2019 IGF - MAG - Virtual Meeting - XVI

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during an IGF virtual call. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

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CHENGETAI MASANGO: Good afternoon, morning and evening ladies and gentlemen, this is MAG virtual meeting number 16 and just before we start the meeting, just a reminder that the meeting is being recorded.  There is a transcript, and we are all going to publish a summary report afterward.  And we will also be using the hand up system and the link is in the chat room.  So with that I will hand is over to Lynn to starts the meeting?

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Welcome.  Everyone.  The first order of business is to approve the agenda which was sent last week.  It follows the same format as the last few weeks, largely a series of updates on the ongoing activities.  Let me see if there are any requests for additional items under AOB or any suggested edits.  I'll do any slow count to six.

>> VENI MARKOVSKI: This is Veni, just to mention I am on the phone.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  We will note that in the chat room.  Not seeing any other requests for the floor or comments in the chat room with respect to the agenda.  We will call the agenda approved and the first order of business is just the Chair's introduction and welcome.  So, again, I appreciate everybody's participation in these meetings, and the ongoing work.  I know it's been quite a workload, but I think we still have an awful lot to cover and we are making great progress.  So I think the meetings are actually helping.

What we would like to do today as we go through a fairly long list covering the main sessions, the introductory and concluding sessions,  the intersessional activities Working Groups, et cetera, is ask people to focus on any significant updates and any requests for support, suggestions or help from MAG members or the community.  This really is meant to be useful to those individuals that are working on all of these various sessions, so the more clear you can be in terms of any help you are looking for, the better and more quickly we will be able to help you.  So I think that's pretty much all of the comments.  I have more substantive comments on some of the other activities, but they will come in under the individual Agenda Items.  So with that, let me turn to Chengetai for an update from the Secretariat.  Chengetai you have the floor.

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you.  I will be brief.  

We have 1,652 people registered at the moment and we are expecting many more, the other thing that I have to say is that the Sched system is now online, and we will be inviting all of the session organizers to update their sessions some the Sched system with presentations, et cetera, so those emails will go out other tomorrow or the day after.  And that's it.  Keep it succinct.  Thank you, Lynn.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Chengetai.  Let me see if there are any questions from any MAG members for the Secretariat.

Not seeing in questions from the floor.  The next dumb is an update from the    item is an update for the host country but I'm not seeing Rudolf or anyone else on the call.  Just do one more quick review of the participants here.  I think Rudolf was intending to join us, so if he joins later on we will come back to that Agenda Item.  Maybe just to say that we have had two Working Group calls the early part of this week, one on funding and one on ad hoc reporting which Rudolf has participated in and there is a number of updates and activities which we can comment on either in the Working Group reports or in the meeting summaries which should come out later this week, but there is an awful lot of activities as one can imagine occurring in Germany at the moment on many different fronts.

So if Rudolf is not able to join us later today we will make sure we do a high level update and then the meeting summary on those substantive items will be coming out hopefully later this week.  So with that I'll move to the next Agenda Item, which was the UN digital cooperation report consultation main session planning.  As we have commented on on the last couple of MAG meetings, it's important we are all using our networks and reaching out to ensure that we actually get comments, suggestions, input, et cetera, on the report itself.

This is obviously very central to the IGF and everything we all care about so it's important that we respond to the request for comments.  It's also important in that it will set up the main session that we are going to hold at the IGF, specific to digital cooperation of which a very significant piece of that, oak, will be this report and this set of recommendations.

I looked this morning and by a quick reflection there has only been frankly less than ten individuals that have commented, and I think the actual number might only be three or four.  So I hope that, you know, everybody just as I am in the background, is it contemplating responses and that we will see some additional responses in the next few weeks.  It's meant to close on the 30th of September, and as I said many times before, you know, this group, MAG members obviously, but everybody we can reach out to are very central to advancing the IGF and digital cooperation on Internet Governance.  So I really do hope people can find the time and I totally appreciate that it's a very busy period to comment on the report.

We have enabled commenting line by line or paragraph by paragraph if you just want to put in a few comments as well as the ability to put in a more formal, complete response.  So I do, again, want to encourage everybody to participate even, I know this is always a question, one can certainly participate as a MAG member.  It would be in our individual roles, individual names, not representing the MAG or the IGF community.  And we would also ask everybody to really work aggressively across share networks.

And even those people particularly, perhaps, those people that haven't participated in Internet Governance activities, since that is one of the key communities we are trying to pull in those that haven't been engaged, those that aren't connected and those from other disciplines.  I'm sorry, I'm just getting over a cold.  So I do want to encourage everybody again to please send some comments in, please hit your networks, get them to respond.  It's two weeks.  The processes we were going to pull out a synthetization of these comments that we would share ahead of IGF in Berlin and those comments would support the main session planning.  With that I will stop and see if there are any questions.  Chengetai, is there anything you would like to add?

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO:  No, nothing for me.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Sorry, everybody.  My voice will come back in a minute here.  Just looking to see if there are any comments in the chat room.  Are there any suggestions with respect to what we can, perhaps, do to increase participation?

I'll give that a moment to see if anybody wants to come in.

  Okay.  Not seeing any further comments.  We will ask the Secretariat to kick off another round on the social media channels too and possibly try and find some something every day or every other day to keep interest up.  I will notice also that the Working Group on outreach and communication sent in a report where they are volunteering to help kind of populate the social media channels with some information.

They are suggesting they work with the Secretariat to ensure appropriate content and to ensure whatever approvals are needed but perhaps that's one thing we could get some focus on as well, making it clear that this is a significant focus of the upcoming IGF.  There is a main session.  We have the consultation open, we are looking for input, et cetera, so perhaps we can even trial run some of the Working Group suggestions with the Secretariat on this particular, on this particular topic.

With that I will stop and move to the next Agenda Item, which is updates on the thematic and introductory concluding sessions.  So I think this Agenda Item is actually meant to talk to the, specifically the introductory sessions of the three main themes.  The concluding sessions, there was a proposal which was part of the original proposal from the Ad Hoc Group from our last face to face meeting that, which suggested some reporting formats and structures basically a matrix, et cetera.  That is actually under suggestion in the ad hoc Working Group and reporting so I don't think we are prepared to talk about the concluding sessions just yet, but if we could have specific updates from the groups that are working on the thematic sessions for their introductory sessions, that would actually be helpful.

So who wants to go first?  We could go by the order that's in the chat room there and ask for somebody to speak on the status of the introductory sessions for the data governance workshop sessions.

>> Hi, Lynn, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening everybody,.

>> BEN WALLIS:  Again Wallis, Microsoft.  Apologies to everyone who signed up to the list because I haven't yet sent anything to the list.  Lucy volunteered to do the work with me.  We have exchanged in ideas already on the introductory session template so that we could, when we reach out to the group, we already have some suggestions to discuss, and so I need to get that out to the list along with the meeting date this week.  And I apologize for the delay.

It has been very helpful that Susan Chalmers has shared with other people in charge of the thematic groups examples of what she is doing and I am grateful for that, and that gives me further inspiration.  So things are coming, and so sorry for the delay.  I will leave it there until Lucien wants to join.

>> That's fine.  We are on it.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  Any comments or questions from MAG members?  Seeing none, let's go to an update on the introductory session from the digital inclusion group.  Just looking through the list of participants.  I don't see Paul on the call.  Is there anybody else from that group that can give us an update?

Let's move to the other one and I will ask the Secretariat to reach out directly to the group to get a written update and send it to the MAG list.  The introductory session then for security, stability, safety and resilience.

>> SYLVIA CADENA: Hi, Lynn, it's Sylvia here.  It 

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Hi Sylvia.

>> SYLVIA CADENA:  What I said earlier.  We are in a very similar situation as Ben and Lucian, we haven't really started with the work.  To be honest, I was following the discussions on the template waiting for the template to be finalized to have it more clear what it is that is expected of the sessions.  So we will work with well work with Rajesh and Jutta to work on the conclusion session on the safety and security track as soon as possible, maybe for the next MAG meeting we will have some progress.  Apologies for the delay.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you Sylvia.  I actually think with the introductory sessions a substantive part of the session work has been done already because, of course, it's meant to talk to the narrative that was developed earlier in the year, talk to the thematic track that's been built, and then breakout sessions around the policy questions which, of course, were all submitted some months ago.  I think that's more just one of sort of structuring these sessions as opposed to new.

I think the only new component of all of them was the section where we were looking for a speaker.  The notion was it was sword of a Ted Talk speaker, somebody who was challenging and interesting and who made the issue real to the participants.  So I think that's the most substantive piece of new work for these sessions, and if the Working Group, Working Groups haven't actually started to think about what that session looks like and what the speaker or speakers may look like, that's probably the next substantive piece of work, and if you need any suggestions or support from other MAG members, anyone, this isn't to your comment, Sylvia, it's to the three, if anybody needs any support or suggestions, just put a note out to the MAG list with a clear request.  Otherwise I think we are in fairly good shape for those sessions.

Anyway, as I said, with the possible piece of this one new Agenda Item.  Maybe just take a quick moment on the concluding sessions because we will be working on that over the next couple of weeks.  If you recall, at our meeting in Berlin in June, there was a suggestion that we try and capture the key messages' main points from the three thematic working tracks along a matrix covering kind of legal governance, social, cultural, et cetera.

We didn't    we were waiting for some of the other Working Group members to join the ad hoc Working Group call to have a more in depth discussion.  They weren't able to join, so we postponed this to the next meeting T. but there were a couple of comments that said there was some concern around how well we could actually do that, and how much it would reflect the full depth of activities across the IGF, obviously not just the workshops, but also the Open Forums, the DC activities, the NRI activities, Best Practice Forums, main sessions, et cetera.

And I think that was a question we all went away to think about a little bit more.  Because we certainly want what comes out of those concluding sessions to, I think, be as kind of representative as possible of what happened over the course of the week, but that is a very, very difficult list.

Second, I think we really wanted it to start to point towards, to be future oriented as well.  What are some additional things the IGF community should be considering, perhaps undertaking and that it would actually support some of next year's Agenda Items.  So I will just leave that there.  I will be putting the minutes sought hopefully    out hopefully before the end of the week which will put more light on that discussion, but if there are any comments or anything for the Working Group members that they would like to respond to at that point in time, obviously these are key sessions, these three concluding sessions, and my intent was to say that the work hasn't started in full, but that at a brief discussion on the Working Group call earlier this week, that was one of the, one of the main comments.

Again, the floor is open for comments, suggestions, reflections?

Okay.  Not seeing any, I want to keep everybody apprised of where we are in the progress, but recognize there is not a lot of detail to advance there or to review at the moment.  Well move to the next Agenda Item then, the updates from the main sessions, and in the chat room the Secretariat has listed the main sessions and I would propose we just go through them in order.  Again, we are looking for any substantive updates from the last update and any specific requests for support or help from the Working Group members.  So the first main session proposal is Addressing Violent Extremist Content Online:  Rights, Responsibilities, Responses and Risks.  I think Sylvia was going to talk to that.

>> SYLVIA CADENA:  Yes, Lynn.  We had a Conference call earlier this week to go through the list of speakers and at the moment we were able to finalize four out of the 16, I think, that we have listed so far, and the list of the Forum were passed to Chengetai earlier because there is some need for invitation letters and the list, also four confirmed at the moment are Christine Lambrecht, Minister of Justice in Germany, Sherry Clark, violent terrorism U.S. State Department.  Victoria Hallum, Secretariat of legal affairs in New Zealand, and Brian Fishman policy Director of counter terrorism at Facebook who is in his capacity as Chair of the GIFCT.

So there are other speakers that are at the moment under discussion to bring UN representatives and focus on human rights, civil society, and technical communities, so we have lots of suggestions, and we are at the moment in the Working Group finding a way to make that decision in getting confirmations from those invited speakers.  So it's slowly getting in that mode.

The rest of the document has been slowly being discussed and agreed by the Working Group over many weeks of work, so as you request see on that screen, anything that is, the red text that is on like Page 6 or something has been more or less agreed and we are slowly trimming down the rest of the document.  And that's the update so far.  Thanks, Lynn.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Sylvia.

Any comments, questions from MAG members?

I think my only comment, Sylvia is that there is good gender representation so far, maybe an imbalance.  But I let's note that of the three speakers we mentioned they are all from WEOG countries as well.

>> SYLVIA CADENA:  Yes, that's one of the reasons why the list is not finalized, and the list that is already showing on the screen is the one that is under discussion.

There are only four that are confirmed are those that I just mentioned.  The reason for those is that if you look at the agenda that I think is a little bit up on the session, we have the session divided in four blocks.  One that covers rights and responsibilities and the other one that covers responses and risks, and look into the future.  And the first part is like an introduction.  So the idea is that the issue with responses is that the responses that are habiting out there are the stronger ones or the more organized one from different stakeholder groups are coming from the WEOG countries and the focus of the session is on the importance of response so that we will have to find a way of balancing diversity in the other parts of the agenda.

So one of the speakers that is under consideration is Professor in Korea to talk about the laws in Korea that just passed around taking content offline, blocking.  There is another speaker from Sri Lanka and a speaker from India, we are looking for a speaker from North America with experience in counter terrorism, so that's where we are at, so slowly but hopefully surely we will get to the list of eight speakers that is the maximum we are trying to have for the time that is allocated to us.

That being the list that you have on the screen, had on the screen before that has like 16, 17 people, not the list of the speakers, it's just the names that have been suggested so we are slowly going through.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you Sylvia.  Maybe one way to get additional regions engaged would be to have a section which actually focuses on would some of the solutions or actions that are being implemented work in other regions and if so, why or why not.  Again, I just saw that.  I'm trying to watch all of the main session planning on the list, but I'm not always kind of deeply engaged with the individual discussions.  But I do think it would be important in this one in particular to really try and get some of the regions engaged.

And I'm sure you are all focused on that as well.  So that's great, thank you.

>> SYLVIA CADENA:  Thanks.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  The second main section I wanted to go through the order that was in the list there.  If the Secretariat can put that back up and we will take note of it going forward.  Could the Secretariat put the list of main sessions.  The next one is multidisciplinary frameworks for policy making in the digital age.  Who is prepared to give an update to that.  Is that you, Ben, I see you put a link in the chat room.

>> BEN WALLIS:  That's me.  Good morning, again.

I think we are making steady progress, Maria and I are updating it as we have speakers confirmed.

We have identified all of the speakers we want to invite, and invited those.  I still need to work out exactly which private sector member we are going to invite, and that's partly dependent on geographic diversity.  So it's kind of waiting for the other speakers who have already been invited to respond one way or the other.  But I think we have at least three confirmed so far.  And of those who we have invited and identified, I'm pretty happy with the diversity of the panel in terms of gender and stakeholder group and region.

I'm not sure we have every single region of the world, but we have got most covered.  So, yes, I feel comfortable that we are making progress with the main session and that's one of the reasons I have not gotten so far with introductory session is because there has been the focus on organising the main session.

So I will let people consult the link of our Google Doc at their leisure.  There were two things I wanted to say.  Yes, kind of a more general point about the main sessions, and also the travel support that's available for speakers from Developing Countries.  Now, so obviously as main session organizers, we are looking to involve people from, sometimes from other disciplines or groups that just are not traditionally involved in the IGF.  We clearly need to get a good balance and include Developing Countries.  So we might well find ourselves in a position where we are inviting someone to participate who hadn't previously registered for the IGF or considered attending and would be a great candidate for travel support, but because the two deadliness don't line up and the deadline for travel support has passed, it can then, we miss out on the opportunity to kind of invite a potential speaker to apply for travel support.

I do want to appreciate that compared to my experience last year, we are far advanced and much better organized than we were able to be last year when we started later.  And I think in general we are in good shape and we are still two months to go before the meeting.  And I don't know what requirements there are that kind of dictate the deadline that the Secretariat has to put in place for travel support the.

I thought I would mention that for consideration for next year so the main session organizers are able to point potential speakers toward travel support if that's appropriate for those speaker candidates.  That was one thought I wanted to share about main sessions.  There was one thing I didn't say about introductory sessions, which walls that we may well be looking for at least six MAG members to help us run the session, lead breakout groups.

I don't know how many MAG members are in our Working Group, and it might mean reaching out further into the MAG for volunteers.  So I just wanted to kind of set an expectation that, you know, hopefully with 50 MAG members we will be able to find up to 250 MAG members who would volunteer when we have the concurrent thematic sessions if needed.  I think it would be great to have MAG members involved 50).  They have been thinking about the thematic groups throughout the year and would be well placed to do things like lead breakout sessions but I will get to specific questions when Lucian and I start working with the group.  I thought I would throw the idea out there and encourage people to be ready to volunteer to take on roles to help with these new sessions.

Thanks.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Ben.  A couple of really good points.  If we take the last one first, if that were to be true across all of the three sessions that would mean we are looking for 18 roughly probably half of the MAG members we might expect on site which I think is a pretty big percentage given all of the other activities that are happening at the same time I'm wondering if we could think about engaging the speakers from the sessions in the thematic electronics to lead the breakout groups that would get them understanding whether some portion of the community is interested in as well.  So maybe there is a mixture of a few MAG members and a few speakers or workshop organizers from across the track.

I thought Ben's point was good as far as speaker developing country participation.  Is it possible to set aside a portion of the funding.  I know partly it's the timing that's actually required to process all of the requests and process the travel, but maybe if there was a small subset set aside specifically to support speakers, that would help you manage the workload a little bit.  I don't know if you have any other thoughts or comments or?

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yes, I mean, we did have the intention this year of having some people who were speakers being funded, but the deadline now is totally past and the people who have been funded are, you know, in the process of being finalized, so I don't think we can do anything about that this year.  We will look about doing it next year.

But one thing this year, I think a good idea would be just to let session organizers and also the MAG know which people are being organized and which people are being funded, and maybe from that list they can select somebody to be on a main session as a panelist or as a helper, because I do think that since they are being funded, they have to be actively involved in the IGF 2019 meeting in some fashion, either being a panelist if they are invited or they could help out with the sessions.

So I think that's something we could do.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  I think that that's a good idea.  I wonder if even the parliamentarians if we had a list of that, if there are a few of those that might actually help with the developing country speaker participation.  So maybe we can use some of the kind of additional vehicles we have at this IGF to identify people that are going to be on site and see if they would be interested in participating.

>> BEN WALLIS:  Lynn, can I respond briefly, it's Ben again.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Of course.

>> BEN WALLIS:  I wanted to recognize that for the main session organisations, if we had followed the schedule that the Secretariat had set out back in June, July, then we would have probably had our speakers lined up before the travel support deadline happened.  So it wasn't necessarily for want of planning, but it just has taken longer to organize the main sessions.  I think it would be helpful as the Secretariat, as Chengetai suggested to share the list of those who need travel support we can draw in potential speakers and I think it would be great to remind MAG members as we set out organising main sessions next year that one reason for the deadline is that you may want to have some of your speakers seek travel support, and that part is not going to be so flexible even if we have been able to kind of move beyond the deadliness otherwise.

So I just wanted to add to that.  Thanks.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  I think that's a good point.  And we may need additional guidelines from the Secretariat as well, because of those individuals that have received funding support, I think these opportunities should be presented as opportunities to allow them to participate more fully, not something that's expected because there has been funding support.  I don't, and I don't think anybody was suggesting that we tie those two together in that manner, but I also wouldn't want somebody to feel that they were being pressured in some way because of the funding support.  So I think it's more about facilitating participation, engagement in giving them an opportunity, and if people reach out to individuals on that list, I really hope we are thoughtful about that.

And, again, if the Secretariat is to supply that list, then maybe we can help with some guidelines or something for outreach, make sure we are thinking about that carefully.  Mary, you have the floor.

>> I think one of the criteria for selecting, the criteria given to us as a community, especially me, my own community was, one of them was if the politic want was two panels in in a session.  So I know that we had not started the introductory and the transition process.  In selecting from my community, we considered new voice, newcomer of the discipline and then a question of a candidate that has got a panel in a session.  So it was there as one of the criteria, but the truth was that we were not, the introductory process, we know that we will need more hands so going forward as you said and as Ben said, maybe next year we will do it and maybe start it on time and then (?) in session will be properly.  So it will also come in as a criteria for developing that.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Mary.  You were breaking up.  There is a lot of static on the line.  I think you had two major points, and I think the last one was talking to sort of the timing of all of this.  And I think we can look at the timing a little bit again, but as Ben said, the timing didn't necessarily prohibit it.  It's just that the planning was a bit later for some of the main sessions.

I think we need to look at that all very carefully, because I don't know if we would ever be through with speakers six mornings ahead of the IGF    six months ahead of the figure IGF.  So we may need to look at the process more closely.

I think the first set of points when you looked from your communities to suggest people to participate, it was on the assumption that they were new voices, new disciplines, and that it was about their engaging in the IGF.  So were you saying that approaching them for some additional ways for them to participate deeply would be, would be in line with what you had done or was the point something else.  There was a lot of static.

>> No, what I was saying was that the criteria given to us by the, by IGF Secretariat to select a participant, the participant to be funded was included new voice, new discipline and gender as well as role at the IGF.  I said it was part of the criteria.  I don't know whether I made myself clear.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Yes.  

At that time we had not started the process of introductory and clouding session then.  So probably going forward, we will factor all of that in if we have the opportunity of selecting again participant to be funded from our community to include at the IGF.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  That was more clear.

Thank you.  And good points.

Any further comments on this particular topic as Ben said, it was a slight sort of side bar from the original topic, but a very important one.

>> BEN WALLIS:  We won't force anybody, we will ask people if they are willing to be panelists before offering up their names.  They are not going to be just find the names being offered without.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you Chengetai.

The next main session we are looking for update on is issues with free flow of data, ICT and services in a digitally connected world.  Who is able to give us an update on that.  Kenta.

>> Can you hear me.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  We can.  Thank you.

>> KENTA MOCHIZUKI: This is Kenta speaking, I don't have many updates but I have been working together closely with the Minister and communication with Japan, and indeed I had a meeting with them today too.  They made a very positive every agenda including our main session and hopefully Mr. Yoichi Deputy Director General, Co Chair of economic task force of administrative affairs and communications will serve as our panelists, as a panelist for our main session.

He has kindly assisted me in reaching out to other Government stakeholders and as far as I heard, keep confidential, please, the Government of Saudi Arabia who hosts the annual G20 Summit next year is very positive to participate in our main session.  On the other hand, Dr. Mago, Chair of the Committee for Economic Policies is still not sure whether he will be able to participate in the IGF.  So I will keep communicating with them.

In any case, in addition to Mr. Fred Issru and Mr. Tsatu, I tried to confirm panelists with other MAG members.  Apart from that, actually recently I had many meetings with our ministries so that last week I had a meeting with Ministry of Economy and today I had a meeting with ministry of internal affairs, and yesterday I had a meeting of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and next week I will have another meeting with ministry of economy, and to be honest, I feel going tentative that our ministries are getting more interested in the IGF from the prospect of comment.  So I make an effort to let them participate in that coming year.  So that it is.  Thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Kenta, thank you, that's very encouraging.  Are there any other comments or questions?  Are you still looking for speakers from some other regions as well or do you think you have enough under way there?

>> Thank you for you are kind of    yes, we have been looking for some potential speakers from other areas, but thanks to our other MAG members who are participating in our group 3, they already pursue to assist me in finding stakeholders.  But our discussion here by Ben and other members, actually I might have to reach out to you to ask some support to reach out to some from the Developing Countries, so in any case, I will keep in touch with you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  That's excellent, thank you, Kenta.

>> Thank you.  I appreciate it.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  I'm sure the entire MAG will be willing to help as well if you are looking for something from any particular region.

>> That's excellent.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Any questions for Kenta or the team on issues on free flow data?

Not seeing any, thank you, Kenta and the Working Group members as well.

>> Thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  The next main session is applying human rights and ethics in responsible data governance and AI.  Who is prepared to give us an update on that?

>> NATASA GLAVOR:  Hello?

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Yes, hello.

>> NATASA GLAVOR:  Natasa speaking.  I can make a short report on the group for preparing main session on AI.  We sent presentations to five analysts.  Keep in mind there is a diverse, and so far we have one information.  We sent among others we sent invitation to the Chair of Singapore Government Advisory Council for ethical use of data bit the message was bounced, and since we have additional panelists representing the Government stakeholder invited to the session, in case we will need help with the reaching Asian or African Government representatives we will reach out to my colleagues first in this matter if it's okay.

Our group will have Skype meeting on Friday and question will decide what will be our next steps.  So I would like to thank all colleagues and facilitators of this main session and also to colleagues not specifically involved in the preparation of this main session for their proposals on potential panelists like Maria or Susan as well.  So that would be all for my side for now.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Natasa.  Are there any comments or questions from MAG members?

Not seeing any.

Is there somebody else wanting to come in on this?  I guess not.  Let's move to the next main session then which was securing the interconnection of everything.  I'm not sure who is meant to speak do that.

>> JULIANA HARSIANTI:  Hello, it's Juliana speaking.  We are representing the Working Group for the Internet of Things main session for giving a brief update.  We received an update from Ben yesterday.  It says a few weeks ago that there is technical problems so we can add it yesterday so the incorporate it in our proposal.  About the speakers, there are three speakers who will be able and confirm to attending our main session after the last update of the IGF schedule last week.  It has been posted by the Secretariat.  There will be some speaker will be reaching out, but there is some suggestion from Juta and Ben, but we still try to find the speaker from the Asian region make a small balance in geographical representation.  So I think.

The problem finding speaker from Asian region because they are still thinking to attending IGF.  They are thinking or not to IGF, so we have to wait.  They are not sure yet.  I think this is the update from my side.  Any comment is welcome.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you Juliana.  If it would be helpful, I'm sure if you put a couple of lines together with respect to kind of profile or country or region that you might be looking for, that there are MAG members that would be willing to help or suggest as well.  So if you get to that point, just drop a note to the MAG list.

>> JULIANA HARSIANTI:  Jutta and Ben have sent some suggestion.  And then filling up the gap on the Government committee, but, yes.  We just try to describe what we are looking for.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Just as an offer if that's helpful.

>> JULIANA HARSIANTI:  Thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  And thank you to the team members as well.

Are there any other comments or questions for Juliana on this particular main session.  Well move to the next main session which is achieving the SDGs in the digital age.

>> MIGUEL CANDIA:  Hello, Lynn, I can talk to you on that if it's okay.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Excellent, thank you, Miguel.

>> MIGUEL CANDIA:  Thank you for giving me the floor.  Hello, everybody, how are you?  Well, we don't have too many updates, but we do have a few, a couple of news that we can share with the MAG and we are, the document was, it's available for everybody since a bit after the last MAG meeting.  So it's open to comments.  We haven't received any written comments, but we do think that document will evolve a little because we have had a very good conversation with DESA and we talked to other MAG members to get their suggestions so they will be very welcome and the document will be updated as soon as possible.

Regarding speakers from other areas, we are working on it.  We don't have any confirmations yet but we are looking to secure a list at least by mid-October and have already confirmed people who will be taking part of the main session that we are trying for them or the intention is for this to be high level in order to bring visibility to the main session and to the IGF.

So that's the idea.  The group will have another meeting as well in order to look for giving closure to the document and to the proposals for our speakers and as soon as we have more information or names, we will be letting everybody know.

And the intention with the speakers is, of course, to be, for them to be from all sectors and taking into account particularly the efforts by the UN system and by countries for, to achieve the SDGs and how this  affects the world of or the work of IGF and vice versa how the IGF influences the SDGs and their achievement and their realization.

So that's the idea, that's the intention and we are looking forward for any interaction with other MAG members or any interested party.  And we are at your service.  I don't know if someone else from the group wants to take the floor on this.  Thank you, Lynn.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Miguel.

We have Sylvia Cadena in the queue.

>> SYLVIA CADENA:  Thanks, Lynn, I just wanted to ask if other sessions are also kind of struggling with either trying to identify a speaker or too many speakers from one place but need to shuffle some speakers around, let's say, if there is a chance to have some sort ever descriptions of what expertise you need those speakers to have so that we can make some contributions, I know that my colleague from Indonesia just mentioned the lack of representatives from Asia.  So I'm very keen to provide input on that.  But at the same time, I have been asked by several senior officials to help them place high ranking officials in different sessions, but because I don't know exactly what kind of speakers people are looking for it's kind of hard to make those suggestions.

If there was a chance to have like, I don't know, like a spreadsheet, with what is required and more or less and then we can easily add, because otherwise it takes a lot of time to go through all of the main session documents and stuff.  If that's okay, I don't know.  At least for the main sessions.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Sylvia, I think that's a great idea.  We should    let me just propose something and see if we can get comments from other MAG members.  At one level people could simply identify the open slots they have by the, the stakeholder country or region, gender and kind of background or profile, which is, that's all pretty straight forward and I don't think that's a huge workload.  If we ask everybody to do that and send that to the Secretariat, then the Secretariat could put together a spreadsheet, which I think putting that in one place would make it much easier to look where there is maybe overrepresentation and underrepresentation.  Is that something the Working Group members that are working on these main sessions would think was useful?

So, again, the request would be to identify any needs you have with respect to the speakers so the stakeholder, the gender, the region kind of profile expertise required and the Secretariat would collect all of that and share it back out with the MAG.

>> MIGUEL CANDIA:    Hi, Lynn, it's me.  I support the proposal.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Miguel.  Natasa is saying thank you very helpful.  Lucien is saying that as well, actually Sylvia did from her Working Group.  Is there anybody that sees problem or difficulty with that if so, please take the mic.  Can I ask the Secretariat to get a note out to MAG members and with this request and, you know, honestly if people could do that in the next three or four days that would mean we could start the beginning of next week with a list that everybody could move forward into their own processes.

>> Yes, we might actually put up a Google Doc so that it makes the collection easier.  I will talk it over with the rest.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  That makes a lot of sense, thank you, Chengetai.  Thank you, Sylvia, that's a good suggestion.  There is support for that and the Secretariat will get that under way.

Thank you Miguel for that update too from your Working Group.  We have just a couple more.  We have emerging technologies and their interfaces with inclusion, security and human rights organized by the NRIs.  Anna, are you prepared to give us an update.

>> Yes, thank you very much, Chair.  We gave on behalf of the network a very broad update in the last MAG meeting.  For this MAG meeting we don't have a lot of updates except the fact that rapporteurs have been confirmed so we are very happy to have our colleagues from Nigeria IGF reporting other than this session following R following the until the 25th of September the NRIs that would like to designate their speakers to represent them at this session will be signing up and confirming the names of the speakers and sending submissions what will be their positions on the topic regarding this session and so after the 25th of September, we will be able to confirm then, I think, a final update to the MAG on who are the speakers by name from which NRIs in the first and second block.  If you remember the format update from the last meeting, and also, of course, to update you on the nature of those inputs and to see what will be the core focus of all NRIs on this topic and we may even modify slightly the title of this session depending on the nature of those inputs.

But for now, that will be my update for this meeting.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you Anja.  Are there any questions for Anja?  Comments or questions?  I think that session is coming along well as well, and, again, Anja, if there is anything you need from, you know, from the MAG in terms of support for that session, just let us know.

The next main session is the one organized by dynamic coalitions, is that Markus or Jutta that are going to speak to that.

>> JUTTA CROLL:  Hi, Lynn, it's Jutta speaking on behalf of the dynamic coalition.  I can give a wick update, so after we had another call to the dynamic coalitions to send in or fill in the template that was provided on line on the IGF website, we have now received so far feedback from nine dynamic coalitions, so we are still waiting for a few of them to fill in the template and give us information on what area, what they are working on to achieve Sustainable Development Goals, what they have achieved so far, and what their plans are until 2025.  So we are attempting to have the next call of the dynamic coalitions within the next two weeks, and then hopefully we will be able at the next call of the WebEx meeting, soon meeting of the MAG to give you more feedback on the content of the session and probably also we will have some names of speakers from dynamic coalitions and beyond that.  Thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you Jutta.  Thank you for the work you are doing with the DCs, I know you have a huge workload it given the support you are giving to so many of the IGF activities.  Much, much appreciated.  Any comments for Jutta on the dynamic coalition main session?

>> JUTTA CROLL:  If I may add something, so from the short report we got on the other main session that is also related to the SDGs, I do think it might be useful to have a call between the coordinator of that session.  I do think it was Lucien if I am right or Miguel.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Miguel.  

>> JUTTA CROLL:  Sorry for mixing it up, Miguel, but we have a call between the coordinators of the two sessions in order to just make sure that it's not overlapping in a certain way is two sessions.  I do think we can differentiate very well between the two sessions but it might be useful once we have got all of the input from the dynamic coalitions that joined this main session that we just have a call between the coordinators.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  That's a good point, Jutta and one mentioned in the last call as well.  So it's really important, and if you need help setting that up, I'm sure the Secretariat would help.  Otherwise starting with Miguel and deciding from the two Working Groups who should be on the call is the low barrier way to set it up. 

>> JUTTA CROLL:  If I can come in on that.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Of course.  Thank you very much Jutta for that proposal.  I fully agree, the more the merrier, the more we talk, the more we understand each other and we can help to make those, both activities more relevant.  No problem from my part and, of course, the call will be open to anybody in our group for them to help out as well.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Excellent, thank you, Miguel.  So we will just leave it to Jutta and Miguel to organize and communicate appropriately across the Working Groups.

Not seeing any other requests for the floor, I want to thank Jutta again for all of her work with the DVs.  There is one main session which ant listed and that's the digital cooperation main session, but as previously reported, we are still waiting the outcome of the consultation to really determine what is the right structure and coppices and that sort of thing, really hopeful we will get more comments white soon to give us a better indication but the plan is that we will have to get under way fairly soon, and, again, the team that was supporting that was the Secretariat, DESA, myself, and the host country.  And as we begin pulling together the planning for that, we will make sure the MAG is willing, engaged, well involved and if there are individuals that want to participate as well, they are certainly welcome to.

If we move now to the next item.  There were updates from the PPFDCs.  Any other intersessional activities and then from the NRIs as well.  So we could start with, I guess the Best Practice Forums.  I'm always tempted to switch will it around and go with ZCs and NRIs first, but I also worry that I would catch them off guard because that's not the order in the agenda.  So let's stay with the order in the agenda.  Could we have brief updates from the leaders of the BPF efforts?

>> Hi, Lynn, I usually go first.  

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thanks.

>> BEN WALLIS:  Possibly for alphabetical reasons.  So we extended the, we extended the deadline until this Friday, the 20th, and the Secretariat has helped with kind of additional outreach. And we have had a couple of different blog posts go out. Wim did one and our lead expert Martin Van Hornberg did another on ID and elsewhere just to try and raise awareness.  I know Microsoft is a member of the tech accord itself with the blog posts that bring attention to the call for inputs, and I have also reached out directly to the Paris call, to the French Government and asked them to think about responding on behalf of the Paris Corps as well as let the Paris corps signatories know.

We have four contributions to far and I would expect more to come in by the deadline on Friday.  We then have a meeting of the BPF schedule towards the end of the month so at that meeting we can reflect on the response to proceed and what that means for a report of the BPF this year, and we can also start discussing what the BPF session in Berlin should look like, and how, yes, which kind of speakers we would like and that kind of.  So we are making progress.  It was right to extend the deadline at this point and I'm confident we are going to likely reach double figures once people work towards the actual deadline.  Thanks.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Ben.  Are there any comments or questions for Ben on that particular BPF.  Carlos has just put a link in the chat room for the Article that was just written by Wim and Anriette.  Any additional comments?

Let's go to the next BPF.  Is there someone who can speak to gender and access?

>> Hi, Lynn, this is Maria Bosk. Can you hear me?

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  We can, thank you, Maria.

>> I will provide the update for the gender BPF, access on gender BPF.  We have been looking into the result of this and we are working this year help us to process and we received a little bit more of 20 responses for this and the information dollar in Sorbet thus the different presentation that we have had in the past for the BPF group, Working Group, and we are in the first round this week of deciding what will be the topic that we want to have in order to have device on study cases and one in looking for the specific recommendation in each one of the areas, so we are planning on having our next call with the full group Monday next week.  We will announce the time on the list, but probably we will keep the time that we have in the past that if I am not mistaken, it will be a 13 hour UTC.

And the idea with that, the additional topic will be to accrue a little bit more support of the people that have been interested and participating in the list.  So we will keep you updated with information in order to find a better way to collaborate with that work.  That's what I can update for now.  Thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you Maria.  And thank you for calling in and having just gotten off a plain as well.  Are there any comments or questions for Maria or for that BPF.  They are saying there have been 25 responses to date for the gender call, Anriette said.

Let's movie don't have any other comments in.  Let's move to local content.  I see a note from Carlos saying he is having mic difficulties, and Anriette is supporting them on that, and I know we were a little concerned at the last meeting about the progress and attention as reported by Carlos.  So if we could get an update today and if Carlos isn't able to speak then perhaps Anriette.

>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  Hi, Lynn, Anriette here, can you hear me.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  We can, yes.

>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  I'm sorry it's a little bit noisy where I am.  It has been going slow, but I think it was summer holidays and one of the coordinators were away and Carlos and Jacques have refined what the topic is and that is what the blog developed by them, and it's focusing on how iOTs, Internet, can be used to preserve local content and heritage particularly during times of conflict, or political upheaval.

I think there is specific examples around the world at the moment.  So I think that the topic has been narrowed down, and the next steps would be to send sought the call for input, and we have a draft of that which, and after the coordinators have looked at that, we can share it with the rest of the group.  The other thing that would be very useful which worked very well for gender was to have some webinars just where people can begin to share some of their experiences or examples.

So I know it's a slow start, but I think it's a matter of giving more and feeding new content to the BPF in order to provoke discussion.  I think once we have got the call going and people can respond to the call, I think that will stimulate more engagement.  I'm confident that we will do useful work even if we start a little bit late.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Anriette thank you, and Carlos as well.  I mean, I have always been very supportive and very aware of the importance of local content going back several decades actually.  So I'm glad the BPF is going forward.  I think the topic is quite interesting and I know it's close to Carlos' heart here for some time as well.  So I think that sounds like a really interesting and, you know, and frankly, I think somewhat of a new focus at least within the IG circle.  So I think that's really interesting.

I also think the webinar is a good idea.  I know a lot of people find it easier to speak to a lot of these things and sit down and send in comments.

I think that would be a useful idea, so I do hope that this continues to move forward.  So I think it's a very interesting area overall and I think this particular focus is timely and important.  Thank you for the work you are doing and Carlos, thank you too for rekicking it off again.  Are there any comments or questions from MAG members?  Not seeing any then, I look forward to seeing the formal call out.  Thank you.

The final BPF is Internet of Things, big data and AI.  Natidi normally gives us an update, but she has a conflict today.  Is there anybody else that can speak to that?

>> WIM DEGEZELLE:  Hi, Lynn, it's Wim here.  I can give the update.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Excellent, thank you Wim.

>> WIM DEGEZELLE: The BPF on big data and AI is still having its survey open.  The current deadline is the end of October.  It is every survey that tries to get a general impression of what people see as    or what people are excited about when they talk about the new technologies, but also to get input on what people fear about the technologies and come up with some best practices.  So that's open still, like I said, until the eighth of October.

In parallel, the BPF is working on emailing this internally however, you want to call it on a draft document based on input from the survey, but also based on the discussions of the calls we had before the summer period.  So that is focus on coming up with the draft document that will get out for we hope between four and six weeks before the IGF's meeting.

We had a call the 10th of September.  Most of the call was dedicated to structuring the work for the remainder of the year.  The BPF then has, agrees on four more dates for virtual meetings.  They are all on the website already.  The next one is the 24th of September at noon, 12:00 p.m. UTC.

Like I said, there were four meetings, the next two calls will be used to work on the document so that by early October we finalize a draft that can be sent out to the broader community or published on the website to invite broad community input and then the next two calls will focus on the preparation of the session we have at the IGF meeting in Berlin.

So that's the update, but happy to answer any questions.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Wim.  Appreciate everything you are doing here, holding so much of this together.  Any comments or questions on this BPF?

Not seeing any, thank you to you, again, and to the Working Group members.  Obviously another very critical, very topical BPF.  So look forward to that report as well.

Next up in terms of updates, dynamic coalitions, Jutta is there anything you or Markus want to add?

>> JUTTA CROLL:  Hi, Lynn, can you hear me?

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Yes, we can.

>> JUTTA CROLL:  There had been some problems with my internet connection previously.  So there is no update so far on the dynamic coalitions.  As I said before, we will try to have our next call at the beginning of October and then we will probably be able to tell you more about what's going on.  Thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  I know a lot of the activities in the DCs have been organized towards the main session as well.  So thank you, Jutta.

Are there any comments or questions?  Markus, anything you would like to add?

>> Just to confirm what you said.  I typed it in the chat.  The focus on the DCs was on organizing the main session.  I appreciate that there too.  Thank you for your support and, Jutta, for the support of the DCs, much appreciated.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  NRIs, Anja, is there anything you would like to add to your earlier update?

>> ANJA GENGO:  Thank you, Lynn.  

In addition to preparing the main session you mentioned along with the MAG, they also work on preparing six collaborative sessions and we are hoping that the Secretariat will be receiving written inputs by the co organizers from all of those six sessions that we will be consolidating and producing publications as input documents to this session to be announced before the meeting in Berlin will start.

We are also, we will start very soon with building the agenda for the NRI coordination session which as you know is an open meeting between the MAG Chair, the MAG, the IGF Secretariat, colleagues from UNDESA, and all NRIs as well as, of course, the wider community that finds it of interest.  So we will be in wide consulting primarily the Chair, and then it will be general to the MAG on building this agenda because the agenda isn't built just by the MRIs, but by all of those participating in this 90 minutes long kind of open work meeting.

And in addition, the NRIs as you know will host the bullets so we are preparing our individual presentation of all of the NRI meetings that in this year.  The calendar has been updated, but so far there has been a number of NRI meetings so we are getting photos and key information in terms of the participation records and so on.  I'm sorry, this noise is coming from me.

That presentation will be also shared with the MAG as soon as it's finished.  I assume it will be finished in the beginning of November, because many of the meetings are scheduled for that time.  So that would be all.  If you look at the calendar, you will see that the meeting that is upcoming in September is the Nepal IGF.  We had several scheduled in the first half of September and the reports will be published on the IGF website for the information on everyone.  Thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Anja, and can you just give us at current number of NRIs, and then second, do you have off the top of your head the number of NRI sessions, annual meetings that have been held or are planned to be held this year?

>> ANJA GENGO:  Yes, so when it comes about the current number of the NRIs, you remember my last update was 116 as a total number to the MAG.  So that changed actually.  That's a very good point.  It changed according to the previous records and previous meetings shared.  So now it's 118.  We have two new national IGFs that have joined us, and we are communicating with six more to hopefully establish their IGF's before the end of this year.

For the number of the meeting that you mentioned, I will have to do the count again because actually today I am updating the calendar, but so far I know that my current count is 42, but I think it's going to go up, so I would then just kindly ask to update you maybe through the MAG list after this meeting.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  That would be great, both in terms of those that have been held to date and how many are kind of currently planned or expected just so we all have the number off the top of our heads.  That's excellent news with the 118 plus hopefully six more.  That's great, Anja, thank you.

>> ANJA GENGO:  Thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Any questions for Anja or any other comments for any of the other NRI participants on the call, MAG members?

Not seeing any, Mary.  Mary, you have the floor.  Mary, we can't    we can hear you now.

>> MARY UDUMA:  Can you hear me?  Is it working?  I think my connection is unstable.  Just to state that I don't know whether you were briefed but the African IGF, we launched the first Africa youth IGF in charge as well.  I know Anja    I don't know whether you have gotten the information or not, but when you are making your count you also include, I think.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Mary.  That's excellent news, both for the recent African IGF and the youth IGF there as well.  Thank you.  So let's move to the next Agenda Item then not seeing any other requests for the floor, which is the penultimate Agenda Item it's updates from the Working Groups of which there are four.  

Aresene, do you want to give a brief update on the communications and outreach and thank you for sending the comprehensive report before the meeting as well? 

I think I saw Arsene on the call.  I didn't, no.  Is there anyone else then from that Working Group who can give us an update.

>> JUNE PARRIS:  Hello, Lynn, this is June Paris.  Thank you.  

I think Arsene had to leave the call early, he sent an email out to MAG this morning with an update on our activities, we have been pretty busy this week, we have been trying to get something together    let me see if I can find what I want to say.  We have been working in the background to try and help to improve our outreach efforts and outcome.  So far we have finished on the marketing audit that the Secretariat patiently answered, and we highly appreciate the cooperation.  Thank you so much for that.

From those answers, we also made a feedback and below are some of the recommendations and requests we want to take.  We want to create content calendar with curated content and posters related to IGF.  This content will be posted on the Facebook and Twitter on a schedule manner using a social media post scheduling app.  Rose recommended, but I believe IGF already has a calendar they are using.  We had a response from Luis about that.  We also need graphic designers to help in creating simple posters that can be posted and since we have written this, we had some volunteers, Rose and Adema and Afia.  They volunteered to work this out.

So we also need to request the Secretariat to grant at least a moderator editor access to the social media accounts for post scheduling at least for the content manager.  Reference we made update to the Working Group activities 2019 document explaining the things we mentioned about, so we thank the MAG for being so patient with us, and we hope that we can get all of this work done before Berlin IGF.  We are actually planning to meet in Berlin and to follow through with the work that we do.  Thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, June.

I particularly liked in the report, I think, the intent to sort of focus on those things that were helpful even in the shorter term, you know, with respect to broadcasting the IGF and that sort of thing, so I think that's a really pragmatic and useful approach, so thank you to the Working Group.  And I'm sure the secretariat will review the note and respond appropriately.

If there are specific requests to the MAG, then I'm trying to think having read through the note quickly before the call here, we can ask the MAG to certainly read it and come in as well on any specific comments or questions. 

>> JUNE PARRIS:  I will also update on the Working Group improvements myself and Shenai.  We met with I think it was Flavio last week, and we did some work on what we said we were going to do and we hope to do it by the end of the year.  So we had a Zoom call on the 9th and this is our most recent update on our activities.  Shenai sent the email to the MAG.  We have volunteers to review the reviews.  We are looking for volunteers and any volunteers are most welcome.  There is a page to sign up to the volunteer list going forward with those we have on the team.  We will have an internal chat on the 17th of September to find out where people are with reviews.

A call will be scheduled on a date to be excited in October for an update on the reviews in terms of action items.  We will also work on a draft report to be discussed at the bilateral meeting for the IGF.  Myself, Shenia, we are supported by Flavio and jewel Leann.  They are still giving us support even though they are not with the MAG anymore.  And that's my update.  Thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, June.  And, of course, all Working Groups are open to non MAG members as well.

So we are fortunate to have Flavio and Julian's participation.  The efforts of the Working Group are extremely important.  Over the last several years, they have taken great pains to capture all of the suggestions for improvements from many processes.  Each year's stock taking the Working Group on improvements, the group on 2016, various services that have been done from the WSIS+10 set of recommendations, and it's a really thorough, and they categorize them by the type of suggested improvement.  They have begun identifying the status of them, and where necessary identifying who should be responsible for enacting them.  It's incredibly important because it obviously helps the IGF improve.

It also shows that the IGF is paying attention to so many of these processes and so many of these views and responding to them.  So I really would like to encourage MAG members to take a look at the work, to jump in and help where you can, it's a tremendous, tremendous undertaking, but just incredibly, incredibly important, and I really want to thank the Working Group members that have been with us for several years now.

I really fully recognize the level of work that's required.  Let me see if there are any comments or questions from the MAG members on that particular Working Group.

Not seeing any, are there any other comments from June or any other Working Group members?

>> JUNE PARRIS:  No, I have no further comments, thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, June.

Another Working Group on the workshop process, Jutta, are you able to give a brief update?

>> JUTTA CROLL:  Yes, of course.  Can you hear me?

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  We can, yes.  Thank you.

>> JUTTA CROLL:  There was background noise, Jutta speaking for the record.  So for the Working Group on workshop process, we have finalized last week the survey, the questionnaire to workshop proposals, and thanks to Luis, it was set up as online survey, sent out on the 13th of September with a deadline of four weeks.  That would mean the 14th of October, sent out to it 55 individual workshop proposals, and so we are hoping to get lots of feedback and we have also encouraged with the survey these workshop proposals who had not been successful with their proposals to have a look at the IGF program and decide whether some of their potential speakers might also be available for other sessions.

So this could be another channel for those sessions that are still looking for speakers also for main session speakers that some interest might come in via the survey.  Thank you.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jutta.  Any comments or questions for Jutta on that Working Group?  Not seeing any, thank you Jutta, thank you for focusing on the survey too.  I do think it's important to see, and I certainly hope we get a lot of respondents as well.

I can give an update now on the Working Group on fundraising.  We had a call earlier this week with strong participation from the German Government from the Secretariat and from DESA as well.  There will be a meeting summary coming out, as I said earlier, hopefully before the end of the week.  Much of the discussion activities is focusing on kind of getting appropriate visibility and messages out during the IGF.  We did agree to host an open session.  It will be on day one at lunch time with respect to focus on IGF participation and donations.

The working model at the moment would be to have past significant donors make a very brief set of comments with respect to why they support the IGF, why they think it's important and why it's important obviously to fund it.  We would have a presentation on the financial status as well, but that would actually be a fairly minor piece of the agenda.  A lot of that can be found online.

I think what's really important is to use that meeting to actually kind of get people to share why it's important and why they participate and why they contribute.  And get some discussion going.  So we are going to work to organize that.  We are also updating the IGF post card that two MAG members last year, Sylvia Cadena and Arnold Vanrhign from the Dutch Government focused on.  I think it's ray great tool.  We are simply thinking of adding a couple of lines that actually talk a little bit more specifically about what the donations support, because the post card at the moment says that it supports the Secretariat, this is, of course, true, but we think it could also kind of add a bit more data behind that and actually talk about what that focus is, the fact that it actually supports developing country participation in the MAG and various activities.  And, of course, it supports support to intersessional activities and to the national regional youth IGF initiatives as well.

So we are going to start a process on the MAG list to the MAG members will see this to just kind of update the backside of the card a little bit.  And then we will get a number of those printed up for distribution at the IGF.  We can put one in each one of the Conference bags that will be given out.  And it's a tool which is free.  The IGF is actually going to make the tool accessible to, across the entire IGF ecosystem, which means groups such as the NRIs could use it, could tailor it to their own messages, obviously could put the text in local languages, and then either make it available on their websites or distribute it at their meetings in various places as well.

So we will be working on that over the coming few weeks.  We have support from the German Government to work on    last year we created a high level or a champion's letter, support to distribute that to the High Level Meeting participants, and the parliamentarians.  So we will be working on some really, really targeted outreach efforts to various communities at the IGF.  And we will just continue to advance a number of those activities over the coming weeks.

I'm trying to think if there was anything substantive.  We, of course, are following up on current and past donors to continue to get the contributions in, and potentially hopefully increase, and there is an effort on a quite small number of targeted donors and that's just limited, frankly, by the resource we actually have to address them.  And I think the other point is that DESA has agreed to look for significant opportunities across the UN system to promote the IGF, and I think they have historically done that, but we are going to take a harder look at it because, of course, with the Secretary General's high level panel, there is a lot more focus and I think a lot more momentum across the UN system to really look at digital cooperation in governance, so we want to take advantage of that momentum.

I'm doing this from memory.  I don't have a meeting summary prepared yet.  I will ask any of the other members on the call if there is anything they want to add or anything that I have forgotten.

  And at the same time open it up to further questions or suggestions, all ideas are welcome from MAG members with respect to what we might do to increase the visibility to the fundraising.

>> VENI MARKOVSKI:  This is Veni.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  You have the floor.

>> VENI MARKOVSKI:  I hope you can hear me because now I'm on a 3G connection, so.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  I can hear you well.

>> VENI MARKOVSKI:  Whoa, the 3G connection was better than the American 4G.  So first of all, it I really enjoyed the conversation that we had earlier this week on that, on the financial Working Group.  I do want to reach out to everyone to ask everyone to reach out to their contacts in Government and businesses and urge them to both come to the IGF, but also to take example the German leadership in this situation because they have shown tremendous support for the IGF, and I agree with you the attention is, there is an attempt to move the attention a little bit towards the high level panel or maybe not a little bit for the high level panel report.  But we should not lose focus that the IGF is here to stay until at least 2025, and it needs some solid finance support.  

So if anyone on the MAG or anyone from our contacts has the opportunity to take the example from the German Government and the German Parliament in particular, it would be really good for these people to introduce them to our host to make sure they participate in the Friday parliamentary day, so to speak, and find out why Germany is so supportive, why also the Netherlands is so supportive, and see also, you know, talk to the Polish hosts for next year.

So really my view is for everyone to think outside of the box, and try to bring as many people as possible and make sure that we can bring some more funding into the Secretariat.  Thanks.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  That's a very good message, Veni.  The German Government at one point over the year was actually looking at maybe doing a fairly focused sort of fundraising effort or challenge to try and get some donations on site during the IGF.  And in some of the exploratory talks, I think the best way to maybe say this is they were underwhelmed by the support or interest.

So we are looking for other ways to bring appropriate attention to it, make the importance clear, and to that extent some of the things we will be putting out on the MAG list in the coming weeks will be in an effort to enable the MAG to actually generate some more interest locally, whether that's through distribution of post cards or that's through taking the, we have both the champions letter plus we have a longer template letter that people can start to get out to your networks, and the place to focus them if they are interested in more detail would be towards the Secretariat and, I guess at this point the Chair, but we will continue working on that, and we really do want to continue to encourage MAG members to make the point about the unique space the IGF occupies and the importance of supporting it properly as well.

And Lucien had suggested yesterday that some of the materials could be translated.  It's certainly easy enough to translate the post card, and that's kind of an open application anyway, so we can do that locally.  But even the champion's letter which is a one page letter.  There was support for doing that and translating that into a few languages as well.  So you will see more activity from that over the coming weeks and we really want to use this opportunity to have kind of a strong lead, if you will into the IGF, and then hopefully pull forward additional support there as well.

So I will stop on that, just give a moment to see if there are any other questions, comments, suggestions and then I have one other brief update.  Not seeing any, I will give a brief update on the ad hoc Working Group on reporting.  We also had a meeting earlier this week, and this the meeting summary will be out shortly.  We are focused at this particular point and really looking at the process we have used in the past to collect the reports from the sessions, how to structure them, whether or not additional advice is needed.  There was some really useful comments in terms of how we can kind of better operationalize some of the existing reporting mechanisms, working to clarify the role as well.  The German Government has provided a substantive amount of funding to supplement some of the reporting on site.  That contract is with Diplo, and Diplo, of course, has supported reporting from the IGF in past years as well.  Some of the things we are hoping to advance this year with respect to Diplo is, again, a lot of it is I think kind of more practical operating to see if we can have small teams of people supporting the main thematic tracks or the sub themes underneath so that we get consistent reporting and we actually use that to build a story of these discussions over the IGF which, of course, is in keeping with the narratives and the process we have run all year.

Also to do a little more kind of front end work with Diplo to ensure that the things that the MAG and we think the IGF community find particularly important are focused on from the Diplo efforts as well.  So just to try and, I think, make all of our reporting processes a little more robust, a little more concrete and more focused, we are also trying to determine how to improve some of the processes with respect to some of the summaries, and the key messages.  This gets in a little bit to the concluding sessions and how we might want to structure that, which is the main focus of our next call.

I reported on that at the beginning of the call so I won't repeat that here.  It is quite early days with respect to that particular part of the process.  I have also seen in some of the sessions where the workshop organizers are really trying to get the, to get a really tight or tighter focus on the policy questions.  I mean, I think 90 minute sessions, four and five policy questions are just too many, so I'm hopeful we continue to really kind of narrow those down and focus so we can advance the discussions in the sessions.

  There were a couple of other things we thought we might do as well with respect to beefing up some of the reporting.  We are going to make sure we support the median press and going to put up a specific press section as well, again, trying to facilitate their particular entry into the IGF.  And it will be there to support both the press that's on site as well as press is participating.  Let me turn to see if there is anything I have forgotten from the call.  Any of the Working Group members want to comment on, and, again, the meeting summary will be out shortly.  Chengetai or Wi Min, is there anything that we should comment on here?

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO:  You did mention the prereport being out a month before the start of the meeting, the session report, right?  Pre session report?

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Right, we are changing some of the timelines too to facilitate that.  Any comments, questions?  Suggestions?  So comments in the chat room, Wi Mim thinks he is at this point at least we captured everything it was a productive discussion and it's a good idea to have Diplo reporters grouped to thematic suggests.  One the other things we looked at there will be a consultant engaged with the Secretariat that will support this process as well, and in addition to having the Chair summary which will focus on the three thematic tractions, we are actually going to see if we can structure that so in addition to that one aggregated report that we have three separate reports so if people are really interested in data governance, we have got a report that is appropriately introduced and concluded that standalone that we can put out to those communities as well, again, just doing whatever we can to make the material that comes from the IGF accessible.

So we will be working on that and I think there are both TDF components in terms    PDF components in terms of a report that people can send or print out as well as online structure.  Continue to work that.  If people are aware of tools oar apps or resources that would like to jump in and help here, this is, you know, an area where I think it's difficult, frankly, to get too much support.  So please let us know if anything else occurs to you.

With that I will give it another minute to see if there are any comments on that.

  Seeing none, we are at AOB.  There were no requests for AOB, but is there anything that anyone wants to add or anything that's come up over the course of the discussion here?

Then I think it remains Chengetai, do we have a date for our next call?

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yes.  The next call is supposed to be Wednesday in two weeks' time which is the 2nd of October.

I was going to ask if we could have it on Tuesday, the first of October if possible.  It's supposed to be at 8:00 p.m. UTC.  So if we could shift it a day because I will be going to Poland for the assessment mission.

So I was wondering if we could have it on Tuesday, if there would be any objections?

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  That go be Tuesday the second of October.  It's the second, right?

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO:  I'm sorry, I'm getting messed up with my dates again.  Would my date person please tell me the dates, Luis?

>> LUIS BOBO:  Yes, it was supposed to be on second, Wednesday.  It's 8:00 p.m. UTC.

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Wednesday, yes.

>> So Tuesday the first at the same time, 8:00 p.m. UTC.

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yes, or if you want to push it a week.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  I think either one is fine with me.  Maybe we will stay with the same week.

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Tuesday then, the first of October.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  I think it's probably better, and I think we are getting to the end of a lot of these activities, but at this point if we have anything to report on some of the other reporting or fundraising that's probably a reasonable time to do that as well.

Or the other week works as well.  Let's leave it on the.

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO:  It would be on the ninth, Yom Kippur.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Let's leave it on the first of October, the Tuesday, the same week.  I think that's the schedule everybody is targeting towards.

>> CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Okay.  I guess everybody is happy with that.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, everybody.  Thank you.  I'm sorry, Nebojsa, you have the floor.

>> LUIS BOBO: So, Lynn, this is Luis.  It seems Nebojsa left the meeting and he wrote a message in the chat saying he is fine because of all of this. 

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  I don't see his message.

>> LUIS BOBO:  He is on the call.  He is having issues with the microphone because he is unmuted.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  So, do you have?

>> NEBOJSA REGOJE:  I have a question about the selection and appointment of the new Chair if you have any information in which stage is the process?

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  On the appointment of the new Chair?

>> NEBOJSA REGOJE:  Yes, exactly.

>> LYNN ST. AMOUR:  I don't, and I would turn that over to DESA, I guess, if Wi Min is still on the call, to see if there is an update there or if Chengetai knows of anything.

 >> (Captioner dropped call at 17:00 UTC)