23 May 2013
IGF
MAG Meeting AM Session
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Please take your seats. We would like to get started. The fewer we are, the easier it is to come to an agreement.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Ladies and Gentlemen, let's start the next session, please. If we can sit down.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Please to take your seat. We would like to get started. We said we would stop for lunch at 12:30 and also, I know that several of you have planes to catch, so we would like maybe to wrap up the day at 5:00 so that you can all catch your planes. And in addition, the EBU has kindly offered to give us a guided tour through their premises, that is the technology side, the technology wing of the house. So who would be interested to have the guided tour so that Giacomo would know roughly. 1:00.
[ Speaker off microphone. ]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Quarter of an hour or so, it will be. Those -- Okay. Giacomo, can you count? These are the people who would like to come.
[ Speaker off microphone. ]
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Okay, straightaway. Okay. At the end of this session, at the reception, and then Giacomo will take you across for the guided tour. Okay.
Without further adieu then, I would like -- oh, yes, Mr. Chairman, please. May I ask you then to open our session.
>>ASHWIN SASONKO: Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen, sorry for a few minutes late. Have to go to the toilet first. And understand that we have the three groups discussion about all the proposals and hopefully this -- in this morning's session we can finalize -- not morning. Afternoon session, I believe. We can finalize our proposals and finalizing also the working groups and workshops that we'll have in Bali because I mean from an Indonesian point of view it's very important because we have to know exactly the rooms, you know, the open forum. If we have open forum, how many of them. If we need rooms, or big rooms, small rooms, one need to be divided into two and so on, then this kind of thing, the logistics is necessary to know by the organizer. And with this, I would like to continue and pass it to our interim chair. Please, Mr. Kummer.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much. I would like to get straightaway to the facilitators of the various working groups. Group 1, who will speak? Yeah, I think that's Ayesha, yes.
>>AYESHA HASSAN: Thank you, Chair. We handled the human rights/freedom of expression category, to the extent possible, as well as Internet Governance principles. The other two facilitators were Patrick Ryan and Paul Wilson. So we had two general takeaways we wanted to share with the group. One is diversity of views, when we're looking at workshops, could mean discussants or panelists. People don't have to load up the panels. They could also identify confirmed discussants to bring in diversity of views. In general, we wanted to note that some regions are just generally underrepresented, i.e., Latin America and Central Africa. So on workshop 1 -- we did not get to evaluate those in the gray category which met the numbers. So there were six workshops that were "under the accepted based on numbers category." We started with 110 which is Internet rights and freedoms in Latin America, and on that one our recommendation was for them to collaborate with the Council of Europe on the human rights workshop 105 and 102. And we wanted to note for the proposers that it would be interesting to add a Latin American perspective -- no, to add non-Latin American perspective.
Workshop 98 on digital safety and freedom of expression proposed by UNESCO, we thought that the diversity factor that was a little low could be rectified. We would ask them to address that. We could also ask the organizers to contribute to another workshop on this topic area. So pardon me, there would -- in some of our discussions there really was a divergence of views. So we didn't always come to a consensus, but I think at the end what we're saying is, ask the organizer of 98 to contribute to another workshop on this topic area and that the current proposal was not unique enough to be moved into the accepted category.
Workshop 297, the right to blog protecting citizen journalists proposed by article 19, there were a lot of to be confirms so the diversity factor was unclear. But in the end, we've recommended for it to be allowed to go forward, collaborate with workshop 290, and MAG member Patrick Ryan is willing to help bring in the necessary business view and we thought it's an important topic. So those were the recommendations.
Workshop 16, oppression over the Internet submitted by CSPA, we noted that it was a new proposer, there were a lot of different viewpoints in this discussion. Some felt that it could -- could be interpreted in different ways. Perhaps it needed more focus. MAG member Raul Echeberria said that he would be happy to work with the proposer of workshop 16 to ameliorate it and that we felt that it was an interesting and appropriate topic to consider. Also that they could work -- they could work with and collaborate and merge with workshop 44 which is the next one we evaluated. It's called Fit to Lead Online Censorship In Established Democracies. The recommendation was to consider working with 16, as noted before, as well as 183 which is Addressing Human Rights Challenges In Telecommunications to address the lack of diversity and deficiencies that might have led to the score they received.
Workshop 290, Online Defamation Problems, An Old Wine In a New Bottle submitted by (saying name). We recommended that they merge with workshop 297 which is the right to blog which was previously noted.
Workshop 174 Internet and Human Rights, UPR Lessons Learned for IBPSA, this is a duplicate actually of 343, so we discussed this and in general there was not support to move it to the accepted category.
Workshop 37, human rights infrastructure for the Internet proposed by Global Partners, we were questioning whether it was going to build on a workshop they held last year, so our recommendation was that they build on last year's discussion to take the discussion to a new level.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Sorry, I hate to do this.
>>AYESHA HASSAN: Yes.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: If you go at this rate we -- I mean, it's very thorough and very useful. I just wonder whether you could maybe not give a summary to the Secretariat for the record and that we take it on in -- at the very high level I think we will have to discuss on how to move forward. And have you identified workshops which did not score high enough which you think they should go forward and if so, how many in addition to the ones you already have, so that coming out of your group are there recommendations for how many workshops you think we could give the green light and how many more are in an in-between category that need more work of those who didn't make the overall grade so that we have an overall picture before going too much into the details.
>>AYESHA HASSAN: Thank you, Markus. I was wondering how much detail you really wanted on this. We -- okay. Without going through the list that I've already gone through, in addition to those where we've recommended mergers or ameliorations, we -- we said one, two, three -- in this category there are three more that we recommended should be given some insight on what they could do to ameliorate but they should go forward and we only had one that we said should not go forward because we actually thought that yeah -- so just one that we didn't accept.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: That would be how many then coming out of group 1?
>>AYESHA HASSAN: Coming out of group 1 that would be -- I guess with the mergers within group 1, I think it's about seven that we said should be taken up. We did not get through the whole rest of the category of group 1. And on the next one -- the next category was Internet Governance principles, and one, we said it should be moved to Internet as an engine for growth and/or merged, and then we said one --
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Which number was that? I think --
>>AYESHA HASSAN: 332.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: 332 should go from Internet Governance principles to the engine for growth.
>>AYESHA HASSAN: Engine for growth. And possibly merge with 160. And then out of the other ones, 128 we said could possibly be a flash session. We also -- we had several recommendations on 128 but basically it's a good proposal with some ameliorations. 306, we thought this one should become a meeting so we take it out of the workshop category and put it into a side meeting. We strongly recommended they get a room.
( Laughter )
329 -- pardon me. Okay.
( Laughter )
Okay. A little humor. And my apologies, Markus. We didn't do this calculation as --
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Okay.
>>AYESHA HASSAN: So 329 with ameliorations we said that they should go forward. 320, offer a flash session. But again, newcomer from a particular region but we wanted to offer them someplace to go. So 329 I said should go forward. 320 we thought perhaps a flash session. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Okay. Thank you very much. And as I said, it would be very helpful to have all of that, I think, in writing. It is obvious that we will not be able to go through every single workshop in the remaining time that we have. I was actually going around the groups. Very impressed by A, the very constructive spirit of all participants, and also recognizing the hard work that went into it in preparing these discussions. And it seems also fairly obvious that we need to have an online process going forward. And my suggestion would be to take advantage of these kind people who agreed to be facilitators to keep doing so as we move forward.
I think we had co-leads, co-facilitators in each of the groups, and we also had new members, but I would also strongly encourage maybe also other new members to volunteer to be part of this process. But what I would like to come to conclusion today is that we agree on a given number of workshops where we can say you please go ahead and the others still, there's some work we need to do. But whatever we do, we cannot avoid discussing numbers. We discussed -- and as our Chairman rightly pointed out, they also will need to know and we discussed with some members of his team. They say they can make seven rooms available for workshops. And seven rooms, you can more or less multiply by 12 for workshops, lots. That will give 84 workshops. And if you use one of the rooms for flash sessions, then obviously you get more sessions in. Then you could get, I think, roughly about 25 sessions in if you have 30 minutes, one after the other, during the week. So that will be 97 overall. But this is, in essence, the maximum framework we're talking about.
Now, this does not mean that other proposals could not have a meeting, but they would not have the same facilities as setting up a meeting room is relatively complex with all the technical plumbing that goes into it, so to speak. We have setup for scribes, web streaming and so on, microphones need to be on the table. So we can offer rooms for meetings and it is in the U.N. tradition to do so, that everybody wants to have a meeting can have a meeting. So we would not say no to anybody. But there will be, I think, the terminology is, special events. They are in addition to the official workshops. They would not benefit from realtime transcription as such. But it would have the advantage of not saying no to anybody. We don't say you can't have a meeting. Yes, you can have a meeting, but it will not have the same status, it will not have the same support. But we will have to decide on basically how many workshops eventually we want to have in these seven rooms and how many of which are flash session.
As I said, if they're all 90 minutes workshops, then we talk about 84. If we split them up, if one room is set up for workshops, then we can have 72 plus 25 would be 97. But you could also have two rooms for flash session and then you would have 50 flash sessions and less workshops, 60 workshops, that would be 110 total. So there are ways of playing around with that. And we don't have to decide that, again, today. We can work on it as we go forward. But there are limitations to the number that we can decide. There's not unlimited number -- amount of space available for workshops. Yes, Raul.
>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: What would be the (indiscernible) of the flash sessions. How long would be them?
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Maybe we'll ask again Veronica. She seems to be the specialist on flash sessions, but in essence we talk about 30-minute sessions. Basically thematic presenting a report or something. Would you like to --
>>VERONICA CRETU: Thanks, Markus. I think I really don't want to take time on this right now. What I can do, I can send a written description of the format so everyone has it so -- but it's a 30-minute session with a specific case study to instrument that is being shared or presented. But more details I will send to the list. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much for this. And I think we also agreed that we would make space available for poster sessions for very informal birds of a feather sessions, that sort of thing.
Group number 2, what is the overall picture? Who will be reporting? Was that the group in the other room, are you number 2? Subi and Theresa?
>>THERESA SWINEHART: We're 2. Good. Just a group overview. We had three groupings, we had enhanced cooperation, the multistakeholder principles, and the category that was put under CIR. Quickly on the enhanced cooperation, we added zero, we deleted four. Three went into flash. Four were proposed to merge. What I'd like to emphasize in the merging is that in some cases the proposal was to merge them with others that had received a low ranking and find a way to work with that. And in some cases, they were encouraged to merge with some that had already existed. And we tried to identify names of people who could help facilitate that.
On the ones where there were suggestions to merge with ones that had not received a high score, in those cases in particular we had noticed that -- this goes to a broader issue -- that many of the workshops that we were dealing with actually belonged in other categories. And, for example, some belonged under security or some belonged under human rights and that while they were addressing the issue from a multistakeholder or enhanced cooperation standpoint, the substantive topic actually belonged someplace else. So what we've done is tried to identify those and encouraged them to work in that substantive grouping area. We have one in particular which is focused on security where it actually belongs someplace else and may be able to find a slot there. And we can give numbers to the Secretariat on all of these.
On the moving they were encouraged -- the notes will say to the Secretariat that they were moved into other groupings, so they were in the wrong category. Multistakeholder, we added one workshop. We deleted three. We've proposed that four of them are merged, again, some with existing workshops that were accepted, some with others that were not. We need to work that out. Or sometimes it was a combination of one that was accepted and one that was not. So encouraging those groups to work together. And three of them were moved to -- what these other tracks on capacity building and the regional dialogue on Internet governance. They were just in the wrong grouping entirely.
On CIR, those were moved into the appropriate categories whether around security or other issue areas. We deleted one, and we added one. So that's our breakdown. Just a few quick observations, again, reemphasizing that many of them that we dealt with were actually not in the right category group and, again, that some were suggested to merge with existing ones. And there's good opportunities there for a track.
We had one workshop around multistakeholder principles where the suggestion is that this might actually provide a good framework for a main session into which other workshops could be incorporated and be the premise for a main session itself.
Again, trying to -- trying to leverage the work that's already been done. So we'll send to the Secretariat the exact breakdown and where things were proposed to move to and where they're proposed to merge and which ones were deleted. And my partner in crime here was Subi, who was splendid. Subi, do you want to add anything?
>>SUBI CHATURVEDI: That pretty much covers it. We didn't really have so much of an effort at that because it was a wonderful group to work with.
Just one addition, we also did manage to relook at the workshops that had made the cut 4.42, which is why we found opportunities of collaboration with the ones that did not make it. So I really appreciated that. And thank you, Theresa, for the report. That encapsulates everything that we did.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Excellent. Thank you to both of you. So the overall numbers coming out of your group of those you have approved and how much?
>>THERESA SWINEHEART: I have to do the math. Sorry.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Okay. Thank you.
And then the next group. That's Olga, I think. Yes, please.
>>OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Markus. Okay. We -- we could review the two lists especially focusing on those below the score and trying to merge them, finding similarities with the ones already accepted by the score, or not accepting them.
So in the first group which is legal frameworks and cybercrime, there are 8 which were accepted by the scores. So we have -- I will talk in general, and then I will send you all the details. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 that we suggest merging. There's only one that we recommend a flash session. And we would like to accept one of these. And there is 107 that we think should be brought to this category.
So, in balance, we have 8 accepted. Those proposed to merge should merge and not be in the list any more. One recommended. So that would make 8. Another one. 10, so from 8 we went to 10 and perhaps bringing 107 to this category, which we thought it belonged to this one and not to the other one. So that's the general balance of it. And then we have the other list, which is longer. The Internet as an engine for growth and advancement, it has 18 which were above the threshold. And we decided that there are some which have a lot of value and could be accepted, especially if the diversity or other issues could be improved. And this is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Some of them as shorter sessions as informative or flash sessions, which are four. And other four we think there are a lot of value in them. So we decided to keep. And we have six -- 6 for merging and 2 nos. So I will send you the breakout.
So I don't have the final numbers. But it's, like, 10 and 25. Around like 35 that would be desirable to keep. More or less. But I have to work a little bit more on it. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Okay. Thank you very much to all of you for your hard work. As I said at the outset, I think it was a very constructive morning to go through all these workshops. Basically, the question is how many, at the end of these workshops, can we actually inform you can go ahead as it is. But, as I take it, quite a number of them still need some work. It's a provisional green light provided you do this or you do that, which, I think, is okay. And I think it's very much the role of the MAG as expert group. Yes, please.
>>OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Markus. Just as a point of clarification, what we tried to do is some of us will follow up on trying to merge them or trying to bring more speakers to improve the diversity. So I kept notes on this. So we will follow up. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: I see Mervi is asking for the floor, please.
>>MERVI KULTAMAA: Yes, thank you. Mervi Kultamaa from Finland. Just a question. If there was any group who discussed the two proposals discussed under "other." If not, I would like to spend a moment to discuss the proposals on 326 data mining on IGF because it has relevance on the discussion that we had had earlier this week.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: The "other" group. Was in which group, the "other" category? Did that fall through the cracks? It did. Okay. It fell through the cracks. Okay. Mervi, please. Thank you. The proposal comes from the Finnish multistakeholder WSIS working group, submitted by Finland. Just to explain the background behind it, the thinking behind it is we should find a way how to preserve the wealth of information that has accumulated from the IGF meetings over the years. And the workshop proposed is to discuss how to do this. And one of the suggestions that came from Vint Cerf, actually, a while ago is how to create a search engine where, by choosing a certain key word, one would find the reports from the discussions that have taken place on that given topic in the IGF meetings.
And I think this relates very much to the idea that Google has on updating the IGF web page and on the objective to do this as a bottom-up exercise. And this could be an opportunity to collect stakeholder's inputs on what they expect out of this updated web page and -- and how all the discussion which takes place in the IGF meetings could be properly documented so that it could better benefit people also in the future.
So I just want to have this noted, even though I recognize that it did not pass the line. And, if there is a possibility to discuss this in other fora or in other context, this would be highly appreciated.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Chris.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Markus. I just wanted to make a suggestion in respect to the flash sessions. If we -- it sounded as if there were somewhere around no more than sort of 10 or 12 that have been suggested for flash sessions, which sounds like it's, like, you know, a room for half a day or a day or whatever.
So that, obviously, is going to affect the number of workshops. So, if we assume that we're only going to take one room out, that gives us 7 -- that takes us back to 72. And then the additional workshops we can add depends on how many flash -- full workshops, rather, we can add depends on how much flash sessions there are. So that seems to be the sensible way of working it out. Starting with the number of flash sessions and then filling the gaps in with additional workshops above 72.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. And don't forget there may also be flash sessions coming out of regional track. And there's also a capacity building track. And on the capacity building, they will meet at 1:30 in this room. Is that -- yeah, the back. So whoever is interested in capacity building, 1:30 in the back of room.
But these are two -- they have started the discussions on the regional track and the capacity building track. There were several workshops on that that did not make the grade. But it's worthwhile relooking at them and maybe bringing them together. I would not invite for a lengthy discussion at this stage, because we have a lunch break and also the visit of the EBU facilities. Also, very briefly, Bill and Makane.
>>BILL DRAKE: Very briefly, one, I support the Finnish proposal, which I think is an interesting meta exercise that would be really useful for the IGF, maybe you put it in a different categorization, format it a little different. But I think it's really interesting.
Second point just want to make, I'm trying to understand what you're suggesting as a procedure. The workshops that have been -- that were above the agreed threshold, are you going to wait, then, to formally approve them until we sort out all the flash sessions? Or are you -- because I know that there are -- people out there around the world who are waiting for smoke signals from --
>>MARKUS KUMMER: It's the opposite. I would like to invite a substantial number of workshops we are comfortable with. Some of them may be provisional, provided you have more regional balance or whatever. Whether that is the 72 we said or maybe a fewer -- that's fine. But, I mean, at least 50 or 60, I think we should be able to tell them to go ahead. And the others need still some work, and we need to figure out.
>>BILL DRAKE: Okay.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Makane.
>>UNECA: Thank you, Markus. I just wanted to note generally that (indiscernible) only 20% are coming from the developing countries. In this particular workshop on data mining, I think it has a value. But when you look at the mark, I agree that the mark is okay. Because it's only putting people from Europe. There's no diversity in these workshops. That's where it failed. But, if -- I believe that, if it has a --
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Sorry to interrupt. Let's not discuss individual workshops at this stage. I think there is very broad agreement in this room that we really need to make an effort to bring in actors from developing countries.
>>UNECA: Yes, I support this workshop and then bring people from other groupings. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: And I think every group made a lot of effort to actually look at these workshops with that in mind. And I think this will a little bit affect the overall number of workshops we can clear now is how much space do we want to reserve for potential promising workshops that did not make the grade with priority given to those from developing countries and newcomers? But I think the groups this morning made a lot of effort in this regard. Did you want to say something? I saw you fiddling with --
>>HONGBING CHEN: Thank you. Just a few words. I want to talk about our method of work. I know the chairman, Mr. Kummer, and all the chairmen and chairwomen of the subcommittees have worked very hard to try to find out what's the comfortable number of the workshops which we can accept in the future. But I think the mandate of our MAG is to determine the -- decide on the theme and subtheme of our -- of IGF. If we have this problem solved, then we can how to say to find -- to select workshops or to decide on workshops. Deciding themes will be much more important. Because workshops is just specific issues that follow or serve the purpose of discussion of the themes, of certain themes.
So I think the main issue should be -- or main task of MAG, of our group, is to talk about the themes which we may choose. I think, if we have consensus on that, we can select workshops. Maybe for some themes or some topics we couldn't find candidate -- I mean, good candidate proposals. Now we can encourage some stakeholders to develop new ones. I mean, we should not base our work on the current proposals only. Because it's just part of our work, not whole of our work. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you.
Well, there are two ways of approaching this. One would be, indeed, first discuss the theme. But the MAG decided to do it the other way around, to let the theme come towards the MAG and let it percolate up through the workshop proposals. And that's, I think, where we are. It gave us a clear indication of community input for those who want to come to Bali, what are the issues they want to discuss? And the themes that we discussed at the February meeting, the headings for these workshop categories.
But we will revisit that this afternoon. And -- but the selection of workshop is part of the mandate of the MAG. And that consider this a very important part of the mandate.
Are there burning comments on this? Yes, there are. Chris and Mark, and can we close the discussion with that?
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I just want to make a very clear point that you've just focused on the overarching theme. And I agree. We haven't discussed that yet. But I want to make a very clear statement that, when it comes to the subthemes, we have discussed those. And we have decided on them already. I was concerned to hear my colleague from China suggesting that we haven't yet decided on the subthemes. We have, and those are the themes under which the workshops have been proposed. And what we need to do this afternoon is to work on the title, if you will, an overarching theme. And there is a strawman, if you like, on the table about building bridges I recall. Thank you.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes. We had a discussion on these headings in Paris. And, of course, we can revisit and validate. But we did discuss them. And we also had a discussion on the overarching theme as well. Mark.
>>MARK CARVELL: I just want to add a point to Olga's account of group 3, if I may. And that is with regard to the session on spam would be -- which we are recommending a merger of workshop proposals 140 and 323, that this have an extended element to capture the results of the discussion. So this might be, you know, 90 minutes plus an additional 30 minutes. So that's the first special feature of this.
And the second special feature is outreach to stakeholders and especially governments who raised this issue in Dubai be undertaken so that we invite them to this session and maximize the interaction with them on the problems, on the solutions, and possible way forward. Thanks.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. I think one other possibility would also be to consider it as a framework for a main session as the other group did. Said a workshop could provide a basis. But that's not for discussion at this stage.
So with this, I would like to thank you. There will be the guided tour to the European Broadcasting Union. So those who are interested go up to the reception. And could we ask the facilitators of the three working groups to come to the secretariat and sorry for breaking -- shortening your lunch break. Over to you, Mr. Chairman, to adjourn the meeting.
>>ASHWIN SASONKO: Well, ladies and gentlemen, as we have been informed, I believe many of you will be interested in seeing the EBU facilities. Markus told me that someone will meet us upstairs. We are minus one.
And yesterday I talked with the president of the EBU. I think one of the interesting discussions today in the EBU is how to handle the broadcasting content, free broadcast content, which is also located -- also put in the Internet. So I think while we see the facilities, we can also have a bit of discussion on that with our resource person from the EBU and ask him more about that. So, with this, I would like to suspend the meeting. And we will meet again at 2:30.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: 2:00. Sharp!
>>ASHWIN SASONKO: 2:00 sharp. That's what my friend Markus told me. 2:00 sharp. Okay, thank you.