IGF 2021 Third Open Consultations & MAG Meeting - Day 1

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Good morning, people, who are face-to-face, and good morning, afternoon, and evening those of you who are joining us online.  We will start now, I think.  I'm sure some more people will be coming in, just to keep with the time because it is now 7 past 10:00.  So I think we should get it going.  And before we start, just a couple of announcements.  As you know, as usual, this is being recorded and also is going to be published on YouTube as well and the transcript is going to be made available at the end of the day.  And you can also see the transcript now.

 The other thing I just wanted to mention briefly as well is the COVID protocols that we have in place.  You were sent an email earlier -- yesterday, in fact, with the COVID protocols.  But just in case, people have been having email problems or connecting, let me just read them out very briefly.  First of all, please note that if you have been in close contact with somebody with COVID-19 in the last 14 days or you have cold or flu-like symptoms, please do not come.  You can participate online.  We have the link there.

 If you are feeling any of these, please stay at your hotel room or please do not come and do not come in here if you do need any medical assistance.  If you think you have got COVID, give us a phone call or send us an email, and we will help you from there.

 Also, on-site responsibilities, face masks are required to be worn at all times and in common areas of Palais.  Unless you are speaking, of course, and then you can take your face mask off and put it back on when you finished speaking.

 There is strict hand hygiene.  You've got these dispensers all around the Palais so please wash your hands -- clean your hands on a regular basis.

 And also, we do have a focal point who is Pascal Garde.  And he's actually our newest member of the secretariat.  I will just ask him to stand up and give a little wave.  So that's our COVID focal point.  And he also deals with travel and other administrative issues.  So please a big warm welcome to Pascal to the secretariat.  Hopefully, he realizes that it is not a mistake but an enriching experience to be with the secretariat.

 And since -- I would also like to welcome back Eleonora who is back in case those people who don't know her.  I will just ask her to stand up a little bit and give a little wave as well.  She's come back from an educational Sabbatical.  So warm welcome.

 And we also have an intern as Marlene Fasolt.  He's going to be with us for the next six months.  

 I would like to introduce everybody else.  Of course, everybody knows Anja.  If you have any NRI issues, registration, she does basically everything.  So please feel free to contact any of them and they'll help you out.

 So with that, I will hand it over to our chair, Anriette Esterhuysen, to start the meeting.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thank you very much, Chengetai.  I'm Anriette Esterhuysen.  I'm currently chair of the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group.  And it's a pleasure for me to be here.  I traveled from Johannesburg, which is perhaps a bit bizarre at this time; but I felt it was important for us to come face-to-face and come together (indiscernible).

 So a warm welcome to everyone who took the time to be here face-to-face and a very warm welcome to all of our virtual participants who are joining us from different time zones and different parts of the world.  So I would like to treat this Open Consultation and MAG meeting this week as a learning experience, a way of hands-on running through a hybrid format.  We might be a relatively small group but we'll be going through some of the methodologies and some of the challenges that we will face with our hybrid IGF which, in fact, has already started because our preparatory engagement phase has started.

 I will run us through the agenda a little bit later.  But at this point, it's my honor and pleasure to hand over to co-chair from our host country this year, Poland, Mr. Krzysztof Szubert.  I'm also very happy to welcome sitting next to me representing Poland, Przemyslaw.  

 But for the opening remarks from the host, we'll hear from Krzysztof.  

 Or, Chengetai, should we do the prerecorded first?  

 Krzysztof, I can see you with us, but if you don't mind just waiting a little bit longer so we can listen to the prerecorded message from Under-Secretary-General Liu Zhenmin from UN DESA.

 Chengetai, can you put him on, please?

 (Video )

 

>>MR. LIU ZHENMIN: Dear members of the MAG, IGF 2021 host government representatives, distinguished colleagues, friends from around the world, thank you for the opportunity to address this event.

 I wish to begin by expressing my deep appreciation to the Multistakeholder Advisory Group, the MAG, of the Internet Governance Forum, the IGF, for your time, energy, and dedication in preparing the 16th meeting of IGF in the forthcoming December.

 The innovations you have brought to this year's IGF are timely and forward looking.  The agenda is more focused and issue driven, the preparatory process more open to public engagements under Katowice IGF officially hybrid elements.

 I'm aware that it is not easy to plan a forum such as IGF while there are still many uncertainties in today's world.  But I commend you for navigating through these challenges.  You have put in place an IGF 2021 process that remains open and inclusive, while at the same time responding to the realities around us.  And all throughout, the leadership of MAG chairperson has been remarkable, and I would like to thank her for her able guidance.

 We're also grateful to the host country team for your tireless commitment and dedication.  Not only have you supported the online IGF last year, but you have now gone above and beyond to ensure this a hybrid IGF in Katowice becomes a reality this year.

 The past year and a half has been challenging for all of us.  The COVID-19 pandemic had upended lives and communities across globe.

 Throughout this time, the Internet and the digital technologies have demonstrated more than ever before formidable forces for good.  The Internet has kept many of us connected and our society functioning.  But the pandemic has also shown that the Internet, which many of us take for granted, remains inaccessible for millions, especially in developing countries.  And bad actors continues to misuse technology to spread misinformation and fake news, to commit cyber crimes, and to put in danger critical infrastructures.  All this lead to clear realization that addressing Internet governance requires strengthened global cooperation across nations and stakeholders groups.

 Dear colleagues, I'm pleased that digital cooperation together with universal access, inclusion, trust, and other issues are among this year's IGF key topics.  Indeed, multistakeholder cooperation is at the heart of IGF's intersessional work, including the dynamic coalitions, Best Practice Forums on cybersecurity, an agenda on access, as well as the newly introduced policy networks on environment and meaningful access.

 This IGF is no doubt an important and timely forum to advance discussions on these matters, and I trust that as you fine-tune the overall programming this week and over the next couple of months, you will think of even better ways to make the 16th IGF more meaningful and action oriented.

 I also look forward to the great opportunities at IGF 2021 to meet legislators and (indiscernible) from all disciplines and the young people from around the world.  In this respect, I wish to draw your attention to a recently released report of the United Nations Secretary-General on Our Common Agenda.  The Secretary-General makes references to the IGF urging the forum to, and I quote, "adapt, innovate, reform, to support effective governance of the digital commons and keep pace with rapid, real-world developments," unquote.

 Let us ride to the core and work together, MAG members, and the host country, and the old secretariat, and most of all, the broader IGF community, including the network of 137 national regional and youth IGFs from around the world.  Let us ensure that IGF can meaningfully contribute to the vision of an open, free, and secure digital future for all.

 We at UN DESA, including IGF Secretariat, remain at your disposal for all forms of support towards this goal.  Various capacity-development opportunities are already under way in cooperation with our sister organizations in the U.N. family and in close partnerships with many others.

 I wish you successful deliberations on this challenging agenda, and I work forward to interacting with you at the 16th IGF in Katowice this December.

 I thank you.  

 (Video concludes.)

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thank you very much to Mr. Liu for his supportive remarks and for taking the time to send us this message.  And, in fact, I'd like to extend the thanks to the team in New York, the UN DESA team, who are a very core component of the IGF machinery.

 I now am very happy to give the floor to Krzysztof Szubert who is with us, alive and in realtime, virtually from Warsaw.  Krzysztof, you have the floor.

 

>>KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT:  Thank you, Anriette Esterhuysen.  Thank you, Chengetai.  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our third Open Consultations.  We have already entered the final stage of the preparations for the IGF 2021.  Actually less than 70 days the global IGF will be launched in Katowice and online.  

 Just a couple of information.  On a daily basis, we constantly promote this event in Poland.  For instance, I attended last week one of the biggest European economy congress in Katowice, organized in the exact same location and venue center as our IGF 2021 in December.  So we had a taste how it will look like hopefully.

 It provided this unique opportunity, I took part in the briefing dedicated to IGF 2021 with the high-level representatives of the local and regional authorities.  All of them, they are very helpful and they are really very happy to host IGF in the region this year.

 Just to name a few other most important and prominent events in which I took part just recently to talk about our event, the Economic Forum in Karpacz, the CyberSec, Smart City conference.  So there's quite a lot of conferences almost every week I'm trying to attend and promote the event.

 I also presented this event in our parliament -- to our parliamentary commission on innovation and new technologies. As a result, they are now planned to organize the upcoming meeting in Katowice during the IGF 2021, which is also great to see.

 But as you know, the promotion is one thing and the preparation is another story.  I hear, as Anriette mentioned, with my colleague, team member, Przemyslaw Typiak, currently with you in Geneva to provide our MAG colleagues assistance on-site.  So if you may have any questions and subjects that you would like to discuss on a forum basis or one-to-one, please find him and he will help you with all the questions you might have.

 We are organizing this event, as you know, in the hybrid formula.  This is on-site and online at the same time.  And we are prepared from the technical perspective.  This event, as you know, has a very rich program which consists of more than 300 sessions chosen from around the world, including workshops, open discussions, fora groups, and networking sessions.  So very interesting and very busy schedule.  

 There will be also the high-level session and parliamentary track thanks to the support from the UN DESA and IGF secretariat, the IPU, and the Polish parliament.  So we are organizing it as well.

 We are counting on the physical presence of the UN IGF Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, and the executive vice president of the European Commission, Margrethe Vestager, as well as dozens of digital ministers from around the world, business representations from different continents, activists of nongovernmental organizations and scientific community.  So just to let you know, that quite a high number of digital ministers from around the world already register.  And so it might be really interesting to meet them all in Katowice.

 We have a program community which support us in planning next steps of our activities addressed to hosting this year's IGF.  

 There is also ongoing international competition for young people entitled The Internet of the Future.  We are waiting for your submissions -- for the young people's submissions until 8 October, 2021, so there is still a couple of days left.

 All in all, we want the IGF 2021 to be an important event for young people all over the world.

 All in all we want the IGF 2021 to be an important event for young people from all over the world (indiscernible) create the global Internet environment.  Therefore, one of the companion events will be the youth summit.  Therefore, we are counting on the youth to support our virtual meeting rooms which is a great way to experience the IGF.

 The deadline for submissions is extended until 15 October, so do not hesitate to join us, and please promote this message through your channels, contacts, and communities you are working with.

 Moreover, together with our logistic and venue operators, we are setting the necessary conditions to safely conduct our joint event for those of you who will be able to come to Katowice.  I do hope, based on the feedback we do have from the MAG and that's in different states, there will be a lot of guests on site as well, so it will be really interesting to meet them all.

 Concluding my short speech, I encourage the UN's and MAG's community active support in inviting everyone to register for the IGF 2021.  In particular, on site.  If you may need any support or anything from us, please let me know.  Please contact with Przemyslaw or our team and we will be more than happy to provide you with more details.  

 There will be also, as far as I know, the presentation, again by Przemyslaw, which is going to be displayed afterwards, and we will provide you with more details later on today and tomorrow.  

 Yeah, so that's all from my side.  I wish you a very fruitful consultations, and thank you for your attention.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Krzysztof.  And also welcome to Przemyslaw Typiak, who will be representing Poland and the co-chair of the MAG here.  And he'll be making a presentation soon.  

 I just want to review the agenda.  So if everyone can look at the agenda, just so that we can invite comments and get clarity on what we'll be doing today.  We'll start with a review of the state of preparation.  So you'll hear from the secretariat and you'll hear from the host country.  And this review will be quite comprehensive.  It will look at some of the COVID-specific and travel-specific preparation as well as program content and process and the hybrid nature of the IGF.  

 We'll also brief you on the state of outreach and engagement, capacity development, and the overall evaluation of the IGF.  And you'll hear from the secretariat and from the host.  And that really will take quite a long time.  

 We'll then have our lunch break.  During that lunch break, there will be a donor's meeting starting at 2:00 Geneva time.  That is 1200 UTC, and everyone is welcome to join that.

 After lunch we have the pleasurable opportunity to look at the new IGF website.  We'll be joined, and we're very honored to have with us, both Nigel Hickson, representing the United Kingdom, and Thomas Ryder from the U.K. Mission in Geneva, who have provided the financial support for this website.  The secretariat will then run us through it.  And we'll then look at IGF intersessional activities.  This is all part of the Open Consultation.  So it's really an opportunity for the secretariat and the MAG and everyone involved in the intersessional activities to share this work with the board and IGF community and to get feedback.  Critical feedback, participative, collaborative feedback, whatever the community feels they would like to say or ask with regard to the intersessional work, and please do so.  We'll hear from the national regional IGFs, the youth IGF.  We'll hear also from the best practice forums, dynamic coalitions, and the new modality policy networks.

 And that will take us to the last session of the day, which is also a very important session, and that's briefings from other initiatives and institutions followed by a question and answer discussion.  So that's where some of the international organizations that support the IGF and participate in the IGF, be they from governments or society or business, it doesn't matter, technical community.  That's when we'll hear from them.  And that's also a way in which, for the MAG this is very important, because the MAG can then listen and absorb the briefings that we hear from the community and relevant institutions and then ensure that what they are dealing with is adequately reflected in the program content of the IGF.

 We'll then bring the meeting to a close.  I want to hear highlight how we are going to try and make this meeting, the Open Consultation today, hybrid.  So all participants, and we'll communicate this in writing as well, in email certainly to the MAG, that are not able to follow the meeting in real time, whether you are here present in Geneva or following on the Internet, many people will in fact be looking at the transcript after the fact.  If they are in the Americas, for example, although they will be watching the recording on WebEx or on YouTube.  The meeting will also be available on YouTube.  

 So they're invited to send any comments or questions overnight, and I'm talking here about our Geneva time frame, central European time frame overnight.  They can address these to [email protected] or to myself, [email protected], and we will then allocate time tomorrow morning to process and respond to any of these questions.  So this is a very simple but we believe still significant way of ensuring hybrid participation in this meeting.  We'll do that also tomorrow for MAG members who are not able -- and observers who are not able to be present or follow the meeting in real time.

 So if there are no questions on the agenda or the meeting process, can we move ahead and consider the agenda adopted?  I don't see any other questions.  We might have questions from participants who are following virtually, and I'd like to ask Chengetai to give us a very clear outline of what the process is of requesting the floor during this hybrid Open Consultation.  Chengetai.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you very much, Anriette.  To request the floor, just to make it fair for everybody who's here and who's also following online, we're going to be using the speaking queue.  So you'd have to log in and just type in your name at the speaking queue.  We will put the link in the chat, and I think also I'm going to ask Luis if he can just show very quickly the speaking queue link, how people can access it.  It's on the website front page.  For the floor request system.

 

>> LUIS BOBO:  It's here.  Participate in our meetings.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yeah. So front page upper right-hand corner, for most of us, and then you just click participate in our meetings.  You have to log in and then you just type in your name and the Chair will call upon you in the order that your name appears.  So it doesn't matter whether you are on site or off site, you should still be in the queue in the order that you have requested the floor.  So we are not going to be taking any hands here.  Everything has to go through the speaking queue.  And we've got Adam already there.  Thank you very much, Adam, for demonstrating that.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Adam.  I would like to say, however, that in the spirit of being as inclusive as possible and that as Chair I will make exceptions.  So if there's anyone who is in the room who would like to speak who's struggling to access their device, put up your hand. We'll add you manually to the speaking queue.  Similarly, to virtual participants, if you have any difficulty accessing the speaking queue, please type loudly and clearly into the chat that you would like to take the floor.  We'll add you manually.  But the preferred method is for you join the speaking queue.  But I'd like to -- you know, the default should be that everyone should feel free to participate and be given the opportunity to do so, whatever means they use to request the floor.

 This does mean, and I think this is one of the challenges of hybrid events, that even those who are physically present need to be able to interact with the event through a device.  And I think this will be equally important for us during the Katowice annual forum.  And that's why practicing this dual form of participation for some, for those that are physically present, is so important.

 Adam Peake, you have the floor.

 

>>ADAM PEAKE:  Thanks, Anriette.  Actually it defaulted --

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: While he takes the floor, just a reminder to everyone who takes the floor to introduce themselves when they do so.

 

>>ADAM PEAKE:  Thanks, Anriette.  Good morning, everyone.  Adam Peake speaking.  Actually, it defaulted to put my hand up when I logged in, and now the hand down function isn't working.  So a very nice experiment, and it's very nice to speak to you all and see you.  I hope you're having a great time in Geneva.  Raining here in The Hague.  But I'm sorry I can't lower my hand.  And have a great meeting.  Looking forward to it.  Thanks.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Adam.  I struggled to hear you, so what I'm doing is using the transcript.  So this is another way in which we, in the IGF, provide these multiple formats and opportunities for following the meeting.  So thanks very much for joining us, Adam.  And you are here.

 If there are no other questions on the agenda, I'd like us to proceed.  And I'm very happy now to give the floor to Chengetai Masango, the head of the IGF Secretariat, to start us on the briefing of the state of preparations.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you very much, Anriette.  And again, as Anriette has said, this is like a mini test.  So we do apologize in advance for any hiccups that we're going to have.  But this is just a mini test to test the system to test whether or not what we envision as the hybrid method will work and to see if there's anything that we need to iron out or to rethink.  So thank you for that.  

 I'm going to share my screen, and let's see if I can do that.  Yes.  And let's see if I can widen it.  Yes, I can.  All right.  Thank you.  So that's worked.

 So just a brief overview of what we're doing in the program and the structure and also this is -- this presentation is also going to be complemented by the presentation from our hosts.  And Przemek is going to give that, more on the venue and also the visa issues, et cetera.  

 So I'm just going to start with the program schedule.

 And I'm going to go into it at a high level because during the day we are going to have reports from the various working groups and from the various people who are in the national -- in these intersessional work streams.

 So, for the IGF 2021 process, there's basically three phases.  We have our intersessional work which is a continual phase where the dynamic coalitions are, our policy networks are as well, and best practice forums, et cetera.  So that's the continuous stream of work.  But then now, starting in September until the end of November, we are having the preparatory and engagement phase that we have just started.  And this is going to continue until the end of November.  And then, of course, the third and final phase is the IGF -- the 16th IGF meeting, which is going to be held in Katowice from the 6th until the 10th of December.  

 Now the IGF 2021 program is an issue-driven approach, and we plan to have full inclusion, regardless of the participant's location.  There's going to be over 200 different sessions and focusing on the forum's two main and four emerging crosscutting issues.  And I'll just go quickly through those.  

 Economic and social inclusion and human rights, universal access and meaningful connectivity, emerging regulation, market structure, content data, consumer users rights and regulation, environment and -- environmental sustainability and climate change.  This is the second year, and it is a growing theme in Internet governance and it is a very important theme in Internet governance.  And then we have inclusive Internet governance, ecosystems, and digital cooperation.  And then trust, security, and stability.

 Now, the next slide, so the IGF program structure.  We have workshops, open forums, town halls, which is new for this year, and then we also have launches and awards.  Launches and awards we usually did have but now they're a formal part of the IGF schedule.  And these are book launches, award ceremonies.  Like we have the EQUALS Awards ceremonies run by the ITU and which they are going to have an awards ceremony at Katowice.  We have the networking sessions, which we have really thought about because we also want to include the online participants, not just the on-site participants.  There are networking sessions.  Dynamic coalition sessions.  The national and regional initiative collaborative sessions, which we've always done, and, of course, our Day Zero and pre-events.  And these are community organized and issue-driven sessions.  

 We are continuing with the parliamentary track, and we've had our first session of the parliamentary track last week.  And there's a couple more sessions of the parliamentary track, and it's a set of sessions on the legislative approaches for a user-centric digital space.  

 I would now, again, ask you, if you know of any parliamentarians who would be interested in joining this, please, they can contact us.  They can also contact through the international parliamentary union as well or through the host government.  I will not go into the detailed specifics of this because we're going to have a session later on today.

 We have the high-level track and these are -- there's seven sessions in the high-level track and Przemek, my colleague from the host country, is going to go through those as well.  And then very important, which is also highlighted in the Secretary-General's common agenda, our youth track, you know, focusing on youth.  And we have the -- also the traditional newcomers track.

 I've already mentioned what the -- on the 16th IGF, I've mentioned on the preparatory engagement phase, the community driven, the timetable and the schedule is on the website so please, I encourage you all to go through them and also to join it and training sessions.  And these are very important because we do not want just people to come to Katowice and start the discussion.  No, we want to prepare for Katowice and then when we meet in Katowice we already have a matured discussion going on and in that short time frame that we have, that five days, we'll be able to actually reflect back on what we've done through the preparatory phase and engagement phase, what we're doing in the Katowice, at Katowice as well, and then come with very substantial, you know, ways forward or outputs from that meeting.

 So it is very important to please engage in the preparatory and engagement phase.  And the same goes for the best practice forums, the cybersecurity agenda and digital rights, and also our policy networks which are new this year.  We've got the two policy networks on environment and meaningful access.  We do have the consultant for the policy network, Raquel, which -- whom I forgot to -- to introduce at the beginning, but she's right there at the back.  So if you are interested in the policy network for meaningful access, please just go and see her.  You can also identify her in the WebEx and talk to her.  But as again, as I said, there's going to be a more in-depth review of this later on during the day.

 We have our 22 dynamic coalitions and also our capacity development activities.  And as you know, we have the travel and support grants.  Unfortunately, all that is -- all that has been

 As you know, we have the (indiscernible) -- (background noise) -- all of that is now closed.  I think August 30th was the end date.  The only thing that's open now is travel support for ministers who may want to come and parliamentary members who may want to come to Katowice.

 (Background conversation)

 Giacomo, can you please mute?

 Again, we have been working very, very hard for the hybrid format.  We have the hybrid working group, and we're going to have a more in-depth discussion later on.  

 But I would like to thank the hybrid working group, host country, and also UN DESA.  And we also are collaborating with people from across the U.N. system.  We have (background conversation) from (indiscernible) in Nairobi.

 Just to ensure you we have been consulting widely and consulting also in the area -- and we have consulted our organizations such as ICANN and similar meetings, RightsCon, et cetera, ACP.  We have had very good discussions and tips on how to run hybrid meetings.

 And I would like to thank the community because it's community (background conversation) exercise.  It's a community process.  And I think the community has all stepped up and I think we can all agree on that, to provide input and to provide help in this.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Luis, sorry, where are you?  I can't see you.  

 Please mute -- one of the participants has their microphone open.  Can you mute them manually?  

 Adolphe, can you hear me?  

 Please mute them.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Just touching up a little bit on the hybrid format, I will not read everything here.  But one participation platform for all, I mean, one example of this is this hand-up system so there's not two systems to request the floor.  If you want to request the floor, it's one way to request the floor.

 (Background conversation).

 In Katowice, if you're having a session and everybody's online or everybody is in place in Katowice, it's the same thing.  You'll still be assigned a room.  There will be people in the room to help people out as well and we will have online moderators as well to help with this.  And we're going to try and make it as seamless as possible.  So whether there's one panelist off-site or there's only one panelist on-site, we will still have the same mechanism.  And, hopefully, everything is going to go smoothly in that way.

 We are having a venue.  So we have the physical venue.  We're also having the venue built in cyber space, in the Internet.  So you'll be able -- if you're off-site, or even if you are on-site, you'll be able to log on, go into the venue online.  You'll be able to view the IGF village booths.  You'll be able to go into the workshop rooms as well.  There's going to be an interface where you can log on into each workshop room.

 But the core of this is basically the IGF village as such so that you can interact with the village participants there, ask questions, get to know all these organizations that are advertising what they do in the IGF village.

 So it's not quite Second Life, but it's -- I was impressed when I saw it.  So I hope you'll be, too, when it's finished.

 There is -- I know there is the challenges of the time zone.  Unfortunately, we cannot have times that are very suitable for people in different time zones, especially, for instance, in the Pacific region.  There's basically a 12-hour difference.  We have managed -- thanking very much our hosts that we are able to expand the time so we're an hour earlier and we can also finish an hour later.  But unfortunately we couldn't go more than that and have sessions, let's say, at 11:00 which would be in the morning in the Pacific region, for instance, because it's just the cost.  This would mean we would have two complete shifts and we basically would be doubling the labor costs.  But the good thing is that the IGF meeting does move around.  In two years' time it is going to be in Japan.  It will be the opposite effect here.

 So we're sharing the burden, so to speak.  Networking which is very important, which is something that the IGF is known for.  There's always the saying that the value of the IGF is around the ages.  It's whom you meet in the corridor when you're having some coffee, at the receptions.  And we are trying our best to have the -- to try and replicate the sort of interaction so that people who are not able to be there physically can also interact and can also network.

 Now, the next is intersessional work.  Again, you will hear about this later, so I will not go into it.  About the best practice forums, I think I have already said every single one of these.  I will not dwell on this slide.  You can also go to our website and read up about them.  But there is going to be presentations later on, each one of these, where they are at and the state of play there.

 And then we do have our capacity-development efforts.  I wouldn't just call it the IGF 2021 but for the whole period, for the year, 2021, we have capacity-development workshops.  We have the grants to the national and regional initiatives.  We are trying to get stakeholder integration more integrated into the IGF process.

 We are supporting the schools of Internet governance, trying to come up with a common syllabus for one of them -- for one.  And we're also trying to learn from each other, from these schools of Internet governance and see what is the best approach, which may not be the same for each region because they have different needs.  But, of course, we can learn from each other.

 We have travel support.  We're going to be traveling more than 100 participants to the IGF 2021.  And also thank you very much to our Polish hosts, that they have put a lot of effort into the youth engagement and into the importance of youth.  We have listened coming out of the Berlin IGF where we did have a lot of interventions from youth wanting to be better integrated into the IGF and have more opportunities in the IGF.  And I really do think that we have answered that call to a large extent, especially with the help of the host country.

 And I think that is it.  Sorry if I did take longer than anticipated.  But thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Chengetai.  We'll take comments and questions after the presentation from the host country.  So please start noting down your questions.  Don't be shy about requesting the floor, using the speaking queue.

 In fact, the more names that are there, the more it will encourage others.

 But now I'm very happy to give the floor to Przemyslaw Typiak who will give us the update from the host country perspective.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Thank you very much, Madam Chair Anriette.  Can everybody hear me?  

 I would like to ask my colleague from the IGF secretariat to display the presentation, if possible.

 Thank you very much.

 (Echo)

 Thank you very much.  I think now it's better.  Thank you very much.  I hope you can see the presentation.

 Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone who are with us on-site in Geneva and to everyone online.  I'm very happy to be here with you physically in Geneva and, of course, to hear everybody and to see everyone online.

 As the host country, we're very much looking forward to hosting this year's 16th Internet Governance Forum in Katowice from the 6th until the 10th of December.  And we are proud that Poland's commitment to our multidimension digital dialogue has been recognized by the U.N.

 Next slide, please.

 The IGF 2021 headline by the motto of Internet governance will be a place of open and real debate about the future of Internet platforms as well as about the number of other issues.  Everyone will have the rights to express their opinion on the future of the Internet and to influence the debate.

 This event will be held in a hybrid formula, meaning on-site and online at the same time.

 Next slide, please.

 Here you have a general overview of the agenda except for the high-level sessions attended by ministers responsible for digital affairs in the U.N. member states.  

 IGF 2021 will also feature such activities as the youth IGF track, which is an initiative launched to bring together young people from around the world and foster their engagement in a debate on Internet governance.  But also parliamentarians have been invited to discuss regulatory approaches for user-centric digital space.  

 The IGF will be launched on the 6th of December by a Day Zero, and this day will be full of pre-events.  I'm going to say a bit more about them at the next slide.

 The core phase of the IGF will be starting from the 7th of December by opening ceremony and continue until the 10th of December with a closing ceremony.

 Next slide, please.

 As every year, Day Zero keeps being very popular.  And the number of applications received for Day Zero pre-events was really impressive.  I can tell you that.  Only from the host country itself, we have received over 100 applications.  Therefore, 6th of December will be a very vibrant day offering over 70 sessions and workshops.  The youth forum offers opportunity for young people to exchange their ideas and experience with experts from business community, academia, and politicians.

 Its members actively participate in the IGF youth summits in cooperation with youth from other countries of an international event.

 A music concert organized by the host country, Poland, will be followed by an evening reception at the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra headquarters, NOSPR, in Katowice.  This will be an available to all registered IGF guests.

 Next slide, please.

 Here you have a short overview of high-level and parliamentary tracks, which will start on the 6th of December by high-level tracks and on the 7th by parliamentary session.  I'm going to say more about the parliamentarians later on.  But for the high-level track, you can see just the general topics that will be covered by this particular track.  Whereas, for the parliamentary session, this is actually very interesting because we are working with the ITU as well as with our (indiscernible) of the national parliament, the same, to provide you with a very interesting and detailed program of this year's parliamentary track, which will consist of, of course, the IGF parliamentary roundtable on the 7th, which is the main session for this particular track.

 But, of course, it will be also --

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Other, Przemyslaw.  Can you just pause?  We are having a problem with the display for the virtual participants.  So if you don't mind just giving Luis a few minutes to sort that out.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Sorry.  I was not aware.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  They are not able to view it fully.

 

>>LUIS BOBO:  They are seeing it.  I just gave instructions --

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Can you show me and Chengetai how to do it because then we can convey to them how to do it because we failed to do it.

 That's not good enough.

 

>>LUIS BOBO:  What do you want?

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  I want it to be bigger so you can actually read the text.  Sorry.

 Sorry, participants, we're nearly there.  Just give us a few more seconds.  There is an option in which you can use the drag button to make your screen -- the box that has the display bigger but we're going to see if Przemyslaw can actually screen his share which will resolve the problem.  So just hang in there for a bit.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Can everyone see it now?

 (Echo).

 So let me just focus on the high-level parliamentary tracks.  So I was speaking about the parliamentary session.  This session will start on the 7th of December (echo).

 And it will have a preparatory session and the main -- parliamentary roundtable.  And we will continue on the 8th with two other sessions for this particular track. 

 We are going to speak more about this particular session (echo).

 

>> Yes.  Please turn your computer microphone to zero and your audio to zero and use the microphone on the table, please.  Thank you.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Is this better now?  Thank you so much.  Right.  So, we have preparatory sessions on privacy rights and legitimate use of personal data as well as balancing freedom of speech and the fight against harmful content.  And, finally, the automated decision making and human-centric approaches.  These are for the preparatory sessions.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Sorry.  These are the trials and tribulations of hybrid format.  The virtual participants say the echo is worse now so we've not resolved the problem.

 

>> Yes.  Your computer -- your computer audio must be turned to zero and your microphone to zero.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Yeah.

 

>> On the computer.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Przemyslaw has actually muted his microphone.  But just give us a second.

 

>> No computer in (indiscernible) should be connected to audio.  Someone has an open microphone on their computer.

 So ideally, you should leave WebEx and rejoin but without connecting to computer audio, please.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Is this better now?

 

>> One of you all have your microphone still open and your sound open.

 So your microphone must be turned off on the computer and your sound must be turned off.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Is it better now?

 

>> I believe so.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Is it better now?

 

>> It appears so, sir.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  I think what we --

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Or now?  Which one was better?

 

>> It appears to be better now, sir.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Good.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Perfect.  So I would need to share my screen again.

 Can everybody see it now?  So moving on, we are expecting the present -- the physical presence of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Antonio Guterres; also the prime minister of the Republic of Poland, Mr. Mateusz Morawiecki; the Marshal of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, especially for the parliamentary track, Madame Elzbieta Witek; as well as the European Commissioner, Madame Vestager also including ministers for digital affairs from the U.N. member states, as well as representatives of national parliaments, private sector, youth, civil society, technical community, and others.

 A couple more information about the venue.  So International Congress Centre is a very large venue which gives a good opportunity to host the IGF 2021, to meet the demand resulting from a number of applications received for Day Zero.  The entire capacity-building can accommodate up to 15,000 guests.  ICC hosted many events, including the COP24 but also large trade fairs, congresses, conferences, as well as dozens of trainings.  It also has served as an arena for music and sport events.

 So the ICC, to meet the demand resulting from a number of applications received, for Day Zero we allocated as many as 13 workshop rooms.  Ten workshop rooms will be used for days from 1 to 4.  Plenary room will be used every day.  A food court will be available to our guests where lunch will be served on a daily basis.

 The ICC building accommodates multifunctional halls, banquet halls, 26 conference rooms, and hosts 200 events annual.  The spacious, multi-functional hall can host up to 8,000 guests and can be arranged as needed.  All rooms are fitted with modern equipment.  All rooms are equipped with professional conference equipment.  Wi-fi will be available throughout the building.  Technical staff will be assigned to each room to ensure all sessions and workshops will run in a smooth and undisturbed way.  Volunteers will be present online and on site to make sure each session is launched in Zoom.  As Mr. Krzysztof Szubert has previously stated in his address, we have launched a call for volunteers, and it has been extended until the 15th of October, so please do distribute it among your respective environments and groups and stakeholder groups so that we can have a very large output of this call.

 Among others, we also have an exhibition that will be presented at the ICC.  During the entire event there will be an exhibition of award works of the competition for young people, this competition actually.  This is the My Internet of the Future, which has been announced at the early September.  And this competition consists of three categories, graphic visualization, video, and written essay and lasts until the 8th of October.  So we are looking forward to receiving inputs from young people from all over the world.

 As it was previously stated, we are going to also have a performance by the pianist Ingolf Wunder with his TEDx Talk, the music night, the dedicated scientific publication of our virtual chair of ethics and law.  You are also going to (indiscernible), have also free tours.  And, which is also very important, everybody from -- we are finalizing arrangements with the City of Katowice so that we could provide all of the IGF participants with free transportation around not only Katowice but around the entire Silesian agglomeration, which is actually one of the most populated places in the country.  So it consists not only of Katowice but other cities like Rybnik, for instance.  So we are finalizing this, and we would be very happy to let you know to confirm that we will provide you with free transportation at the IGF, just like in Berlin.  

 We are also continue -- we also continue our preparatory phase for the youth.  As it was mentioned before, there will be the Youth -- young IGF Summit connected to programming workshops for young people, but also we have other webinars at the preparatory session which are being also introduced.

 Here you have the IGF 2021 host country website.  We truly and kindly ask you to visit this website for any actual changes, amendments, and other information.  

 About the Visa, we are -- we have a special dedicated liaison officer from our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  So please do contact this person.  I am going to put, later on in the chat, the direct link, the direct email to this person so that everybody can address this person if -- in case he or she would have any problems with Visa.  So please do not hesitate to contact this person.

 We are also finalizing arrangements in order to provide a smooth entry to Poland for people -- for our guests with respect to the current epidemic and pandemic restrictions of the COVID-19, but we are also working with our good colleagues from the U.N. on the possible -- not restrictions but possible ways of introducing and entering the venue itself using the COVID-19 protocols of the U.N. as well as from the venue, to combine them, and that you will also be -- feel safe on site and everybody could smoothly enter the building, the ICC venue.  So we are -- we will provide you with this information also on our website short, so please look at them in the coming days and weeks.  We will provide this information in cooperation with our colleagues from the U.N.  Like always, to conclude my presentation, I always put this address to -- email address, the [email protected].  For any questions, answers -- for any questions or hesitations that you might have, please do feel free to contact us.  There's also the IGF Twitter and, as I mentioned before, the IGF host country website.  Thank you very much.  That's all from my side.  If you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer them.  Thank you very much.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thank you very much, Przemek.  And thanks for all the hard work.  In fact, Poland supported the 2020 IGF as well.  So it's been a pleasure with me because I've been able to work with them for two years.  

 The floor is now open for any comments or questions.  And it's open virtually in multiple ways.  I know there's already a request from one of the MAG members.  I'm not sure that he has yet joined the speaking queue.  But Adam Peake, you have the floor.

 

>>ADAM PEAKE:  Thank you again, Anriette.  Adam Peake speaking.  Przemek, a question, please.  Thank you very much.  The organization seems excellent, and thanks for the work you and your colleagues are doing.  Could you send us a list of the high-level guests who have been invited, the names of all the people you read out?  That would be very helpful if you could do that, please.  And again, thank you for all the work you are doing.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Adam, thank you very much for your question.  Could you please repeat it?  I was not able to hear it.

 

>>ADAM PEAKE:  Okay.  I'll get very, very close to my microphone.  I hope that's --

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Sorry for that.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Adam, let me just explain to you.  What is happening is that, as often is the case in U.N. meetings, if you are in the room, you actually have to use your headphone to hear the audio effectively.  And we weren't doing that, so you were actually quite soft, and that's why Przemek is asking you to repeat your question.  And by the way, for the transcribers, my name is not Moctar Yedaly.  He is a very good friend of mine, but my name is Anriette Esterhuysen.

 

>>ADAM PEAKE:  Thanks, Anriette.  I hope this is a little clearer, and I think I'm repeating myself on the transcript.  But anyway, thank you again.  

 So Przemek, yes, my question was, could you please repeat the names of the high-level guests who have been invited to the IGF, please, and also, so that you hear it, to thank you and your team for all the work that you're doing.  The organization is going very well.  Thank you very much.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Thank you very much, Adam.  I have listened to this so now I can hear you very well.  So thank you very much for your question.  Yes, of course.  So we have invited one of the most prominent guests of the entire world being Mr. Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the U.N.  But also Deputy Secretary-General Mr. (saying name), Mr. Houlin Zhao and just to name a few.  But also we have invited the Polish Prime Minister, Mr. Mateusz Morawiecki, to be present on site.  Online, we are most probably going to have our president, Mr. Andrzej Duda, speaking to us from Expo in Dubai because Mr. President will be there at the Polish Pavilion at the Expo.  Unfortunately, he could not be with us on site.  Although he did try to be, but unfortunately those two events coincide with each other, therefore, we will not have Mr. President on site, but we will have him most probably online.  

 Of course, commissioners.  Madam Vestager, she will most probably come to Poland physically.  We are also going to have some -- a group, a delegation of MPs from the European Parliament.  Unfortunately, we don't know their names yet, but we have been approached by a delegate from the European Parliament who addressed his very much interest in having them physically in Katowice, a delegation of MPs from the European Parliament.

 Also we are going to have most probably the entire Polish parliamentary commission on innovation and new technologies present in Katowice as well.  We are also -- until the 30th of September we are waiting for confirmations from the ministers of digital affairs from around the world because we have sent, a couple of weeks ago to them, personal invitations.  We are, of course, waiting for other high-level guests to confirm their presence.  We don't have those confirmations yet, but we are waiting for them.  So do hope that we will have more people, high-level people coming.  

 So I hope that answers your question.  If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to ask them.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Przemek, for responding.  And I do hope you invite some woman high-level speakers as well.  We don't want to see an all male high-level panel.  

 Next we have Nigel Hickson who I'm very happy to say is with us virtually and in person.

 

>>NIGEL HICKSON:  Good morning.  Madam Chair, ladies and gentlemen, can you hear me?  It's a success.  These minor successes, at my age, are significant.  

 Thank you very much, indeed, firstly to the secretariat for hosting this hybrid meeting.  It's an experiment as we're experiencing, but it's really fantastic to be here with fellow colleagues and friends.  

 Thank you so much to Poland for their sterling work.  I mean, this is an incredible effort against lots of difficulties.  And the U.K. is totally supportive of this hybrid model and the roll-out of it in Katowice.  I think the eyes of the world are on you, sir.  They'll be looking at how you manage this.  And we certainly wish you well.

 The U.K. will be represented by our minister, we're pleased to say.  We're very, very pleased to be able to have a physical presence in Katowice.  We're fortunate in securing an open forum session on the future of the Internet, and our minister will be speaking at that.  He will also be hoping to take part in other sessions.  And your briefing just now on the various activities that are taking place has been really useful indeed.  Thank you.  Thank you so much for that.

 Just a couple of questions, I suppose, on the -- well, first of all, on the high-level sessions, and whether there might be an opportunity for visiting ministers to take part in any of those sessions.  But we can obviously follow up on that.  I'm sure ministers might also like to be involved in some way in the parliamentary track.  And I -- I do recall at some point there was a conversation on whether there might be a sort of closed meeting for those ministers there.  Like a breakfast or something.  But obviously we're in your hands on that.  So I think that's all I want to say.  I'll say a couple of things perhaps later this afternoon, but it's really encouraging to see the fantastic work that's being taken forward and the preparatory phase by the secretariat, and I'll shut up because I could go on.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Before you respond, Przemek.  Thanks very much, Nigel.  And we have more people in the queue.  I will just read a question.  I assume Maria Paz you will ask your question.  There was another question from Mark Carvell earlier, and I do urge participants to actually request the floor.  Otherwise, it's very difficult for us to record these questions and comment as part of the meeting record.  So just making your remarks in the chat is not enough.  

 But there was a request from Mark Carvell asking how the zero track parliamentarian discussions will be fed into the main proceedings of the IGF.  So that's probably a question as much for the secretariat as it is for you, Przemek.  We are also coming back to these in more detail tomorrow.  And then I think there was a further question, but I see the person has requested the floor and we'll hear it in due course. Next I'm very happy to give the floor to Livia Walpen.

 

>>LIVIA WALPEN:  Hello, can you hear me?

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  I can hear you, and I'm hoping all the virtual participants can hear you too.  I don't see any comment that they can't.

 

>>LIVIA WALPEN:  Thanks very much, Anriette, for giving me the floor.  And hello, everyone.  I actually have the privilege to be here physically in Geneva, which I'm appreciating very much.  It's so great to see at least some of the familiar faces that we haven't seen in a long time.  So yeah, just for the record, this is Livia Walpen from the government of Switzerland.  And I'm actually only echoing what Nigel just said.  I just wanted to express actually a huge thanks to Przemek and the whole team from the government of Poland and, of course, also the IGF secretariat, just for the huge effort in organizing this year's IGF.  

 I mean, as some of you know, we have been the host country in 2017 for the IGF in Geneva and from that time I remember how hard it was to actually organize an IGF meeting, and this time I think the circumstances are just even more challenging.  So just thank you very much for all your efforts and also to ensure that we, from the Swiss government, we are, of course, here to support in any way possible and our delegation is also really looking forward to be physically in Katowice and among all the people also organize an open forum on the topic of digital self-determination.  So yeah, just to express our thanks, once again, and looking forward to the IGF in December.  Thank you very much.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much for that, Livia.  And Chengetai has just given me an update.  Of around 1,800 participants that have registered so far, 1,300 have indicated that they will participate in person.  

 Przemek, do you want to respond to the questions before we give the floor to the next speaker?

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Yes, I'll be more than happy to do it, Madam Chair.  So thank you very much to Mr. Nigel Hickson and to Livia Walpen, Ms. Livia Walpen, for the addresses and for the questions.  We find them very useful and, of course, was in response to them and do appreciate that they have been addressed.

 Regarding the ministerial participation, yes, we are thinking of having maybe a session, maybe not -- unofficial maybe, maybe breakfast for ministers would be very useful to have.  So we are actually looking forward to this proposal, and we will come back with our response as soon as possible.  But, of course, we would, first of all, discuss this issue of our colleagues from the U.N.  So we will keep in touch with you on that.  

 And thank you very much, sir, for confirming the presence of the minister from the -- physical presence of minister from the U.K., and thank you very much to Miss Livia for confirming on-site participation, too.  We are looking forward to good cooperation and to further -- reach you further with other details of the presence of your ministers and including the program.

 Regarding the possible mixture of having ministers and parliamentarians, I think this is open.  We do not exclude anybody.  Although it is a parliamentary track, but it doesn't mean that a minister couldn't participate in it and vice versa.

 Regarding the topics and the composer -- composition of the high-level dialogues, we are finalizing this issue

 Regarding the topics and the composition of the high-level dialogues, we are finalizing this issue with our U.N. colleagues.  So we will provide you very soon with detailed concept note including also the names of ministers because we are still looking for confirmations.  And as soon as we receive those confirmations at the end of September, maybe beginning of October, we will come back with the final decisions on that matter.  Thank you for raising this as well.

 If you have any more questions, I am happy to answer them.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Przemyslaw.  Next I call to the floor, Maria Paz Canales.

 

>>MARIA PAZ CANALES:  This is Maria Paz.  I am a MAG, member of the GRULAC region in my third year, civil society representative.  

 I want just to stress this last point it was referred regarding the still-pending confirmation of participants in the high-level track, in general for parliamentarians but also for high-level guests in general.  That an additional effort can be made in ensuring truly global representation of different regions from the confirmed invitation.  I understand this is still ongoing work, and I appreciate very much the efforts that have been made for the host country so far.  But I want to stress the relevance of having a geographically balanced representation.  I see much more confirmation from representative of the Western European side than the rest of the region, particularly the Global South.  I want to stress the relevance on ensuring participation.  And also, at least put myself at the service of anything that can be helpful for facilitating those communication with high-level leaders in my region, that is Latin America.  But I am pretty sure other MAG members can facilitate from other regions in Global South.

 So please don't hesitate and ask anything that can be useful for you in our site.  I'm also eyeing my consideration for what was expressed by our chair in terms of the gender balance also in the representations.  Thank you very much.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Thank you very much, Maria Paz Canales.  I thank you for raising those issues.  And I thank you personally for your engagement in preparing the frequently asked questions for the hybrid document that has been published.  It has been produced by working -- MAG working group on hybrid meetings chaired by Ms. Tereza Horejsova and Adam Peake.  You have contributed very deeply into this document. And we have also supported its preparation.  So thank you very much for your most valuable inputs regarding the equal participation and broadened participation from all over the world, not only from the Western hemisphere but also from Asia-Pacific and other parts of the world also.  Thank you very much for that.

 And we are very open to your other suggestions, if you have any remarks, questions.  Do not hesitate to reach to us, and we will try to accommodate them also.  Thank you very much.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Przemyslaw.  

 Thanks, Maria Paz, for that important question.

 I'm happy to confirm that the South African minister of Communications and Digital Technologies will be present, virtually or in-person.

 There was a person in the question from Gunela.  I ask it to you, Chengetai.  And that is to ask if there is any -- at this point, can you say of the 1,300 participants you indicated they'll participate in-person, what is the regional distribution?  

 Others, please, I urge you to request the floor.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  It will take us a couple of minutes to present those figures.  But we'll come back as soon as I get them.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Chengetai.

 Any other comments or questions or contributions?  The MAG working group on hybrid meetings are also with us.  So if you wanted to share anything about the state of preparations, you're welcome to do that as well.

 I have a question.  Could you take us through what the experience will be of a workshop at the Katowice forum?  So if I'm organizing a workshop, I'm the moderator also of that session, and I am not able to be there in-person, can you just perhaps -- you know, just give us an indication of how you're anticipating the experience will be for session organizers.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Thank you very much, Madam Chair Anriette, for this very important and very question.

 Yes, although you're not able to be on-site in Katowice does not mean that your participation is excluded because, as I said before, we have a team -- we are going to have a group of people who will facilitate you as session organizer in preparing this workshop.  As I said previously, there was this frequently asked question document which is already published at the IGF website.  So this is, first of all, tips and hints for you on how you could technically and how we could approach the IGF preparatory team both at the IGF and at the host country site.  Please feel free to familiarize yourselves with this document at any time.  So that's one thing.

 Another thing is that we are going to have a technical support facility team composed of, of course, technicians on-site but as well as volunteers online and on-site that will support you in running smoothly this session that would take place in a hybrid mode, which is online and on-site.  And also to gather participants that would be present on-site so that people online would not feel excluded in any way but to be a part of this workshop.

 So we are very much prepared for that, and we are looking forward to your approaches, to your questions.  And please do not hesitate to come to us for our support.  But first of all, this document.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thank you, Przemyslaw.  I would know by looking at the program which room my workshop has been allocated to.  And then based on the room allocation, I would be able to make contact with the technical support team in that specific room?  I would do that well before the session actually starts.  And then people that are in the room will see me as the session moderator on screen and I'll be moderating the session, you know, very much from that.

 So it's really not that different from what we do with our many virtual MAG meetings and other Open Consultations.  But the difference here is that we are using -- that the agenda the program, will give us an entry point both into the virtual room for that particular session as well as the face-to-face room.  And that face-to-face room will have a tech team, and there will obviously be online support as well.

 Please keep in mind for those of you who are following, there will be the documents that Przemyslaw is referring to.  There will also be training for session organizers that walks everyone through the scenario of what it is like to host a virtual-hybrid IGF 2021 session.

 Chengetai, I am going to give you the floor to add information.  And then we will go to the speaking queue.  I'm very happy to see we have the MAG working group on hybrid meetings represented by Tereza Horejsova.  And she will tell us more.

 First you, Chengetai.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  I may be repeating information.  But emphasizing, we are having an online facilitator which we are having with volunteers.  There will be an online facilitator.  If you're the moderator and not there, if you're the workshop facilitator and not there, you will still be able to join the room.  You will be projected onto the screen through Zoom.  People will be able to see you in the room, and they will also be able to see you in the Zoom room.  And we can take it from there.  There will always be somebody -- thereby check-in people of the room.  There will be the online facilitator in the Zoom room as well just to make sure things go smoothly and, as we said, requesting the floor or any slides, presentations, should be available online as well for both people.

 Yes, it should be fine, I think.  But, of course, we do appreciate that there may be a few hiccups at the beginning.  But I think everything will go well, yeah.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Chengetai.  

 Tereza, you have the floor.

 

>>TEREZA HOREJSOVA:  Good morning to everybody.  Madam Chair, colleagues, it is really good to be with everybody joining us online and for those of you joining in person.  

 My name is Tereza Horejsova, first-year MAG member, representing civil society.  As you might have guessed from the previous remarks, Adam Peake and I have had the pleasure to co-chair together this working group on hybrid meetings.

 The rationale for this working group was quite easy, to push a little bit on two fronts.  First, on the front of inclusion, to blur the lines between those of us who will be joining the meeting in Poland in person and those of us who will be joining the meeting remotely or online, I should try to say because there really should be a move from the previous practice of having an on-site meeting with participants who were able to follow to really both of these groups participating kind of on very, very equal terms.  So that was one area where we tried to push.

 At the same time, we are also trying to push in the field of interactivity, in making sure that this is an engaging meeting, that we maybe step away from workshops that were all in the same format of having remarks, discussion, then five minutes for remote questions and that was it.

 I'm really glad what Chengetai actually mentioned a few minutes ago.  There might be hiccups.  Yes, there will probably be hiccups.  But I wanted everybody to kind of understand that we are experimenting.  We are playing.  We are trying.  Some things might work.  Some things might not work.  But we will really try to push the limits on what a hybrid IGF, a meeting that is still very traditional, a U.N. meeting, with a very expensive -- expensive as well, important role of the host country, how meetings like this can work in a hybrid format.

 So the working group with all your inputs and support is not only looking at this like a quick fix, what can we do for the meeting in Katowice but what can be done and how the IGF can approach meetings in the future.

 We have an absolutely amazing cooperation with Anriette, of course, as chair, with the secretariat, and with Poland, Przemyslaw.  We have been on many calls together, trying to think of many details.  So there is a clear commitment of Poland to try to push the limits with us.

 It was also mentioned that we have produced a document, a Frequently Asked Questions.  Again, it was a collaborative effort.  The document is now published on the IGF website.  And we have tried to anticipate what are the very practical questions that you might be asking as an event participant, maybe somebody who is now thinking should I travel, should I not travel, does it make sense for me to take part or not.  But for all session organizers who have submitted their proposals and maybe now my speakers will be online, my moderator cannot travel, how am I going to address these kind of issues?  So we have really tried to zoom out and zoom in at the same time and think of all these questions.  It's a living document.  And I would very much appreciate if you could take time, if you haven't done so yet, to review it and to maybe come to us with anything we might have missed or any questions that you're asking that are not covered because I feel this is a kind of task that is not just a responsibility, Okay, working group on hybrid will deal with it or secretariat will deal with it.  Poland will find a way.  It's kind of our common responsibility as a community.  So I will probably stop here.  And thank you for the floor.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Tereza.  Thanks to the MAG hybrid meetings working group.

 Next I'm very happy to give the floor to MAG member Roberto Zambrana.

 

>>ROBERTO ZAMBRANA:  Thank you very much, Madam Chair.  It's a great pleasure for me to be here with everyone after almost two years.  Roberto Zambrana from La Paz, Bolivia.  I'm a second-year MAG member representing GRULAC and technical community.

 I would like to add a little bit about the need for perhaps a simulation of this work and doing it actually in the -- in Poland, in the actual site, because I think the devil is in these details.  And it would be very important to -- perhaps using the Zoom platform, not this one that we know we're not going to use, for the different sessions.  And we'll try to involve maybe the MAG members so we can actually have a session.

 I think we're going to learn a lot from that.  Trying to fix or foreseeing at least all the different problems that we may have during the actual sessions, I think that would be good.  And I think it would be great to have a final date for this sort of rehearsal or simulation.  Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Roberto.  I think that's a really good suggestion.  

 Przemyslaw, let's see if it's possible for the host to do that in collaboration with the secretariat.

 And I think as Chengetai said to me, we'll also have Day Zero.  That's also an opportunity to run through everything.  But it's an excellent suggestion.

 Next, the floor goes to Joyce Chen.

 

>>JOYCE CHEN:  Thanks very much, Anriette.  And I hope that I can be heard.  I am Joyce Chen, first-year MAG member representing the technical community.

 So I want to thank the members of the hybrid meeting working group for your work and also for producing the FAQs, modalities, for the hybrid IGF.  I think it's a very good document.  I've read through everything already.  So I don't have specific comments on this.  

 But what I would like to say is that I hope the hybrid format for the IGF is not going to only be done this year but that it will be something that will follow on from subsequent years as well.

 And the reason for this is not everybody has the privilege or the opportunity to travel for an IGF meeting, particularly if it's rotated outside of countries that are not in the Global South, for example.

 And so I think it's very important that we use this year's hybrid format as an exercise of getting it right, and we continue to do it in subsequent IGFs.

 I do have a question, which is whether -- are we taking note of the geographic distribution of online participants, of the remote participants during IGF, and not just the on-site participants?  I think this data would be very, very important to capture the interest and the demand that comes from the Global South, particularly those participants that would not typically be able to attend an IGF.  It's a physical meeting.  And to compare, you know, across the years whether -- because we are running it in a proper hybrid format that it has made a difference to those people who would not be able to attend physically.

 So I think it's important to be able to capture this data, if possible.  And my question is whether -- are we doing it.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much for that question, Joyce.

 The data about where participants are located and what time zone they're in is being captured.  How exactly they'll be able to follow is still being discussed by the outreach and engagement group.  But as Chengetai mentioned earlier, there was a town hall meeting on 20 September during which members of the community talked with the secretariat, the MAG, and the host country about how to make the participation of those that are in different time zones as inclusive as possible.

 And one of the suggestions that was made which is now being considered for implementation is ensuring that every session has a hashtag in the same way that every workshop has a workshop identity number.  And that will enable people who follow the meetings via the YouTube channel or read the transcript after the fact to send their comments.

 And then before the session report is finalized by the session organizer -- you all know in the IGF if you organize a session, you become accountable for writing a report on that session.

 That then will enable those session organizers to include those comments that are received after the fact into their final session report.  So that's just one example.

 But, Joyce, I think that is very challenging.  And as you might have seen in the chat, the secretariat already mentioned Eleonora -- that the schedule won't refer to meal breaks as lunch breaks.  I mean, those of us that are there will relate to them as lunch breaks.  But they'll refer to as meal breaks just to make it more inclusive for those who might be having dinner or breakfast during that particular break.

 But as Tereza was always saying, and Chengetai as well, there will be hiccups.  There will be.  This is a modality.  This hybrid way of working together is going to be with us for many years.  So the more ideas, the more suggestions people can contribute for us to try and implement, the better.

 But that's where we are at the moment, Joyce.  But there's more to be done, I'm sure.  And we'll come back to some of these mechanisms for really being fully inclusive during the next two MAG meeting days as well.

 Unless the secretariat or the co-chair wants to add, I will give the floor to the next speaker, Wout de Natris.  

 Wout, please, go ahead.

 

>>WOUT DE NATRIS:  Can you hear me?

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  We can hear you.

 

>>WOUT DE NATRIS:  Thank you for giving me the floor.  Wout de Natris, coordinator of the dynamic coalition on security and safety.

 The question is that -- responding to a comment you made on Day Zero.  The first question is:  Will all the sessions be facilitated like the regular workshops, et cetera, at the IGF?  Because that was not always the case.  And the second one, you made a comment about being able to do trial sessions on Day Zero.  But I would hope the trial sessions could take place before that because my session, for example, is at 9:30 in the morning, so I'm one of the earliest.  It would be good to know it works perfectly so we can discuss with people online as well.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks, Wout.  I would just like to ask you to clarify your first question.  I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you ask will all sessions be facilitated like the regular workshops at the IGF?  

 

>>WOUT DE NATRIS:   Okay.  That in the past, on Day Zero, sometimes there were no online options or the caption wasn't found, not available.  So is that available for all sessions on Day Zero or only for some?

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks, Wout, for clarifying.  Chengetai, can you please respond?

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Yes.  For Day Zero, there is going to be captioning available for all sessions.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   And I think, Wout, your point about not doing all our experimentation and testing on Day Zero, absolutely valid and legitimate.  And I can assure you the host country is taking preparation very, very seriously.  And all glitches that can be anticipated would have been sorted out by then.  That doesn't mean that more won't occur.

 Next we call to the floor, from past host country Switzerland, Jorge Cancio.

 

>>JORGE CANCIO:   Thank you.  Thank you so much, Anriette.  

 Thank you very much for this presentation, for the whole information we've got; as Livia said, for the -- for the very hard work.

 I was just wondering and now considering the wealth of work which is being invested.  And possibly the presence of very high-profile people, including the U.N. Secretary-General, highest authorities from Poland, and many ministers from around the world and also high-level people from other stakeholder groups.

 Perhaps I was remiss at hearing out from the presentations the communications plans you have.  Perhaps it is something that will come later on.  As you know, we've been having a lot of efforts in the last years trying to raise the visibility of the IGF, of the good work which is being done here.  And we've had, let's say, challenges in the past to get the message through amongst other things to international media or to important, also, newspapers and outlets.

 So really the question is whether you could elaborate on what is the strategic communications plan and how can we all help in getting the messages through and how you also intend to capture the -- not -- the main points of the discussions, whether you will follow with the tradition of messages that we introduced some years ago here in Geneva.  

 Thank you so much.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Jorge, thanks for that question.  And we'll give you more detail on the reporting process and format for this year's IGF.  And on Friday, during the MAG meeting, there will be a more detailed discussion of the work that's been done by the secretariat and MAG members.  We have a working group on outreach and engagement.  It's, indeed, very, very important.

 But I'd like Przemyslaw to respond because the host country is also focusing on this.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:   Exactly.  Thank you very much for this important question, Jorge.  We have a dedicated team who is responsible for information and promotion of the IGF 2021.  So do please reach to me.  Provide me with your contact.  I will reach out to them.  So maybe you could communicate, and maybe you could provide some -- some hint, some -- maybe some suggestions to them.  But if -- I will come back to you, of course, with the plan of action, because this team has been settled, and they are working on specific actions to be taken.  So please do reach out to me, let me know your email, and maybe I could also communicate you with them, and to provide you with more detailed information as well as to, of course, the IGF Secretariat colleagues.

 Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks very much for that, Przemyslaw.

 And Jorge, I can also confirm that the tradition of producing messages, key messages, which was started by Switzerland during the 2017 IGF, and which has continued, actually, that that is actually fundamental to the communication strategy.  So we will be building on that.

 But I'd like to give the floor to Eleonora from the secretariat who will give us a little bit more background on this.  And as I said, then on Day 3 of the MAG meeting, we'll come back to it.  But it's good to also share the broad plans for the purpose of the Open Consultation.  So thanks very much.  Eleonora, over to you.

 

>>ELEONORA MAZZUCCHI:   Thank you, Chair.  I'll just be very brief because I don't want to anticipate the discussion that we're going to have on Friday with the MAG Working Group on Engagement and Communications.

 I will just say that the secretariat has worked together with these MAG members to produce a draft strategy that will be covered on Friday, and it covers a number of activities that will be implemented before the IGF, during the IGF, and after the IGF to address the key issues of how the messages and outputs coming out of the meeting will be -- will be disseminated.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks very much for that, Eleonora.

 Any further comments or questions?

 Please add --

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:   Just to add what I've just said, Mr. Krzysztof Szubert who is the plenipotentiary for this year's IGF from the Polish side as the host country is also promoting and informing about our event throughout many prestigious and prominent events in which he participates.  He is always speaking about the IGF.  He has spoken it about to the Polish Council of Ministers, to the National Parliament, to -- He will be in Dubai in couple of weeks, so he will -- he has also a detailed plan for promoting the IGF there as well as at the Expo.  So he has in many interventions, introductions.  He has a lot of events in which he participates, and in all of them he provides a detailed information and promotion of the IGF.  So he is very active.  He's very engaged in this -- in those activities.  So he's making all the necessary efforts to promote our event throughout different channels, to new stakeholders.

 We have had very -- he has had recently a very good meeting with the heads of academia, because we -- as we want this year's IGF to be a youth dedicated one, so we want the youth engagement in a very broad sense.  Therefore, he addressed to those -- to the university and academia communities his information about the IGF and provide his -- their engagement.  So they are very happy, they are very active and willing to participate and to engage themselves, to involve them into the IGF process.

 Thank you very much.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks for that, Przemyslaw.

 I think we've seen from previous IGFs, most recently the Berlin IGF, how effective it can be for the host country to work with different stakeholder groups at national level to create more participation.  Switzerland as well, to create more participation.

 We don't have anyone in the queue but in the chat, this is the temptation of hybrid meetings, is that people express themselves through the chat.  I urge people to resist this temptation and to respect the fact that this is a hybrid meeting and to ask for the floor.

 So we have some really good suggestions from Mark Carvell.  So, Mark, if you do not mind requesting the floor, if it's possible for you, I would appreciate that.  But he's really suggesting inclusion of the broader IGF community in the communication strategy.  If he cannot speak, I will read his comment, but first I'm urging him to ask for the floor.

 And there's also a comment about hubs and asking how the communications and outreach and participation strategy will ensure that hubs that are in different time zones can participate.  And for those of you who might not be aware, IGF hubs are places in other parts of the world where people actually come together to participate virtually in the IGF, but it's also a hybrid in the sense that they are in one place together and able to also talk about what they participate in.

 So, Mark, don't worry about asking for the queue formally.  If you're able to enable your mic now, please take the floor.

 

>>MARK CARVELL:   Yes, thank you very much, Anriette, and it's great to join you here from the UK.  And greetings to everybody.  Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and so on.  It's a very helpful morning session.  A lot of information coming through.  That's very, very good.

 With regard to Jorge's very important question about the communication strategy, and I note that there's work going on, and so on, to roll that out, and I suggested in the chat that one network, global network for promoting awareness and providing information is that provided by the national and regional IGFs.

 And so I would encourage, really, the NRIs to put up front on their websites, and if they are holding sessions -- I know a number of national IGFs and regional IGFs are meeting in the next month or so -- that they provide information about obviously the IGF itself and how to access practical information about participating in the IGF in Katowice, but also information about the preparatory phase, and I mentioned specifically the three days of introductory sessions on the 1st and 3rd of November.

 So the NRI network would contribute, I think, to the communication strategy through providing that channel of communication about these important opportunities, to understand the practicalities of participating remotely in the hybrid format, and also, if possible, to travel to Katowice.  If there is visa information, updates, and so on, that's going to be very helpful, I think.

 So that was my suggestion. Perhaps it's already been worked on, but I thought it was worth raising at this time.

 Thank you very much, everybody, for your comments today.  And my great appreciation.  As a former MAG member who has followed the IGF, my great appreciation for Poland hosting this year and all the team work that's going on to ensure a highly successful event.  And the registration numbers are very impressive.

 I do bang the desk about ensuring geographical participation amongst the full range of participants, but also the High-Level Panel, ensure there's geographical diversity there, and amongst the parliamentarians who really -- it really is the time to strengthen the contribution of parliamentarians to the process.

 Thanks very much.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks very much, Mark, for those really valuable comments.

 And I want to thank Mark and other past MAG members, some of whom are in the room with us, for continuing to be part of the process of contributing to the planning of the IGF.  It really, really makes a difference.

 And I think, Mark, you're very right to remind us to keep the inclusion and diversity of participation on top of the agenda.  I feel sometimes myself, as a past MAG member and having been involved in the IGF since the inception, that we sometimes forget to -- there's so many new challenges that we try to accommodate every year, such as this year's theme in our goals for the IGF 2021 is to be more focused and strategic in terms of the agenda of the IGF.  But in the process of adding new goals, we sometimes can underestimate some of the fundamental goals and geographical and stakeholder diversity and political diversity, perspective diversity.  Those are incredibly important aspects of the IGF, and that's why the IGF was proposed in the Tunis Agenda, to enable that level of diverse and inclusive dialogue and debate on Internet governance.

 So I do think it's really good that you do remind us to keep that has a really important goal at all levels.  At the level of every session, to the high-level sessions, to the parliamentary sessions.  So it's not always easy, but we have to continue to strive to achieve that.

 Now I give the floor to Amado Espinosa, MAG member who is with us here in Geneva.

 

>>AMADO ESPINOSA:   Thank, Ms. Chair.  Without getting in deeper detail, just thanking Mark and Jorge for this important -- those important remarks.  And we are launching on Friday a -- an open call to prepare kind of a repository or a database of all the different strategies which can be accomplished for an inclusive -- inclusive call for participation or communication strategy from the standpoint of the Working Group on Outreach, Communication, and Engagement.

 I -- Allow me to use the opportunity to invite everybody to participate on Friday at this invitation and to help us build up those best -- so-called best practices to try to take advantage of the past experiences, successful experiences like the Swiss strategy, for example, or UK strategy, and whatever will value add to the proposition will be very welcome.

 Let's meet, please, on Friday and talk a little bit deeper about that.

 Thanks.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks.  Thanks, Amado, and thanks for the work of the working group.

 I'm waiting to see.  There's this anticipate -- If you look at the screen, you'll see when there are three dots, it could mean that someone is joining the speaking queue; it could mean that the speaking queue is empty.

 I do not see anyone else asking for the floor, but I do have some information that's in the chat that I'm going to ask Chengetai to share with us.

 Luis has kindly shared with us the regional breakdown of registrations to date.  So, Chengetai, can you please share that with everyone.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Thank you very much.

 So the largest group is the African group with 667 people that have registered and have said that they're coming to Katowice; followed by WEOG, 198; and then Asia Pacific, 179; Eastern Europe, 165; GRULAC, 85; and IGOs, 42.

 So I think these are very good figures, especially at this stage.  We usually have -- Our registration is usually basically an S curve:  A lot of registration at the beginning, and then it drops down, and then near the end it ramps up quite quickly as well.  So, yeah, I think these are very good -- encouraging figures.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   They're encouraging.  I would also take them with a bit of a pinch of salt, but they are definitely encouraging because I mean I think for me, what I would say is that it's actually too soon.  It's too soon for us to know what the breakdown will be, which means we need to continue to focus on encouraging people to register and participate in whatever form, format.

 I think what we can rely on is having a large number of participants from Poland and from the region, and I think that's important.  One of the methods or the mechanisms through which the IGF has expanded the community of people and institutions that are concerned with Internet governance is through the event being hosted in a particular country, in a particular region.  It brings a lot of newcomers into the process, and it makes it more expanding.  It enhances that network-of-network effect.

 So I think the fact that there will be lots of Polish participants is actually a positive, and we should look forward to that.  But we'll keep you updated with those statistics as they are available to us.

 As Chengetai says, the registrations usually only really pick up in like two months.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   In November.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Well, a month before the event.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Yes.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   I don't see -- Amado, please, go ahead and take the floor.

 

>>AMADO ESPINOSA:   For the organizing committee, which is the capacity of the venue?  In order for the people to learn about how many people can be actually registered and if there's any limitation.  Thanks.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:   Thank you very much for that, Mr. Amado Espinosa.  Well, the general capacity is 15,000.  So 15,000.  I mean the venue, the entire venue.  So it's very large.  Of course there are some COVID restrictions at the moment which limits, unfortunately, this capacity.

 Well, if we are not considering people vaccinated, it means 50%, but even though, it's still eight -- 8,000.  So we do not need to worry about -- about the capacity.  There is enough space.

 Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Enough space and enough rooms.  And I think this includes also ensuring that there are -- if the room capacity is limited, there will also be spaces where people can follow the session virtually.

 Chengetai, there's a question from one of the virtual participants to say more about hubs.  How many hubs are there and where will they be?

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Thank you, I will pass it on to Luis just to give us the hub totals.  I think we have to give him a couple of seconds to just find the figures, but we are trying to encourage hubs.

 We are also trying to make a pre-defined space for them, especially in some sessions, so that they can ask questions and interact with the team.  We've done this before.  This is not the first time we've done hubs.  We've had hubs for basically the past 10 or 12 years, and -- but during this time of COVID, we've seen that, especially in the national and regional IGFs, there was the Pacific IGF, for instance, and also the Asia Pacific regional IGF, and there were hubs there and they really did interact and they really did enhance the participation of people that we observed.  

 So we're trying to go full steam ahead with the hubs, and we are trying to finalize also how we can better support the hubs, whether it be through financial contributions, et cetera.  So we're working on that with UN DESA as well, trying to give them some support through our trust fund.

 And I've been talking just to give Luis some time.  So let's see if he has --

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  While we're waiting for Luis to come up with the data on the hubs, I have a question for all the people in the room.  How many of you are actually following the chat in WebEx?  Not everyone.  Actually a minority.  And I really want to -- this is extremely important.  I really want you all to take note of this.  Because it's a way that -- it demonstrates how, in fact, your face-to-face participants can be more excluded from the dynamic and the -- the climate, the sense and the jokes in the meeting, the side comments.  In other words, it's a form of exclusion of face-to-face participants that emerges when people are able to participate virtually.  

 So really I think the message we need to send is that to participate fully in this IGF, you need to be able to participate in the online form of the meeting.  It really is extremely important.  

 So Luis, are you ready?  Not quite.  It's fine.

 

>>LUIS BOBO:  Thank you, no.  Not yet.  I will share them in the chat, actually.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Sorry.  What did you say, Luis?

 

>>LUIS BOBO:  Sorry.  Not actually.  Yes, I will share them in the chat.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  I would like you not to share them in the chat because, as we just found out -- or not only in the chat.  You can put them in the chat, but then we also need to read them out.  Because we've just seen that most people in the room are not reading the chat.  But while you -- while you do that, Nigel Hickson, you have the floor.

 

>>NIGEL HICKSON:  Yes, thank you very much, Madam Chair.  And I agree with you.  I find reading the chat enormously useful.  But I appreciate your -- your encouragement.  But the chat has to be used in a way that adds to the conversation.  But we need the conversation as well.  I mean, some of us that take part in other fora also notice this.  I mean, chat can be quite exclusive, in some ways.  

 I attended an international standards meeting, and I wouldn't possibly name the host of the organization, but I didn't really understand much that was taking part in chat.  I thought my English -- understanding of English was reasonable, but I still didn't understand much of the chat because it was in acronyms, it was in the sort of colloquial terms that people use when they know each other, and that can be very exclusive.  Anyway, I didn't want to mention that at all.

 What I wanted to ask was really the U.N., I don't know whether our colleague from DESA are on the line, and we can take this tomorrow morning or whenever.  But I'd be very interested, from their perspective, on the debate at the U.N. General Assembly, the mentions of the -- our common agenda, the report by the U.N. Secretary-General which touches on digital cooperation and the IGF, and I wondered if UN DESA had any reflections on that or perhaps others that were intimately involved in the debate.  And also whether there was any update on the appointment or further details on how the appointment might be taken forward in terms of the high-level panel or thinking on that.  And I'm not asking for instant answers, and I do apologize for these direct questions.  But I think these are -- these issues are quite important to us all.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much for that question, Nigel, and for emphasizing that we need to be not cautious about the chat but we need to apply sensitivity when we use chat in the hybrid format.  But it's also important, I think as was just said in the chat, that the FAQs also need to address the role that chat plays in hybrid meetings.

 In response to your question, Nigel, I'm not sure he's able to share.  We do have Wai Min from UN DESA with us.  If he's able to share now, he or Chengetai can respond, but we'll also be able to come back to that point in this afternoon's session when we look at briefings.  

 What I can say, you know, is that as you probably have seen, that digital cooperation is one of the themes of this year's IGF.  So there will be introductory sessions and there will be sessions, main sessions.  The tech envoy's office is organizing an open forum during the annual forum in December.  They also are organizing a session during the preparatory phase.  

 But in terms of specific feedback on the General Assembly, I think that's a really important point.  So Chengetai, I'm not sure if you've been in touch with Wai Min.  Is he able to share now, or would you like to be given more time? 

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Just give him ten seconds to see whether or not he'll respond.  If not, I can just say that the Secretary-General did present the common agenda, and there has been discussion about it in UN DESA and what we can do to forward the common agenda.  In the common agenda as well the IGF was specifically mentioned in paragraph 93.  So there's actually two paragraphs, 92 and 93.  But we were specifically mentioned in 93, and that same paragraph also does talk about digital compact.  So it's new.  It's just been announced, so we're discussing -- there's internal discussions to see how we can help forward this agenda.  The IGF is there as well, and we are a multistakeholder institution and it is very important because in there it does mention civil society, government, and the private sector, which are part of our key stakeholder groups, as well.  I mean, also the technical community, but we can, I think -- the technical community, to us, is different and distinct but to people on the outside it may not be.  So yes, there is discussions.  And I think we should also be having discussions amongst us as well.  But that's for the future.  Yes.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks for that, Chengetai.  That's very helpful.  And Nigel, just -- I might not have mentioned it specifically, but also during the preparatory phase there's a session that I am co-organizing with the MAG working group strategy which is looking at the IGF in the context of the G7 and G20, which has actually really emphasized multistakeholder approaches to Internet related and ICT and cybersecurity -- security-related policies.  So that will also be an opportunity to now bring this new dimension into that more sort of -- the IGF from a -- through a geopolitical lens discussion.  But thanks for raising that.

 Next we have Wout.  You have the floor.

 

>>WOUT de NATRIS:  Yes, thank you, Anriette.  I want to come back to the chat discussion that was going on before Nigel's other question.  Wout de Natris in a personal capacity, just sharing some ideas that I have (indiscernible).  

 I think that the chat, when used right, can create an alternative reality to the workshop, and discussions take place there that actually provides ideas for solutions or way forward that are not necessarily taken up into the discussion that is going on officially.  

 So my idea and my advice is to actually make sure that the chat is saved properly and shared with official organizers because that way what happens sometimes, a parallel world and in chat can become part of the official report that the intersessional organizers have to use; and otherwise, they're lost.  And sometimes some excellent ideas are being discussed in chat.  So that's what I wanted to share. (Indiscernible).  Thank you, Anriette.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Wout.  I think that is indeed important, that the chat needs to be saved.  So these are important takeaways.  But I think the other lesson, which I can share as chair, and I'm sure many of you have been in the same position, that you actually need a co-chair or someone in your team who actively moderates or follows the chat.  It's not realistic to expect your overall moderator to also be able to moderate and follow the chat and bring points.  So it actually requires a more collaborative approach to session facilitation, which I think is healthy and can make sessions more dynamic anyway.  So thanks to everyone who's making comments with regard to this in the chat.

 In fact, the chat is very dynamic.  It's difficult for me to keep repeating it.  So I urge those of you that are using it to also ask for the queue.

 And Luis, are you ready to share with us on the hubs?  And then Courtney, I've noted you've joined the queue.  Thanks a lot, and we'll come to you shortly.  Luis.

 

>>LUIS BOBO:  Yes, thank you, Anriette.  So as there are not so many hubs, like 34 or 36, I will give you the stats by number country.  So Nigeria have 5.  Then Uganda, 3.  Ghana, 3.  Haiti, 3.  Then we have with 2, Poland, Italy, and United Kingdom.  And then with 1, the following countries, Cote d'Ivoire, Morocco, Congo, Austria, Colombia, Malaysia, Tunisia, Sudan, Venezuela, South Africa, Tanzania, India, Libya, and Zambia.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much for sharing that, Luis.  And you can put it in the chat as well.  But at least now everyone has heard it.  

 Courtney, you have the floor.

 

>>COURTNEY RADSCH:  Thank you.  This is Courtney Radsch, MAG member, for the record.  

 I just wanted to comment about the hybrid nature of this and the role that chat plays in both physical and virtual content.  

 I would suggest instead of trying to see whether the in-person and the online participants can have the exact same experience and communication style, perhaps taking the alternative view which is recognizing that the chat will function for informal things the way that chatting in a room with your neighbor or someone in the sidelines will have.  And instead of discouraging chat, we encourage that but one of the roles of either the co-chair or the moderator is to kind of sort out the chat from the substantive comments, right?  

 So there's a whole range of comments.  There's some really important informational pieces going out in the chat and then there's engagement, right?  +1s or "great idea."  This is a great way to encourage participation.  

 So perhaps we can kind of look at it that way and really emphasize the importance of the moderator role to monitor the chat and make sure that they're either bringing in or flagging for the chair when there is important substantive information but not diminishing some of the side conversation.  If we do save the chat, I think that would be level for the session organizers to make sure that they do capture that intervention afterwards.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Courtney.  Wise words.  We're looking at multifaceted participation.  And we're not trying to create parallel participation between those that are there face-to-face and those that are there virtually.  But I'm also -- I think we also need to keep in mind -- and we'll hear more during the MAG meeting about how the secretariat is planning to document IGF outcomes because I think the multiplicity of ways of participating and engaging also create new challenges for session organizers when they write their reports and for the secretariat team who has to compile the overall report.

 I think what we have to do is to navigate a way through all of this, that is inclusive and dynamic but that is also realistic and achievable.  But these are all really important points.  And I hope the MAG working group hybrid meetings is going to note all of this so that we can address that.

 I am now looking at the chat.  I see here there's a comment from Tracy Hackshaw, also really experienced person in organizing hybrid and online events and past MAG member.

 He's saying it's important to note that everyone can participate verbally due to accessibility or other issues, and chat may be the only effective way in which others can participate.  That is really very important as well.

 When we look at inclusion in the IGF, disability and ability is another dimension that we need to also factor in.  And if you're using -- if you're visually impaired and you're using an interface that allows you to hear everything that is taking place in the meeting, you're not going to be able to listen to the chat and listen to the transcript at the same time or listen to the audio track.  So just adding another dimension to that.

 Also, Amrita, very happy to give you the floor.

 

>>AMRITA CHOUDHURY:  Amrita Choudhury for the record.  I'm just following up from the question -- or the discussion related to the chat.  Would the chat be shared with the session moderators or the session proposers, rather, so they can take out the essence from the communication which happens during the workshop?

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  That's a really good question, Amrita.  I noticed Sandra from EuroDIG has just put in the chat that we cannot make chats public in the same way that you can make the transcript public because there are also confidentiality issues sometimes.  

 That doesn't mean that the chat cannot be shared with the session organizer for drawing on when they compile their final report.

 In fact, I'm going to ask Sandra if she's willing to take the floor and share with us how EuroDIG has dealt with this particular issue.  

 Sandra, are you able to do that?

 

>>SANDRA HOFERICHTER:  Can you hear me?  

 

>>CHAIR ANRIETTE:  We can hear you.

 

>>SANDRA HOFERICHTER:  I was on my mobile so I wasn't sure.  

 I was trying to send a message to the chat to Wout that if the chat is available for the meeting organizers, that's a different story.  If this is what he meant, I'm in full agreement.  And I would even say, in fact, this is happening already because when you set up a Zoom or WebEx session, you can automatically can send the chat after the meeting is closed.  Those who are reporting do have access to the chat.  But making the chat fully public just like a transcript or YouTube video, this is something I would really not suggest but we have spent some thoughts on this already.  

 But the legal hurdles are too high because you have to announce -- just if you have to announce that meeting is recorded, that the chat is going to be recorded.  And we know there is a functionality when you enter a meeting that says the meeting is recorded -- I don't know or I'm not aware that there is a function that says the chat is recorded.  So this is a technical hurdle, per se, for those joining later and for whom might have missed in the very beginning the announcement that the chat is recorded.

 Also, I believe in the chat there is too many side information that is not relevant.  And I would always encourage the session host, the technical session host, the online moderator -- let's use that well-known term -- to either read valuable comments out so that they are on the record.  I think that gives inclusion for those who are not able to speak and use the chat as a form of communication or people are encouraged to take the floor just as you did with me, Anriette, now, asking me for put my comment that I've put in the chat already now also on the record.  And I think that needs very, very good online moderation in order to bridge the gap between people in the room and people that are joining online.  Thank you very much.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Sandra.  Really good to have our NRIs share their experience.  We really learn a lot from EuroDIG and from other NRIs.

 Wout, is that a new request for the floor?

 

>>WOUT DE NATRIS:  Yes.  I just want to add what Sandra was saying.  I would agree what Sandra put in the chat.  

 My point is that classically organized workshops with ten panelists who are all talking, usually there is no way that people in the chat or even questions have time to be added.

 So I think it would be good to flag to session organizers that the chat is extremely important.  And that when a parallel discussion happens that doesn't have time to be integrated into the workshop itself, that they're more or less obliged to take chat into consideration for their report because otherwise so many important comments could be missed.

 So I totally agree with Sandra that an online moderator should facilitate everybody as much as possible.  But when you have a classic setup, usually from the room, hardly anything is possible.  I think that's where perhaps the IGF secretariat could be more demanding of those workshops to integrate the hybrid form as much as possible, even if it's in hindsight from taking comments into the workshop.

 I think that would really make it more hybrid, if necessary.  That's where I will stop.  Thank you, Anriette.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Wout.  Just to comment, very useful discussion on this topic in the chat, saying we should document and share with participants that chat is shared with session organizers but that chat is not public, that it's not part of the official record of the meeting but it will be made available to those who are compiling reports.  Making the point we need to be transparent and make it clear to participants what the different modalities are and what the different accountabilities that accompany them are.

 I think I've captured that.  

 Carol Roach, MAG member joining remotely, saying we really need this chat monitor for people to intervene at intervals to mention what is happening of relevance.

 I think this is covered in the FAQ already, that there should be a co-moderator, co-chair facilitator of the session that focuses specifically on the chat.

 Next I give the floor to Roberto Zambrana.

 

>>ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Anriette.  Roberto Zambrana for the record.

 I think we need to acknowledge that the IGF is evolving, and it's evolving particularly during the last two years.  I think it was different IGF before our last virtual IGF 2020.  And one of the things that have changed from that opportunity is that all the interaction is really different.

 When we are following -- when we were following a session in the past, it was impossible to comment besides the comment on the actual content that speakers were sharing with us because we didn't have this tool that we have now as chat.

 And I think that was one of the most particular difference in the last one and the previous IGFs.  And I'm not sure if it's a good idea to actually not share this kind of content because it's part of the expressions that all the participants do.

 Again, it was acknowledged in the last year in our virtual IGF 2020 that it was very rich content we had in this chat form of expression.

 So I will say that it's the same, that when we have the courtesy to announce that the sessions are being recorded, it doesn't mean that if one is against the session being recorded that it's going to be stopped.  It's just courtesy.  And if you don't want to participate in this session, then it's going to be recorded, then you can be a part of the session.  But you're not going to prevent the others to have the opportunity to see the recorded session.

 So it's the same when we are talking about the chat.  If you do not want to participate in the chat, nobody is going to force you.  But since I think it's a public and open event, we all have the right to know what we are expressing, what we are sharing with the others.  And I think that's why we need to give this chat also as an important part of the content of the overall session.

 Thank you very much, Anriette.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks, Roberto.  And I think that means that session organizers really need to -- I think that's a responsibility that we have to locate, I would suggest, strongly with the session organizers, the session moderators, and the session rapporteurs.  I think very, very important that we do that.

 By the way, I was wrong.  Carel is not here.  She's there, sitting behind the Bahamas sign.  So very, very good to have her with us.

 Joyce, you have the floor.

 

>>JOYCE CHEN:   Thanks, Anriette.  Joyce Chen, first-year MAG member for the record.

 Just on the topic of the chat, and I think coming from the Asia Pacific region, I feel very strongly that we preserve what is discussed on the chat, particularly for this hybrid meeting.  I think it bears mentioning that there are cultural language barriers for participants, particularly for those who are mic shy.  So you can be camera shy and there are people who are also mic shy.  And this is very prevalent, particularly for participants coming from my region.  They tend to prefer using the chat to conduct their discussion, to share their views.  And so it's become very common practice for our system moderators to do exactly what Anriette is doing now, to curate and pick out some of the comments or questions that are coming up from the chat and actually saying it out loud on the mic on behalf of the participants.  Not everybody wants to or -- you know, wants to take the mic to add their views.

 And so I think we also need to give them the space to feel that it is safe to participate and that, you know, they are able to participate through the chat and not just, you know, through having their voice recorded on the transcript or whatever it is, and to have people to facilitate this kind of participation for them.

 And I do take the point, Anriette, that you mentioned.  The session moderators and organizers, the onus is really on them to make sure they're monitoring the chat and making it inclusive for everybody.  So I think that's mainly it.

 In fact, if we wanted to have some kind of an agreed-upon signal.  I know ICANN, for example, does that, where they will say if you want to make a comment or a question that is read out, you do it in a certain way when you type it in the chat, and that makes it very clear that you want to participate in the actual discussion.  You're not just having an informal sort of chatter.

 So I don't know if we want to consider that.  That might be a bit more formal and requires a lot of getting used to doing it.  But otherwise, I think it would be good enough just to remind moderators that, you know, they have to keep an eye on the chat as well and to make sure that things are read out.

 Thanks.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks, Joyce.  Very, very useful suggestions, I think.  And why not try and use that form of coding?  And people don't have to use it, but it's a way which we can use that.

 And now I'm going to turn things around a little bit.  Roberto, I'm asking you to write your suggestion in the chat so that we have it on record there and we can come back to it.  So you've spoken it and it's in the transcript, but I think it would be very useful, because people like it.  If you follow the chat, you'll see people like your proposal.  So if you can just type it in for us, please.

 And, Maria Paz, you have the floor.

 

>>MARIA PAZ CANALES:   Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

 I just want to intervene to say something that I shared on the chat, but for putting in the record.  This is something that is already relatively covered in the frequent asked question for the hybrid format.  I encourage you to review what is there and to try to make the suggestions in light of what is already there.

 So, for example, the issue about the coordination and how to capture and input what is going on in the chat in the conversation in the session, it's covered because one of the recommendation -- and it's not a recommendation that is optional but it's, rather, a requirement for the organizers to have one moderator on chat, and that moderator on chat has to be communicated and coordinated permanently with the moderator of the session in person or in voice, whatever you want to refer it, for the session.  So that is something that is already covered because I totally agree with what Joyce was mentioning in terms that the input in the chat, it's very much related with different possibilities of participation and cultural settings of different people that is engaging with the forum.  So I think we should find a good compromise.

 I understand what Sandra was sharing in terms of the legal hurdles of sharing the full information, but I think that it's possible to find a good compromise if all that information is first tried to integrate in the session through the coordination between the moderator in the chat and the moderator in the room.  That's one thing.  And the second thing is that the chat dialogue conversation can be recorded at -- included in the reporting of the session, but in the same which way in which reporting of the session has always been:  In anonymized format, in a way in which it captured the content but not necessarily identifying who said what.

 So I think those are two things that are relatively covered already in what we were suggesting in a hybrid format, but I encourage you as MAG member who have a particular concern on this point to review the current text of the frequent asked questions and to make suggestion to complement what is there and to cover whatever vacuum can be in this subject there.

 Thank you very much.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks.  Thanks, Maria Paz.

 And I think what we also need to confront, and I think we increasingly are doing so, but that when the IGF started, it started with the spirit of the Chatham House Rule.  And that was considered a very powerful instrument to ensure multistakeholder dialogue without anyone feeling they could be held accountable.  If they're from government, you know, that they would be held account for having a formal mandate for saying what they say.  And the Chatham House Rule was something that really facilitated open engagement in the IGF, but we lost it because it's very, very difficult to maintain the Chatham House Rule using the platforms that we use these days.

 And I know there are people that are experimenting with platforms that anonymize contributions and participation.  That comes with other concerns about feeling safe.

 So I think as many of you have said, that this way of meeting is -- we're still actually just at the starting point of working out how to have effective hybrid multistakeholder dialogue.  So a lot more to learn and a lot to consider.

 And Maria Paz's request to the MAG, the MAG working group - hybrid, to revisit some of these points, please let's note that.

 And our final speaker for this morning's segment or this first segment of the meeting is Courtney Radsch.  Courtney, please go ahead.

 

>>COURTNEY RADSCH:   Thank you so much.  This is Courtney Radsch, MAG member for the record.

 I think it was really interesting to hear your comment about how the IGF used to be held under Chatham House and just kind of the different modalities of communication that have evolved over time and what that enables in terms of types of conversation and people participating.  But I think there have been a few really good ideas thrown out here, including indicating when someone is making a comment for the record or to be read out, you know, in -- in a voice during the session versus just wanting to participate.

 And I just find the chat really dynamic for encouraging participation, both, again, like in the room, people are chatting on the side with each other, not necessarily, you know, wanting to intervene but want to go just kind of make that point.

 So to -- to -- well, one suggestion and one question, which is I know the Working Group on Hybrid Meetings has really thought through a lot of this, so I think taking on board some of the suggestions that have been made here and thinking about how you make this hybrid participation really meaningful regardless of how you're participating, but not necessarily trying to be equal.  And then also thinking about whether the platform we're going to use will enable, you know, chat and Q&A so that a lot of events that I've done, we've had actually many panelists.  You know, I've attended and moderated where we've had many panelists and chat function and were able to integrate all of that.  And then sometimes they'll have a Q&A function that's activated as well as a chat function with the understanding that the person moderating the discussion is going to look at the Q&A, and the chat is a place for those more informal comments, you know, first-takes, some things to be made.

 So I don't know if the Working Group on Hybrid Meetings has sorted that out yet, but that would be helpful to think about as well.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks very much for that, Courtney.

 There's one very distinct advantage that the virtual participants have which I don't have, which is having to take off and put your mask on the whole time.  So my apologies if that's distracting to everyone.

 Tereza, I think you be you can have the last word on this.

 

>>TEREZA HOREJSOVA:   Thank you very much.  Tereza Horejsova, MAG member.

 On whether the chats -- or maybe let me start.  Online moderator for the chat is absolutely essential.  I hope that no session organizer will aspire that the moderator of the session itself, the one asking questions to speakers will handle the job of the chat moderation.  We've heard some vigorous numbers today of how many people will be attending.  Hopefully they'll be contributing very actively, and it's just beyond control.  So Joyce referred to it as this curating of what is happening in the chat.  You need to have a dedicated person for that.

 Now, on the question on whether the chat is public and whether the Working Group on Hybrid Meetings can clarify that, it's -- I don't think this is our call to decide on whether the chat is public or not.  I understand personally the IGF is an open meeting in the sense that anybody can register, attend.  We have reports from every single session which also attribute kind of who said what.  If a speaker "A" argues for something, it's reflected in the chat session.  If somebody intervenes in the session, makes a point, they introduce themselves.

 So I'm a little bit confused on this point.  I would be very happy to discuss with other (indiscernible), of course, the full working group on maybe giving some advice on the operational details.  Like, for instance, what I said:  Have a dedicated moderator for that.  But I do not think this is our call and our decision.  And if this is the case -- if, for instance, the IGF and the chat should be in Chatham House -- can we please get it clarified.

 We also covered in the FAQ document that only certain sessions, the very ceremonial ones, will be in the webinar format where you cannot actually see the traffic going on in the chat, but all of the other sessions on Zoom will be happening in the meetings format where everybody can see who says what as long as they register with their correct name, which I think is the practice.

 So a bit confused here.  And thank you in advance for clarifying it.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks for that question, Tereza.  I'll try to clarify to the extent that I have.  The Chatham House Rule would still apply to session reports.  So when a session organizer compiles their session report, I'm not sure if it's explicit in the guidelines, but they would generally not be asked to attribute specific positions or inputs to specific individuals.  And certainly the secretariat and the chair's summary that is produced of the event also does not attribute specific positions or comments to specific people.

 The fact that we have a transcript that does attribute by implication has been existing for a long time.  It's not -- it's there.  It's a reality and we have to work with this.

 I think the point about the chat was a proposal that should the chat be recorded or kept or stored as part of the record of the meeting, that comments should be anonymized.  I don't think that was a decision.  It was a proposal.  It needs to be discussed from both a technical perspective as well as a procedural perspective.

 I think what we did agree is that the chat and the record of the chat will be made available to session organizers so that they can draw on those in their reports.

 We also need to keep in mind that we'll be using hashtags and Twitter as well as another input this year.  So -- and in fact, we won't be the only people who are doing that.  Many events are having to deal with this sort of multiple levels of input.

 I think the point that we should take away from this morning's discussion is that we need clearer guidelines.  We need information that we can share that can make transparent to participants how these different modalities work and what the implications are.  And we've been reassured by someone on the chat that one-on-one, private chat in an online meeting platform, is not recorded.  So that is -- I'm not sure if that's always the case with all platforms.  I would question that it's always the case, but that's something else -- that's something else that we do need to consider.

 And then further point that we have to close now and we are perfectly on time, which I love, my South African control-freak character loves that, is the multilingual aspect of the IGF.  It was raised by some -- several people in the chat that that is something that we still need to grow.  And I think that when we look at improving and strengthening the IGF over time, looking at using different technologies but also other mechanisms for being more language diverse remains something that is extremely important.

 So I think that is it.  I won't go back to the chat.  It's very, very busy, but I'm worried that if I -- let me just check if I'm missing anything.

 I need a co-moderator, and I'll organize one for the after-lunch session.

 It's evolving continuously.  And Roberto has graciously posted his proposal in the chat.

 So thanks very much, everyone, for your participation and whatever medium or mechanism.  I'm even trying to read facial expressions behind the masks in the room.  It all makes a difference.

 And I look forward to seeing you after lunch, which will start at 1300 UTC, the next session.

 Good-bye, everyone.  Thanks.

 And did you have any further remarks?  I'm just checking --

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   No.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   -- with Przemyslaw or -- nothing further at this point?

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:   No, no.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Okay.  The session is now closed.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   I did see a little bit of confusion.  2:00 in this room for those who are here.

 [ Break ]

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Ladies and gentlemen, we'll start in two minutes.  We'll start in two minutes.

 Ladies and gentlemen, can we please take a seat?  We're about to start the afternoon session.

 Thank you very much.  As usual, just a reminder we are being recorded.  It's going to be posted onto our YouTube channel.  There is a transcript.  Transcript is going to be available after this meeting.  If you would like to request the floor, please use the speaking queue.  If you are unable to use the speaking queue, you can just send a message into the chat and then we'll add you onto the speaking queue.

 When the chair calls your name, please state your name and organization.  Or if you're speaking in your individual capacity, you can just state you are speaking in your individual capacity.  I think that's it.

 And with that, I'll just, first of all, give it to our chair, Anriette Esterhuysen, to start the afternoon session.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thank you very much, Chengetai.

 And thanks to everyone for coming back after your meal break, irrespective of what meal you had in whatever time zone you had -- you are in and for joining us again.

 And actually I will be handing back to Chengetai.  We have a fantastic opportunity and moment, at the moment, it's been long in coming.  We're going to look at the new IGF website which has been made possible through very generous support for the U.K. government.  Our colleague, Paul Blaker, who worked with us in the IGF and in other Internet governance spaces -- he's not here with us but his colleagues are, Nigel Hickson and Ryder Thomas.  Welcome to Seb Kay from the U.K. mission in Geneva who will be working with us over the coming years.  

 Take us through the process, through the ceremony, the presentation.

 I'm going to sit back and hand over to Chengetai.  And I think we will start with the Under-Secretary-General's message.  

 Back to you, Chengetai.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you very much, Anriette.  And just before we start, I'd just like to thank everybody who has been involved.  As Anriette said, it wouldn't be possible without the contribution from the U.K. government but also it was a community effort.  Everybody in the community was involved.  We had the dynamic coalition on accessibility coming in, giving us accessibility pointers and also the national and regional initiatives and all the other parts that make up the IGF come in and give their wish list and their points of view.  So thank you for them.

 So, first of all, with the official launching of the website, we will first hear from our Under-Secretary-General of UN DESA, Mr. Liu Zhenmin, if this works.

 Okay.

 

>>MR. LIU ZHENMIN:  Excellencies, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I join you virtually today in marking an important milestone for the Internet Governance Forum, the launch of a new website.  Improvements in IGF's online presence has long been called for.  We're indebted to the government of the United Kingdom for responding to these calls.

 I have learned His Excellency Mr. Simon Manley, U.K.'s Permanent Representative to the U.N. in Geneva is in the room with us today.

 Your Excellency, I believe I can speak on behalf of the entire IGF community as I express our deep gratitude to the United Kingdom for your generous contribution.

 These has made it possible to not only improve the look and feel of IGF website but also to transform it into a truly collaborative platform.  The MAG and IGF community can use it to advance its annual meeting preparations and intersessional work.

 I'm especially pleased to note that the website has been built with accessibility in mind.  Indeed, that is a priority at the United Nations.  And here I wish to thank the dynamic coalition on accessibility and disability for their valuable contribution.

 I also thank everyone who has contributed ideas and suggestions during the consultations organized by the IGF secretariat.

 I trust that website in its new form will respond better to the needs of the IGF community.  Beyond serving as an entry point to information about IGF, the new portal will be a useful tool in facilitating communication and collaboration among stakeholders, promoting IGF, and making it easier for everyone to participate in IGF processes.

 Along with the website, I understand we are also launching a mobile app.  This will allow easy access to all relevant information about IGF including the annual IGF meetings.

 With congratulations to the IGF team and the community on this achievement and with thanks to the United Kingdom government, I now give back the floor to you to present the website and IGF app.  I thank you.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you very much. With that, I would like to give the floor to Ryder Thomas from the U.K. government to say a few words.

 

>>RYDER THOMAS:  Thank you very much, Chengetai.  Good afternoon.  Thank you, Chair.  And thank you to the Under-Secretary-General.  Unfortunately, Ambassador Manley has been unavoidably detained, so I am delivering this statement on his behalf.  

 Chair, I'm delighted to be here today representing United Kingdom, a proud financial donor to the development of the Internet Governance Forum's new website.

 The IGF is a vital global forum for discussing Internet governance and for developing and sharing best practice on a wide range of Internet and cyberpolicy issues.  The U.K. fully supports the IGF's mission to foster the sustainability, security, stability, and development of the Internet, strengthening capacities of all those who use it through its multistakeholder approach.

 The IGF will better meet these important objectives by having a website that is more accessible, interactive, collaborative and dynamic for its users.

 The new platform is more user friendly for those with disabilities and those who do not speak English.  And it is more accessible to people across the world who rely on using mobile devices for Internet access.  

 The platform will allow more people in more countries to contribute to and benefit from the important work that the IGF does.  It will also strengthen the role of the IGF as the global multistakeholder forum to facilitate the exchange of information and best practice, not least in discussions in the run-up during the General Assembly decision of the renewal of the WSIS mandate and the renewal of the IGF in 2025.

 The new website fully accords with recommendations made in the report of the U.N. Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation which calls for the IGF to be further strengthened.  

 The United Kingdom believes it is only right that the IGF, a true champion of a free, open, and secure Internet, itself has advanced an accessible platform from which to deliver its important work.  And we echo the Under-Secretary-General's congratulations.

 Thank you, Chair.  If I may, I will hand to my colleague, Nigel Hickson.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Please, Nigel.

 

>>NIGEL HICKSON:  Yes.  Thank you very much.  Nigel Hickson, U.K. Department of Digital Culture and Media and Sport.  I'll be very brief.  Thank you, Ryder.

 First of all, I would just like to pay tribute to the various people behind this initiative and for the hard work that taken place, as acknowledged by the U.N. Assistant Secretary-General, both in the IGF secretariat and in other parts of the U.N. and also back in London, our colleagues from the cabinet office and my colleague Anna Golden who has been spearheading this project from DCMS and who can't be here today.  

 And Paul Blaker who was kindly mentioned earlier sends his regards to all and is very pleased that this project has reached fruition.

 Madam Chair, this is more than a website, as Ryder has said.  Websites are no longer websites, which might sound quite odd -- a rather odd statement, but some of us remember the early incarnations of websites which were essentially vehicles for information.  I remember a previous minister of mine got very excited when he found a bakery in Yorkshire that was increasing its orders on its telephone line for bread from people across the world.  And they had no idea.  They thought the website might attract people from the next town down the road.  But when they got orders from bread from across the world, they wondered what was going on.

 Of course we all take websites for granted.  But this IGF communication vehicle, portal, call it what we will, is going to be of such importance as we move forward as, of course, the existing communication vehicle is.

 As we look forward to the renewal of the WSIS mandate in 2025, we see the website as being a vital collaboration tool, a tool that can bring stakeholders together, a tool that can share best practices from the various national and regional initiatives, this incredibly important growth that is -- this growth of communication and national and regional initiatives that has enabled so many to take advantage of the multistakeholder governance processes that didn't have access to them before.

 And this collaboration on the site, hopefully as we move towards the General Assembly debate, is going to show all countries, going to show all stakeholders of the deep vein of collaboration, cooperation that goes on in the IGF family.

 So it's really a great pleasure that we are able to contribute in some way to this launch today.  Thank you.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you very much, Nigel.  I would like to hand it over now to Luis from the secretariat -- he is -- he was actually the point person, day-to-day communication with the web developers and keeping everything on track and on time -- to show us the new website.  

 So, Luis, please.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Luis, I just want to make a very quick remark.  Nigel, I hope the new website attracts a lot of bread for the IGF.

 [ Laughter ]

 On that note, thanks again very much to the U.K. government for providing the support.

 

>>LUIS BOBO:  Thank you very much, Chengetai, Madam Chair.

 So here is the new website.  So you may see the look and feel has changed a lot, more modern with the standard practices today for websites.

 It is also intended for you to easily still navigate it because the navigation setup has not changed so much so you can still find here the top menus about the IGF 2021, about the intersessional activity initiatives, reports, the calendar, et cetera.

 However, you can see behind this much more powerful features.  So the features we had before are much more powerful now.  For example, when you look for reports here, you will be able to see them ordered with different aspects, as this was a request from the community.  For example, the multilingualism applies to the whole website now, using artificial intelligence algorithms.

 Let's see a little bit the front page.  So this is first slide so with probably the most important news, information.  But then the regular social connections to the different channels of the IGF and the possibility to easily connect to the newsletter -- IGF newsletter from here.

 Then we will have here a section of the news, the most important news of the moment.  And you can always see all the news as you did before, the previous news.

 Then we have here a section about the IGF itself with this design, so with quick links here.  But, of course, there is also a specific landing page for the IGF.  Has the same -- more or less, it's basically the same structure as last year's IGF page -- landing page that was successful with the different sections here, at-a-glance, articles, the access to the thematic tracks, the different formats of the IGF, the different cross-activities of the IGF.

 Youth, then a section for the future outputs, the Village, and the high-level sections with access to the different speakers, high-level speakers' profile.

 And if we go on with the main page of these issue areas of the year as well, featured articles, and then this -- for example, this quick search elements were a request from the community.  For example, to specifically search for transcripts of past years of just sessions and session records or just search in the calendar or search the different NRIs, national and regional initiatives, in the map.  

 We have information here with the donors.  Then quick access links to the different cross-site sections as Best Practice Forums, initiatives, policy networks this year, proceedings, DCs, et cetera.

 Social wall are the different social channels we have, and content from previous IGFs.

 There's also a good -- so it's not surprise anymore, but a good advance is this website is going to be linked to the new IGF mobile app.  It's already prepared; just missing to be launched today to the markets.  It will be done in the next days, in the following days, shortly.  And basically this mobile app is an access, a personal access to the different, most important sections or features of the website.  The most personal one, for example, from there you will easily be able to request the floor in meetings using the speaking queue or book a room for the next IGF or register very quickly to any of the different sessions and create your own calendar and have notifications of that.

 I hope this will be a success.  Most of you can download it in your devices.

 That's more or less the login.  So this is a continuation so -- of the current website.  So you don't need to create a new user.  The same community will have users already created here.  All the content has been transferred to this website, so the sessions are already here for IGF 2021, et cetera.  But the login is still closed.  We will open it next Monday.  We will wait until these Open Consultations and MAG meeting to use the new website and from next Monday your login will be done directly on this website.  We will keep, still, the previous website open for reference, but the login will be done here.  So all your activity, you should do it here.

 So just advancing.  So the website has been tested, et cetera, but of course we kindly ask for your patience.  If you find any issues, please tell us, tell me.  I am the main point of contact for the IGF website.  If we need to quickly fix something that we have missed or something that maybe could work better, these are the first days, so thank you for your patience, but I'm sure that the process will be smooth.  And for the IGF 2021, it will be a success in the usage of all these features together with the mobile app.

 So you can all navigate it now.  It's here in d8.intgovforum.org.  From next Monday, we will already have the regular URL as www.intgovforum.org pointing here.

 I think that's all.  Thank you, Chengetai.  If there are any questions...

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Thank you very much, Luis.  Does anybody have any questions or comments?  We can take them now.

 So the website will be available.  Starting Monday, the regular URL will be going towards it, but you can look at it right now by just d8.intgovforum.org.

 The app, it's ready.  It's now just making its way through the approval process for the iOS and the Google stores, and you'll be able to download it.  And it's not just for the IGF 2021 meeting, but you'll be able to get our newsletters and our -- you know, download documents and our messages as well from the mobile app.  And you'll be able to -- the "Hand Up" app that we were talking about, you can do it through the app and also through the website.

 

>>CARLOS AFONSO:   Yes.  Can you hear me?  

 Hello?

 Can you hear me?

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   We still can't hear you, Carlos.

 

>>CARLOS AFONSO:   Uh-oh.  Yes -- the transcribers.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   I think he needs to be unmuted.  There's a problem on our end.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   It's here.

 Oh, and just to let you know, we will be using Zoom, not Webex, for our meeting, so...

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Not (indiscernible) --

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Yes, yes.  This is the first time we've used Webex or our meetings in a while, but our usual product is Zoom and we're very familiar with that.  We're just not as familiar with how Webex works.

 

>>CARLOS AFONSO:   Okay?  Can I talk now?

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Yes, we can hear you now.

 

>>CARLOS AFONSO:   Great.  Well, first of all, congratulations for this new portal for the IGF.  It was really badly needed to show not only the current events related to the IGF --

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Now we can't hear you.  Yes, freezing.

 

>>CARLOS AFONSO:   Freezing?

 I will post in the chat, okay?

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Let's go to Giacomo, and then we'll come back to Carlos.

 

>>GIACOMO MAZZONE:  Yes.  My question is very simple.  It's for updating the current documents on the area of the workshop or other things, which procedure we have to adopt today and from Monday?  Will be can until Monday use the old ones or we have already to move to the new one?

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Luis?

 

>>LUIS BOBO:   Happy to answer that.  It's completely transparent.  So until Monday you just use the current website.  All changes will be integrated in the new website.  So basically we will need some frozen time when we do the transition.  Monday early morning will be, okay?  But everything you do will be not lost, will be transferred to the new website, and you will be able to log in one site or, after Monday, in the other site and you will find your changes.

 Thank you.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Thank you, Luis.  That's okay?  Okay.  Great, Giacomo.

 Let's see if Carlos has managed --

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   It was the same question.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Great.

 

>>CARLOS AFONSO:   Yes, trying again.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Does anybody else have any questions?

 

>>CARLOS AFONSO:   Hello?

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Joyce Chen is in the speaking queue.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Joyce.

 

>>JOYCE CHEN:   Hi, are you able to hear me?  Hello?

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   We see you, Joyce, but we don't hear you.

 

>>JOYCE CHEN:   Okay.  I think your audio probably has not sorted out because the remote participants are able to hear Carlos and myself.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Yes, I think that is true of the would it be possible for you to type in your question?  And apologies about this.

 

>>JOYCE CHEN:   Sure.  Another thing I can do is I can just speak and then have the record on the transcript instead of my typing it.

 So I'm just going to go ahead.  I wanted to say a big congratulations to the secretariat and --

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   For those of you in the room, if you follow, we have a technical issue.  The participants who are online only can hear.  Just follow the transcript.  It's the best way of being able to follow at this point.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Yes, please speak.  I'll just read from the transcript, yes.  Thank you, Joyce.

 

>>JOYCE CHEN:   Thanks, Anriette, and thanks, Chengetai.  I'll just start again.

 I wanted to say a big congratulations to the secretariat and especially to Luis for a job well done.  I think the website looks fantastic, for it to be updated.

 I think it's very important, especially if we want an IGF that is situated in 2021, to have a website that also looks like it is in the 2021.  So I'm very pleased.  And I'm also very appreciative of the efforts that the secretariat have put in to consult the MAG, to consult the community about, you know, what would be useful to have on the website.  And I hope that those requests have been reflected in the new website.

 I haven't had a chance to really navigate the website yet, but I will go in, and I will fiddle around with it.

 I just want to say congratulations again, and thank you very much to the UK government for your financial support for making this happen.  And I think if we were all in the same room in person, this is the time when we would have a round of applause just for a job well done.

 Thank you.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Yes, I think we should.

 [ Applause ]

 Thank you very much, Joyce.  And to answer the question about the app, we would say that the latest that the app will be available in the stores would be in four weeks' time.  But we think it's going to be available much, much sooner than that.  I'm just giving the four weeks' time, but it will be available November definitely it's going to be available, and you'll be able to use it in December as well.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Chengetai, there's also a question about whether the portal is compliant with the web accessibility initiative, the WC3, the latest WC3 recommendations.  As far as I know it is, but Luis is busy right now.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Yes, since Luis is busy, yes, it should be compliant.  We made sure it was.  And Luis also had a focus group with the Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility.  So I do trust that it is compliant.

 Not the app, but the portal does have the ability of working on documents, especially some of these will be MAG features to help the MAG in their work.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:   Thanks very much, Chengetai.

 I want to echo the thanks that have been given to Luis, to the secretariat.  It is -- A website transition is always extremely challenging.  There are always some glitches.  I think we should all be prepared for them and not panic when we encounter them, and just share our experience of the new portal with the team.  Websites are living creatures that need to grow and improve, and they really only improve as we use them.

 And I think the background to this new website, which goes back to Paul Blaker first taking the leadership to facilitate this, is because the IGF is a community that works collectively across different platforms and languages and time zones.  And I know and many of you -- the MAG members know how challenging it is for us to work with a mix of Zoom and teams, Webex today which has added new complexities, Google Docs.  And I think what we've also encountered recently is the difficulty, the generational challenges.  There are those of us who are used to mailing lists, for example, but now younger people are used to apps.

 So I think what this portal is going to give the IGF community is a -- is a common interface that brings together a variety of functionalities which we currently -- fulfilling -- the need for which we are fulfilling with multiple platforms.

 So really look forward to this.  And just I think the time -- it felt like it took a long time to get it going, but actually these projects take a long time.

 So thanks very, very much again to Luis.  I know I'm repeating it, but I look forward.  And the incoming MAG chair I hope will really enjoy having this portal and this interface for the MAG to use as a collaborative work platform.

 So to take us back to our agenda -- sorry.  Przemyslaw and I, the co-chairs, are scrambling between paper.  I forgot to mention paper is also part of our reality.

 We are now going on to the session of -- there's an open mic somewhere -- update from IGF intersessional activities and the national, regional, and youth IGF initiatives.  And then we'll have a discussion on -- on these, and we have some new facilities.

 So first we'll hear from NRIs.  And we'll run the session in the following way:  We'll have an update from Anja Gengo, the secretariat, person responsible for national, regional, and youth IGF initiatives.  We'll then open it to the floor for discussion.  And then we'll go on to the other intersessional activities:  Best Practice Forums, dynamic coalitions, and policy networks.

 So, Anja, if you are ready, please go ahead.

 

>>ANJA GENGO:   Thank you very much, Madam Chair.  And, yes, as you said, I will give a brief update on the status of recognized NRIs until today, and also on the collective efforts of the NRIs to present themselves at the 16th annual IGF in Poland in Katowice.

 So currently the number of recognized national, regional, youth, subregional IGFs is 137.  We have two information, and it is expected that very soon we'll have two more national IGFs recognized.  I'll just hint that they are coming from the African region, and very soon the community will be informed about the exact name of the countries and communities that will be recognized.

 The latest NRI that's been recognized is the subregional IGF for Southeast Asia, which hosted the very successful meeting just a few very -- a few weeks back.

 So geographically speaking, as you can see the map continues to be updated as the new NRIs emerge.  And regionally -- geographically speaking, I think we have a solid balance of especially national IGFs.  And where we have missing national IGFs, a special recognition really goes to the efforts of the subregional and regional IGFs to bridge these gaps and ensure that all people living in these regions are part of the Internet Governance Forum processes.

 Overall, speaking, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose challenges to the NRI meetings as well as to I guess all of us, but the NRIs are coping well.  Over 65 of the NRI annual meetings are confirmed so far, and you can see which ones if you visit the IGF calendar.  Most of the meetings are hosted in a hybrid format, which means that there is an on-site component added to the online component of the meeting.  But during the, especially, first quarter of the year, the majority of the NRIs, indeed, hosted their meetings completely online due to the epidemiological situation in their countries.

 The good thing, I think, what this year sow is innovations in terms of the intersessional work at the NRI levels.  So the formats are changing.  You can see some of the NRIs hosting a series of online events throughout the year, in addition to growing number of schools on Internet governance, various courses and seminars.

 In parallel to the NRI processes happening on individual level, 137 NRIs collectively work on organizing five NRI collaborative sessions which are, as you can see on the screen, focused on different -- different topics.

 In addition to the collaborative sessions, there is the main session of the NRIs, the planning is under way, but the indication so far as per the bottom-up discussions of the NRIs is that the focus of it will be on looking at the Internet and digital policy in the context of resilience, sustainability, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

 And, finally, the NRIs' coordination session has a traditional work meeting between all NRIs, everyone interested in the community to engage more with the NRIs, as well as the United Nations parties involved in the IGF project implementation, the MAG chair, and the MAG, will be also hosted in the framework of the 16th IGF.  

 This year, the plan is to host it on Day Zero, so at the very beginning of that meeting.  And we will see how this small experiment, moving it from traditionally hosted on the last day to the very beginning, will work.  But it is expected that it would allow for more networking opportunities among the NRIs and the broader community.  

 For this session, likewise, the planning is underway, but it is now expected, after a series of discussions the NRIs had over a couple of months, is that the agenda will focus on sustainability of the NRIs in its various forms as well as how to make the NRIs individually and collectively more policy impactful.

 And in addition to preparing a number of these sessions that I mentioned, the NRIs collectively worked with the IGF secretariat since the beginning of this year on trying to map the mechanisms for better engagement of parliaments and governments into the NRI processes.  This resulted in a brochure that's being developed earlier in this year.  But its translation is ongoing, and so far, it's been translated to nine different languages, thanks to the really voluntary efforts of different NRI coordinators and their community members.  And I use this opportunity once again to thank them.

 This brochure already is giving good results.  I wish to especially thank the coordinator of the Dominican Republic IGF, my colleague Osvaldo, for bringing it to the attention of their parliament there and with that resulting in having some parliamentarians already engaged with the IGF secretariat discussing about their further engagement in the parliamentary track.

 So by the end of the year, it is expected that the NRI publications will again emerge, especially the compendium of the NRI discussion topics in this year and some analytical work on how that compares to the previous two years and the compendium that's been done last year, just to understand where is the shift in global digital policy and if there is one, from the NRI's perspective, and what was the focus of various countries and regions which went through IGF-like processes throughout this year.  

 The youth IGFs especially are engaged into the youth engagement track of this year, which was mentioned a couple times, also by our host country colleagues, with the strong enrollment of the Polish youth IGF as, I can say, a host for all young people in Katowice.  The youth summit will feature also a number of youth IGFs being involved there.  

 So with that, I'll just, in closing, also note that in addition to this status overview, the capacity development process of the IGF 2021 and the IGF secretariat is very much working in close cooperation with the NRIs.  

 This morning, we mentioned the capacity development workshops, and they are implemented and delivered in close cooperation with the NRIs.  The upcoming one will be with SEEDIG, and we are working together with our colleague Olga there on a very interesting workshop on which you will be informed very soon.  And then we will start preparing for one on the African IGF before we all meet in Katowice.  

 So with that, I thank you for your attention.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Anja.  

 And just also to commend Anja for her extraordinary work in staying in touch with so many NRIs, convening regular calls, responding to individual requests for support, and maintaining an active flow of information to the community and between the NRI community and the MAG and the global IGF.

 Are there any comments or questions?  

 We have an echo in the room.  I'm sorry.  

 Luis, I'm sorry that you have to deal with this.  

 Any questions for Anja?  Are there any participants from NRIs who would like to contribute?

 I see a hand from Giacomo Mazzone.  

 Giacomo, please go ahead.

 

>>GIACOMO MAZZONE:  It was an old one.  Sorry

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks.

 It was an old hand from Giacomo.  

 I don't see any hands, but I have a question for you, Anja.  At the start of this year's IGF planning, the MAG, partly in response to the recommendations from the MAG Working Group Strategy -- we have some of the MAG Working Group Strategy co-chairs here -- articulated the goal to try and integrate NRIs more closely with the IGF's intersessional work.  To some extent, that also happened last year, and it's not entirely new.  Of course, that's always been the aim.  

 But what has been your experience?  Has that added more complexity?  Has it worked?  What would you say has been the achievements, but also the challenges in integrating or connecting NRIs more closely with the issues, the content identified by the MAG, but also the intersessional activities, including the new ones, the policy networks?

 

>>ANJA GENGO:  Yes.  Thank you very much, Madam Chair.  That's a very good question.  And it's an ongoing effort between the NRIs, between the IGF's intersessional work streams, the IGF secretariat, and the MAG, of course, to find mechanisms which would save time on all sides since the NRIs, I think, are facing really a burden in terms of the time commitments to their regular work, in addition to what's a voluntary, for majority, work in terms of the NRIs' engagement.

 So as I said, for us, it's really an ongoing discussion.  So far, as the NRIs' focal point, I'm very satisfied with the responses received from the NRIs, to the -- especially to policy networks, the new ones, but also the best practice forums, their responses to the calls for contributions in various forums.  

 But I do think that the major issue is the time, and I refer especially to a recent discussion I had with the NRIs when there was -- there were some discussions about the NRIs being maybe more represented collectively in the preparatory and engagement phase, which basically resulted in a consensus that the NRIs are just overburdened with the already existing tasks related to the IGF directly, in addition to the NRIs' individual processes, and in addition, of course, to their regular work.  So the coordinators and members of the organizing committee.

 So I think what needs to be done, this -- obviously, it's difficult to provide a concrete response to that.  But I do think we need to find ways where we will get more from the NRIs without asking them physically or intellectually to spend time more than they're spending already time with us.  And for that, some of the colleagues already advised having resource -- well, having a source of information on all the NRIs from where the intersessional work colleagues, so the facilitators, could go and get what they need rather than asking the contributors to respond to long surveys, send long emails, write, and so on, would be probably very efficient for us as well as for the NRI coordinators, just because that -- those materials already exist.  The matter is just putting them in one place and making them accessible.  

 Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much for that response, Anja.  

 I don't see anyone else in the speaking queue.  

 Przemyslaw, is there anything in the chat?

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Yes.  There's only one suggestion, from (saying name) -- sorry, from Mark Carvell to Anja on -- on his -- on promoting NRI's awareness and raising and networking if the new website would provide more detail in the links it provides to individual NRI meeting and events.  And national and regional steering committees and organizers should consider how to raise their individual profiles and main areas of policy focus through the global IGF portal.  That's the suggestion from Mark.  

 Thank you.

 

>>ANJA GENGO:  Yes.  Thank you very much to Mark.  And I see Mark is saying that he can speak to this more.  

 So if you want, Mark, to elaborate --

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Mark, if you're willing to, please do take the floor and elaborate.

 

>>MARK CARVELL:  Yes.  Thank you very much.

 I've got an echo, I think.  Is that me?

 

>> Microphone and audio should be turned off, please.

 

>>MARK CARVELL:  Speaking to this integration -- 

 

>>Sir, your audio needs to be turned to zero on your laptop.

 

>>MARK CARVELL:  -- objective we have for the NRI networking and the global IGF.  And as we have the prospect of the new IGF website coming on scene very shortly, I think there's an opportunity, perhaps it's already considered, but the opportunity to provide more information about the national and regional IGF agendas.  

 It's been useful to have the links on the IGF website to national IGFs and regional IGFs.  But perhaps -- I found it challenging to try and find out synergies between different national and regional IGFs on specific issues.  And if the page of the new website provides more opportunity for individual steering committees and organizers of NRIs to say this is our priority for this coming year, this is the big issue for our stakeholders, and to make that visible, and then you can see where those shifts in priorities are happening elsewhere.  And that will inform the preparatory process, the thematic agenda-setting, if you like, for the global IGF.

 It seems to me there's a useful opportunity there to use the website to help reinforce the integration of the NRIs into the global system of multistakeholder governments.  

 I hope that's useful.  Thank you.

 

>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  (Off mike.)

 You can hear me?  

 

>> Yes.

 

>> Okay.  

 (Audio difficulties.)

 

>>ADAM PEAKE:  Are people asking that someone say something?  I seem to be saying something.

 

>> We can hear you well online.

 

>>ADAM PEAKE:  Okay.  Then I'll shut up again, or I'll start telling jokes, and everyone will definitely regret that.  Thanks.  

 I heard a very bad joke about -- related to Geneva, and it was a question about food.  So it follows on from Anriette's excellent comment earlier about bringing bread to the IGF.  But the question was, how do you make a Swiss roll?  Which, of course, is a very delicious probably not Swiss cake.  Anyway, how do you make a Swiss roll?  The answer is, push him down the hill.  

 Anyway, I do regret saying that, especially on a public transcript.

 

>> Okay.  I have one also but not for the transcript.  

 What did the -- what did the sushi say to the bee?

 

>> Sound check, WebEx, please.

 

>> Wasabi?  Wasabi.  Yeah, terrible food-themed jokes.

 

>> You may proceed.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much to our tech support and to Luis and to Adam for being our guinea pig.  

 I don't think we need to really re-cover the ground.  The point that I made which most -- not the participants who are not here probably did not hear, but it really was just that the task of integration needs to be tackled not just through creating additional work, but through the design of the IGF process.  And so that content and -- that informs the MAG's identification of issues to deal with, that that really is fed by the NRIs.  And also that it goes back the other way.  If there are issues discussed at the IGF that need further particularly localized engagement, then there should be a direct link from IGF outputs and reporting and outcomes into NRIs.  And I think this is the point that was made in the roadmap on digital cooperation.  It's a point that the MAG and the secretariat have been trying to realize and work with for a long time.  It's not simple, but it's doable.  

 And the website is intended to help facilitate that.  Whether it will be adequate will remain to be seen.  We have to work with it.  But that is what we would like to achieve.  So thanks very much to everyone for your contribution, and Anja, and thanks to all the NRIs.  

 I really want to commend the NRIs because the NRIs create a community that doesn't just organize activity at a national or a regional or a youth level.  What I feel is so powerful about the NRIs is that they are the sustainability of the IGF.  They create that ecosystem, the individuals, the institutions, the governments, the technical community, civil society, everyone who continues the discussion and really gives life to the idea of multistakeholder Internet governance processes.

 And whenever the IGF calls for input on anything, the NRIs are at the front of the queue.  So thanks very much to all the NRIs for your contribution.

 I don't see anyone else in the queue, not that I can see the queue, but I don't see any hands.

 I'd like to now give the floor to Sorina Teleanu and Markus Kummer to update us on dynamic coalitions.

 

>>MARKUS KUMMER:  Thank you, Anriette.  And hello to everyone.

 The dynamic coalitions' main focus was the paper we started to develop that would document their activities and also look into the future of where the dynamic coalitions might head to, also especially in the light of the Secretary-General's roadmap.

 This paper has been developed.  And many things to Sorina.  She did an excellent job on that.  And we have a fairly lengthy paper which collects all the input we received, mainly from dynamic coalitions but also from the broader community.  And maybe not everyone will read the full paper, but there is a section of the paper which is focusing on the key findings and on issues that deserve to be further explored.

 It has suggestions that came up for improving the cooperation.  And the paper has been circulated among the dynamic coalitions.  It was on the whole well-received, and it's also -- just to be clear, it's not a negotiated document but a paper documents the input received.  And it's not supposed to be a negotiated outcome document of a process but to rather document all the ideas that were received.  And we are now in the process of having a last round of input from the dynamic coalitions who will look at the paper and who will make their comments or maybe things that were left out.

 We had a call to discuss the paper, and there were some suggestions.  One suggestion was to focus maybe a little bit more on the forward-looking part and another one was to highlight a bit more clearly some key operational aspects like the management communication that would help coalitions that want to get started.  So that's something to build on.

 But I think the document will be very useful for the future IGF community as it documents where the dynamic coalitions come from and it collects also very useful, practical aspects of how to work as a dynamic coalition.

 And then the second aspect we focused on was how to prepare the main -- the traditional main session for this year's IGF.  As you all know, the dynamic coalitions, there are 22 active ones now.  And they have great variety, great diversity.  So it's not easy to bring them all under the same hat, but it was felt that one aspect of the main session should build on this paper -- on this DC paper and then to discuss on how the DCs can contribute to digital cooperation efforts and also to a more strategic and impactful IGF.

 And the other part of the session should focus on the issue areas.  Very much like to connect the DCs.  And when you look at the broad issue areas, one or the other dynamic coalition falls under that heading.  Now we're in the process of asking them to see whether they would like to contribute on this document.  It's still an open document, so that is a work -- process -- ongoing process.

 I think with that, I have given a very high-level overview.  And I would be grateful to my co-facilitator, Jutta or Adam, if they have another aspect they would like to highlight.  And, of course, Sorina who is most qualified to fill in the gaps I may have left out.  

 With that, I thank you for your attention.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Markus.

 And over to you, Sorina.

 

>>SORINA TELEANU:  Thank you, Anriette.  Thank you, Markus.  No, not much to add at this point other than saying that the paper, once it's done going through the review by the dynamic coalitions, will also be put for comments by the MAG members and the rest of the community.  So keep an eye on that from us, and we would be looking forward to your comments.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Sorina.  

 And special thanks to the dynamic coalition coordinating team, Markus Kummer and Adam Peake for the MAG and Jutta Croll from the previous MAG who work with Sorina to support the many dynamic coalitions that we have.

 I just want to urge everyone to look at the dynamic coalition pages.  Many of these dynamic coalitions produce annual reports that absolutely give -- they cover state-of-the-art issues.

 They are very topical, and they are often very in-depth.  So the value of the work that emerges from this community of practice -- community of communities of practice is really substantial.

 Now if there are no questions -- let's just check -- Luis, perhaps we should bring the speaking queue back into play just in case people are using it.

 Is it empty at the moment?  Jutta -- thanks very much, Przemyslaw.

 Jutta, you have requested the floor and you have it.

 

>>JUTTA CROLL:  Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for giving me the floor.  I just wanted to add that Sorina has really done an excellent job on putting all this information together.  And that is not only for the benefit of the existing dynamic coalitions.  I think it's of benefit to the whole IGF community.  

 And we -- once it's a final document, I really think it's helpful for anybody coming new to the IGF community or also people who are acquainted with the IGF but have not yet done a step in the direction of dynamic coalitions to better understand what role dynamic coalitions can play and are playing in the whole IGF ecosystem.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thank you.  Thank you, Jutta.  And thank you, co-chair, for being our chat.  We are putting our own learnings into practice.  So Przemyslaw is our chat moderator for the rest of the day.

 Now let's hear about best practice forums.  

 Wim, you have the floor.

 

>>WIM DEGEZELLE:  Thank you.  And I would ask Iombonana to try.  She wanted to present.  I don't know if she can hear us.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Iombonana, are you ready to take the floor?  It seems she cannot hear us.  Let's try, once again.  If not... if not, I can take over.  If there are specific questions, we can go back to Iombonana.  Let's look at the best practice forums on cybersecurity.  It is one of the two best practice forums this year.  It is focused on the use of norms to foster trust and security.  It builds on work done in the previous years.  It's actually already three years.  The best practice forum has been focusing on different aspects of norms and the ideas behind norms.

 This year, specific, once again, changes the perspective and make another step and looks at two things.  On the one hand, trying to look at drivers behind cybersecurity norms, to see if there's some ideas that can be collected there.

 And, on the other hand, try to look back, testing norms against what they actually are made for, to deal with deal with Internet -- cybersecurity events and security.

 So as you see on the current slide, it gives an overview of how this best practice forum works.  It actually has three work streams.  One mapping agreements.  Two on testing norm concepts.  And then the third one -- come back to that -- is on cooperation with other IGF initiatives.

 I will briefly zoom in, in what the activities has been done.  So, first, mapping of cybersecurity agreements.  Like I mentioned, it's a continuation of last year's mapping exercise, but it goes much wider.  This group has identified 36 different agreements.  So that's quite a number, 10, 12 agreements more than last year, which they're now trying to -- now analyzing and trying to come up with some ideas what are the different elements are in those agreements and what are conclusions that can be made.

 One of the things this work stream wants to do -- and I don't say it will work in the time left -- is try also to reach out to people that were around the table when some of those norms were being discussed and were put on paper and just go back with the question, what's actually the reason or what was -- were your expectations at the moment you put the agreement on paper and did the agreement fulfill what you were expecting.  But that is an exercise that is still ongoing, and we hope to have that finalized.

 Just for information, this is the list of agreements.  Don't force your eyes.  The presentation is available on the website, on the BPF website.

 Then I will jump to the second work stream.  Like I said, it is focusing on testing norm concept against Internet events.  There's a different group working on that.  What they actually did as a first step is trying to identify -- or they identified a number of real-life or existing cybersecurity issues and did some descriptive work, actually what was going on, what was happening.

 And now they are trying to move from a descriptive to a qualitative analysis.  They tried to identify some people that were directly involved in those events and ask those interviewees if a cybersecurity norm helped them in the situation they were in or if there would have been a norm, if it would have been helpful.  But, like I said, this is also work -- ongoing work.

 At this moment, there is not that much result to be shown.

 What I show now on the screen are the 11 cybersecurity incidents that currently have been selected by that group to try to work on and try to get some background and insight at the moment.

 And then there is a third work stream.  And I don't know if Markus wishes to take the floor or not.  Okay.  Then I'm happy to do it.  

 Specific for this year, there is a third work stream that is focusing on outreach and cooperation with other IGF activities and also other Internet governance activities with the idea to try and engage more people in the work of the BPF or also try to integrate the BPF work in the IGF program.

 I put some of the initiatives -- or some of the work this team has been doing.  And I refer to Markus, as Markus is one of the co-leads of this work stream 3.

 For example, there was outreach initiatives at EuroDIG but also involvement in the secretariat's capacity-building workshop.  But the team is, for example, also having a short update of giving an update at a workshop of the Paris call working group on advancing cyber norms tomorrow, or the day after.  

 So these are all ideas, trying to raise awareness on what the best practice forum is doing this year and involving people in the work of the best practice forum.

 So specifically for the last part, I think it's very important.  It's very useful also for the team to get suggestions from other areas, other events that are happening where the best practice forum should -- or could reach out to raise awareness.

 That's a short update.  I don't know if Iombonana or Markus want to add anything at this moment or if there are questions.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Iombonana, if you're able to and if you want to add anything, you could take the floor now.

 I think let's move on, and I will check in with her.  Iombonana is connecting to us from Madagascar.  She uses -- her Internet connection is often quite unstable.

 Back to you, Wim.

 

>>WIM DEGEZELLE:  I didn't check if there are any comments in the chat.

 If not, I pull up the updated slide for the best practice forum on gender and digital rights.

 But I think, Chenai, if she's online, will start the update.  And Amrita, who is in the room with us, will follow. 

 Just give me a second to change the slide.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  There is only one comment actually from Mark Carvell, that the dynamic coalition on standard, security, and safety welcomes the linking up on the BPF on cybersecurity.  It would be beneficial to do so.

 

>>WIM DEGEZELLE:  I know the dynamic coalition is definitely on the radar of Markus and Sheetal from work stream 3.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Wim, I just have to say, the fact that you're looking at integration at work stream 3 is perfect.  It's really very useful.  I think that can be helpful to the secretariat and to the policy networks, dynamic coalitions.  So very clear thinking on behalf of the BPF.

 We have Adam in the speaking queue, to, Wim, maybe you should pause a little bit.  I cannot see the speaking queue right now.  

 Adam, please go ahead.

 Thanks, Przemyslaw.

 

>>ADAM PEAKE:  Sorry.  Adam Peake speaking.  I just needed to take a call, so I might have missed something.  

 One of the things we spoke about in MAG meetings and the earlier consultation was trying to coordinate across -- yeah, I'm hearing a beeping and bit of noise.  I hope you can hear me -- to coordinate across the different -- trying to think how to describe them.  

 Anyway, across the NRIs, the dynamic coalitions, best practice forums, and then the latest would be the policy networks.  There's not always a direct overlap.  There's not always a dynamic coalition on the same issue as a best practice forum.  And there are only two policy networks.

 And there's also the youth IGF group.  And I wondered how we are progressing on making -- (no audio) -- and how they can take part or that the best practice forums are all aware of the youth and the expertise they bring on their issues, et cetera.  That does seem to be a way to ensure that we have a joining-up of these different parts of the IGF.

 Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Adam.  Your audio cut out a little bit but I think we did get most of that.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  There is one question actually from Amir Mokabberi.  What is the value added of the BPF for cyber norm-making process in the U.N.?

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks for that question.  

 And, Wim, can you respond to that, please?  

 

>>WIM DEGEZELLE:  I can give a brief response.  I would like to say from this BPF, I would say the BPF this year and the three or four years that it has been looking at cybersecurity norms, at a certain moment, it has been giving input in other U.N. processes, like the open-ended working group one, when it was possible as a BPF.  But I would not -- I would focus on the idea that one of the things that came out -- or that has been underlined by the best practice forum was actually the importance of multistakeholder involvement in both the making of norms and, on the secondhand the implementation of norms, the next steps, what comes after.

 And I think if you were to ask me what is one of the most important signals that came out of the work by the BPF, it's actually that message.  Multistakeholder involvement will help to build better norms because they're better, easier understood and there were less discussions.

 Also, when a norm is there, you need your different stakeholders to implement and to go from paper to real actions.  So that I would personally like to underline as lessons learned and value of this best practice forum.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Wim.

 I think we can go ahead.  There's a discussion in the chat, but I think we can go ahead.  It's just a point that Wout is saying that in order to present goals on -- to the youth proprietary phase and have a discussion with them.  

 And, Adam, I can also share from my own experience -- and this one's to your question -- that the youth sessions that have been held during the preparatory phase have included MAG member participation, it's included NRI participation.  And perhaps Anja can say a little bit more about that.  But so far, I think that the connection has been really active this year.  And the collaboration between the secretariat, myself, the host country, and intersessional activities and the youth IGF process has been really close.  So -- and thanks to all the MAG members who've made time to participate in those sessions.

 Wim, let's go back, because we are also running a little bit late now, so let's go back to the gender-based practice forum.

 

>>WIM DEGEZELLE:  I don't know if Chenai is ready to take the floor.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Chenai, please go ahead.

 

>>WIM DEGEZELLE:  If not, Amrita, are you?

 

>>AMRITA CHOUDHURY:  Hi, everyone.  Amrita here.  

 I will be presenting on behalf of the best practice forum on gender and digital rights.  And this year, we are focusing on gender disinformation.  

 While disinformation is being discussed, gender disinformation is quite a new topic which is being discussed.  So the basic idea was to actually understand the concept of gender disinformation, how it affects, what are its manifestations, and, you know, perhaps look at best practices which are being followed globally and to see how these best practices can be shared with different communities.  

 Of course, it was also -- you know, gender disinformation is a kind of violence, and we wanted to highlight, you know, how it manifests, how it affects women, you know, and gender-diverse groups, their existence and their freedom of expression.

 So what we went on -- and, obviously, our goals are to understand gender disinformation and how it is deployed as a strategy against women, to understand the negative consequences on digital rights and how it spills to other rights, such as political participation, and, you know -- and how it works on the citizenship and their rights.  And also map the strategies and actions to halt the spread of such disinformation and build a less toxic environment and showcase the positive initiatives.

 the Next slide, please.  

 So what we have been doing so far is, we tried to -- we had a few learning sessions with experts coming in and stakeholder discussions to actually explore the topic more in terms of understanding is it really an issue.  Do people think -- and who are the targeted audience.  Identify what could be the best practices output and contributions to this debate without -- the important part is not duplicating any work done by others.  We didn't want to do that.  And also prepare a summary report of our learnings so far on the -- on this particular concept, which we want to publish as the BPF.

 So during the learning sessions and -- on gender disinformation, what we actually looked at was, first, to understand the concept of gender disinformation.  Then look at disinformation and freedom of expression, its effect on journalist communities.  

 Then the third was the round table discussions and updates on the insights from the BPF participants on gender disinformation.  And they were people from across the globe and different age groups and stakeholder groups.  

 And then documenting the issues which are being faced by women leaders in terms of gender disinformation.  

 And the session 5 was gender disinformation, its impacts, and potential road maps to solutions.  

 So -- 

 The next slide.

 So what we are currently doing is, we are working on the draft report.  And here, I would urge all of you to have a look and share your views and comments.  We have been pin holders in different sections.  But if you have come across certain concepts or issues or even, you know, certain examples where certain things have been used by any state, any organization, that would be really helpful.

 So we have divided the report into an introduction, where we are talking about gender disinformation as a concept.  And then we are looking at the manifestation.  And we have felt, first of all, we were looking at woman human rights defenders, politicians, journalists.  But then when we were having the discussion last time, the, you know, stakeholders said, why not add (indiscernible) and even general people, how gender disinformation works in real life.  So we incorporated these as discussions.  

 And we would like to see some tried and tested (indiscernible) -- 

 (Multiple people speaking.) 

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  I muted the person.

 

>>AMRITA CHOUDHURY:  Thank you, Anriette.  

 And then we look at, basically, what could be the responses which various places have -- or various entities have used, and then recommendations.  

 So this is how we are looking at this.  In case any of you have any comments, please do share it with us.  We would definitely want to improve things as it goes.  And please do leave your comments.  It's -- it will be helpful, because it's a new topic.  

 And these are some of the time lines.  We have the next call on 14th of October, where we would be sharing an update and review of the draft report.  

 Then we have the -- on 4th November, we plan to have a final review of the BPF draft, followed by the publication.  

 And that's the BPF workshop details on 9th December at IGF 2021.  

 And on 20th of December, we want to have the final reports published.  

 But we really look forward to your contributions.  You come from different regions, nations, have seen it manifesting in different ways.  If you think we are missing something, please let us know.  And if you have some links also to share, please help us.  

 Thank you so much.  

 Wim, you can add more.

 

>>WIM DEGEZELLE:  I don't really have much to add.  One thing I would like to underline, that -- only underline that the summary of those five talks, learning talks we had with specialists, is already online.  And I think for -- if you're not familiar with the -- with the topic, it's worth a read, because it's very -- almost bullet-point reflection of different ideas.  So that's already there.  

 And then second time -- second thing, Amrita mentioned at the end, it's really a new topic.  At the last call we had, participants also warned, well, it's probably too early to start talking about best practices.  And that's why we, for the final -- or for draft report, we added a section, like, discussion on solutions or experiences with solutions.  And then see, next point in discussion, if it's already possible to identify best practices or not.  

 And then, most important probably, please contribute, join the mailing list, join the next call.  That's the most important part.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Wim and Amrita.  

 I see Courtney has the floor.  

 I just first want to commend the best practice forums.  And for newcomers, people who are in the open consultation -- 

 Courtney, I just -- and Wout, I don't know if that's an old or new hand.  

 Just for everyone's information, best practice forums have a MAG member or maybe sometimes two MAG members that lead the work, that work very closely with the consultants, Wim being the consultant in this case, Amrita Choudhury and Chenai Chair being the MAG members.  So in that sense, they're somewhat different from dynamic coalitions.  

 Dynamic coalitions receive support from the secretariat.  

 And there's the coordination group, which is voluntary, made up of Adam and Markus and Jutta.  But they really are bottom-up and community organized.  

 So these modalities are all a little bit different, and it can be quite complex to understand how they are different from one another.  But if you go to the intersessional activities section of the IGF website, you'll find a comparative table that explains very clearly what the different activities are and how they work.

 Courtney, you have the floor.

 

>>COURTNEY RADSCH:  Thanks so much.  

 I just wanted to add to the excellent description that was already provided of the work here.  

 I think one of the things that we, you know, are trying to do in this work is to really look at kind of categories and trends and not focus too much on individual cases.  A, because we want to understand how this applies around the world in different contexts and regions, but also to avoid any potential of kind of reemphasizing the abuse and just spend information operations against people who might be profiled in there.  So we're really looking for kind of emblematic cases, which we're then going to, I think, distill to kind of take out kind of identifying information.

 And then one of the things that also came up in the discussion was, you know, how this builds on previous work.  And there was a sense that it's the coordinated aspect that defines disinformation.  And I just think there's a very great opportunity for people to contribute what they know from their regional contexts and own experiences so that we can make sure that we do this right.  You know, there are a lot of efforts to kind of define disinformation and work on this topic.  And I think this community has a really valuable effort to help shape our understanding and approach to this topic.  So I just want to encourage everyone to jump in there.  

 Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Courtney.  I just wanted to add something I've encountered recently with other work that I've done with women human rights defenders, who shared they encounter a narrative of disinformation and -- along the lines that women and women's rights defenders are not concerned with cybersecurity, are not concerned with national security, are not concerned with national development issues.  So there's this narrative that's perpetuated quite deliberately that women's rights groups only care about women's rights and nothing else.  

 And so I can share more information about that, but that was a narrative of disinformation which was encountered very vigorously by those women's rights groups.

 

>> There's one question.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Przemyslaw, anything in the chat?

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Yes.  There is one question from -- again, from Amrita Choudhury.  

 Could we have a discussion on frameworks and mechanisms for annual reporting the situation of respecting human rights and digital rights by global digital platform in this BPF on digital rights?  

 Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Can you respond to that, please, Wim?  

 And then, Wout, we'll give you the floor.

 

>>WIM DEGEZELLE:  Brief reaction.  Well, it's -- I think the question, as it is, would rather be the topic for a follow-up best practice forum specific on the -- these frameworks and mechanisms for this type of reporting.

 One point that came up in the -- in one of the learning sessions was -- and it's related to the -- related to the question -- is actually the -- how -- or what frameworks and what mechanisms are in place for cases or to alert networks and platforms on cases of gender disinformation and how they would respond.  And so it is -- some part of the question he's asking is being looked at.  But the question as it is, really to look for frameworks and reporting ways on the topic, is something I think is -- would be, rather, for a completely different best practice forum.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks for that response, Wim.  

 Wout, you have the floor.

 

>>WOUT de NATRIS:  Trying to start the video.  But can you hear me?

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Yes, we can.

 

>>WOUT de NATRIS:  Okay.  The video is not starting.  Perhaps it will later.  

 Thank you, Anriette.  

 I want to ask a question to the MAG on behalf of the Dynamic Coalition on Internet standards and Security and Safety.  But in order to do so, I have to try and in one sentence explain what we tried to do.

 The main goal is to make the Internet safer through the more effective and rapid deployment of existing security-related Internet standards and ICT best practices.  We have three working groups, which I will for time --

 

>> (indiscernible) is not good.

 

>>WOUT de NATRIS:  Is it better this way?

 

>> (indiscernible) this huge scheduling (indiscernible).

 

>>WOUT de NATRIS:  Sorry?  

 Somebody was saying something.  (indiscernible) to me or not?

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  It's to you, Wout.

 

>>WOUT de NATRIS:  Okay.  Thank you, Anriette.  

 What I can say is that we have found substantive first funding for the dynamic coalition and that we have been able to come up with goals, which will be recommendations, guidelines, tool kits, and capacity-building programs into 2022 and '23.  

 But at this point in time, what we need are experts willing to work with us.  And Mark Carvell and I have been putting multiple hours upon hours to try and find communities.  And that is proving extremely hard.

 And the question to the MAG is, can we discuss somewhere in the coming days if there could be a role for the MAG to reach out to specific communities so that we actually can find the right experts to work with us?  Because at this moment, that is proving something that for two persons is too hard to do.  But for the rest, we are moving and progressing in a very successful way.  

 So that's a question, if we can discuss that somewhere in the coming two days together to see if there's a solution for this.  

 Thank you for the opportunity, Anriette.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Wout.  I would just -- in response to your question, I think if you have questions for the MAG or the secretariat, you can always channel them through the coordinating group and -- you know, who can pass them on.  But also, there will be an opportunity during the IGF preparatory phase where we have a day that's dedicated to intersessional work, where some of this exchange and questions and discussion between the different intersessional activities can take place.  And we'll hear more about that when we look at the preparatory phase tomorrow.  But that's precisely why we've scheduled that intersessional day.

 Is there a question in the chat, Przemyslaw, before we move on to policy networks? 

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Yes.  

 Have there been instances of cross-pollination between the intersessional working groups?  

 It's from Joyce Chen.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Joyce, that is a very interesting question.  And I think there probably has.  I mean, I -- 

 Wim, do you want to respond to that?

 

>>WIM DEGEZELLE:  I didn't see the full question.  

 Between the different intersessional work and other work going on?  I would -- I would say it's also continuing -- continuing work that is planned.  And I would like to point out one difficulty that comes in and that explains why maybe the focus on that will come in the next months.  

 When a best practice forum is really starting to develop its work, it's really very internally focused, discussing what are we going to do and how are we going to approach the issue.  But now I think comes the moment, really, for the (indiscernible) how they can connect their work with others, because I think that's the normal way of working before you can reach out to others who need to know what you are doing.

 But linked to that, there's definitely an effort between the best practice forum cybersecurity and the issue area team preparing the preparatory session, but also the main session on cybersecurity this year in the program.  So that's also another example.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Wim.  

 And, Sorina, can you share your experience?

 

>>SORINA TELEANU:  Thank you, Anriette. 

 Yes, just a quick follow-up on that.  

 In the paper we're working on for dynamic coalitions, we'll also look at that, how dynamic coalitions have been directly interacting with other intersessional work.  And there are some very concrete examples.  For example, the dynamic coalition on gender has been working with the best practice on gender.  The dynamic coalition on public access has been working with the forum -- best practice forum on access.  And there are a few more examples.

 What we're also hearing from dynamic coalitions is that, yes, they would like to be more engaged and cooperate more with other intersessional activities, but as well, they're saying it's also a matter of resources and how many people are actually able and willing and have the time to dedicate to this kind of cooperation with other IGF work.  

 Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks for that, Sorina.  

 And, Joyce, just to get a response to your question, I think, and reflecting on what both Wim and Sorina have said, I think the challenge here is to give each group the space to do the work that they need to do and focus, but then also to integrate and overlap.  And a lot of this rests on the MAG.  

 But I think how the MAG navigates and manages this interaction between intersessional activities is going to continuously be key to this goal of making the IGF -- I don't know what they said in the new compact document.  But the IGF strengthening is going to have to find a way of navigating these different processes, without taking autonomy away from the dynamic coalitions, because that's also extremely important, that they have the freedom to tackle the issues which they as a community of practice consider really relevant.  And with BPFs, similarly, although there is more MAG intervention.  

 And to some extent, I don't -- 

 I hope this other question in the chat, Courtney -- Courtney, I hope your question has been responded to.

 But I'd like us to move on to policy networks, because I think in many ways, this new intersessional activity introduced earlier this year for the first time is in fact trying to achieve that level of integration where you go from looking at good practices, identifying issues, and then actually channeling them into policy recommendations.

 So let's hear from the -- first, let's hear from policy network on universal access and meaningful connectivity, which also includes emphasis on local content, which was a best practice forum previously.  And then after that, we will hear from the policy network on the environment.  

 Raquel, you have the floor.

 

>>RAQUEL GATTO:  Thank you very much, Madam Chair.  I would like to share the screen.  I think it's not working.  I'm so sorry.

 Luis, can I ask your help?  I think it's not enabled to share.  Or else I can continue.  I was not able to share.

 It's going to work.  Thank you so much.  I'm so sorry for the technology.

 So let me introduce myself.  I'm Raquel Gatto.  I'm working currently with the IGF secretariat as a consultant for the policy network on meaningful access, the PNMA, another acronym for us.  But I was also a former MAG member.  

 And it's a pleasure to be here in lovely and warm Geneva again.

 So as Anriette was mentioning, we have the policy network as this new intersessional work which is an experiment precisely to bring together those expert-led -- this expert-led network and deep dive into one of those key issues that are cross-cutting with the IGF community, the IGF agenda.

 And it's also grounded on the IGF mandate and the paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda as it calls for this exchange of information for bringing together all those stakeholders, in particular to bring the capacity development and the countries -- developing countries.

 And it's also grounded in following the roadmap -- the U.N. Secretary-General Roadmap on Digital Cooperation and particular 93(e) where it also calls for any streamlined work of the IGF. 

 So grounded in all this comes also building on the previous work from the IGF, the previous work from the DCs, the previous work from the BPFs, in particular the BPF on local content, the BPF on gender and access that Wim just presented together with our MAG colleagues.  And, also, it builds on the previous major intersessional policy work which was the connecting and enabling the next billion, so the CENB which took four phases, also collecting those examples.

 But the important part is really in this experiment -- we started in June this year.  We've invited 25 expert members from the community.  And I'm not sure -- sorry.  It's not -- I was talking, and the slides were not moving.  I hope now you can see.  I'm going to just to move ahead because this is what I already spoke about in terms of the expectations for the policy network to be impact-driven and to build from previous work.

 But starting in June, we have collected 25 expert members from different backgrounds, stakeholder groups, from different regions, from also different perspectives.

 Also, not all of them were previously involved with the IGF, so we have potentially new participants to our community.  And from those 25 members, we've appointed two co-chairs, Madam Sonja Jorge -- sorry, it's very, very small -- and Sylvia Cadena, who is also a former MAG member.

 We do have our MAG liaisons also in the policy network.  They are here in the room.  Giacomo Mazzone, Roberto Zambrana, Carlos Afonso, and Karim Attoumani.  That is the group that has been formed.  We have had four calls.  We have started precisely working on a statement of purpose or what is the common ground for this group.

 There is a strong consensus, similar to the BPFs and to the DCs not to duplicate efforts but really to look into what the policy network can complement and achieve further.  So that's one first strong consensus.

 The second one is that (indiscernible) see a huge value in contributing to this policy network despite their busy agendas because they have those stakeholders that usually would not meet in the same room or even would not have the channels for communicating among each other.  So they see this value on understanding what is being done by others, understanding the interest from others, and trying to find this common ground.

 And the third one is also that the group has a sense to move from not only achieving the policy recommendations but also moving into the policy implementation.  So it's not only saying what should be done (background noise), what needs to do, but also what we can do as the IGF community.  So that's going to be the extra layer of challenge for the policy network on meaningful access.

 And that's, well, the grounds of the statement of purpose precisely saying we are not starting from zero.  There is a long way and lots of efforts that having been put into -- well, connecting people and connecting people meaningfully.  And the group wants to recognize and to build further into the policy implementation.

 So by saying that, the second phase or step from the multistakeholder working group for the PNMA has been to choose the work streams.  It's a notion of topics that everyone is potentially interested in.  And so we are defining three pillars that are going to be the overarching pillars for the work of the PNMA, connectivity -- more into the infrastructure connectivity, digital inclusion, and capacity development.

 And under each of those pillars, the group has also identified the substreams or the major areas it wants to deep dive in and have more in-depth approach for this year.  And that's basically with community networks, hence another connection with dynamic coalitions and the DC3, the new business model.  And, perhaps, Roberto and Karim also wants to speak about that as one of the alternatives of business models for promoting more of this connectivity.  

 And digital inclusion and two of those substreams are accessibility and multilingualism -- sorry if I'm not -- speaking about multilingualism, some of the words are difficult for nonnative English speakers.

 And capacity -- sorry, capacity development and tackling more of the technical skills for -- and training for technical skills.

 Now, the next steps are, one, going into the communities, so going out looking for the case studies, collecting the local experiences, having this grassroot approach, to bring this together into the work of the PNMA.

 As I was saying, if we are talking about policy implementation, we need to understand how it's being done and what are the key factors to make it happen so that we can capture that and really bring this together for the PNMA outcome.

 So basically this is a flowerily -- literally looks like a flower, but it's about engaging the community.  And that's the next steps as the multistakeholder working group has achieved its mainstream work streams.

 Now, we've been also working with connecting the dots, which is not to duplicate the work.  And for that we need to understand what is out there.  We have the experience inside the IGF community, inside the IGF tracks.  And we've been also looking outside with some of the existing and current active work that we can build on.

 One of them is within the U.N. Secretary-General Roadmap on Digital Cooperation implementation phase, so the discussions on the Roundtable 1a with the recommendation about global connectivity.  And they've been working with the baselines and targets for universal and meaningful digital connectivity.

 And from this work, they've chosen to focus into one of the pillars, one of the measurement questions about how meaningful connectivity is in each country.  And because of the time and resources, they were not able to focus into other three questions that are precisely out of scope.

 So that's one of the discussions with the group, to bring in those out-of-scope questions which are precisely how connectivity is used and quality can be improved, what is it being used for, and what is the impact of this connectivity.  So that's one of the streams that we will connect with the connectivity, digital inclusion, and capacity-development pillars.

 And the second one that we heard last meeting is the UNESCO, the ROAMX framework.  For those that are not familiar, it's about the rights, open multistakeholder approach, accessibility.  It's for the cross-cutting issues where they are developing also a comprehensive framework for the principles and the indicators to measure that.  And so the group is going to look where it can complement this work and go further.  But of course, there are much more to be looked for.  And that's the next step with the group, to go to the community, to collect those case studies, to understand where we can connect further those dots, to take advantage and answer one of the questions also.  Not only looking to cross-pollinate among the intersessional streams but also to cross-pollinate with the MAG work.  And we've been in close contact with the MAG colleague Susan Chalmers, who is leading the universal access and meaningful connectivity track, to make sure we can use our combined efforts for shaping the agenda, the mains sessions, and the outcomes for the IGF itself together.  So that's also another connecting-the-dots effort that we've been doing.

 And, finally, this is an outline, so this is just a draft of the -- what the report is going to look back a little bit on what I was talking and to bring all those -- what is the topic, what is the problem we are trying to solve, and which are the solutions that we can capture and really move to the policy implementation.

 And, finally -- so I don't take too much time and I can also have an interaction with everyone, I just want to point out we did a few outreach sessions.  They might not be in this slide, but they were pretty much useful with Anja.  And some of the participants from the NRI meeting that we did the outreach sessions, started joining our monthly calls with the multistakeholder working groups.  So that's really also another achievement.  It's just a few yet, but I hope there will be more after today.

 And the next call from the multistakeholder working group is going to be on the 14th of October at 13 UTC.  We are rotating the calls so it's 13 UTC, 10 UTC, to share the pain among all the time zones.  We do have very extreme time zones.  And so we are making this effort.

 Of course, we have the final session, the main session, in Katowice on day 2 at 1315 local time.

 So that's about the overview and the high level.  And I'm available if you have any questions.  I'm sorry if I spoke too fast.  I hope it was --

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Raquel.  Sorry if it looks like we have been rushing you.  We are running a little bit late now due to technical glitches.  Giacomo, I see your hand is up.  Would you like to and to this?  And then we'll go on to policy network on environment.

 

>>GIACOMO MAZZONE:  Yes.  Thank you.  I think that we had a very interesting example of what can be the role of the IGF exactly in the last meeting of the PNMA because we have seen there are two initiatives.  One is the initiative from ITU, and the other one is the UNESCO initiative that are very complementing each other.  But, of course, because of the mandate of the UNESCO and the mandate of ITU, each one focuses on a specific part.

 And I see that we can play exactly the role of integration and connecting the dots that are missing.  And I think that if we are able to play this role, this would be really beneficial for the ecosystem, the general ecosystem.  It's a path we need to follow, I think.  

 Thank you, Raquel, for this work done.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks for that important contribution.  We can still take more questions on this, but let's first hear from Flurina Waspi, who is supporting the policy network on environment.  And I'm sorry, Flurina.  I have to ask you to try and be as brief as you can because we are running a little bit late now.

 

>>FLURINA WASPI:  No problem.  I hope technically it's working and you can see my presentation on the screen.  

 I just prepared a couple of slides.  I will try to be as brief as possible.  I included all of the links and overview.  And we also have an FAQ page ready on our website.  So that may answer any additional questions that you might have.  So hi.  My name is Flurina Waspi, as Anriette has kindly introduced me.  I'm a consultant to the PNE, the second policy network.  And here on this first slide, I just gave you an overview for those who are -- obviously this is a new format of policy networks.  So here you see the goals that we're trying to achieve and our first output document -- or our first output is going to be this report where we are striving at formulating concrete, actionable policy recommendations.  So really to give justice to this idea of policy network, we are targeting the policymakers, which we understand policy quite broad.  So it's not just the official government people but also just everyone who has a say or who is able to influence policy.  On that, maybe more in the report.

 So here I've just included a couple of slides, a couple of screen shots, to give you an idea of where we are at the moment with the work.  

 We started a bit earlier than the PNMA, so we started in May or April, let's say April, with our first meeting.  We have meetings every month.  We even had two in September.  And we have spent the first couple of months or the first couple of meetings to try to discuss and work out our scope.  

 Obviously, the topic of sustainability and digitalization is very broad and there are many topics one might address.  And we are actually planning to address a lot of topics.  But here in this very rough illustration on the left hand, you see that we have chosen -- or we have decided that we want to address the sustainability of ICT as well as the ICTs for sustainability question.  So with our policy recommendations, we are aiming at how to shape ICT in a more sustainable way but as well how to use the benefit of technologies of ICT to combat climate change.  They will address both ways.  And in green, the green bubbles kind of illustrate which topics we have chosen to focus on.  And there are also a couple of topics we are not going to have in our scope, such as the resilience of the ICT structure as well as sustainability of ICT operations.

 And on the right-hand side, I've also included a link to our draft document.  It is completely open.  Anyone can -- until now, anyone can edit or comment so we might limit this in the future.  Until now, we have had quite a lot of trust and we've decided to keep it purposely open to make on-boarding new co-authors and reviewers as easy as possible.  So here you see an outline of a report and here another kind of an illustration to make it a bit more accessible for your understanding of what we will have in this report.  So we will have an introduce, obviously an overview of opportunities and challenges, and then these thematic chapters where -- which really are the heart of this report and where we have chosen these four different topical areas, the environmental data, so the question of how can we use environmental data to further our achievement of the SDGs, how do they have to kind of -- how do we have to shape the environmental data.  We have a chapter on food and water security, possibly also energy security.  We have one on the supply chain and transparency, which is all around circular economy, and one overarching issues which is kind of just a chapter to be able to address questions that we have also been discussing this afternoon, such as network or just how distribution of finances and other questions and topics.  And a conclusion obviously.

 So just a little insight into how we have been organizing this.  So obviously we have quite a lot of work streams and I tried to make this as accessible as possible on our website, which I have linked.  It's really nice that we're going to have an even nicer-looking website.  As you can see, until now, anyone has been able to request to join a work stream.  We have organized it this way.  This request goes directly to the work stream lead.  So for every chapter of our report, we have a work stream basically and one or two people leading the work stream.

 We also have Joyce in the call, if she's still here.  She's leading one of work streams on environmental data and others.  This is how it has worked so far.  We are planning on closing at the end of -- beginning of October for additional co-authors just to facilitate the process to really write the report in October and November and to be able to focus.

 And this is a screen shot, and we have the statement of action, which is our main document on Google Docs, so it has resonated with me when it was mentioned that we have so many different applications.  Obviously, we've chosen to work with Google Docs, even though it's proprietary software et cetera.  But it was our tool of choice.  It makes it easier for most to access, and we have the statement of action which you are welcome to take a look at to see how we organize ourselves.  We have color coding system.  And so we have in green the work stream leads, in Yellow the co-authors, and in reds the reviewers.  

 And finally, some words about our PNE meeting.  So as the PNMA we have a meeting once a month.  From June 2021 they have been open to any interested participants.  So it has been completely open.  Anyone has been able to join.  We have announced the meetings on the website and also reminded of them through our open community mailing list, which is also linked on our website.  I have been slow with updating the website with all of the documentation, but you will see that you find most of it, especially the ones where we had guest speakers which is another point that I have been really excited about, the possibility to invite guest speakers to our P&E meetings who have also brought this policy dimension into them.  And it has been really nice that we were able to welcome Michael Oghia, who is very active in the EuroDIG movement, Elliott Carlton Harris, who is the U.N. Chief Economist, and Jacob Malthouse last week who is Foresight Cleantech Accelerator VP, so that has been really nice.  And to finish off, I hope in time, I feel like I've been getting faster by the minute, but this is just to highlight our next meeting is on October 13.  The Zoom credentials are being sent out by our community mailing list, which is also linked here, and you can also find this on the new website obviously.  And as I said, anyone is welcome who would like to add something.  Also, just to give -- as a disclaimer, the future PNE meetings will focus more on updating the community on what the content is of the report and on exchanging on the -- like on the whole PNE community to what has been done, the results in the work streams.  So we -- if you are interested, if anyone is interested in joining as a co-author still, please get in touch with us as soon as possible so that we can on board you because in October, November we will be really focusing on the report.  And with that, I'm done.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thank you very much, Flurina.  And there's no one in the speaking queue.  But I want to thank the policy networks.  I want to thank the MAG members who are liaisons who on top of all their other work are also interacting and following the policy networks, and then the working group members.  Both policy networks have managed to get really high-profile, active key people to serve on those working groups.  So thanks, everyone, for giving their time to this.  This really is IGF evolving.  These policy networks are, in many ways, an expression of the idea of the IGF plus which emerged through the Secretary-General's high-level panels report.  So thanks very much, and as with the BPFs and the dynamic coalitions, during the preparatory phase there will be a session where there will be more in-depth and more focused discussion on the policy recommendations they are striving to share with you.

 So Nigel, are you joining on this matter?  Please take the floor.

 

>>NIGEL HICKSON:  Thank you very much.  I'll be very brief.  I mean indeed, that was inspiring and really worthwhile.  Really shows the sort of breadth of coverage that we have.  

 I just wanted to mention that last week at the ITU and the council working group on Internet public policy it was agreed that there will be an Open Consultation on the subject of environmental impacts and benefits of the Internet.  I'm not suggesting there's a direct match here, but there will be hopefully a number of contributions on this subject towards the end of the year.  And during this Open Consultation at the ITU, and hopefully there might be some synergy there.  Thank you very much.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Nigel.  Yes, I think the interaction with other U.N. agencies that are dealing with similar issues is very important.  I don't see anyone else.  Jorge, please, take the floor.

 

>>JORGE CANCIO:  Thank you, Anriette.  Thank you, Chair.  Just wanted to share with -- or join with what you said and to -- it's absolutely important that the MAG and this community takes ownership of the products of the outputs of both policy networks, both the one which is facilitated by Raquel and the one facilitated by Flurina.  It's an innovation consistent with the character of the IGF and as you rightly said, in the direction or in the spirit of the IGF plus.  So it's absolutely important for this IGF to deliver on this as the U.N. Secretary-General also has mentioned in his common agenda.  So it's important and also with a view to WSIS plus 20, which is really around the corner.  So I really urge everyone to look into the outputs or in the workings of both policy networks and take ownership because the more inputs we have, the more criticism, constructive, of course, and the more inputs on that work, the more it will represent the views of the whole global multistakeholder community and the better the quality of the outputs will be and more visible and impactful they will be.  Thank you so much.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Jorge.  I would just add to that, that I think it's also the links between these policy networks and discussion at the IGF.  So it's a -- it has to be multi-directional.  They have to reflect on a process and take further discussions that take place in the IGF and then, of course, feed into that process as well.  Similar to the NRIs.  But this has been very encouraging.  And so thanks very much to everyone.  And to Przemyslaw, who was the co-chair on the policy network on the environment.  

 We now have to move on -- we're running late -- to the final agenda item.

 

>> ( Speaker off microphone. ).

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Joyce, I'm going to have to respond to Joyce in the chat because I don't want us to finish late.  Sorry, Joyce.  

 To our final agenda item, briefings from other related initiatives and organizations in dealing with Internet governance, and we'll have more Q&A at the end of that, so we can come back to policy networks if there's time.

 But to take us through the order of input, I want to ask the secretariat who they have -- that have requested to brief us under this agenda item.  Anja.

 

>>ANJA GENGO:  Well, I think that interested organizations and practices can use the floor system request and request the floor, and then the Chair can make the order.  We didn't receive any requests in advance.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  So if there are no requests in advance, the floor is now open to any international organizations or institutions and from any stakeholder group who would like to brief or share information with the Open Consultation.  Please use the speaking queue.  Or you can use the chat or the WebEx interface.  

 While we're waiting for this, Flurina, you have a bit more time.  If there's a request -- there's a question about whether there's a contact.  Does anyone have contact with COP26 that they can link to Flurina or hand over to Flurina?  And Nigel has just generously shared the ITU document for further conversation.  Keep an eye on the chat.  And Joyce's question -- Przemyslaw, why don't you read Joyce's question quickly.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Yes.  Sorry.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Can you find it?  

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  I've seen it.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  So to answer your question, let me communicate with New York  (indiscernible).

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Okay.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  I don't see her, I don't see the question.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Well, don't worry.  Let's move on.  Because we have our speakers in the speakers' queue.  And Chengetai said that he will also work with UN DESA and New York to make some of these connections with other U.N. processes and agencies.  So Flurina and Raquel, I know already you are in touch with some of them, but this is also where UN DESA support is indispensable.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Joyce wanted -- she suggested -- encouraged more MAG members to join the PNE.  That was actually her suggestion.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks for that, Joyce.  And that resonates with Jorge's comment, that we really need to connect and participate in this.

 So now let's go back to agenda item 4.  The final agenda item of the day.  And I first give the floor to Velimira Nemiguentcheva Grau.  And please introduce yourself and the institution you represent, and please try to keep your intervention to no more than three minutes.

 

>>VELIMIRA NEMIGUENTCHEVA GRAU:  Yes.  Thank you, Madam Chair.  Good afternoon to everybody.  So for the record, I'm Velimira Nemiguentcheva Grau.  Indeed, thank you, Anriette, for the pronunciation.  It was good.  So I'm representing European Commission.  I'm a part of the Internet governance team.  And I would first like to say that I'm happy to join you from Brussels, although I regret really that I could not travel to Geneva.  

 What I wanted to share with you today is a brief overview of the action of the European Commission in the Internet governance area where, as many of you know, we have been working with a number of initiatives.  Most of you have heard of the Digital Services Act, of the Digital Markets Act, but those are basic governance act where we aim to boost data sharing and support European data spaces.  I also wanted to draw the attention of the MAG participants in the IGF community to the legal framework that European Commission has proposed in artificial intelligence where we're trying to ensure that technology evolves in a trustworthy environment.  And also I would like to share with you that the commission, together with the European External Action Service, has also published a youth advocacy security strategy to ensure global Internet security and openness.

 Basically what I think is important to inform them is an initiative which is probably less known to the IGF community, which is the so-called 2030 Digital Compass.  And basically this is an initiative about defining the European way for digital transformation in the next decade.  It's really about empowering community citizens, and this is a strategy that stands on several pillars, one of which is the importance of defining the right digital principles to ensure respect of different fundamental rights and our European values behind which the European Commission stand.  

 More recently there was an announcement in the state of European Union speech by European Commission President von der Leyen where she announced basically that you will be deploying the new global connectivity strategy, the so-called global gateway.  And basically the idea behind the strategy will be to connect goods, people, and services around the world, but what is most important is that what we aim to do is to create a partnership across the globe and for this, the transparency and the good governance of these partnerships would be quite important.  And this strategy will have a strong check on the promotion and development of the open Internet around the globe.  I'm trying to be as concise as possible.  

 I wanted also to share with you that among the international partnerships that you will continue developing the partnership with Africa, really features very prominently and we also continue working with the community on development of the IGF towards an even more inclusive and active IGF.  And we continue being committed to the implementation of the digital roadmap, including to the -- to attract -- to attract envoy -- envoy's office.  We also believe that more than ever we need an inclusive IGF where all stakeholders and especially those of the Global South feel empowered to bring their perspective on how they feel the Internet Governance.  And on how the free and open Internet should be governed with a (indiscernible) bridging the digital divide.  

 And with that point, just a brief information that we will be organizing an open forum on this subject of open Internet.  And I would basically like -- I would like to conclude by saying that we very much look forward to the IGF in December and to really take this opportunity to thank the MAG, the IGF secretariat, and the Polish hosting team as well as all colleagues involved for the tremendous work that is carried out to ensure an inclusive IGF session, and hopefully successfully combining the online face-to-face exchanges.  

 So thank you for the opportunity to share this information with you.  And we definitely believe that this exchange is -- allow for great consistency and synergies across the IGF community.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thank you very much, Velimira, for that very interesting briefing.  And thank you very much to the commission for your extensive support of the IGF and using the IGF as a platform.  It's exactly what it's there for.  

 Next we give the floor to Valeria Betancourt from my previous employer, Association for Progressive Communications.  We will take questions, so if anyone has questions for any of the presenters during the session, please start taking the -- adding your name to the queue, the speaking queue.  Valeria, over you to you.

 

>>VALERIA BETANCOURT:  Thank you very much, Anriette.  I hope you can hear me well.  Well, as I mentioned, my name is Valeria Betancourt.  I'm also a former MAG member, and I just want to take the opportunity to share some reflection on various matters and apologies for bringing perhaps issues that were already discussed, but because of the time difference, I was not able to participate in the earlier sessions.  

 So I would like to say I really believe that the IGF continues to be the only multistakeholder process that can reestablish more accountable, inclusive, participatory, and effective global Internet Governance.  In that sense to contribute substantially to global digital cooperation among all stakeholders.  So to continue to provide that role in the context of this changing reality brought by the pandemic, we need to recognize that a hybrid event can only be truly global when barriers and restrictions to participation in terms of time, space, access, and efforts related to other common needs for people around the world, living in so many different contexts, are addressed in the design of the process and the event.  But in August we had the support of more than 100 non-governmental stakeholders.  We submitted to the IGF secretariat, to the host country, and also to the MAG a statement on the issue of inclusiveness and balanced participation of the stakeholders in the upcoming IGF 2021 and its hybrid modality.  And thanks to the openness and the (indiscernible) of the IGF secretariat, the host country, the members of the working group on hybrid event and the MAG chair, it has been possible to have a very constructive conversation oriented to identify viable and concrete ways to ensure meaningful inclusion.  

 So I -- I won't refer in detail to the daily suggestions, but overall, we think that as an outcome of the 2021 process the IGF could propose a vision of a  hybrid model for global policy processes designed intentionally in this new context, and building on not only the experience of this year but also working with experience of many thousand of people in the IGF community.  So we believe that it could be a much-needed contribution to the policy process and ecosystem.  In that sense, the IGF could form a working group to reflect on a global hybrid IGF for 2022 and beyond in a more consistent way.

 I would also very briefly like to refer to the 2022 MAG and MAG chair renewal process.  As many of you may know, the civil society coordination group which exists to ensure a coordinated civil society response, when it comes to making civil society appointments to outside bodies, undertook a process to select civil society candidates to the '22 MAG elections.  And as an outcome of that process, we have submitted and supported five candidates for consideration for the five civil society positions available for the '22 IGF MAG.

 And we believe that the IGF is in a crucial moment in which significant adjustments are needed.  And we feel that the group of people that we are recommending would constitute a valuable asset to the IGF process moving forward with their respective experiences and perspectives.

 So we would really value that the renewal of the MAG and the MAG chair position are handled with all the necessary transparency that characterizes the IGF.  And in our view, it is crucial that the selection of the new MAG chair is aligned with the proposals of the MAG working group on IGF strategy oriented to have a stronger, more impactful, and strategic IGF.

 So in our view, it also includes acknowledging how key it is to ensure developing countries' representation and participation in both the MAG and the MAG chair positions.

 And just finally, let me take the opportunity of this consultation to ask about the status of the process around the multistakeholder high-level body.  The community was called for input on the role of the composition of the body and how it would relate to the MAG.  However, we have not heard about what has been decided.

 It could be important to know if the overall scope of the process will be publicized and whether a call for nominations will be open or if the members of the body will be announced along with its terms of reference.

 Similarly, I would like to ask about progress made in relation to linking both the IGF and the U.N. Secretary-General process around global digital cooperation and what the next steps are.  In general, we would really welcome to hear more about the links between those two processes during the rest of the preparatory process and during the IGF.

 And just, finally, I would really like to express our commitment to keep engaging and participating actively in the preparatory phase of the IGF 2021.  And thank you for all the efforts and the energy invested in making sure that the design and the planning process are going to lead to a very successful IGF.  So thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Valeria, for your input.  

 There are a few questions there.  Chengetai, maybe you can take note of them and answer them a little bit later.

 Next I call to the floor Adam Peake.

 

>>ADAM PEAKE:  Thank you, Anriette.  Adam Peake.  And I'm speaking as a member of ICANN staff.  

 Just very briefly, firstly, Anriette, thank you for chairing the MAG.  It's been a pleasure to work with you as MAG member but also on behalf of ICANN for the inclusive and thoughtful way that you're chairing the committee and driving changes forward, which is very helpful for this process and to Przemyslaw and his team and Chengetai and the secretariat who are always a pleasure to work with for us.

 The one thing I wanted to mention, of course we've been working online for the last 18 months or so.  At the end of October, we will hold another -- we hold three meetings a year, and this is will be the sixth in succession that will be a virtual online-only event.  But one of the main plenary sessions we're hold is a discussion about how to return to some form of meeting in-person.  So we're talking about hybrid, which in our terms we're calling virtual-first.  The idea being to emphasize that the inclusive nature of this type of meeting that everybody, wherever anybody is, will have the opportunity to participate in an inclusive format.  Very much the same as we're working on in the IGF.  

 There will be a public session on this, which I hope people will be able to join.  And look forward really -- because I'm a MAG member as well, but to bring this collaboration I hope with ICANN and the IGF to make sure that we're providing a sort of global learning experience on how we can go forward learning from our unpleasant last 18 months or so, that we can improve but not lose some of the experiences and skills that we've learned in how to conduct meetings online so we can hold better meetings, more inclusive global meetings in the future, in this hybrid or virtual-first format.

 So thank you for that.  Thank you, again, Anriette.  And thank you, Przemyslaw and Chengetai and team.  Thank you.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Adam.  And also thanks very much to ICANN for your support, similarly to APC for supporting the IGF process in so many ways.  I don't see -- there's no one else in the queue at this point.

 Chengetai, can you respond?  Valeria had some questions about the HLP process, what the outcome of the consultation was if you can respond to that, please.  She also just asked for general update on the roadmap process and how the IGF relates to it.

 

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you, Valeria.  The only thing I can say is that a note was sent to the Secretary-General's office concerning the multistakeholder high-level body process.  And we are awaiting to hear back from the Secretary-General's office.  I mean, it is understandable that the Secretary-General is rather busy at this time, so we really do have to wait.  And hopefully we'll get something soon.

 But I just said let's be patient and give the Secretary-General enough time to consider all the options that are there.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks very much, Chengetai.

 Does anyone have any questions for either of the -- or any of the institutions that shared updates with us?  Checking the chat as well.

 No questions at this point.  Any other open questions?  I don't see any, which means that we can bring the Open Consultation -- the third Open Consultation of IGF 2021 to a close.

 It really has built on previous Open Consultations and various online processes of consultation.  So I want to thank everyone in the community who participated today who bore with us with our challenges with Webex.  I think we've learned that patience is also a really important component of a successful hybrid event.  Let's not forget that.  

 And I'm happy to be able to bring the meeting to a close a little bit early.  We all deserve that.

 And welcome, everyone.  We invite everyone to join the MAG meeting tomorrow.  It's open to observers.  We'll have MAG members first in terms of the sequence of contributions, but the meeting is also opened to full participation from observers.  So thanks hugely to the secretariat for your hard work during this meeting, in preparation for this meeting, and to everyone who has made a contribution in one form or another.

 June Parris, our past MAG member asked for jokes.  No jokes, I'm afraid, June.  But maybe you can get those over dinner tonight.

 Przemyslaw, do you have any closing remarks?  Our co-chair.

 

>>PRZEMYSLAW TYPIAK:  Thank you very much, Madam Chair Anriette for giving me the floor.

 Yes, I would like to thank you very much, everyone, for your very -- first of all, for your participation and for your valuable contributions.  We have heard all of them, and I have quite have a large portion of notes made.  So I will, of course, distribute and deliver them to my colleagues here in Poland.  We have quite a few issues to discuss.  

 But the IGF 2021 is upcoming, and we do hope to see you all -- well on-site, if possible.  We would very much be happy to see you in Katowice.  But as equally as it's hybrid mode, online.

 No exclusions.  And feel free to register.  If you have not done so, please do.  And do check our website for any updates, amendments, and new information, new insight coming.  And I hope to see you all in Katowice in December.  Thank you very much.

 

>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Przemyslaw.

 And, finally, thanks to the interpreters and to the transcribers.  We cannot have these meetings without you.

 We reconvene tomorrow morning at 8 UTC in this room and virtually.  Good day, everyone.