3.7, and then we have a weak workshop which is rated 2.7 or something like that. If they refuse to merge, they both don't get a slot or does the weaker one not get a slot? But then the strong one will always, in most cases, say, No, I don't want to merge. It's okay if they're the same points as such. Then you can say, okay, they are equal and they have to merge if they want a slot. So, I mean, that's one of the things.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's been a fairly consistent experience and set of comments over the years.
Hossam, you have...
>>HOSSAM ELGAMAL: Yes. All what I'm saying is I don't have any problems with the logic Chengetai is highlighting. I'm just saying if we don't know those potential mergers, then we may come and select them in this coming next stage. (indiscernible).
Now some of the remaining with the potential merger with those 60, if we don't highlight them now, then probably some of us will suggest them again. And then we'll have two or three proposals that are related to exactly the same topic that were having different rating. So we need early enough to highlight them ahead so we can keep them aside. Either they merge or they don't get in the queue.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: But if there's -- if there's a strong belief for the MAG members based on past history that mergers just don't work, then suggesting that you merge a lesser-rated proposal with one which is higher rated is not -- it's not solving anything. You know, I would say that the ratings hold. If you got two proposals that are similar, one's rated high and the other one is rated low, I think the collective wisdom of the MAG chose that one. And we shouldn't have a lot of discussions on which ones we can merge and suggest.
(off microphone).
>>HOSSAM ELGAMAL: Then we don't -- if we know this other one, we are not going to suggest it between the 60 and 100. We are going to suggest other proposals. So we need something that highlights for us some of those proposals already have a more stronger proposal in the top 60.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: If MAG members actually indicated that two proposals were fairly similar and rated them and were thinking merger, I think each MAG member needs to look at whether or not that whatever they liked about the lower-rated one that they thought should be brought forward, whether or not that's been adequately captured in the other one and make a decision as to whether you bring it forward to this room and suggest a merger with what, I think, is a pretty clear sense of the room that mergers just haven't proven to work.
I'm not sure if I'm answering or not.
Jivan or Liesyl.
>>LIESYL FRANZ: Thank you. I have actually a lot of responses to your questions, Lynn, from the prior discussion. But I'll hold those for now and just deal with the merger question.
I think it's a different thing to think about two workshops that might be similar that could be candidates for mergers. But having been in a merger workshop before willingly, I think it's possible -- not in every case is it turned down, but I think what we can do if there are two workshops, one is strong and one is weak, the weak didn't make it -- pass muster by whatever rules we choose to use at this point, that what we can do is suggest that some of the speakers or the organizers of the workshop that didn't make it be incorporated into workshops that do make -- that do make sense for them. That kind of speaker engagement is something we need to do after the fact.
The second thing I'm going to say because I do now have the mic, I want to go back to Jac's comment earlier about the number of speakers that were repeated throughout the workshop proposals. And there was no way really -- I mean, that became a subjective judgment about how you graded the diversity in the panels -- excuse me, the diversity in the workshop proposal.
And I think another thing we can do after the fact is to take a look at all the accepted proposals, whatever they are at the end, and see if the people that are in three or more panels, whatever number we choose can deselect themselves and find somebody who is -- they can even be from the same organization, if it's a new voice maybe from a different region, to replace them on whichever panel they choose. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: All right. I think those are good comments, and we can figure out how we actually mentor and further improve the agreed proposals.
Jivan, I will give you the last comment because we are being told we need to let the interpreters go. And there is another meeting in the room here.
>>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI: When going into a room that is very messy and a lot of clothes are thrown out, I think it's best to start with the clothes that are clean and then go to the next one, or a drawer.
So let's just -- I think that if we have a little system to start things going after the lunch and we start going, the feeling will be that we start checking things off and it will be a different feeling. I think we just start going based on the formulation we were discussing earlier.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I appreciate that. I mean, I also suspect -- expect to feel a lot happier about reviewing some of the key proposals and figuring out what we do to actually bring in appropriate balances and things.
So with that, I'm getting some strong signals here from the interpreters that we need to stop.
Juan, if you have a very short --
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I have one announcement.
>> (off microphone).
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I don't know if the queue stays here or not. But in this case, I think -- I don't know if people would have the same comments or not. I think we'll wipe the queue, and we can start over when we come back after lunch.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Interpreters can go. I just need a general announcement. Please, if you are sponsored to come here, can you please see Adriana and sign the attendance sheet and also give her your boarding pass. That's very important. Otherwise, we will hunt you down and...
[ Laughter ]
And, also, for tomorrow, if people are leaving, the U.N. doesn't allow you to bring in baggage here. So...
[ Lunch break ]