IGF 2021 Workshop Submission and Review Process

Stage 1: Initial Screening by IGF Secretariat

Why: Remove proposals that do not satisfy minimum criteria

Who: IGF Secretariat

When: Complete within 1 week after proposal deadline

All proposals must meet the minimum criteria listed below. Proposals that do not will be removed from consideration for the IGF programme.

  • The proposer must complete all fields of the submission form with relevant information.
  • The proposal must have at least 3 provisionally confirmed speakers who have been contacted by the proposer, and who have expressed their interest and intent to participate.
  • Workshop reports are important to building discussion at the IGF. If the proposer organized an IGF workshop in recent years, he/she would have been required to submit a report to the IGF Secretariat. Proposers can provide a link to the report on the submission form. If a report was not submitted, the proposal will be declined.
  • MAG members cannot submit workshop proposals.   
Stage 2: MAG member evaluation

Why: Rank proposals according to criteria

Who: Individual MAG members

When: Complete by the MAG in up to three weeks time. 

After Stage 1, the IGF Secretariat will circulate the workshop proposals to individual MAG members for evaluation. MAG members will evaluate workshops based upon the following criteria:

  1. Session content and description

    Under this criterion, MAG members will assess ‎the overall quality of the proposal as presented, including whether the description of ‎the session is well-thought through, presents a concrete plan, and all responses are ‎complete. ‎

  2. Response to policy question(s)

    For the two main focus areas, proposals should ‎respond to the established policy questions that will be addressed during the ‎workshop. As for the four emerging and cross-cutting issues, there are also identified ‎policy questions, but the proposer will have the option to define policy questions of ‎their own.‎

  3. Relevance to IG and to focus area

    Proposals should be relevant both to Internet ‎Governance and one of the six issue areas for IGF 2021. Two main focus areas: 1) Economic and social inclusion and human rights and 2) Universal access and meaningful connectivity; or one of the four emerging and cross-cutting issues: 1) Emerging regulation: market structure, content, data and consumer/users rights regulation; 2) Environmental sustainability and climate change; 3) Inclusive Internet governance ecosystems and digital cooperation; or 4) Trust, security, stability. The 2005 Report of ‎the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) describes Internet Governance ‎as ''the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil ‎society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making ‎procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.'' The ‎narratives for each issue area are available here. ‎

  4. Format

    This criterion does not favour any one format over another, but considers ‎whether the workshop session, as described in the proposal, is consistent with the ‎format listed (for example, if the format is Debate, then the proposal should describe ‎how the debate will be set up). ‎

  5. Diversity

    This relates to content, process and speakers. Proposers are strongly ‎advised to pay particular attention to ensuring as much as possible diversity in ‎participation, including gender, region, stakeholder group, and inclusion of youth, ‎persons with disability, and persons from under-represented or marginalized groups, ‎within their organizing teams as well as listed speakers, as these will be reviewed ‎against the key diversity measures listed in the form. Proposers are further advised ‎that they should list a minimum of three provisionally confirmed speakers and limit ‎their number of speakers to no more than five wherever possible, so as to ensure ‎space in their session for participant engagement. While the latter is not a ‎disqualifying criterion, excessive numbers of speakers will result in lower support for ‎the proposal.

  6. Approach to encouraging participation

    Workshop sessions should stimulate ‎involvement of  all participants.  The interaction criterion will consider the plans ‎proposed for interaction between speakers and other participants, including remote ‎participants. ‎

The total score for each proposal will be the mean average of the grades received by MAG ‎members.

Upon receiving the MAG member scoring, the Secretariat will prepare a synthesis of the evaluation. The Secretariat will also conduct a final review of the results, in preparation for the second Open Consultations and MAG meeting in late June 2021. 

Stage 3: MAG discussion, identification of merger candidates, and finalization

Why: Determine the final list of workshop sessions

Who: MAG members and IGF Secretariat

When: The 2nd Open Consultations and MAG Meeting (end of June)

Before and during the June meeting, MAG members will look at the results to ensure an overall balance of the topics within the programme. Proposals that did not score highly overall, but which show promise and could help balance the programme, may be set aside for further consideration. Proposers will then be contacted and asked to submit a revised proposal, addressing any shortcomings in their initial submission.

In some cases, the MAG will receive workshop proposals on the same issues, topics and format. Similar workshops may be accepted on the condition that they “merge” together. In this case, the workshop proposers will be contacted by the IGF Secretariat.

Following the merger process and other necessary arrangements, the IGF programme will then be finalized.