IGF Open Consultations
Wednesday, 19 February 2014 (Entire Day)
Geneva, Switzerland
>>VYATCHESLAVA CHERKASOV: -- in order to make this announcement, I would like to inform you that United Nations would like to express deep appreciation and thanks to Mr. Markus Kummer, who was the interim chair of MAG for the 2013, for his great efforts, for his dedication and time he spent to lead MAG and working with you together to make the 2013 IGF event as one of the most successful events within the history of the IGF. So I would like to ask you to applaud and thank Mr. Kummer.
[ Applause ]
Thank you very much for your support.
I also would like to continue and make the announcement that taken into consideration the recommendations of MAG members so that Mr. Wu who is to Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, of DESA appointed Ambassador Janis Karklins as the interim chair of the MAG meeting.
[ Applause ]
So, you know, Ambassador Karklins, he is a long-time supporter and I can say one of the founders of the WSIS and IGF. And I was really pleased to see him as the interim chair of MAG.
Now I would like to give the floor back to Chengetai. Thank you.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Slava. Now I would like to call the honorary Chair for these meetings, Dr. Ahmet Cavusoglu, head of international relations department from the Information and Communication Technology Authority from Turkey. Thank you very much. Can you please come up on to the stage?
[ Applause ]
And also our new interim chair, Ambassador Karklins.
You now give the floor to Dr. Ahmet.
>>AHMET ERDING CAVUSOGLU: Thank you very much. Esteemed colleagues, dear ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I would like to express my sincere appreciation that U.N. agreed to hold Internet Governance Forum in our unique city of Istanbul. Being intercontinental (indiscernible), we reach historical and cultural texture. I'm sure that IGF in 2014 will be a remarkable one, and you will all enjoy your stay in Istanbul.
Taking this opportunity, we look forward to welcoming you all in September in Turkey in Istanbul.
Since 2006, Internet Governance Forums have been providing an excellent platform for dialogue between all stakeholders of Internet-related issues, forward-looking discussions keep the basic principles of transparency, accountability and inclusiveness of all relevant stakeholders have been leading to improvements in Internet governance. Internet is an important part of daily life. It has already shaped how we conduct our business, how we interact socially and even how we provide our daily needs.
Internet comes with great benefits. Also, it brings great challenges that are not like challenges we have settled before.
In order to tackle these, it is vital that all stakeholders speak the same language and have the same principles. The multistakeholder nature of the IGF is a promising start of this. IGF provides the platform for discussion of various Internet-related issues.
Dear colleagues, safe, secure and (inaudible) Internet are the main goals to be achieved for building confidence in cyberspace.
It is also important to keep the norms that respect the national values and cultural diversity in the borderless nature of the Internet.
Building trust and confidence in the Internet is not an easy task. It faces serious challenges. Cybersecurity is one of the challenging issues for all stakeholders. Safe and secure Internet is important for national security, the development of (inaudible) and privacy of users. In this regard, I believe that IGF will have all stakeholders that will develop a common understanding of cybersecurity and how to deal with it.
I believe that today and tomorrow we will have fruitful discussions for shaping the agenda of the IGF 2014 and other important issue for further developments in good governance of Internet.
I'm very pleased to be hearing this community and look forward to hearing discussions and proposals for successful IGF 2014.
Having this change, I would like to congratulate Indonesia for hosting a very successful IGF 2013 -- (audio interference) -- and would be very happy to hear their experience and guidance for our IGF 2014. Expressing once again, the great pleasure of IGF 2014. I trust this meeting will be a successful one in achieving its planned purposes which forms the basis for successful outcomes for IGF 2014.
Thank you very much for this opportunity that you have given me. Now I would like to give the floor to His Excellency Ambassador Janis Karklins to chair the meeting.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Ahmet for your opening remarks and for the decision of the government of Turkey to host the 2014 edition of Internet Governance Forum. So thank you.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Before getting any further, I would like to start by inviting our previous chair, Mr. Markus Kummer, to address the meeting.
Markus?
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Chairman.
It gives me great pleasure to see a new team in charge and to see that the IGF is in good hands, and I wish you and the honorary chair all the luck and success in your endeavor.
Looking back at last year, it was almost a year ago we met in Paris and discussed how to prepare the 2013 meeting. That was shortly after the World Conference on International Telecommunications, which was a very divisive meeting and we felt then it was necessary to build bridges and we felt that the IGF was a good tool to build bridges between those who were opposed in Dubai.
But the year continued and disclosures about pervasive mass surveillance marked the year, and the IGF had to address this issue and the IGF did address this issue. It was an open discussion we had in Bali, and the IGF also made a contribution towards building bridges between all stakeholders involved in the Internet.
Now, looking forward, 2014 will be an equally challenging year. There are many important conferences ahead of us, and the IGF will have to find its place in these conferences, but I'm sure under your guidance and leadership, the 2014 IGF will be the best IGF ever.
Let me conclude by thanking you all for your support and cooperation throughout the year and for all the kind words addressed to me and very warm words addressed to me by Slava this morning. Very much appreciate it and I wish you good luck with the meeting. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Markus, for -- also for good wishes, and certainly I see that you are smiling and certainly many of you can also see certain preoccupation in my face, and guess why it is. Because Markus just passed the bucket full of water to me and saying, "Please carry it on without spilling water out."
So dear friends, dear colleagues, let me thank all of you for the confidence you're placing in me by nominating me in this position. I would like also to thank the United Nations Secretary-General, in the person of Under-Secretary-General Wu for confirming this nomination. I will do the utmost I can. I will apply all my experience and knowledge and skills in managing the process and chairing the meetings, but certainly decisions which will be made will be made by the MAG as a group, which is designated by the Secretary-General to prepare the IGF meeting.
We have a number of differences, if I may say, and I will mention only two.
2014, as Markus already mentioned, is a year where many important meetings will take place related to Internet governance and there are extremely high expectations that some decisions will be made in a truly multistakeholder manner, and of course IGF is part of this Internet governance ecosystem, and therefore, expectations from the 2014 meeting are very high.
And secondly, this year we have less time for preparations. We -- normally IGF is taking place at the end of the year. October-November. This time, we will have in early September, which puts additional strain on the MAG, on all contributors to IGF, so we will need to work in an accelerated speed.
But as I told some of you already, we are condemned to succeed and we will together.
And without further delay, I will go to the business of today's meeting and we'll start with the question whether the agenda, provisional agenda of the meeting, which has been distributed to all of you and is published on the IGF Web site, is acceptable to guide us through this two-day meeting.
So I see there is a request for the floor. Vlad.
>VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Janis. Welcome as the new chair.
There were a couple of thoughts shared on the MAG list previously which were basically, seems, agreeable by most of the MAG members, so this is a suggestion for a slight change for improvement in the agenda of today.
So for the afternoon session, instead of just having the topic on the IGF places -- IGF's place in the evolving Internet governance landscape, we should focus on the CSTD improvements recommendation which, under it, has also the IGF place and links with other fora, but it also has parts on funding, outcomes, working modalities, broadening participation and capacity building. And it would really be good to try to have at least two hours to discuss the improvements because it's a critical year as you also said.
And for tomorrow morning's session, in the first part I would recommend that we also have as an (f) point, maybe, eParticipation because it's something that we usually keep for any other businesses and I believe that this is crucial for the -- for the success of the -- of the IGF. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Vlad, for these comments or suggestions.
On the second one, I think in Point (b), you can read eParticipation, "including eParticipation," so that is covered.
When it comes to your proposal on improvements -- I mean implementation of the decisions or recommendations of the working group on improvements of IGF, certainly we can discuss it. The idea, of course, was that as you -- as you also see in the terms of reference, these recommendations are -- should guide MAG in all decisions and they should -- it is considered -- at least I consider it as a cross-cutting theme which should be present in all our debates. But certainly we can allocate time in this part this afternoon to discuss the implementation or state of implementation of these recommendations.
Please.
>>APC: Thank you, Janis. Anriette Esterhuysen, Association for Progressive Communications.
And just supporting Vlad's suggestions on the agenda, and then maybe just one addition to that, or elaboration of that, perhaps under Item 3, the IGF's place in an evolving Internet governance landscape, it would be useful if possibly Slava or the secretariat can just give us an update on what the time frame is for the decision on the renewal of the IGF for a further five years, because as far as I understand, that decision is to be made before the end of this calendar year and I think it would be very helpful for us to discuss that and possibly make suggestions on how we can effectively respond to that.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Anriette. Well noted.
Marilyn?
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you. My name is Marilyn Cade. I'm one of the new business MAG members and I'm -- I'd just like to go back to both support the comment that Vlad made, but to reinforce the importance of our spending time as the MAG and as a group of interested stakeholders in understanding the range of events and activities in the ecosystem landscape, and then talking about the role of the IGF, because some of the -- some of us are involved in some of those other meetings while other participants and members are not, and I think it would be important that we make sure that we are really thoroughly understanding the range of challenges and opportunities in the Internet governance space and the IGF's role and ability to -- and urgent need to strengthen and enhance and deepen its contributions to the challenges facing the Internet. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. I think that is covered with the Point Number 3 of the agenda.
Any further comments?
I see none, so then with these amendments, I consider the agenda approved and we can move to the first -- to the -- actually, to the second question of our agenda, "Stocktaking of IGF 2013 and looking forward to IGF 2014."
So but if I may suggest, let's take this agenda item in two steps.
First, let's talk about 2013, lessons learned and sort of what kind of conclusions we can make and what we would bring forward to 2014; and after that, we would discuss how we should approach the 2014 edition of IGF.
So if that is acceptable, then I will invite the representative of 2013 host country, Indonesia, Mr. (saying name), from the Permanent Mission of Indonesia, to make remarks on behalf of the host country 2013.
Mr. (saying name), you have the floor.
>> Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Before I begin, please allow me to extend (inaudible) to both Mr. Markus Kummer and to you, Ambassador Janis Karklins, Mr. Chairman, and in your -- in their capacities as former MAG chairmen 2013 and as the interim MAG chairman in 2015. It is -- we are very delighted to note that the IGF has been and will again be in good hands. Good luck with your future works.
Since our international focal point for IGF, Sardjoeni Moedjiono, will arrive tomorrow due to technicalities, I have the privilege to deliver these initial remarks.
I am pleased to share with the meeting that the 8th meeting of IGF has been convened in Bali on 22nd through 25th October, 2013.
The meeting was attended by 2,632 participants from 111 countries with 1,700 others participating remotely from 83 countries.
The main theme of the meeting was building bridges through multistakeholder cooperation for growth and sustainable development.
Of course the meeting discussed a diverse array of topics that may not be easily summarized, but they are highlighted, the substantive themes that were sustained throughout the meeting.
The first one, amidst the public concern with regard to surveillance and monitoring activities through the Internet, IGF panelists and participants underlined the need for better protection for all citizens' privacy and security on line by balancing actions between national interests and respect for internationally recognized human rights.
Two, representatives from several governments emphasized the importance of finding common ground amongst all stakeholders of certain cyber-ethics that place value on respecting local cultures on line while safeguarding users from emerging cyber threats.
The third one, all stakeholders reaffirmed the importance of strengthening and maintaining the multistakeholder spirit and mechanism in the Internet governance.
Indonesia wishes to thank its partners from the secretariat of the IGF, UN DESA, as well as a wide array of our national partners both from the public and private sectors, and if there was any lessons learned that may be derived from the meeting, it is the close cooperation with the public and private sector that enabled the IGF 2013 as a success, and for that, we thank you all.
Of course as a way forward, Indonesia wishes to extend its well wishes for Turkey as the next host of the IGF in Istanbul, and of course Indonesia will always be -- stands ready to lend its support in any way to the best of its ability, and good luck to Turkey.
And of course
Indonesia is open for any comments and insights from all participants with regards to the -- enhancing the quality for convening the IGF events in the future.
By conveying that, Mr. Chairman, I thank you very much.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Mr. (saying name), for these remarks, and once again, on behalf of the MAG, please accept our gratitude for all the contribution and the work your government did during the 2013 session. It was highly appreciated and it was really a successful meeting.
Now, before going to the discussion about the substance, format, and lessons learned from Bali IGF, I would like to ask Chengatai to introduce the synthesis paper, the document which puts together thoughts and comments made by many participants of the Bali meeting as a result. And the document was sent to you a while ago. Nevertheless, the introduction I think would be helpful to inform our today's discussion.
Chengetai?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
The IGF secretariat put out a call for public input to all stakeholders to share their general reflections on IGF 2013 and recommendations for the IGF 2014 and suggestions or ideas for issues to be discussed at the 2014 IGF.
Submissions and comments were compiled into a synthesis paper which is available on the IGF Web site, and the individual contributions are under the "Contributions" tab on the IGF Web site.
As always, the contributions touched on a wide variety of issues. Some focused on taking stock of the 2013 meeting in Bali, while others made specific recommendations for the 2014 meeting.
In total, about 26 contributions were received from various individual and organizational stakeholders. A list of those contributors are on the last page of the synthesis paper.
In summary, the general comments -- for general comments, many expressed gratitude to the government of Indonesia for their successful hosting of the 8th IGF. It was said that the 8th IGF meeting in Bali was again an example of a well-organized meeting at an exquisite venue for which all -- for which our appreciation goes to the host country and organizing team.
Many contributions noted that the IGF had progressively matured in 2013 and discussions in Bali took many broad Internet governance policy discussions forward towards points of convergence.
Gratitude was expressed for the hospitality and generosity of the Indonesian hosts, the preparations done by the secretariat and the host country throughout the year leading up to the meeting; UN DESA for providing the institutional home for the administrative support to the IGF secretariat and for supporting the IGF process in general; the hard work of the multistakeholder organizing committee; the presence of the Indonesian public institutions Internet access community media network civil society organizations and human rights and minority sexual rights activists.
The facilities, amenities, and the availability of food and coffee were said to be dramatically improved from the previous IGF.
At the delegates registration wherein the staff assisted the delegates presently, faster and efficiently.
The good layout of the main session rooms and workshop rooms for discussions, including the reconfiguration of the main room for some sessions.
Continued recognition and appreciation for the availability of remote participation, for the remote hubs, and for remote moderation.
Appreciation for the workshop transcripts, the summary reports, Webcasts, increased social media activity, and other records of the IGF meeting that can be found on the IGF Web site and on the Internet.
The IGF pre-events were also greatly appreciated and many contributors recommended that they should both be continued and strengthened in 2014.
The new delegates briefing session was also noted to be a welcome addition and should be continued and improved in moving forward.
Some inputs strongly appreciated the human rights dimension of the 8th IGF, including the inclusion of topics related to human rights issues in its main agenda and providing a space for discussion in workshops.
There were some criticisms on the aspects related to the -- on some aspects related to the 2013 meeting which should be kept in mind when planning the 2014 meeting as follows.
The late confirmation of the host country location made it difficult for many to participate fully. There were some visa issues which also made it difficult for some to join the meeting in Bali. Criteria for participation in the high-level leaders meeting on day zero was not clear for some and the unintentional vulnerability for the registration process which put some participants' personal information at risk.
Those were the general comments received from the synthesis paper.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So, thank you very much, Chengetai. Now the floor is open for the first part of our discussion. It is a format: Lessons learned, substance 2013. Subi, you please open this part of the debate.
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you, Janis. I want to start first by congratulating UN-DESA and the Secretary-General for an excellent choice of the Chair. A big thank you to Markus for everything he has done for us last year. It has been a great learning experience.
I am Subi Chaturvedi. I come from India. I teach at a women's college communication and journalism, and I run a foundation called Media for Change, which is a grassroots network in Internet governance.
I'm really happy to be here today. I want to start out by first a huge thank you for the Bali team for hosting the best-ever IGF.
[ Applause ]
A big round of applause. I don't know what the technical issues were, but we are really grateful to run this and run this so well, despite and against all odds. As a MAG, we did it and we did it together.
As far as what worked and what didn't work, our assessment -- and we've had this conversation before -- we need to get more new voices in the room. We need to be able to facilitate participation. And one of the things that I do want to flag today is an early confirmation of the venue and some sort of support, which the UN-DESA and the secretariat have been very willing and forthcoming.
If we could look at strengthening this mechanism along with the fact that capacity-building tracks -- and we initiated this last year but it was observed that 8:00 in the morning is not really the best time to have these meetings. So we want more new people to come in and engage.
I also think in terms of innovation in both content and format, the last IGF worked in leaps and bounds truly by linkages. We took into cognizance emerging issues. And it was an excellent session, a full session, that took stock and addressed difficult questions, important questions like surveillance and what is the role that civil society and government can play together along with the technical community.
As far as what we could have done more, in terms of innovation and format, the deep well and the seating that we experimented for the mains was an excellent idea. The fact that we could put out six policy questions or seven policy questions per session worked really well. People had a sense, and they knew what to respond to.
I also see that we've taken a step forward in seeking inputs from the wider community. 10th of Feb and this synthesis paper, my congratulations to Chengetai and the secretariat for churning out such a cohesive analysis of all the 26 inputs that were received.
There is a lot that we have a lot on the table, 2013 was a great learning experience. Istanbul and what we have on the agenda. I'm glad this afternoon we'll be looking at how the IGF can relate with other existing opportunities, other existing processes that exist in global Internet governance.
I second what Marilyn Cade has said. We need to be able to integrate and find our way forward in the policy dialogue. And I'm looking forward to, from the community -- listening from the community because this is the first day and an open consultation, as to how we can strengthen, improve the current IGF.
ISOC has also submitted a paper which is exploring an IETF format which looks at the policy role, a role that also looks at the impact that the MAG and the IGF can have.
I do also want to call out on something that Anriette suggested. If you could give clarity by when we are looking at a decision from UN-DESA on the current existing process of the mandate of the MAG, that would be helpful.
I'm looking forward to two things in particular. Some of us gathered together this morning for an informal meeting as to how the IGF can improve and also relate with other processes. And this is a lot from the lessons we learned from the last format.
The one thing that we really need to strengthen is also remote participation and eParticipation. We did very well, but we also have to make sure that remote moderators are sitting in a prominent place so that remote questions can be given priority.
And this time, I think we already have taken the right steps forward in seeking inputs from the community and then deciding on themes.
I'm particularly also interested in the workshop rating format which some of us had initiated last year. How is it that we can have more new voices? How is it we can have an improved participation from developing countries and especially from emerging economies.
Thank you so much, Chair.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Subi, for your comments. We do have also here in these consultations remote participation facility. And I'm now looking to our remote participation moderators, if you are hearing me. If you are hearing me -- please, if there is -- or if there are any comments coming from outside the room, please let me know by lifting your flag.
So now I'm turning to the next speaker, Michael.
>> Mike Nelson: I'm Mike Nelson, a brand-new member of the MAG. And I have a unique perspective of the Internet Governance Forum because I have been a remote participate for every IGF except the last one in Bali. So I really want to second Subi's important point that we do a better job of reaching out to the remote participants. It should be that the largest obstacle to remote participation is the time zone. That has not been the case for most IGF meetings.
I will just focus on a few of the program elements and things that I'd like to see different. Some of these are things probably things that were not mentioned in the submissions because people were too polite, but I'm not polite.
So I would like to say that we have to do a better job of bringing new people in with new topics because the complaint I heard repeated at Bali was that it is the same people talking about the same topics. And I think that means in some cases that those of us in the MAG who have been on panels so should find somebody else to be on panels.
But, most importantly, we should find out ways to make sure this is not just a meeting about people who care about Internet governance and that it is not just a meeting of people who run the Internet.
It should really be a meeting with many people speaking about what it's like to rely on the Internet and getting their perspective, whether it's school teachers in remote areas or bank presidents or government officials. Let's talk about what it means to be on the receiving end of the decisions that are made by the various organizations involved in Internet governance.
I think in some cases it may be necessary if we want to get high-level people who are not in the Internet governance game to participate, it may be necessary to have them beam in through Skype or some other means, and that should be welcomed.
But I think the most important thing is to see if we can really expand the scope of the community -- expand the community of people that we're bringing into these discussions and look at the impact that Internet governance has on these people.
Two other very quick items. I do think we can do a better job on ensuring there's not as much overlap. Some very important sessions were put in opposition to each other. Panels that were almost on the same topic were scheduled right opposite each other, and that should be something we could prevent.
In a few cases, there were some really exciting panels that had completely useless titles. I was on a fascinating panel on cybersecurity, and the title was "Discussion with the Netherlands Ministry of State" or "Foreign Ministry." That gave nobody any indication of what we were talking about. So, again, these are mechanical things, easily fixed. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Michael.
Actually, you were very polite.
[ Laughter ]
In my view.
And if I may maybe invite all participants to stay technology neutral.
[ Laughter ]
When we're calling remote participation, let's call it remote participation regardless of the means or software we would use for that because there might be some vested interest in that. Joking.
So next speaker is United States.
>>UNITED STATES: Thank you, Chair. My name is Liesyl Franz. I'm with the U.S. Department of State, and I'm joined by my colleagues here as well.
And we are very happy to be here again for another opportunity to prepare for the next IGF. I would like to join the Chair and the organization for their warm thanks for Markus Kummer for all that he's done in his role as interim chair but also his previous leadership of the IGF itself. Also to join others in our warm welcome to Janis for taking up the mantel of chairing this august but lovingly unwieldy group for this important process. Thank you and welcome.
We also would like to congratulate Indonesia and the host committee but also the MAG and all the participants and session organizers for what we also felt was a very successful IGF in Bali last year. It is the opportunity for the global multistakeholder community to come together for what we consider to be robust and substantive discussions on timely and salient issues. As Markus pointed out, we certainly did that in Bali in many ways.
We were, once again, struck by the content-rich workshops and thoughtful discussions that took place and also continue to reflect on how the IGF itself is nimble enough to reflect those issues that are top of mind every year.
We truly believe that this ability for global and timely and candid and substantive discourse is the IGF's greatest value.
I will try not to repeat things others have said. One thing I would like to say is that we were pleased to see the IGF embrace some innovative ideas for the workshop topics and formats as well as adding the newcomer briefings and open mic sessions. Those provided for immediate feedback during the week, and I think that's an opportune time to get the feedback of those that participate, not just those that help prepare for the event. So we encourage the MAG and other stakeholders to continue to incorporate innovative ideas like that, like new formats, diversified speakers, new topics as we prepare for the 9th IGF in Istanbul. And thank you to Turkey for hosting us this year. We look forward to joining much more discussion throughout the day, but that's it for now. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Thank you very much. One request from our interpreters is if you are reading prepared notes, if you would keep the pace of reading in the same way as you would speak from the bottom of your heart.
>>UNITED STATES: That was your way of saying slow down, Leisyl. I will do my best.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: That is your interpretation.
[ Laughter ]
Now I would like to invite our friends from Russia. I cannot really read your name plate. Sorry, it's a bit too little for me. Please, if you could introduce yourself.
>> RUSSIA: Thank you, Chair. The National Research University Higher School of Economics. I would first like to have some reflection on the 2013 IGF. This is generally related to my deepest appreciation of a lot of opinions devoted to the human rights specific on the Internet.
Also, this topic should be expanded for the 2014. And we believe that this would be a great topic to discuss, all issues in which Internet governance would like to promote human rights worldwide.
As for our delegation which we would like to remember, the workshops we organized last year, it is about displaced people and services provided for displaced people, migrants. And we talked about free software as well in human rights context, and would like to continue this discussion this year.
In context of three levels of Internet governance in supernational, national, and community level, so I would like to call upon the forum to expand the topic and pay more attention to all human rights topics, especially of the rights of the minor protected people, migrants and displaced people and others.
I believe that Internet governance is one of the good ways to promote their rights. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you for your suggestions. And your colleague also wants to say something. Please.
>> RUSSIA: Thank you very much, Chair. I just wanted to once more thank for -- we appreciate your help and efforts which were given to us last year in terms of organization of the two workshops and especially one that oriented on services for displaced people.
Actually, speaking with some MAG members and visitors of the IGF in Indonesia, Bali, we found out that the topic of services for displaced people was not fully covered in terms of other workshops or panels held in Bali actually. So we would like to emphasize that it is necessary to focus on this side also of Internet governance of services provided through the Internet for those people. And, also, I would like to emphasize that we are talking about a multistakeholder approach.
So last year we had representatives from the government delegations, from the governmental delegations, from the business and from civil society and also technical community. Unfortunately, ordinary visitors were not, you know, able to attend as a panel because of other important panel discussions.
That is why we also would like to think about probably earlier stage of planning workshops, you know, a timetable schedule and so on in order to not have that interruption of quite interesting topics at the same time at the same place, right? Yeah. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you for your comments.
Now I am turning to Anriette.
>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Janis. Also, thank you to the secretariat for an excellent synthesis paper and thanks to all of those who worked last year, Markus for your leadership, and I think particularly for the MAG having regular online meetings. That was an innovation in 2013, and I think one that we should maintain. It was very helpful.
I'll just try to also add as Leisyl has said -- to what has been said rather than repeat, I think the most important reflection on the Bali IGF for ourselves, it demonstrated its value as a very unique platform for open, inclusive dialogue. You know, the Brazil meeting on Internet governance that is coming up in April, I would see as emerging from the IGF. Obviously, there were preceding events, but it was at the IGF that this meeting which could be quite a pivotal meeting was discussed and discussed in quite an open and animated way.
I think that's the value of the IGF. It is open to all and any agenda topic can be discussed formally on the agenda or in the corridors.
So I think the value of that -- and, also, just to add to that, for some of you might know that at the moment, participation in the Brazil meeting is subject of quite a complicated process and participation is limited. We don't have those constraints with the IGF. The IGF is linked to the U.N. It's open to participation to all.
So I think whatever other processes happen, we should not lose appreciation of that value of the IGF.
Just to -- I want to reflect on a main session or themes. We'll come to that later.
Just a few remarks. I think on participation, our sense was that government participation is decreasing and that you do have some governments that send large delegations. But, overall, it felt, particularly from developing countries, that there were relatively few governments participating actively in the process. And I think that's critical. The value of the IGF as a space depends on participation from all stakeholder groups.
So we think the MAG should consider mechanisms for strengthening that. One proposal that we would put on the table is that instead of having a high-level ministerial on the pre-event day, that that event is rather a forum for governments to discuss public policy issues pertaining to the Internet with participation of other stakeholders but primarily organized by governments for governments.
Ministerial meetings have certain value. They bring high-level delegates but, most of those delegates leave by the end of the day. Perhaps having government personnel that is more involved in day-to-day governance issues for a pre-event and then staying for the entire IGF might have a better result.
I think -- just a few other remarks, I think we'll come to that later.
But the number of workshops definitely is of concern, and we again propose that main sessions should not run in parallel.
Also, I think the Bali meeting demonstrated the need for open spaces, wide spaces. Many of you will note that the Brazil meeting and the Montevideo meeting preceding that, that the technical community had, had to be discussed during breaks, during lunchtime or in conflict with other sessions. So I think we should recognize that the IGF is the space where issues emerge and then schedule some open spaces for those topics to be discussed as they emerge.
I think there's not much else to add. I'm very pleased that the ISOC proposal complements previous proposals in coming up with quite concrete suggestions for implementing the CSTD working group's recommendation that the IGF is more outcome-oriented.
At the same time, I think one shouldn't forget the value of the IGF as a space for dialogue.
And then I, to some extent -- remarking on Mike Nelson's comments on participation and new topics and new people, I would qualify that somewhat because I think it is not just a case of new people and new topics. It is about incrementally deepening existing discussions and bringing new voices into those discussions.
But some of the main concerns around Internet governance remain. And I do think debates are repeated, but I don't think just bringing new people is necessarily going to solve that. I think as a MAG, we really need to look at the substance of the discussion and ensure that workshops and main sessions build on previous discussions.
And then I think my final comment at this stage is just to remark on the capacity-building track that Diplo and others organized at the Bali IGF. It received very positive evaluation from participants. And I think one of the values of the IGF is that particularly when new people come to the event that it has this capacity-building role. I think certainly we should continue with that.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Anriette, for your comments as well as for the document you distributed yesterday with APC's comments on the 2013 and suggestions for the 2014 IGF.
So now I will turn to Izumi.
>> JPNIC: JPNIC, technical community. I attended the Bali IGF for the first time in terms of the IGF, and I'm also a new member of the MAG. So my impression about the IGF was I felt very good vibes about collaborating -- collaboration between different stakeholders, especially in terms of cybersecurity-related sessions and discussing the roles of different stakeholders, et cetera, et cetera.
But at the same time, I very much like the comments that Michael from Microsoft just made, about it's important to make sure that we keep the people who are interested, keep the people involved and the people who are not necessarily interested in the Internet governance topic itself.
And what I thought was -- it was quite difficult to follow what are the themes -- why are the themes being picked up is important this time and what are the sessions that are relevant to this particular topic.
So as a suggestion, I think what might be helpful is have some kind of tutorial or guideline kind of session introducing about, I don't know, general landscape of what's happening for a topic that's being picked up as a general theme of the IGF, and then maybe share what are the sessions that are related to this particular topic. That might help some of the newcomers understand a little bit more and be more actively participating. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. I see we have a remote participation, a question from a remote participant.
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much. I have a comment from Angelic Alihusain-del Castilho.
I would also propose that the invitations for governments are sent out at an earlier date than last year. It could maybe make a difference in the participation of government officials from developing countries in the IGF.
And I have another comment from Sandra -- sorry, I cannot (indiscernible) -- and she says that the setup of the IGF village was very unfortunate, and especially for those placed in the last corner of the floor and they have spent money on renting equipment but it was not very efficient. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Okay. Thank you for those comments. Now, Subi?
>>SUBI CHATURVEDI: I do want to echo the fact that the IGF -- and there is no other forum which is as inclusive, transparent, multistakeholder, and bottom-up, and for this to remain effective, we need to have more government and more government participation. As someone who comes from a developing country and closely engages with the government in my country, it has been my constant endeavor to make sure that we amplify government participations because when we go back home, we have to take these decisions and we make sure that they're implemented or are some role in the new policies that we write for the Internet.
The one thing that has worked for us is we got the government to propose a workshop and -- which was then translated after consistent mentoring by the MAG into an open forum, and the idea to have open forums that governments can participate and tell their stories is a good way to have government representatives participate in the IGF.
Most of them need invitations to be able to get leaves and sanctions on travel. If they're not panelists or if they're not actively running a workshop, it becomes difficult for them.
I think there is also a deep and a reasoned and a discerned interest from the Indian government to participate in a similar session or to host an open meeting where we can amplify the role of governments in Internet governance policies and public policymaking.
The high-level ministerial, I do agree, is a good idea and we should retain it. It allows governments to listen and hear and take inputs from other multistakeholders. So just looking at a session of the governments by the governments might not work. I think we need to find middle part.
On the idea of new voices, I want to go back and say this again and again and as many times as it takes for us to realize that the IGF should not be -- under any circumstances, be seen as a club of people who are at the meetings, same people, same panels, same voices and the same depth and breadth of those conversations.
We might not have a fantastic workshop but it is important to mentor and we suggest that the capacity building track can also take an active role, along with some of the MAG members, and to have a process of workshop evaluations that does not keep people out, that does not exclude voices but is inclusive.
So though the workshop proposals might not be as well articulated, English is not the first language of many people across the world, we need to be able to mentor them. They might not even know who to reach out in terms of panelists because we are also rating them on how fully developed or well-articulated the proposals are. So one of the good ideas for us to do is to create a resource pool of people who have expertise on subjects and not hold this against those proposals.
The -- I do want to also cite the Indian open forum that we had, which was about connecting the next billion on line, and they're going to come from countries such as India and China. Those are the numbers. This would not have happened. It was almost kicked off the workshop proposals. So we have to find new ways so that good proposals or potential proposals do not fall in between the cracks.
So government is welcome, needs to be able to participate more, but we as a MAG and as the IGF need to create facilitating processes to be able to get them on the table. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Subi, for your comments.
Now I'm turning to ICC/BASIS.
>>ICC/BASIS: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and first I would like to congratulate you on your appointment to this position. Ambassador Karklins, we have full confidence that we will be in good hands this year in organizing the IGF.
The ICC/BASIS would like to congratulate, as others, Indonesia and especially the Minister of Communications and Information Technology; the organizers, and particularly the ID, IGF for the efforts they put in; the IGF secretariat team and especially our good friend Chengetai for all the work that they put in in organizing the IGF this year.
We would like to thank the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs on the successful event, and we look forward to working with all the stakeholders and especially and including the host country to prepare for another successful IGF in 2014.
We'd like to also make a special thanks and also personally a thanks to Markus for the great work he did in helping shepherd the group last year and bring a successful IGF.
ICC/BASIS believes that the IGF in 2013 continued to bring together an extensive range of leaders from many communities interested in Internet governance, and it provided a unique opportunity to have frank and open discussions on a wide range of issues that is not always available elsewhere.
It's very important, in terms of participation, to continue to strive for greater geographical diversity, as others have pointed out previously. We value the participation of all governments and would also like to increase participation especially from the developing countries, so that we can have even a wider diversity of views and discussion in the sessions.
To increase participation also, we strongly recommend that in the future that host countries make every effort to ensure that the date and location of the IGF are confirmed early and comprehensive arrangements are made for visas well in advance of IGF, so that everyone who -- can make the advance plan they need to attend the IGF. We don't want to restrict participation just because of visa problems or lateness of notification of the location.
In terms of sessions, just some general comments.
We have about 20 pages of comments that we submitted and I have no plans to go through all of them here, so no worries there. Just some general ideas.
We'd like to encourage lead contacts for sessions in the main room and workshop organizers to have preparatory calls with panelists prior to the IGF.
Structure. We felt the structure of the main and focus sessions were much improved this year. It meant that the sessions were much more interactive and focused. And in addition, more roundtable sessions would improve the format of some of these and to promote interaction.
So we encourage further improvement along those lines as well.
The increased efforts to ensure workshops and other sessions submit a report have been important, and we encourage improvement and continuation of improvement on those efforts as well in terms of providing reports out of the workshops and sessions.
Another thing that will probably be discussed, I'm sure, later is consideration of creating the best practices documents that had been created in the past and looking at ways of continuing that as well going forward. That is all I have for now and I thank you very much and I look forward to working closely with everyone for a successful IGF in 2014.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you very much. Now I'm turning to Virat.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Thank you, and my congratulations on your appointment. A big thanks to Markus for his outstanding leadership, both as the interim chair as well as the IGF before that.
I think much has been said by my business colleagues here today and also participants from India. I just want to make some specific remarks, even though I represent business, about ensuring a greater participation from governments and civil society, especially from the emerging countries.
The fact that we need more diversity and go beyond the 83-country mark that we have reached is, I think, uncontestable. It will come with new issues. It will come with issues that they think is important. And when these voices come into the meeting, they will shape IGF in the way IGF deserves to be shaped.
I think existing issues are important, but I also believe that there are multiple places where existing issues are being discussed. I think it is also time to open ourselves up to challenges and success stories that are already existing.
An impression that I've carried from the last six IGFs is that we tend to have a lot less discussion about success stories and how Internet is changing people's lives for the better than discussion on challenges.
Now, that's not designed but that's how it sort of comes across as a person who has been in these meetings, on panels, discussions, both in person and remotely.
The one big standout for the Indonesian conference and its success was the ability of the organizers to arrange the main room into a roundtable -- actually, a square table -- seating for some of the sessions.
I have to submit to you and to the other distinguished colleagues that we've had that experience in India two weeks ago, and at the first go, the dignitaries and the ministers were a bit surprised that they weren't sitting on a panel lecturing people, but by the time we ended this discussion of a hundred which had a square table of about 30 participants -- members of Parliament, civil society, business, government -- they walked out saying, "We want to have every single meeting where everybody is able to participate on an equal footing."
So formats are important, and I think Indonesia took the lead there.
We, I have to say, asked for that format and they couldn't convert it for us for the session that the Indian government did and we were all helping organize that, but having said that, there was a paucity of time and it wasn't, you know, possible, but I think we would request Turkey and the secretariat to look at the possibilities of shaping rooms and discussions around formats that make it easier for people to participate rather than always being a panel situation.
I also want to say that ministerials are important. If we are looking to get developing countries involved, then we need to start thinking the way governments in developing countries think.
Ministers will come into the IGF and they will be leading big delegations with important policymakers if they believe they have a role in an important ministerial. We should never underestimate the importance of protocol for the vast majority of the countries who will not be able to send their ministers and top officials for five days.
So we have to create sessions and discussions around the participation. None of these should be exclusive only to governments, but I think there is a positioning that needs to be given to the ministerial that allows for such a dialogue and we must very carefully plan that.
I'd also emphasize on the issue of best practices, taking off a little bit from the ISOC outstanding paper that they have circulated. I think to make -- we should all strive to making the Istanbul IGF the big impact IGF.
The IGF this year is coming at a time where there is unusually high level of dialogue on some very key issues: The WSIS review, the CSTD working group on enhanced cooperation, the Brazil meeting, the plenipot. I can't think of a single year where such important dialogues across the world are occurring in a multistakeholder process.
We must use IGF this year not only to be a high-impact meeting but to be the catalyst for the dialogue and the outcomes that come from the reports.
In several places, there will be just the start of discussions. In some places, we will have recommendations or reports.
I think IGF is also placed in September, which comes at the end of most of these meetings and just before the plenipot, so the -- the timing is actually quite perfect.
I would close by saying that one of the ways to make sure that we can get new voices of people who are actually making a success of Internet in the developing country and the governments to come to the IGF and participate with gusto is to have sessions sharing international best practices.
Access and diversity, I will just take as an example, is a huge one. According to the ITU, only 40% of the world is on line. 2.7 -- 2.8 billion people.
40% of the homes are connected, which means 60% of the world -- which is nearly 70% of Asia, 70% of Africa -- is yet to be connected.
I think we should pick the low-hanging fruit. Access and diversity is two -- is one of the subjects where outstanding results have been delivered in a public/private partnership with the contributions and inputs of academia and the civil society.
If we can use or we can start at the Istanbul IGF to do best practices demonstrations by countries who have succeeded in access and diversity, that would be a good place to begin, and those documents can take the form of an outcome document and other countries who are wanting to have that discussion -- and there are dozens of countries across Africa and Asia where access and diversity is still a huge issue. Multilingualism is a massive issue. Some of the other issues that we are discussing a lot are still outside the radar screen. Very important, but these are the big concerns. So if we can engage them on best practices, on success stories, on the good stuff that Internet has been doing for average citizens across the world -- especially women and children -- that should help make IGF the big impact IGF starting this year. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Virat. Just a kind reminder, we're talking about lessons learned in 2013 and about the 2014 edition we'll be talking after that.
Let me tell you one story.
One friend of mine said, "Why don't you write a doctoral thesis?"
And I said, "You know, I don't have time."
And he said, "It's not the right answer. You have wrong priorities."
And that is to story comment your sort of remark about ministerial participation.
We have examples that the full-fledged cabinet ministers stay in IGF for the whole time. We have examples that deputy ministers that stay for the whole time and are engaged.
So therefore, what we need to do, we need to convince ministers and deputy ministers that IGF is important and they should plan in their calendars participation.
So I have now a number of requests for the floor. The list is Mr. Chen, Paul Wilson, the delegation of China, Olga Cavalli, and Marilyn Cade, and then there is also further requests, but let me start with Mr. Chen.
>>HONGBING CHEN: Dear chairman and dear colleagues, good morning.
And since it's my first time to take the floor, I would like to take this opportunity to extend my congratulations on your appointment as the interim chair.
Since now we are concentrating on the lessons from 2013, I would like to draw the attention of the dear colleagues to one lesson I learned from my experience of being the member -- of being the MAG member for the last year.
You may recall that last year in Geneva, we added a second round of consultations or meetings of the MAG in Geneva and we had a very heated discussion about the selection of workshops in deciding a decision on themes and subthemes. At that time, one of points -- one of the important points I made is why don't we preserve the subthemes format which we have already used in the previous years, which have -- which is quite a balanced one, but of course some of the -- most of the colleagues decided to have innovation, we have new subthemes.
And so then I compared the new version and the older version and I found the biggest difference is about the Subtheme 4, security, openness, and privacy, and the new subthemes have -- the keyword of "privacy" has disappeared from the new subthemes. But actually just one month later, we got the case -- famous or infamous I, don't know -- but anyway that case of Mr. Edward Snowden has highlighted -- has stirred a big public interest among the world about the protection and privacy issue. And of course we know that we decided to allocate more time for human rights issues at the Bali IGF and it's a good action which we took, but my idea or the lesson I learned from my experience on this issue is for IGF and for all the multistakeholders and for all constituencies, we should always keep an overall -- or keep our eyes on the overall picture of the landscape of Internet governance.
We know we value the multistakeholder approach, we value inclusiveness, but it should not only just rely on -- it should not only be empty words. We should put it into our action.
Last year, we can see from my -- in my eyes, we can see the accelerating pace of discussions about Internet governance. We -- I also saw the mushrooming of different meetings and processes about Internet governance.
So under these circumstances, what is the value of IGF? What is the future of IGF? What IGF really can do? Or what is the unique value of IGF?
I think, all dear colleagues, we need to think about it before we talk about how we proceed with 2014 IGF.
Because there's another factor we need to consider. That is, we are coming to the end of the second term of authorization of IGF and we only have two years away. We need to make use of this time, this two-year time span, to think about the future of IGF.
This is the first point I make.
The second is about the role of the government. I fully concur with Subi on this issue. I'm speaking as a representative of the constituency -- my constituency as a government.
Government is always an important, say, part of constituency of Internet governance. Without its meaningful involvement and participation, how can we expect fruitful and useful principles or guidelines or public policies to come up, to emerge?
So the second point of my idea is we need to get governments, especially the governments of the developing countries, more involved in IGF.
The third point would be about the internal governance of MAG. We know MAG plays a very important role in deciding on the agenda and format of IGF so our work is of critical importance for success or failure of IGF. In order to make our work fruitful, I think we need to strengthen our Internet governance. Now we only have three -- opportunities of three meetings every year, each year. And we have a secretariat based in Geneva but all the members of the MAG are dispersed all around the globe. How can we strengthen our -- or intensify our dialogue to make our work more productive and efficient. I think this is a question which needs us to think about carefully.
Of course, I'm looking forward to working together with other members, colleague members, of the MAG, try to make this two-day consultation successful and fruitful. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you for your observations. Certainly why we are coming together in IGF, it is an important question and everybody needs to understand. All participants need to understand that. That's for sure.
So next to my list is Paul Wilson.
>>PAUL WILSON: Thank you. It's Paul Wilson here from APNIC. I won't repeat all the thanks and congratulations that have been said so far. But I do want to sincerely echo them. I do want to say thanks to the secretariat for the synthesis paper on the 2013 meeting and to all the support they've given to that meeting and this process.
So talking about Bali, one thing I heard again that hasn't been mentioned so far, I think, is, first, to put more thought into the continuity of the IGF process between meetings. I heard, again, the need that people feel to have more information about the meeting they are attending, about the program, and about the individual sessions that they might be interested in. Things like background information and discussion papers and so forth.
I think that's something that we could consider in the workshop selection process and in developing the agenda for the coming IGF to respond to that feedback, which, as I say, I have heard more than once before.
I think a related issue -- I think it is quite important as we look at the IGF renewal in the future -- is the need to be able to understand the progress of the IGF process and the kind of -- the position of a particular meeting or the content of a particular meeting in the context of the whole process. What I mean is to have a sense of progress from the last IGF meeting to the one that you're attending to the next one. So I think that continuity is going to be pretty important in the renewal of IGF, to be able to see what the IGF has achieved in its first ten years and what it can achieve or is planned to achieve in future.
I want to say I think one really exciting advance that actually supports this very strongly is the Friends of the IGF Web site, which I hope everyone has seen it. It gives a fantastic searchable archive of all of the past IGF meetings. So I'd like to think that we in the MAG here could talk about how to support that initially because it really is quite ground-breaking in the history of IGF.
Another thing which I think would help this question of continuity is to support some sort of agreed or recognized intersessional activity, to encourage ongoing community engagement in IGF between meetings, not a set of formal processes which I think would be difficult, particularly at the start as opposed to discussion and exchange among the community. If that was run in an open bottom-up manner, it could allow processes to emerge voluntarily from it. So I would be interested to discuss that at some point during this meeting.
Logistically, I think it is essential to have more resources at the secretariat. The Bali meeting was a great success, but the secretariat resources are required to really carry out the preparations in a way that I think the IGF deserves (inaudible).
If the IGF can't mobilize more secretariat resources than there has been -- in any case, there has been some talk of a voluntary support group made up of some MAG members who could declare themselves as willing and available to play a bigger role in supporting the secretariat activities. So I hope we'll discuss that as well.
A couple things I notice about remote participation just here, I think the remote scribing we're seeing here at this meeting has about a 45-second delay. The screen -- the screen in the room here isn't particularly useful for that reason. And I think that delay is going to cause some problems in any discussion that might be happening between this room and outside.
And, finally, on a remote participation issue for this meeting, a contact in Germany says that YouTube is displaying a message that says: This video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA, the music rights licensing authority, has not provided licenses in the Germany. I haven't heard any music, but maybe the French channel has something playing. Maybe we can do something about that to help our remote participants.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Paul.
Just for information, there is a lot of references to IGF secretariat. We need to understand -- we need to know what we're talking about. We're talking about Chengetai as a permanent member of secretariat, and we're talking about people who are contracted on a short-term basis. And we're not talking about dozens. We're talking about one or two. So there is, also, some limitations on the task that we can expect from secretariat to perform. We're all just humans.
Next to my list is China.
>> CHINA: Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I would also first take this opportunity to extend the thanks and appreciation to Indonesia and congratulations to Mr. Chairman. On behalf of Chinese delegation, I would also give some points regarding IGF.
For the first point, it is well-known that IGF is an outcome of the WSIS meeting. Obviously, the next layer is WSIS +10. All the countries has started their ten-year review regarding the WSIS. So IGF should also pay attention to the topics why the IGF was come into being.
I mean, the topics including IG4D, Internet governance for development, the managing critical Internet resources and security, openness and privacy, all the issues should be discussed continuously on the platform of IGF.
Secondly, considering the rapid development and the personal situation of the Internet, China delegation suggests cybersecurity and privacy protection should be emphasized in the upcoming IGF meeting. It is well-known that the topic is a very key issue for the following development of the Internet.
The third point is that we suggest -- still encourage the involvement of developing countries to IGF. Considering the existence of the digital divide, it's hard for developing countries to participate in the IGF.
And, in fact, for the -- you know, for the solution of the developing countries, the government takes very important roles in the development of Internet in the developing countries. So China suggests we should find more mechanisms and funding to push forward the involvement of developing countries' government, to push forward them to be more active in the IGF meeting. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, delegate from China, for your points. We will certainly take note, and that is mostly related to the preparation of 2014 meeting. So thank you.
We are still on the lessons learned and comments of 2013.
And the next on my list is Olga Cavalli.
>>OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Chair. First, let me congratulate you for your appointment. It is a pleasure working with you again. And I want to thank Markus for his leadership in previous years of our work in the MAG.
I would like to bring a perspective from developing countries in Latin America. In my experience in reporting back and forth in all the years I have been participating in the MAG, one thing that always happens is people ask, "Why should I go to a meeting that's such a long way from home, so expensive if I cannot bring home concrete ideas and concrete examples of how to improve policies and what to do at the local policy space?"
So my suggestion -- or what I have learned from interacting with my own government in Argentina and with other governments in Latin America is that it could be useful to have more concrete examples of how to move forward, how to improve policy. Themes of (inaudible) sessions and workshops should be really a way of bringing home tools and interaction with other experts that could be useful when the time comes and they come again.
Luckily, there will be a next IGF in our region. But for the most, it has always been a long way to go from Latin America to Bali and now to Turkey.
So I think Virat said something around this. Policymakers should be able to interact in roundtables and express their problems and get ideas when they come home. So this is my comment from my interaction with my government and other governments in the region.
Workshops should also be focused. And I would also support the idea of doing a best-practice document as ICC/BASIS said and also support the capacity-building session. And if there will be a group of MAG volunteers to help the secretariat, please count on me for that. Thank you so much.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you. Thank you, Olga. Also for our commitment to help us out.
Marilyn.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you. Marilyn Cade speaking, one of the business new MAG members. But my observations about the Bali meeting are being made as a stakeholder because I was both not a MAG member then but was a very active participant.
So I want to share the perspective as an observer and participant in the process all the way through of some of the lessons that I think can be taken from Bali.
But some of them reflect back into Baku and into earlier IGFs as well. First of all, in any complex experience, what one often benefits from is a spirit guide. And I say that because I think that many of the people who have contributed as active participants in the IGF who are -- who may now be a MAG member like myself actually spent the last several years being a participant and a contributor in a workshop proposal or as a panelist or in some other way.
And we have the opportunity to be mentors and coaches in welcoming other new participants to help them be effective participants.
I think one lesson that I take from my experience of being a participant is that in the past, sometimes the MAG behaves like a private club. And that is not what we want to be nor what will help us to most advance the success of the IGF.
Last year, there was a very distressing, unfortunate experience that took place that led to the selection of workshops that has left a bad taste in a number of proposer's stomachs or mouths. While the MAG did not mean to create misunderstandings, what happened externally was that an agreement was reached by the MAG to establish criteria for workshops and rating was done by the MAG of workshop proposals which included workshop proposals from the MAG members.
Let me explain externally how that looks and feels when your workshop proposal -- wasn't mine, but three of the workshop proposals that I had tried to coach into applying were rejected but they couldn't understand why. They didn't feel that they were given the opportunity to improve their workshop. Two proposals from countries were rejected because they weren't asking for the right event.
So a lesson I've learned externally having developed workshop proposals myself in the first two years, helped to coordinate a main panel in one of the sessions in India on cybersecurity, coached others to help develop workshop proposals and open forums is that I think there's a significant need for an attitude of coach and mentor on the part of the MAG members to help others to become successful participants in workshop proposals so that there's more of us helping others be more successful. But I say that as someone who was not a MAG member but was outside.
I also want to say a couple of quick things about strengthening the secretariat -- and I think this is a lesson that I have learned -- I personally have not interested in seeing MAG members take on functions of the secretariat. I'm interested in the MAG and in others building the financial resources so that we have sufficient resources within the secretariat.
And I also -- another lesson I learned over the past several years is that when we had both Markus and Chengetai at the executive secretariat, we were able to have either Markus or Chengetai in participation at key meetings, whether that was national and regional IGFs or the CSTD or coming to the ICANN meetings to help to cross the ties and build understanding of the IGF and, therefore, strengthen the awareness and understanding and the visibility of the IGF. And I think the lesson I learned last year is without sufficient resources and presence in these other meetings, I think we suffered a little bit in terms of visibility.
Finally, we must get the date set much earlier, which we've done this year. And I really appreciate that. And we need actually to be able to start the "hold the date" process almost immediately so that people in this very busy calendar period, whether they are a workshop participant or not, they know they need to be holding the date and the location. I applaud the fact that we benefited from last year's experience and improving and accelerating the availability of the date.
I have a number of ideas about this year's session, but I think that those comments belong later. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Marilyn.
Jivan.
>> L.P. GJORGJINSKI: Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Ljupco Jivan Gjorginski. I had this experience when I was at university and professor would be giving back the essays and they are called John Doe, this, that, and then a few seconds of pause and I knew it was mine. So thank you for using it. And I propose you use Jivan for easier access. Otherwise, you would be drowned in consonants.
I am from Macedonia. I work in the ministry of foreign affairs and am a diplomat there.
I was involved in the Internet governance debates years ago in the WSIS process and then some later until perhaps IGF Athens, and I've kind of stepped out for the past few years.
I must say that, though, I'm sure there is a lot of progress, I see a lot of the same kind of discussions that were happening then happening still without some breakthroughs, tangible breakthroughs, in them.
I hear Bali was successful and perhaps that is because the Snowden affair was there. So perhaps it helped to focus things on something tangible. I'm glad it put human rights more on our agenda.
So I do think that we need to be result-oriented. I think that we need to be careful and say that we should have more topics here. I heard our colleagues say that we should focus on the landscape. I couldn't agree more. We should be focused on action in order for there to be value added.
So in that sense, ISOC's idea for -- to copy or to use the IETF's RFC way of proposing new initiatives is perhaps an idea long overdue. This has been an idea that has been brewing since the very beginning, and I think that is the way to introduce new topics and to make the good ones, the good ideas, bubble up to the surface in a proper manner.
We should not forget, in having -- saying this, because we keep on saying that the government or governments and ministers, when they come to the IGF should be taught, they should hear.
If a minister comes and is present, I think that they're a committed minister to dedicate their time, so that would be preaching to the converted.
What I do think that the value-add of perhaps a government at the international level is that -- is to use what the MAG and the IGF is, or, rather, where it takes its mandate from. And it takes, we should not forget, its mandate from the General Assembly, from the Secretary-General, and we should use these channels because the fact that IGF is up for renewal with the GA vote should be a reminder enough of where the housing is in that sense.
So when we speak, for instance, in -- on human rights issues, we should not forget that right beside this hall is the Human Rights Council. The Human Rights Council is considered to be most successful bodies that has emerged from the U.N. system. Very results-oriented. So we should use these -- use this channel of being right beside it and having some kind of output that would come out from both the MAG -- and we are a Multistakeholder Advisory Group to the Secretary-General of the U.N. -- and as well from the IGF where outcomes come out with proposals, perhaps to the U.N. bodies like the HRC, like ECOSOC, which is the home for this body as well, in a way.
So just to put all of this together, focus on results and I think that the U.N. system provides some good channels for that. I don't think that they should the only channels. I think that there's a lot of good channels to be used. But for us to have a value added and to prove our worth in the mid- and long term, we should use those channels on specific outcomes, specific products, in the -- in the way of proposals. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Jivan, for your comments.
Next is Council of Europe. Lee?
>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and congratulations to you. Thank you to Markus and to Chengatai and the team for all the good work. Thank you to the Indonesian government.
I found the Bali IGF very smooth in its functioning and very responsive to some of the hot topics which came about last summer. I found the responsiveness very accommodating last year.
The Council of Europe is ever present in the work of the IGF. We thank you very much for that. And even if it's a nongovernmental organization with 47 countries, it finds itself in the world with many different actors and I would like to say from the beginning that the IGF is making or helping the Council of Europe do its job properly.
So, you know, it -- quite clearly Internet governance over the years has grown. Internet governance in the Council of Europe has become a priority, thanks to the IGF.
Some of the learning, some of the remarks I'd like to make is that human rights seems to still every year dominate the discussions. I am predisposed to that because of my work, but many people talk about that and it's not going away. I don't think that's going away. It's going to carry on growing.
So how do we accommodate that discussion?
Whether you call it human rights or whether you call it the fact that people are at the center of this process, where people have -- someone mentioned -- I think it was Mike Nelson mentioned the reliance on the Internet. It's about people's reliance on the Internet and their expectation which is key here. Their reliance and their expectation.
So how do we talk about their reliance and expectation? Are we doing enough there?
So I found that the discussions were very timely, very topical. I know that because this year in 2014, the topics on the IGF Bali are still here in 2014. Whether that be a guide on human rights for Internet users, which we're doing in the Council of Europe, or whether that means protecting the Internet, doing no harm to the Internet, protecting the ecosystem, the landscape, framing the ecosystem with Internet governance principles and net neutrality, these things are still very, very topical now and I think that's also thanks to the IGF.
So I think it's helping us do our job better. This space is helping us do our job better. And that cannot be said enough, really. Even if it's difficult to make it tangible.
It makes us in the Council of Europe be embracing the different actors in a much more -- in a less intergovernmental sense of the word. It brings it back to Europe for our -- in our context. So we find a trace in Europe of the things which we discussed in Bali last year. It validates that work. It kick-starts new work which we can then do. And another thing to understand is that the IGF is kick-starter for new work coming through. But I do think the bottom line is that Internet governance is a sign of the times and I would put forward that it's a sign of next-level democracy. We don't talk about democracy, but I think it's a much bigger issue there which we need to address.
Just one question about the format.
Someone mentioned about the format. I think that's very important. You know, I also work in the field of the EuroDIG and the question of me matching the discussion with the actors involved and making those actors feel comfortable is very, very important. I don't think you're going to get many national security institution representatives talking openly about how they do their work with regard to surveillance.
So perhaps there's a need to think about which target groups we're talking about and matching the formats to those target groups.
If -- whether that's an open discussion or a less open discussion or Chatham House Rules, I think those things need to be more tailor-made and worked out in more details. Thank you very much, Chair.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. And I think you really encompassed very well the reason -- raison d'etre -- of the IGF. That helps us do our work where we're working, so thank you for that.
ICANN, Chris?
>>ICANN: Thanks. Thanks, Janis. And all the thank yous and congratulations to everyone concerned.
I just wanted to make one very quick point, picking up on the -- on lessons learned, picking up on the point from my distinguished colleague from China who commented about the subthemes, and especially privacy.
It's correct that we moved away from the original subthemes that we've had for a number of years and it's correct that the -- the Snowden events created debate around security and privacy, amongst other things, but the lesson that I learned was not that we should stick with the original themes but, rather, that actually the IGF is masterful at adapting.
Even though we didn't have security and privacy specifically as subthemes, we were able to have serious and vibrant debate on the issues that the Snowden revelations raised within the context of the IGF and within the context of the subthemes that we had put in place.
So I would encourage the MAG to continue to innovate, to continue to keep adjusting and tweaking the subthemes moving forwards.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Chris.
Now, Izumi? Izumi Aizu.
>>IZUMI AIZU: Thank you, Chair. And, yes, I'm the second Izumi. It's not that popular a name in my country but somehow, accidentally, we are now, you know, two. So I'll use my family name, if so needed.
But anyway, I was just trying to compare the statistics or attendance statistics of last year's one with that one of 2012. Bali and Baku.
It was kind of interesting that for the -- by the regional analysis, of course the Asia-Pacific made an increase by 7%, and which also the host country of Indonesia made 1%, meaning over the Azerbaijan. Or if it comes to the absolute number, Indonesia had 580 people, roughly speaking. If -- because I sort of multiplied the number of participants overall and also the percentage the secretariat provided, because we don't have the real breakdowns in detail.
Anyway, so that means Indonesians made a great effort to increase the number of participants from the host country. However, if you consider the number of population of the two countries where the other area has 9 million and Indonesia has 270 something, so it's not perhaps fair to just compare the two countries like that, but it indicates something.
But what was also interesting is that for the stakeholder group, several people mentioned about the decrease of the participation of the governments, and the statistics certainly confirmed that.
The civil society made the 13% -- 13% increase by percentage, meaning reaching 46% of the whole -- overall participants.
So myself being a member of civil society, we had close to half, whether it's good or bad. It's up to your interpretation.
And the private sector also made -- well, in the share, they lost by 1%, but actually in numbers they have increased more. So that should be also taken -- noted.
But -- while the governments had only 340 people as compared to 416 of those at Baku, making an absolute decrease by more than 70 people and about 9% decrease.
And so I think certainly there is a need, perhaps, to reach out more to the government people. Given the different political contexts and also the location of Istanbul, it may not be the case, but anyway, I think we need more effort to reach out to all sectors, perhaps, not only the governments.
But finally, there's the gender balancing. And this, we maintain almost the same figure that was the 65 to 35 in Baku, that male had more than female. But it went to 63 to 37, while the 180 more ladies came to Bali than Baku, but the -- the gentlemen or the men came by 220 increase.
So in the opposite number, both made significant effort, but still I don't think the 65/35 is not a fair balance. That we need to reach out more to the female. That's for our task jointly.
I notice that there's no breakdown about the developing countries. There's only the grouping by the region, Asia-Pacific, where we have both developed and developing. I don't know if it's appropriate to go into that details or not, but at least if we have some idea about those from LDCs, which I think are vastly underrepresented amongst even the developing countries -- there are more people perhaps from China and a very few from the LDCs in Asia-Pacific I can notice.
So that is also work I think we need.
I just need one more clarification, perhaps, or question that this total number in the chairman's summary, it says it includes the remote participation in a vague term.
Is it really true, and can we have some means to know the de- -- I mean the breakdowns of how many are actually remote participation and how many are the physical ones, so that we can track all of these sort of more exact numbers?
I picked up that about a hundred people were remotely participated and presented at the Bali meeting, but as -- I'd like to echo the need for the remote participation enhancement, that we better have perhaps an exact figure so that we will have more strategic move.
And finally, I'd like to suggest that the word "remote" is a little bit troublesome to me, rather than -- well, I would like to suggest to use "on line," to be a little bit more neutral. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Izumi, for your comments and suggestions.
>> (Speaker is off microphone.)
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Yes. And I asked if Chengetai could, at a later stage --
>> (Speaker is off microphone.)
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: -- the numbers of remote participation as well whether there is any specific reason why we do not do the breakdown in terms of number of -- from developing countries and LDCs.
But before Chengetai is sort of giving answer, I will call on Matthew. Matthew Shears. Then I have also Robert and Ana on the list.
So Matthew, please.
>>MATTHEW SHEARS: Thank you, Chair.
Matthew Shears, Center for Democracy and Technology. I'll be brief but first let me congratulate you and welcome you to the position of chairmanship. I very much support comments that have been made by many here, and particularly the comments by the Council of Europe, but let me follow up on a comment by the -- the gentleman from Macedonia and Chris Disspain.
I would like to very much support and congratulate the IGF on the session it held on surveillance at the Bali meeting.
I thought that was an extremely valuable session. We had a good set of panelists, and importantly, we had an excellent use of the open mic to have people participate and contribute in a true discussion format. And I think it points to the need for the IGF to not shun away from difficult issues. The more that we can remain current in our debate, the more relevant our debate is, and hopefully the more that will attract people to participate in the IGF.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Matthew.
Robert now?
>>ROBERT SCHLEGL: Dear Chairman, first of all, I want to congratulate you on your appointment to this post.
Dear colleagues, now we have very fruitful discussion and I would like to join my opinion to the fact that the key issue of our examination is a result of the IGF.
Bali was an excellent forum and we thank the host country for its hospitality. Its forum was very informative and interesting, but what are the change in the world after it and now?
The question is: What value will have next IGF in Istanbul as part of the global discussions about Internet governance?
Who, when, and for what reasons will consider the opinions of the IGF participants?
We need to talk about the future of the IGF and how to increase its value improvement.
And the second point is a question of what should be the role of the governments in Internet governance.
For example, in the protection of human rights, privacy, and et cetera.
I think that we have to discuss this topic. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you very much, and as you represent the Parliament, I think that the participation of parliamentarians in the debate of Internet governance is equally important than participation of governments in that, as well as other stakeholder groups. That is evident.
So next is Ana. Ana Neves.
>>ANA NEVES: Thank you very much. And, first of all, let me greet you and Markus for your leadership in these very challenging processes.
Well, I think that we have a deep reflection on the workshops, on the format of workshops, and on workshop proposals, but I think that this discussion will take place later on.
One of the main points that I would like to underline now is about the main sessions. What -- I think that the main sessions didn't work in Bali, and I think that we should reflect on that because they should not compete with the workshops. There should be no competition but complementarity.
Another point that I want to underline is -- is about the IGF village that we had last year. Unfortunately it didn't work. Only the governments were allowed to be at the -- at the main entrance, so all the others stakeholders, the others that are really working on the field, so they were really far away and I'm not sure whether you all that were in Bali, you know where they were, so that is something that we have to -- to work on is these -- these people, they paid for their -- their travel so they paid for the materials and so we have to have an eye on this.
Finally, I would like to talk about the need to increase the participation of governments and other participants. This includes the participation of governments, even if some stakeholders they don't understand. It would be extremely useful for all the stakeholders. So maybe the Brazil meeting that will take place in April -- and there was so much discussed in Bali -- might be helpful on this as some governments are expected to be there. So it is a plea for all that are organizing this meeting to have this in mind as well because we need because we need to have all of the governments in all the different settings and fora. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Ana, for your reflections. Indeed, the placement of the Saturday of participants and exposition should be reflected and really need to think how to arrange it in Istanbul.
Next on my list is Jim, Jim Prendergast.
>>JIM PRENDERGAST: Yes, thank you, Chairman. I'm offering these comments not as a member of the MAG but as an individual who has participated in several IGFs as well as working with organizations to propose panels. I don't envy the position that the MAG is in having to review all these proposals, but I do want to give you some insights from somebody who sits on this side of the equation.
I was excited to be in Paris last year for the consultation where there was plenty of discussion about alternate formats for proposals and workshops, highly interactive sessions, versus the panel speaking to the audience. Having been a moderator for a highly interactive session in Baku where we had about 75 people in the room, 31 of which took to the microphone, certainly one of the highs of an IGF experience over the years, which was quickly followed by one of my lows which was going to a session with eight talking heads and five minutes for questions and answers.
So I would just ask that the MAG consider and take into account these alternate formats when reviewing and submit from proposal submissions. I certainly don't envy the job the MAG has trying to review 175 proposals in a very short period of time.
When you look at something such as diversity, a panel that is supposed to be a workshop or a highly interactive discussion generally won't have seven names from across the globe included in the panelists so, therefore, it suffers immediately for not being diverse when trying to fit it squarely into a spreadsheet that assigns numbers to these different values.
So I would ask that more time be given to the MAG to review the proposals and that accommodations are made for these new and encouraged different formats that we want to try to encourage for valuable input and participation.
On the input phase, you know, personally, I found the new system that we had last year a little more challenging than the previous process both for inputting the proposals to the Web site for submission and review but also when reviewing them. I know an output function -- I think the MAG may have gotten a PDF with all the documents outputted to them. But I think something like that would be good for the community as well because to open up each proposal and review it, I think had to click on five different tabs to get the information about the entire proposal. So if there is a way to look into maybe more user-friendly technology on that end, I would certainly appreciate it.
In Bali, I was involved with a flash session which was a new format that we worked into the program. I thought it was a very creative way to accommodate more proposals when we didn't want to accommodate more proposals. The shortened time frame allowed for more people to have their sessions.
I thought the formats were good. 45 minutes may not be enough time for some topics of discussion. But what I found with our session with youth and digital citizenship is that the conversation very quickly spread out into the hallway and continued for an hour afterwards.
So it kicked off in a formal atmosphere and finished in an informal atmosphere. And then, finally, I'm not sure -- honestly, I don't know about this publication but I found it very valuable and I would encourage that the secretariat highlight it even further and that was something called "IGF Today."
I found that around the corner in the back at Bali. Thought it was a very well-done publication that probably deserves a little more of a highlight and a spotlight, maybe something closer to the entrance every morning to ensure that every attendee does get a copy of it because I thought it was a very well-done publication and something that should be rewarded. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Jim. I have three further requests for the floor, and I wonder if there are further requests, because it seems to me that we're gradually starting to repeat ourselves and slowly drifting in the discussion about IGF 2014.
So I have Anriette. I have Towela. I have United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Makane. And I have a request from the delegation of Netherlands and delegation of the United States.
So may I then consider this list closed for this part of the debate? So there is another request.
Okay. Anriette.
>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Janis, I think I'd rather have people who have not spoken yet speak before me. And if there is time, I will have input.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you. I call now on Towela.
>> TOWELA JERE: Thank you very much, Chair, and congratulations on your appointment. My name is Towela. I'm from the NEPAD Agency, which is a technical agency of the African Union based in South Africa. I'm a first-time MAG member, but I have been involved in several Internet governance initiatives in the region.
I want to echo very strongly the messaging about government participation, especially for our region. And I want to also make the case that I think it is very important to take into account that in our governments, the turnover is high. So one has to make sure that the messaging is going to the governments on a regular basis for them to stay informed, to stay up to date on what is going on.
But I think there is also a need to make sure that the messaging to the governments includes aspects of the origins of the IGF. I think a lot of people are very familiar with the WSIS process. And when one mentions the IGF as an outcome of the WSIS process, they're able to relate to it much quicker than if we just talk about it outside of the context of WSIS.
I think that there's also a need to stress the importance or the impact that the IGF has in language that policymakers can actually understand when we talk of things like local content and we talk about things like linguistic and cultural aspects. Those are things that they can actually relate to, and they can basically make a case for actually engaging with the IGF.
I also think that it was important for the IGF, whether it is through the MAG or through the secretariat, to strengthen the national and regional processes as a way of increasing participation but also as a way of reaching out to our governments as well. And in this aspect, I would also want to stress the importance of including parliamentarians and our regional economic communities in the conversation.
On the issue of online participation, I think that for our region, this is also very important. But I would also stress that it does need to be facilitated on both sides because we still have significant issues in terms of access. And, one, therefore, has to understand that even when we have online participation, it is mostly done through hubs. And those hubs need to be resourced and they need to be facilitated.
Thank you, Chair.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you very much for your observations. United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
>> U.N. ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR AFRICA: Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We wish to provide our thanks and appreciation to Markus for having guided the IGF process successfully up to Bali.
We welcome also the new Chair and the host of the next IGF, Turkey.
We support the analyses that were made by the secretariat on the assessment on the Bali IGF. However, we would like to single out the following two main issues we had. The first one was the visa. Several potential participants from Africa could not take part because the letter of offer for visa was put on the Web site very late, hence preventing our stakeholders to take part. Most of them had to cancel. So I hope this year we will get visa facilities earlier.
Also, the second one was a lack of interpretation facilities for the workshops. The booths which were provided for the workshops did not have interpretation facilities, hence forcing people to use one language. While in Baku, we had the possibility to have interpretation being from our own resources. I hope this year we'll have possibilities also to make interpretation at least in two languages.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you for these observations.
Now I call on Netherlands.
>>NETHERLANDS: Thank you, Chairman. I'm speaking here on behalf of the Dutch IGF and as an observer.
Let me start by congratulating you on your new appointment and thank your predecessor, Markus Kummer, for his excellent work as well as the Indonesian government for hosting a very successful IGF.
Now, on the lessons learned and the way forward, just a couple of points I would like to make. It was already said by Mike Nelson, the open forum organized by the Netherlands, yes, indeed, we had organized an open forum in Bali on cybersecurity and we expected to have this item on the screen. But it was quite important to see a one-liner saying an open forum organized by the government of the Netherlands. That's a very nice title, but lots of people asked us: What's behind this? What's the content? What's the real content? And we had to explain it is about cybersecurity, a very important issue.
So my request to the MAG is, please, if governments are going to organize or international organizations are going to organize an open fora, please make it explicitly that it concerns a topic, a certain topic. Make it visible.
On the workshops, selection of workshops, I'm not going to repeat the excellent words by Marilyn Cade on how it went on last year. I was in the room, but I'm not going to say anything what really happened. But certainly one message to the MAG, please try to improve the selection process. Let's have transparency. Let's have very clear criteria upon which those workshops will be selected.
I know it is a tough job, 150 or so workshops to be reduced; but at least be very transparent and have very clear criteria.
The amount of workshops should be decreased as well. We tried to do that. I think the same amount of 150 workshops were during Bali present, but it should be lowered down for the next year's IGF.
New faces and new themes. New themes, we're going to work on it today and tomorrow. New faces, truly, very, very -- it is important to have new people in the room, but the main question is: How do we get those people in the room? If we're talking about developing countries, yes, indeed, we should get those countries on board. And we are working on it.
We could imagine to have a pre-event for the IGF is starting, pre-event only dedicated to the developing countries. That could be a useful tool.
Another tool could be to have workshops or training for the developing countries. The Netherlands has organized two workshops last year in the framework of ISOC, one in Kenya and one in Argentina, to explain more specific what spam is all about and how we can fight spam. So this could be a way out.
Next thing I would like to touch upon is the -- how can we improve the outcomes of the IGF. In the Dutch IGF, we have continuous discussions about this. And every time it is coming back the same message: Oh, it is very important to have these discussions but what can we deliver? I mean, lots of people are gathering and discussing the same themes. But nothing is coming out of it.
Industries are having a nice expression about this. And they're just saying, Well, we are thinking -- we are just bumping our heads against a glass ceiling and this has to be improved. So thoughts are on the table to perhaps come up with recommendations ending up with the discussions in the IGF. But certainly not binding decisions. Let me be very clear on this.
Last item I would like to touch upon is the renewal of the mandate or to have a new mandate. Several people in the room have already touched upon that, and we are very interested to know more about the whole process, about such a new mandate because we all know that in 2005, the IGF was a result of a political deal. But in 2015, we have to know what can we expect. I mean, if you ask me, certainly we would continue with this extremely useful platform in the near future. But we would like to know more about the details of the process. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. I think we will be talking about the process and that will be most probably tomorrow or in the context of the discussion this afternoon.
So now I call on delegation of United States. Leisyl.
>>UNITED STATES: Thank you, Chair. I was trying to respect your agenda setting and not making some brief comments about looking forward to 2014 earlier. So I will just take a moment to do that now. I was also very remiss in not thanking the work -- the secretariat and Chengetai and his team for all of their hard work throughout the year and at the IGF itself with all of its challenges and opportunities of organizing such a big event.
Having said that, I think that, you know, we feel that we still need to address the staffing issues which you have somewhat addressed today. And we look forward to further developments in that regard, both for the special advisor position and for the secretariat team and staff so that we can realize some of the great recommendations that certainly came out of the CSTD report but also that many of the MAG members and stakeholders have in sessions like today.
Speaking of the CSTD's report, we realize that many of the recommendations have a financial impact presumably on the secretariat and the very stretched trust fund that provides the resources.
However, some of those recommendations can continue to be realized in the planning for the IGF and through the efforts of all of us here and more to make the IGF more inclusive and globally represented to capture the output or the value of the IGF. So in that regard, we would endorse the idea of including discussions about that value and the IGF's impact at the IGF itself in some way that makes sense to do so.
We would like to endorse the recommendations that have been made today for things like workshop proposal assistance, diverse formats, evolving themes to reflect the issues of the day as difficult as they might be and front-loading as much of the preparation and information dissemination to the community as much as possible.
And this means that at this two-day meeting, we really need to determine the criteria for the workshops so that can be made available to the community as soon as possible as others have said.
And we'd also like to echo the comments about increasing even further and diversifying participation in the IGF. We know of organizations that have been able to help bring delegations of developing countries to the IGF meetings, for example, including the IGF fellowship program and even my own government but certainly not only us.
I continue to believe that we can do a better job of recognizing those that have sponsored such delegations, not as a laudatory mechanism but rather to demonstrate there are efforts from the community to provide and opportunity to those who might not be able to attend on their own.
I'm probably now moving out of the agenda format that you laid out, Janis. But since the future of the IGF and the mandate has come up, I'd like to just make a brief comment about that. The U.S. is a strong supporter of the IGF, and we continue to increase our level of engagement and the preparation for and the proceedings of the IGF.
In addition, we were able to make a contribution to the IGF's trust fund in 2013. So we thank those that we join as continuing contributors and new ones, and we encourage other countries and stakeholders to do so as well so that it can continue to serve as a battle organ for the Internet governance discourse and the resource that it has become.
So, in fact, in the ongoing deliberations for the ICT for Development resolution in December, we did attempt to include a provision to extend the mandate for the IGF earlier than required so that the IGF would have some of that predictability and sustainability for the future. Apparently, that was a bridge too far for last year. But we were pleased at least at the recognition -- that the resolution included a recognition of the importance and success of previous IGFs as well as an expression of gratitude to Turkey, Brazil, and Mexico for their offers to host the next three IGFs which would extend it beyond the mandate.
I will close there. I just wanted to address that aspect at least of the process and our support. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Now I call on Soonjoung.
>>SOONJOUNG BYUN: Thank you, Chair. Can you hear me?
Hello. My name is Soonjoung Byun from Korea Internet and Security Agency. I became a new MAG member for 2014 and I've never attended IGF meetings before. However, I just would like to have some comments on IGF based on what I felt as a beginner of IG area.
I have attended various meetings related to the data protection, cyber-security and standardization, et cetera, and I've never seen a meeting like the IGF that tries hard and put great value and effort to involve as many stakeholders as possible, such as governments, industry, civil society, and developing countries as well.
I think this value is something that IGF should continue to keep on the way forward. And also, I've never seen a meeting like IGF that covers this variety of issues at the same time regarding Internet, and that's why it's really important to balance or organize or coordinate subjects and issues to draw more tangible outputs and outcomes that every participant can bring back to their own community to get more valuable results in their community.
I think getting more participants involved greatly relies on how the features of this meeting effect or are helpful to the participants. That's why the role of MAG would be very important for 2014.
It's my honor to be a new MAG member of this year. I hope Korea or KISA as a member of MAG and as a participant of IGF can make meaningful contribution with our experiences in various Internet areas regarding cyber-security, data protection, and Internet ethics, et cetera, to draw more tangible output, and cooperation with agencies like KISA would be welcomed. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Soonjoung, and I still most probably did not pronounce correctly your name. Apologies for that.
We have done sort of a round of -- on the lessons learned in 2013 and I think there were three main areas of questions which came out of this discussion.
One is the logistics and early announcements where -- that everybody is aware and preparing for the -- for the meeting.
Then the second bigger area is the preparation and work of the MAG on the selection of workshops, for instance, and this is where I did not hear really a lot about whether we are satisfied or not.
A few referred to criteria, and do we need to set up a new round of discussion about criteria or we can just take those criteria which were identified in the preparation for 2013 and what would be maybe lessons from the selection process in 2013. So that would be something I would like to hear more from you.
And finally, of course then the bigger substantive debate about the IGF and what issues should be addressed and whether that would be carved in stone, taking into account historic perspective, or we need to be more flexible and react on maybe developments which we do not anticipate at the moment of preparation.
So let me maybe ask you a bit more about your feelings about selection of the workshops. This is important. We need to launch that process at the end of this meeting, and we need maybe to have exchange on that.
Anriette, if you would like to start.
>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Janis.
My comments actually were -- would have included that, and so I'll start by remarking specifically on that.
I think we can discuss new criteria but I don't think that's the fundamental issue. I think the fundamental issue has really been more in the execution of our process. The problems have been in the execution rather than in the process itself.
I think the criteria themselves are actually, I think, pretty solid and -- and, you know, we can revisit them. It always is good.
But some specific problems. I think Jim Prendergast's points are really -- I endorse those. We need more transparency. There were excellent workshop proposals last year focusing on intellectual property issues, on the Internet, that somehow were not selected. And, you know, rather than make assumptions about strategic voting amongst MAG members, I think we should just have MAG members make their votes transparent and visible to the Internet community. So that's one improvement.
And then I think again it's an execution issue. We already have a criteria that workshop formats -- formats should not be talking heads, as Jim was saying, but we're not applying that effectively, so we still end up really encouraging proposers to have participation and not a panel of -- of 8 or 10 people, but when you get to the IGF, you have those massive panels and you don't have participation.
I think there, the solution would be not so much in criteria but following up on Marilyn's proposal, mentoring after the selection process.
I think selection should really be on the substance of the -- the topic, of the proposal, the relevance of the topic, and regional diversity and I think bringing in new voices, rather than on -- on a number of panelists.
And then once a workshop has been accepted, I think then a more active mentoring process with the workshop proposer, making sure that the format, the facilitation methodology ensures that there is interaction, that there are not too many panelists, and maybe we can then work on a process of MAG members being assigned to do that. We can share the workload amongst ourselves, maybe in regional groupings, with workshop proposers.
So I think more hands-on mentoring, as Marilyn was proposing.
I also think we should make the flash session modality formal and announce that, although some might argue it's better to have it as a fallback option as we did last year. But I'd rather see it as a modality for shorter sessions and make that available to the IGF community because what happened last year was that we weren't able to say no to certain workshops, and then we can't say no so then we look at an alternative way of accommodating rejected proposals, so we came up with flash sessions, and I think it just again is a -- is a manifestation of our inability to be firm and apply our own criteria rigorously.
So I mean, in summary, I think that's -- you know, it's not so much the criteria. I'm not opposed to changing them. But I think the execution of the process needs to be firmed up. And then the support.
And then just -- I just wanted to quickly remark on the participation issue because I think it's linked to this.
I think on government participation, you know, I hear two different responses in the room. Some people say the ministerial is good. They like that. That's enough. Others are saying we need something more.
I think the issue of ensuring effective government participation needs more discussion and maybe that can be a MAG working group.
On bringing in new faces, I think we can play that role in our workshop selection and in the design and planning of main sessions, but until we have some financial fund that we can use to bring new people to the IGF, it will always be a hit-and-miss affair, because ultimately we are limited to select speakers from among those that are there or that have patrons or donors or -- or that are local.
So I think to be systematic in deepening participation, which I think should be based on substance, not just on newness, having a participation fund -- this proposal has been made before, I think -- that the MAG can use for main sessions and possibly that workshop organizers can propose -- or apply to would help diversify participation.
And I just quickly want to make just two general points.
I think we should keep in mind that the IGF is about public policy and about Internet governance. It's not a showcase for best practice and using the Internet to -- for development. It's not an ICT4D forum. It's different from WSIS and the WSIS forum. It's really about policy and governance.
So I think if we're having best practice forums, if they're showcasing successes, as has been proposed, let's keep in mind that we want to showcase issues related to governance and policy.
And just quickly, I think the renewal is a fantastic -- I'm glad it's come up again, and I wonder if we can't propose that the renewal is done for 10 years, rather than 5 years, to give us and the whole Internet community and the U.N. system more time to do this properly.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. We have about five minutes to conclude this -- this morning session. Maybe we can go some minutes beyond. And I will call, first and foremost, those who haven't spoken yet, and Susan is the first one.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My is Susan Chalmers. I'm a MAG member.
On the workshop selection criteria, I think that there are two components. First is the criteria that the workshop submitters must meet or that should be reflected within their proposals.
Second, I think that there needs to be a selection process that is sensible for the MAG to use and that is also transparent.
For those new MAG members who are here, a workshop streamlining working group was established last year. A proposal was made by that workshop group and there was subsequent discussion on the proposal on the MAG list.
For the MAG members, I have just circulated a digested version of that discussion, including some PDFs of the threads, so that would be good for reference for a discussion tomorrow.
I also just -- just one final point on the MAG selection of workshops. The process.
You'll see in the e-mail that I sent out there were two basic approaches. One was kind of a numerical-based approach where you could have a binary system, you vote up or down on criteria. It's very numbers based.
The second one is more -- is less so. It's a more qualitative, less numbers-based proposal. And I think that -- I think that these are two different poles -- two different approaches that the MAG could consider in developing and eventually arriving at an agreed-upon approach for a workshop selection process, which I sincerely hope that we'll be able to do by the end of tomorrow. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you. There is a question or comment from remote participants?
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you.
I have a comment from Andrew Maurer, a new MAG member.
He says a thought on format and content. I remember being a part of a session on spam policy in Athens when an African gentleman in the audience put up his hand and asked how to set up a blacklist at the ISP he had set up. It was at that point that everyone in the room started talking with each other, exchanging business cards, and drawing diagrams on the back of them, rather than the rather titled panel sessions we'd had up until then.
It was fantastic.
So one thought is whether we can move away from panel sessions to a more free-form methodology.
The other thought is whether we can put a premium on subject matter that people can take away and build on or use at home. It doesn't need to be highly technical, though I like the RSSAC thoughts on IXPs, et cetera. Maybe a session on what works in terms of stimulating new and active multistakeholder participation at a national level and then at an international level. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you for those proposals and thoughts.
Fiona?
>>FIONA ALEXANDER: Thank you. I just wanted to echo the comments that Susan made and maybe suggest a way forward. I think there's not a shared baseline understanding of the process that was used last time nor the discussion that's happened on the MAG list in the intervening period about criteria. I think everyone agrees there needs to be criteria, it needs to be clear, it needs to be transparent, and beyond that, I'm not sure that there's any further, you know, agreement on how to do it. And not related to any one model. But I think this could take a substantial amount of time for us to talk through, so I don't know what the current agenda -- how we could do that with just one session tomorrow morning, so perhaps if there's a way to sort of put all the material that's currently out there in one spot -- I know Susan tried with her e-mail -- and then people could take a look at it and start a conversation today with the goal of finishing tomorrow. I just think it's -- just to flag I think it's going to take a certain -- more amount -- time of work than people are thinking it will take.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Carolina?
>>CAROLINA AGUERRE: Yes. Thank you. I would like to second Anriette's proposal. I mean in terms of being firm and structured in our agenda, in our calendar, in our criteria. I think that Susan's work and Fiona's comment just raised is essential. We need to move forward. There's work being done in the past eight months about this so we need to move forward and we need to take advantage of the possibility that we're here tomorrow.
I think that we really -- from a developing region's viewpoint, if we need -- if we want more faces, if we want new people, if we want new proposals, we really need this new fund for new participants. It is actually impossible to do it with the current situation and with the current funding structure that we have in our regions.
And if we cannot be firm on our criteria and on our calendar, I -- I don't -- I wouldn't like to repeat the sensation I have every year, that of during July and August we're just revising workshops and submissions that are coming in -- are coming in through the window and not through the main door and the main entrance; that we should be working and we should be aiming at having really institutionalized procedures and structures so that people really know the rules of the game and we all play by the rules of the game. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. And last in this part of the session, I will call on Subi. And others who have requested for the floor will get it at the beginning of the next session. Subi. Please.
>>SUBI CHATURVEDI: And as I realize, I'm between lunch, I'll keep my comments brief.
This is an important topic and which is why I feel compelled to make an intervention. The workings improvement and ratings process as a new MAG member, we looked at about 200 proposals in a week's time. It was completely voluntarily. The secretariat told us that new MAG members do not need to undertake this exercise. I'm just glad I did it.
With Theresa Swinehart who is no longer on the MAG, we led a breakout group that looked at deepening multistakeholderism and enhanced cooperation. I strongly urge that we revisit the criteria for workshop evaluation and proposal rating systems.
When we ask questions in the forms and we do not link those responses to how they are going to be treated or evaluated, there is a gap. We can create funds for people, but we will not be able to facilitate their participation if we have a system that keeps people out. If we have questions or rating-based points on diversity, a developing country proposal cannot have five speakers from across the world because they might not have the necessary linkages with people from different expertise. Geographical diversity, again, a similar point, when we are rating people at a proposal submission stage, even on a virtual call, we had proposed that we should first look at initial proposals based on topics, whether they're from a new MAG member or whether they're from a country which is underrepresented, especially an LDC, we should give them priority.
On the question of whether IGF can be a platform for best practices, I think it is important.
In India, we are struggling because all the sparrows have disappeared from the capitol. It is important to have governance and Internet governance that develops the Internet. We need to look at connecting the next billion online, and proliferation of the Internet is equally important than just merely looking at processes as to how we can best govern it.
In the new criteria, we have been working together with Fiona and Susan on setting a new criteria. It is important that either we filter it as a two-stage process or we have criteria that privileges access and quality, not just numbers of people who do exceptional proposals but new voices that can be actively facilitated by MAG members. I think that is our primary responsibility as the MAG.
We also need to revisit these proposals and workshops when they take place or unfold at the IGF. Just having a broad-based criteria, 17 panelists is not a good idea for a session that is a roundtable with young people, multistakeholder participants, which is not a panel. They might propose 17 names. So we have to look at these proposals with agility and use our discretion when we evaluate these proposals. And we should be able to have free and fair conversations as to how we can include diversity, privilege access which is a very real question for both India and China.
Thank you, Janis.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Subi, for those proposals.
What I would like to encourage, since you have an opportunity to look through --
>> Mr. Chairman, the interpreters are leaving.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: -- which is originated during the debate and I cannot. So please do that and respond or engage on the proposals or some of that Susan has sent out on this very important topic.
Indeed, our task is to agree how we will do the workshop selection and we need to get to that conclusion by end of tomorrow. So a lot of things to discuss and think through. Therefore, this online debate among members of the MAG would be very important.
So that brings to the end of this session. I would like to thank interpreters for letting us work slightly longer.
[ Applause ]
And what I would like to encourage, please come back at 3:00 sharp and we will start at 3:00 sharp. I'm coming from a country where punctuality is a culture, whereas in this country where we are --
>> (Speaker off microphone.)
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: We are on U.N. grounds where punctuality is maybe not so observed. So we will start at 3:00 sharp and thank you very much. Bon appetit.
(Lunch break)
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We're about to start the afternoon session, if you'd all kindly take your seats. Thank you very much.
[ Gavel ]
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I welcome all of you back in the room. I said that we would start at 3:00 to maximize our time and maximize interpretation time, and therefore I am looking. Is -- are those people who have applied -- or who have expressed interest to talk in the room?
I see Marilyn. Marilyn, would you like to...
So while you're going to your seat, I will call on Michael.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: Thank you very much.
I wanted to propose a couple things, since we're talking now about what could be done differently going forward. It seems to me that one of the challenges we've had is getting people from less-developed countries or from less-known institutions, and one of the problems is that they can't assemble a panel proposal because they don't know the right people or they don't know the right good people to be on a panel.
Has the MAG considered, in the past, allowing individuals to apply as a potential speaker? I think this would have huge advantage because then we would be able to place them on their appropriate panel. We would also have a ready list of people who might serve as alternates, should some existing approved panelists have to cancel at the last minute.
Clearly, it would add to our workload a little bit, but it might actually -- it would probably lead to a much better -- an even better series of panels and give us more flexibility.
The other thing I wanted to touch on is the idea of LDC workshops, which was mentioned, and I think given that many people from less-developed countries are coming a very long way, giving them one more reason to come, by doing an LDC workshop on day zero or day minus one, is a very good idea.
In general, I think we should find ways to accommodate as many side meetings as possible, working with the Turkish hosts.
The last point I wanted to make was regarding transparency of the voting process by the MAG members.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am an incredible advocate for transparency. I've written reports on how companies need to have a transparency policy as well as a privacy policy. But I think the idea of having each vote from each MAG member for each proposal made public is not a good idea. I think it would actually lead to potential conflicts of interest and there would be a lot more pressure on me to -- say, to vote favorably for my friends even if I thought their proposal was not worthy.
Certainly giving more feedback, perhaps as anonymous comments or, you know, a score, would be very helpful, but certainly giving individuals' personal votes for individual proposals I think is unworkable.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Thank you, Mike.
Marilyn?
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you. I'm going to pick up where I -- on a comment I made this morning and elaborate on it a little bit related to voting, which I think we have to change our terminology into something a little more neutral which may be "evaluating," et cetera.
But I think we made a major mistake last time and we made that mistake because of both innocence and lack of resources, but the implications of the mistake were, I think, very profound.
And here's the mistake I think we made: The MAG members understood the criteria but the community did not.
And the other thing that we did last time which astounded me -- and I'm going to be an advocate for limiting this -- there were workshop proposals, maybe as many as 11 or 14, from a single entity or organization. There were workshop proposals from a single company. I thought we had a standard of requiring at least three different stakeholder groups in submissions.
So one thing I think we could do to lower our need to evaluate is to heighten our understanding of standards, if I could use that, rather than "criteria," and we may need to have different standards for different types of events that are going to take place. And I'll give an example of that, depending on room availability.
A workshop proposal whose target is to attract 120 to 150 people might have a different standard than a workshop proposal that wants to be a roundtable of 25 people that takes a deep dive in a discussion.
So I'd like us to think more about that in relation to creating formats once we understand, as quickly as possible, what our room options are.
Secondly, I like the idea of trying to use flexible formats and I also like the idea, if it is possible, to have a group of rooms that are set aside for the ad hoc meetings, and I hope we can think about that once we know about space availability.
I am now going to recall something that might be very effective again, and that is the use of open forums that are specific to the experience that a country has taken -- has had in advancing the adoption and the growth of the Internet, and to see whether that is something that is possible. I've been the -- I've had the benefit of reading the country -- the 10-year country report that Rwanda submitted into the WSIS+10 working group and it's rich with information and examples where we might see some lessons learned.
My final comment is going to be I'm a little nervous about one of the things that we are doing where so many of the proposals come from MAG members and the MAG members are doing the evaluation.
So again, I will say if we can find a way to (indiscernible) the submission of workshops with well-understood criteria ahead of time from others than MAG members, I will feel more comfortable with MAG members being those who are evaluating workshops and who are prioritizing who gets in and who doesn't.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Marilyn.
There are a couple of things that we need to factor in. One is, tomorrow, as you see on the agenda, first thing in the morning will be the host country presentation on -- on the premises and the space available, so I think that that will help us enormously in order to understand the parameters of our discussion.
But one thing that I can tell you today is that for everything you are talking about, we have exactly 90 days. Three months.
So we have -- we are now in the middle of February, and all decisions on the workshops should be made by middle of May, because in the middle of May we will have a MAG meeting and in this MAG meeting all necessary decisions will be made.
In between, of course, we'll have intersessional very regular MAG calls, but this is our timetable. Because if we cannot meet that mid-May target ourselves, we are really in big -- in big trouble.
We just, during the lunch, did a little bit of counting back from first week of September, and this is where we -- sort of the conclusion that we made. It is nothing -- nothing personal. It is just the mathematics.
So before getting further on my speaker list, I omitted my promise to Yrjo Lansipuro to make one announcement related to the extracurricular activity this evening. Yrjo?
>>YRJO LANSIPURO: Thank you, Janis.
Good afternoon to all.
On behalf of the nominating committee of ICANN, I have the great pleasure of inviting you all to a reception today in the delegates restaurant at 6:00 p.m. That is after these consultations punctually end at 6:00.
I sent an e-mail to some, but I didn't know all e-mail addresses, so that everybody's invited. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Yrjo. The delegates bar is on the 8th floor of the old building.
Next speaker on my list is Vlad.
>>VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Janis.
On the workshop proposals mechanism, here's a suggestion of five steps that we may follow, following good and bad experiences from the last year.
Firstly -- and I think we've done that -- we asked the communities to come up with topics or policy questions, not suggesting the workshops per se, and I think the IGF secretariat will summarize there -- or it's also already done -- a summary of these policy questions, recommendations that we should follow thematically.
So then the next step would be very good guidelines for the workshop applicants, session applicants, what we require them to do, and it should be very easily understandable for them.
That means that we ask them for their topics to be in line with general policy questions discussed previously or asked previously; we need them to have diversity of formats; we need them to cooperate with different institutions and so on and so forth.
And Mary, I think, in her group previously -- now Fiona and the others -- have been working on what are the guidelines for the workshop proponents, what do we ask them to do. It should be more clear.
The third step is -- and I think that's crucial -- is coaching by the MAG members. That means making MAG members busy with assisting people to do the proposals in a right way, rather than proposing on their own. Well, both of them.
That means that especially for the new proponents of workshops, we as MAG members should approach them -- in cooperation with the secretariat, approach them and say, "Okay, this is a topic where we have on three different proposals. Let's try to see if you can work together." Put them in touch, find the links, help them work together. If they can't work together, insist on having their own sessions. Then we can see if we give them bigger or lower priority.
But we need to help them work in the right way.
The fourth step is after we do that and try to merge, in the early process, which is probably in the next month or so, immediately after the end of the application process, then we say, "Okay, we -- this is the list of sessions." Hopefully we have less than 150 or whatever. And we say, "Some of the sessions do not need to be workshops. They can go within capacity building track," for instance. And I gave an example of Bill Woodcock in Clearinghouse, Packet Clearinghouse, which had a number of very good proposals last year but they were not for the sessions. They were for capacity building. How the IXP works, what is the IXP, what is the IPv6, and so on.
Then we choose different formats for different sessions. We choose different lengths for some sessions. Some sessions can last for 20, 30 minutes, believe it or not.
The next step is the selection, and only then we come to selection -- not voting, but selection or evaluation -- where we really need to have clear criteria. And Fiona has been working on it, and Susan has mentioned it, and I'm sure she will elaborate tomorrow more on that. But make sure that we have transparency and we respond to those that are declined why they are declined, if we really need to do that.
So these are the five steps.
And just to maybe remind what I think -- what Anriette raised before and I think is really crucial, it is funds for bringing people from developing countries to the process, to the IGF, but also funds for the capacity building before or in between the two IGFs, because if we expect next year to have newcomers proposing good proposals for the workshops, we need to start doing capacity building with them now, this year.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. I would like to draw your attention that in the synthesis paper, on Page 5 and 6 and actually 7, we have a list of suggested themes, subthemes, and issues that could be discussed in Istanbul, and maybe to curtail -- as I mentioned, we have 90 days. Maybe to curtail the first out of five steps you outlined, Vlad, maybe we could already now look at those suggested themes, subthemes, and at the end of tomorrow come with a broad outline of four or five big themes that the Istanbul meeting would address. That's just a proposal for consideration.
Virat, please, you are next.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As somebody who unsuccessfully submitted proposals for the first time last year and scored at .03 less than the cutoff on two of my proposals, I share the heartburn and the understanding of the challenges one faces when a proposal doesn't get through.
Two or three things that I'd like to mention from somebody who used to be an outsider, have participated in many IGFs, in spite of which I was unable to write a proposal that qualified.
And hopefully this would serve as some of the lessons for all of us collectively to better structure our processes.
Firstly, I think the process of scoring should be fairly specific and outlined in advance before such proposals are submitted.
Second, there were several proposals ahead of mine which had names of very prominent IG activists across government, civil society, businesses, but in the final analysis when those sessions were conducted, the names were changed either altogether or fused.
So in that sense, a sort of process had been perfected wherein you knew how to get past the threshold and get proposals approved, and then after that change, large parts of it, because you were in and there was no way of checking what multistakeholder content still remained in those proposals since multistakeholder participation was a big part of the scoring.
So I suppose we'll have to put some checks and balances so it's not a -- sort of a loophole that professionally trained proposal makers can get through.
The last piece that I would say from last year's experience and then come on to some more suggestions was that the very high-scoring proposals were sent into what was called mentoring or consolidation process, and we were sent to teams that -- or proposals that made the cut but very similar, and we were told to go work with them.
When we approached them, they just said flat no. Once they said no, it was game over. You couldn't then push this back and say, "But we've been told by the MAG to work with you. We have fairly common stuff we can contribute."
Again, this -- none of this is intentional or this is not something that is perfect, but I thought I will share this with you as someone who came close to the cliff and the cliff-hanger.
We did, however, go host along with the Government of India an open forum that went exceedingly well and I thank Markus and the Secretariat to the MAG for making way for that and ensuring that that sort of session was held and held successfully.
If I may just turn back to this year's discussions, there have been some comments around best practices and whether that is part of what should occur or not occur and whether we should keep this as a policy dialogue.
I submit to you, sir, that I look at the Tunis Agenda, which is the document from which the IGF originated.
Section 72(d) states -- small (d) -- "Facilitate the exchange of information and best practices and in this regard make full use of the expertise of the academic, scientific, and technical communities."
(e): "Advise all stakeholders in proposing ways and means to accelerate the availability and affordability of Internet in the developing world."
At the time the Tunis Agenda was written, there were 1 billion, approximately, Internet users across the world. Currently, there are 2.8 billion. We still have 4.3 billion more citizens to cover.
Item (f): "Strengthen and enhance the engagement of stakeholders in existing and/or future Internet governance mechanisms, particularly those from the developing countries."
(h): "Contribute to capacity building for Internet governance in developing countries, drawing fully on local resources of knowledge and expertise."
I submit to you, Mr. Chairman, and to the MAG for their consideration, that we must add to the policy dialogue the knowledge agenda for the IGF.
Developing countries care about three things. They care about very high-level government ministers and discussions such as the ones that take place in the World Economic Forum or the G8s, the U.N. meetings and the G77. They care about decision-making forums which set standards such as the ITU, and, therefore, they are fully involved in that. And the only other thing they care about is knowledge exchange.
It is common knowledge that the World Bank is restructuring itself completely as we speak to move knowledge into the sectorial practices across the world right inside the heart of the field offices. And this is being done because there is an increasing requirement for governments to get the knowledge agenda going. That means exchange of information and best practices, very much the theme that also finds its way in the ISOC document which makes IGF more effective.
So I would urge you based -- and I always urge the MAG based on the reading of the Tunis Agenda, the importance of the knowledge agenda for developing countries and the fact that we all agree that IGF cannot be a decision-making forum. We all are fairly well-agreed to that. So if it isn't that, then we certainly have to find ways to make it relevant to the participants from the developing economies, especially the governments and they care about the knowledge agenda as recognized in the Tunis Agenda. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Virat, for this important contribution. And I believe that clearly should be taken into account in preparing and evaluating the proposals.
We have a remote comment. Please.
>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: Yes. So Desiree Zachariah, who is a MAG member commented on Michael Nelson's idea, saying it sounds like an excellent idea. And she also says that there is a number of good resource persons from the organization of Eastern Caribbean states who could add to the discussions but do not have the opportunity to do so through the IGF workshops. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you.
Next speaker on my list is Kossi (phonetic).
>> KOSSI AMESSINOU: Thank you very much. I will be speaking in French. May I continue? So thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: If you could allow people to put on their headsets and get on the correct channel.
>> KOSSI AMESSINOU: Thank you very much. I would like to commend the Chair and the secretariat. This is the first time that I'm taking part in the activities, the preparatory activities. I have been keeping abreast of the IGF activities. But this is the first time that I'm participating in the preparatory activities.
I think that we are all aware that this is a decision-making body. But in developing countries, sometimes we have concerns that aren't shared by the developed countries. And this means that sometimes we don't correctly interpret the reasoning underlying the decision-making.
When I tell my minister that decisions taken are -- well, perhaps, when these decisions are not binding, they don't always understand that we're talking about an informal discussion where we can draw inspiration that can then be fed into the development of public policies promoting the use of Internet. So I think international concerns should be able to help our states to understand that.
Even though we're not in a decision-making space but the discussions here can inspire us; that is, both the government and the private sector. Each has its own particular role, and we should be able to draw the relevant inspiration.
For example, the topics. The topics aren't always intended to find a solution to problems that exist in our spaces. We feel that the large groups want to transmit a message and that in relation to particular topics at the world level, of course, concerns aren't all the same. We don't have the same strength of action. But we would like to see in the proposals -- we try to ensure that whenever ideas are expressed, then we be encouraged to apply it to our own situation.
For the private sector, for instance, when we talk about Internet with the private sector, they feel that since this is not a decision-making process, they don't understand why they should make a financial contribution to such discussions since it doesn't guarantee for them that the states taking decisions will ensure that they, the private sector, or elements in the private sector benefit.
These are stakes that we can identify to ensure that our proposals may be couched in a way to make them relevant to the people in our country so they become more involved in what we're doing here.
Last year, for example, the experience of the global topic and all the subthemes, we had the impression that they didn't link into a global interest. So we should ensure that the subthemes are consistent with the solution to a specific problem and then tying in with the global topic or theme for the year.
For example, within MAG, we could ensure that we have subjects that are validated and then we could have workshops for members to ensure greater coherence so we can ensure practical implementation.
And then we have to ensure that when people do invest in travel, et cetera, to attend that they can fully benefit through, for instance, the organization of workshops. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you for your contribution very much. You have raised a number of significant topics, themes. And you've, in fact, addressed many of the concerns which are the same as our concerns also. So thank you very much.
Now I call to Jivan.
>>JIVAN GJORGINSKI: Thank you, Mr. Chair. To think of the fact that there is -- there might be 70 to 100 to 150 to 200 workshops during a few-day event is, to me, mind boggling. I would propose that we actually cut down on the number of workshops, that we set a limit. I would even say a number of 25, but I don't know how that is going to sound to many. I'm sure some eyebrows are going to be raised.
But I don't see why we shouldn't limit the number of workshops to 25. And then there's been a lot of good proposals until now in how to fuse the themes of the workshops. So perhaps as a first round in the selection process, to have people start negotiating between themselves, if we find that there are similar proposals, to put them together, to group them and to tell them, okay, over the next -- you have two weeks or a month to try to figure out a common workshop because your themes are so similar and then to see what the feedback is that we receive from the proposals.
And then when the IGF happens, perhaps to have four or five themes that we decide on and then we have for each theme two or three MAG members that act as pollinators, that jump from the similar workshops within those threads and then report to the next ones that come sequentially, and then meet together in between and then put together some of the common ideas that come out and at the end of it to have a common thing that comes out of that thread.
So just for the sake of the results-oriented approach that I think many of us are kind of working toward, this would be something that could be of value. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you. In the auctions, they usually increase the price. So maybe we need to do inverse auction and see how low we can get in number of workshops. So we heard 25 as a proposal, which certainly then would entail that there wouldn't be workshops parallel to the main sessions of the most important themes and so on. So there is certain appeal to that type of approach that would give a lot of maybe depth in the discussion, a lot of participation or attendance in the workshops but maybe not so much contribution overall. So there are pros and cons of that.
Remote participation.
>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: Sorry, I just...
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: As you see, I'm trying to give priority to our remote participants.
Next to my list is Izumi.
>>IZUMI AIZU: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to make three points, one question perhaps. First of all, I would like to really encourage non-MAG members here in the room because it is an open consultation. One of our jobs is to listen to the wider community. So please don't hesitate. So far including myself, there are more MAG members speaking than non-MAG members.
The second one is a question that in the MAG procedure or procedurals and TUR (phonetic) draft which was sent prior to this meeting, there was some mention about a Chatham House rule and this -- according to this, meant that this practice would continue going forward.
But I assume in the open consultation, no Chatham House can be applied. But for new members and the like, just to make sure, some of us are not really accustomed to the Chatham House rule anyway. Please just make clear confirmation about our rule.
The third one is I would like to echo what some of the other members have already said, that we would like to really have an open space, especially for the -- our new host in Istanbul to put equal priority to have the rooms available for non-designed meetings. It is not just the remaining ad hoc, last-minute effort which some of the proposal in the workshops failed but rather more intentionally, I would like to see a -- the spontaneous, creative, some kind of endeavor that is not possible with other fora. This is very important. Some of the real well-designed, well-structured workshops will come out with very much anticipated outcomes which I sometimes don't see that interesting. So I really would like to see these have much more priority. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Izumi, for your ideas and proposals.
Laura, Laura Hutchinson.
>> LAURA HUTCHINSON: Thank You, Chair. My name is Laura Hutchinson. I'm from Nominet in the U.K. and we also provide a secretariat function for the U.K. IGF. I would like to begin by supporting the return of the high-level ministerial on the first day. From the U.K. we have had a minister present at the last, I think, three IGFs. And certainly the high-level ministerial was instrumental in his participation, and it meant he stayed on for -- not all of the IGF, but he was present for at least the first day.
I'd like to support the gentleman from Montevideo who called for a reduction in the number of workshops. There does seem to be quite an amount of overlap with the main sessions. There were many sessions with a sort of narrow focus and narrow panel, whether it is to do with the sector or the region. (Feedback.)
It was suggested this morning regarding mentoring resources. As a previous workshop organizer, I would call for this to be available prior to selection. It would be really helpful possibly as an area we could use the regional national IGF network for. When you are pulling together a panel, it is really hard to have the relevant contacts sort of outside of your own country or region. And I would support sort of assistance with that.
Virat covered earlier the issue with merging sessions. Certainly when we have organized workshops in the past, in order to submit your proposal, it has to be fairly well-developed and we've already gone out and approached speakers. And you have thought an idea through to a fairly fine level, and then it is not very easy to have to combine that with somebody else. And then you end up with huge panels because both sessions have got -- you know, they have gone out and approached four or five speakers themselves.
There were some comments this morning around the role of positivity and an avenue for sharing best practice. I think this is a really useful opportunity and something that could be built on. I think there's a lot of discussions on practical issues, and it would make sense to have material available for reference. And I think this would encourage new participants. There is a lot of information on the -- sorry, on the IGF Web site at the moment, but it is not particularly accessible and I think having more dynamic and easy accessible information would help encourage new participants. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Laura, for those proposals.
Next is ICC-BASIS.
>>ICC-BASIS: Thank you. I am not a member of the MAG, and I'm happy to be here and be able to participate in this meeting. It is really refreshing to be in a meeting that is so open and allows for this type of participation.
Last year was actually my first IGF. And since then, I have been thinking quite a bit about the importance of making the IGF relevant to the developing world. And earlier Virat said something that I think is really important. He mentioned the idea or the concept of a knowledge forum and a knowledge agenda.
And the reason I think this is so important is because a knowledge agenda is really linked to a policy agenda, something that we all care about and want to develop.
I know based on the Tunis Agenda, it focuses on access, diversity, and financing. And these are three important areas for developing economies.
If we could possibly bring best practices to this next year's IGF, we could possibly combine the good policies and the good experiences along with the tools in understanding how to implement these policies further.
This would also hopefully perhaps give an example of multistakeholderism and help us to further build trust.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you for your contribution.
Anriette, it is your turn.
>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Janis. So just really trying to synthesize or reflect on some of the useful suggestions that have come up.
I really like Vlad's proposal. I know it sounds as if it is diverging quite a bit from our current process but maybe not that much.
I like the idea of starting off with asking the community for input. I think the question we need to address is: Do we feel the consultation process leading up to this meeting has been sufficient or not?
And then I think having as a first phase an open process of inviting for a session proposal rather than just workshop proposals, I really like that idea. I think that can then allow us as a MAG to review those initial proposals and assess whether they are a best-practice forum as Virat was proposing in ISOC or a flash session or maybe a roundtable or workshop.
I think it does involve more work but we can ask the proposers to propose a particular format but we can then still review whether we also think that is a one-hour session or a one-and-a-half-hour session or a three-hour session. So I like that idea.
I think there to refer to the message Susan sent -- and thank you very much for summarizing that -- I think after that first filter -- or during that filter, Fiona's proposal, the scoring and system that she's proposed could then be used at that level, at that first level.
And then I think once we've applied that first filter, we can then come as Vlad was proposing, come together and identify what's in or what type of format we think a particular event should follow and then the coaching by MAG members. I think as Marilyn and Vlad proposed would fit quite well into that.
I do think it is worth, even if it is in a small group overnight or tomorrow morning, to look at that process in a little bit more detail.
But then I just want to also bring -- draw attention to some other proposals that have been made, which I think are important. The one is -- and I think several people have made this -- and that is MAG members and the conflict of interest issue.
I think if there is a decision that MAG members should not make the actual votes transparent, as Michael was proposing, that's okay, but we can still achieve more transparency by at least making it clear which workshops MAG members voted for and which ones they were excluded from voting for because they felt there was some kind of conflict of interest.
I still think we should aim at more transparency, even though I take Mike's point about the difficulty of not giving your friends' proposals a high score. Although I would imagine that most of us in this room could manage with that difficulty.
And -- but I still think -- I mean there are issues around that, and Chatham House Rules as well.
And I also think that something that would facilitate the selection process which was really difficult last year was being easily able to assist whether this topic has been covered before or not, and I think there the work done by the friends of IGF Web site has been very useful, and I'm wondering if that could be incorporated into the workshop selection platform, so that if the workshop deals with a topic on access, for example, or Internet exchange points, it's very easy to immediately go and see what has been dealt with at previous.
So you should be able to link to the reports of workshops on that topic from previous IGFs. That would make it less arbitrary and it would -- because often we reject workshops because we say the topic has been discussed, but I think making that less arbitrary and -- would be -- would be useful.
So -- so yes, I mean I think -- I think it's also worth looking at -- so my final proposal really is, I wonder if we can start the day tomorrow morning with a presentation of
the proposals -- the options that Susan sent in her e-mail. Perhaps the IGF secretariat can propose what the current process -- or present what the current process has been, and then if we could possibly break into smaller groups after that, tomorrow, just to then finalize what our -- to have a more facilitated process of deciding what are we doing this year. I think -- I'm just concerned that we come up with good suggestions but we're not really consolidating them into concrete proposals.
So just a proposal for the modality for tomorrow morning. Thanks, Janis.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Anriette, one question I did not understand properly.
You were talking about consulting the community on topics, calling it a filter. I -- for me, it will be rather getting -- getting a shopping list, not a filtering.
Would you clarify?
>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you. Apologies for not being clear, Janis.
No, I was referring to Vlad's proposal, which is that the first step is inviting the broad IGF community to propose themes and topics.
So no filter would be applied around that.
And Vlad, maybe you can elaborate what you thought would take place between Step 1 and Step 2.
The second step would be when the invitation for activities to be convened at the IGF is announced, and I think that is then when you would link that or invite events related to the theme in some way or in some cases not related to the theme, and once those proposals are in, then we can apply, as a first filter, Fiona's proposed scoring system, but not yet apply criteria such as who are the speakers.
Because we know it's not realistic. We know often that those initial proposals for speakers are very provisional. And so I think to -- to ask for a final list of speakers at that stage is not necessary.
So Janis, yes, that's the -- the filter wouldn't be applied at the point for asking for themes. It would be applied during the first review process, which would be a process of reviewing proposals that are quite general for events, and then we can assess whether we think they should be a best practice forum or a workshop or a flash session or a roundtable or some other format.
But perhaps, Vlad, you need to elaborate a bit more.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Thank you, Anriette, for the clarification.
So, once again, I return to what I said already. We have 90 days for -- to get through the process, and we have already three pages of suggested themes, subthemes, and issues gathered from the community. Why don't we start with what we have already? So that would allow us to sort of curtail a little bit the process, and I think that would also be just a good gesture towards the community, saying, "We heard you, we take your proposals into account, and we depart from them."
Of course it may happen that this list is not complete. We may need to add something. So that's a different story. But I think we have already fairly solid departure points on three pages in font 12, 1.5 in between lines, so it's enough material to work on.
Next on my list is Subi.
>>SUBI CHATURVEDI: Just a couple of things.
Going forward, we just had the first meeting of the India MAG for the IGF and one of the key concerns that we see is how do we create facilitating mechanisms on best practices on creating a cohesive environment for national and regional IGFs to learn, feed into the global IGF, and what are the take-aways that we take from the global IGF at a national and at a regional level.
Where the issues are divergent, they're quite diverse, and the fact that this conversation needs to be vibrant and alive, I completely second and endorse the proposal that our colleagues on the MAG have made about institutionalizing best practices.
ISOC has a fantastic paper, and I would urge ISOC, if possible, to take the lead on this and we would all want to support this conversation forward.
This also ties in very nicely on the next agenda item on how is it that the IGF can relate with other outward processes on global Internet governance.
My second point is about the value and the time and the space that we give to regional and national initiatives.
We often bunch them together and they have extremely diverse issues. I believe there are about two workshop proposals that made the cut last year, and we collapsed a lot of these conversations in a single room. I found that conversation helpful because we could learn from each other and borrow. But if we see substantive proposals on either national or regional issues, we should be able to encourage them.
That is a great platform for taking away key outcomes.
And the second suggestion is also on the IGF Web site where we mention the criteria as to how you can initiate, and we can up the numbers from about 40 to getting and amplifying more regional and national initiatives on the policy dialogue.
We should be able to see a thousand flowers blooming across the world. And one of the limiting factors that we've seen, other than the three criteria, is the fact that we list that we need to have a Web site, which is fantastic. We also need to have a report after the meeting takes place and the meeting should be multistakeholder.
Coming from a developing country, there is a lot of hesitation in terms of understanding as to where it should be housed and how it can be funded. If we can get further clarification that it does not necessarily have to be publicly funded or housed with the government of the country, you would see these numbers amplifying very quickly.
One of the other key things that we do is we take the IGF to a new region and to a new country.
If we can -- and we want to make the IGF relevant, and if we want more people in the mains and the focus sessions, we should be able to make sure that we look at themes and issues, and I second Kossi on that.
If we do not find ourselves building these bridges and walking the extra mile to make sure that we are important and it makes sense for people to travel and invest their money and time in coming to the IGF, we're failing in our duty as MAG members.
I think we should be able to integrate better as governments and host countries with local civil society and some of these themes should feed into this conversation.
And just my last point, access and diversity remain two big key challenges. We can talk about how we can make this ecosphere better but the ITU puts the Internet penetration in India at about 10%, which is out of 1.32 billion people. Very, very few people are on line. The same -- there are great success stories but these are real issues in capacity building and providing the necessary and critical infrastructure for getting more people on line.
So if we could look at mains and sessions that look at regional and national IGFs and also access and diversity, that needs to remain at the core of the conversation. We need to be able to take the Internet to more people. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. I think that there are many needs that we need to address but we have limitations in terms of time and I think that rather than argue whether that is a real need or not, we need to look at which are the topical issues for this particular time and try to address them in depth, and that will also address those concerns that not everybody can attend every interesting session.
So we really need -- this is a balancing act that we are doing, prioritization and balancing act, and it is not always easy.
Patrick?
>> (Speaker is off microphone.)
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Microphone, please.
>> (Speaker is off microphone.)
>> Microphone, please.
>>SUBI CHATURVEDI: -- I'm looking at two-tier processes but if we look at just the fact that we're not judging people on the initial proposals on the number of suggested speakers of panels, it still leaves a lot of people out of the conversation. The existing rating system -- and that is what we turn to, despite the long conversations that we held in the last MAG meetings as well, if we're scoring people on the basis of numbers, we should be able to put together categories that do not exclude people.
Gender diversity, geographical diversity -- gender, yes, certainly, there has to be enough effort that needs to be made, but for developing country proposers of workshops, if we were not to judge them on the diversity of speakers but on the basis of relevance to topicalities as you just pointed out, it might stand us in better stead. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Subi. Patrick. Patrick Graham.
>>PATRICK GRAHAM: Thank you. Is my microphone on? Okay. Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Janis. It's a pleasure to greet you in your role here as interim chair of the IGF. Let's hope that this stays for a while. I wanted to just pick up on a couple of comments that were made here regarding the selection criteria and proposals.
For those that are relatively new to the process, several months ago -- I want to say it was almost eight months ago -- Fiona took the initiative to lay out a set of recommendations on how to evaluate workshops in order to lend to transparency and create some criteria that we can all use to analyze proposals, and recently Susan has captured that and made some proposals.
I think we need to get behind this in a big way as a community. One of the biggest things that we're lacking in the MAG is leadership, and when somebody shows leadership, it's really easy to criticize it. It's hard to sort of get behind it. And we need to do that here.
There's an opportunity for us to take Anriette's excellent suggestion of working on this tonight in a small group, maybe even having a presentation on it, and working on an actual proposal that has been made months ago. It's a shame that we haven't had the opportunity to advance the discussion in the time between then and now, but we can make for that now and we can make up for it quickly.
I just really think that was a fabulous suggestion of Anriette's to get behind it and I want to emphasize it with the group here.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Patrick. As you probably know, there are no more permanent things as interim solutions.
Paul Wilson?
>>PAUL WILSON: Thanks. Thanks, Janis.
I've got a couple of comments about this discussion on the number of workshops. It worries me a bit. I'm not sure that I'm really ready to accept the sort of limits that people are suggesting, but then I think it's a question of what we want the -- the IGF to be.
I've been asked quite a few times how long the IGF has got to go on and I've said that the IGF has got to go on for as long as the Internet keeps delivering us governance challenges, and that's for as far as -- as I can see, at least.
I mean we've got a huge amount of change ahead of us. We've got another 4 billion people to bring on line. We've got incredible changes with the Internet of things, with crypto-currencies, with virtual goods, with new technologies. You know, who knows what happen -- what will happen when we've got kids building ISPs with 3-D printed drones flying around above our houses.
In the next 10 years, there's a huge amount of change that's going to happen. So I actually particularly like the idea that we try and have the IGF extended for another 10 years, because I think it would give us a better sense that this thing is here to -- here to stay.
So that's it. I think we've got a choice as to whether we want the IGF to keep -- to actually grow with the Internet and to reflect what's happening on the Internet and to accommodate what's going on on the Internet or do we want to sort of try and predetermine what it should cover and try and sort of direct and limit it. And I think --
I know what my choice is, but I think there's something to be said for -- said for both. But to me personally, I mean I think it's a feature and something to be proud of, not a bug, when we have people complaining that they find it hard to choose between IGF sessions.
It's a measure of success, I think, to hear the complaints that people have got too much to see at an IGF.
It's not -- it's not a complaint that you'd -- it's not something you'd read as a complaint if it was happening in a trade show or in a supermarket.
I think if the sessions at IGF are of a sufficiently high quality -- which is up to us -- and if the scheduling is sensible to minimize duplication, then, you know, I don't think complaining about that success is really something that we should worry about.
So I think, you know, the more the better, is one way to look at this.
But, you know, there is another approach, I think, which is one which is much more controlled and architected and if we were to deliberately limit the IGF to, say, 25 sessions, which I think is a very small number of sessions, then I think that what that creates is a need for -- for us to actually architect that event to not call for workshops so much as call for initial ideas or proposals or priorities and then for us to sit down as the MAG and actually work out how we're going to address these priorities in a relatively small number of sessions, not through an open and quite, you know, unpredictable inclusive process.
And that's another option, but I don't think that we've got the time to do that, and I don't think it's consistent with the sort of -- de facto, the default model that the IGF has taken so far.
So, you know, I'd prefer the idea that we -- we actually prepare the IGF to -- to expand, that we do the work that really encourages high-quality proposals but proposals which are actually really diverse and large in numbers and we try and aim for success in that direction. Thanks.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Thank you, Paul. According to our agreed agenda, another question to discuss today would be the role or place of IGF in evolving the Internet governance landscape. That would include also information and discussion about renewal of IGF mandate and the status of CSTD working group report to the IGF.
So I have a number of further requests for the floor: Matthew, Fiona, Sandra, Constance, Hossam, Mike, Giacomo on the list. And I really wanted to close it at this moment for this particular topic. And, also, I would like to call on MAG members to speak about the format of the 2014 IGF that we can better understand -- so that we can get a sense which direction we are heading.
As Paul said, we have two now on the table, hinted two options. One is as we did so far, the bottom-up sort of process where we start with the themes and then workshop proposals are architected by the MAG IGF so the architecture and then designed workshops or sessions in order to reach objectives. These are two different ways to proceed.
Now, Matthew, please.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thank you, Chair. I do have some comments on the role of the IGF and the role of the broader Internet governance space, but I will restrain myself to the issue of workshops and the broader issue of relevance, which is of great concern to me.
We talked a lot about the need to be able to attract more government participation, and we talked a little bit about the need to be relevant to developing country participants and to attracting more representation from the developing world.
It seems to me, if we want to, we have a unique opportunity to demonstrate the relevance of the IGF. And that is something that a number of people have touched upon so far, and Subi in particular. And that is to actually look to the national, regional IGFs as sources for issues of concern, non-binding recommendations and other things. And in that respect, I would draw your attention to the excellent report of the Africa IGF which is on the Web site as a contribution to this consultation. It is incredibly rich, and it highlights areas of concern. It highlights areas of work. And if we wish to be relevant to developing country interests, then I suggest we take the inputs of the national regional IGFs far more seriously.
Now, I sympathize a lot with the need to reduce the number of workshops. But at the same time, I don't think that we should take an arbitrary approach. I very much feel the same way that Paul does in that respect. However, I do think that we can implement mechanisms that would allow us to be more precise in the way -- and more bottom-up driven in the way that we do that. So my suggestion would be that once there is a decision on the themes themselves, that we take a very structured approach to the workshops and we ask that each workshop proposal specifically address a challenge, concern or issue in that thematic space. And that would also help us in terms of the output but also would help us in terms of determining overlap with other workshop proposals.
So the greater the specificity in addressing a challenge that's identified within that thematic space would allow us to improve the quality of the output and to also ensure there is no overlap. And I will come back later on on the other issue. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Matthew.
Fiona?
>>FIONA ALEXANDER: Thank you, Janis. I think what might be helpful if people are going to work tonight or tomorrow about a proposal to actually pull all these pieces together is to get a clear indication from you as to what you see is the key date in the next 90 days. I think we have a lot of ideas and a lot of great ideas, but we need to be practical as well.
If we have 90 days, when is our next meeting going to be? When do things need to be done in advance of that meeting so we can build a system that takes that into account?
I think Matthew has reached a proposal about specificity in workshops, what's going to be the output of a workshop. It could be a useful guiding principle.
I think also Anriette's proposal earlier of having people indicate when they submit something to that MAG for consideration or another type of event, whether it is a flash session or an information session or whatever else they may come up with, we should talk through what those other options are now so it can be made clear to people. So that when they submit a proposal, if it gets redirected a certain way, they understand why. And I think as much as we want to be as inclusive as possible, I think this group does need to actually accept the fact that there will be some workshop proposals that are rejected.
We won't be able to number-wise and facility-wise always accommodate everything that comes in. And I would be very supportive of really limiting the number to make it much more focused this go-round.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Fiona for your proposal. Sandra is next.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you. My name is Sandra Hoferichter, and I'm one of the coordinators from the secretariat from EuroDIG.
I hear there is a lot of discussion about the process of getting along with the amount of proposals and the limited time to accommodate sessions. As a person who was organizing a workshop for the IGF and as a person who is in another shoe -- or facilitating the process for a regional IGF, I have quite good insight in both of the sides. And I would like to encourage the IGF secretariat and the MAG to look at what the regional IGFs are actually doing because they have in many cases much more flexibility than the global IGF and the U.N. umbrella has.
So, for instance, at the EuroDIG, we are just right into the process. And I think for this IGF in 2014, it might be too late. But for the next IGF process in 2015, it might be worth to consider the new elements which are invented -- introduced on the regional level. For instance, we are trying to ask session submitters to work collaboratively on a Wiki space. In our new addition, I invite the audience here to participate, to contribute, or just to observe the process and how it could be maybe transferred into the global IGF process.
I also would like to support the idea or the proposal Laura Hutchinson was mentioning. The regional session track should be -- in Bali, I think this was a very successful session track, and we should actually build upon that. I mean, there is a mailing list going on. There is a lot of work already done, and we should actually build on that. This would be my wish for the regional IGFs.
One small comment about reporting of a session, I was in the position to submit a report of a workshop reorganized for the global IGF. And we had to answer questions like how many participants from the remote participants were from which region and from which country or how many participants in the room were from which region and which country. And I think this was just impossible for me to get these figures because this would mean in the room of 100 people I would have to go around and ask where are you coming from or I have to hand out a survey or whatever.
(audio cutting out) -- I know how much time it takes to ask this data and to collect this data and to compile this data and make it accessible in a good manner.
But I think at this point, it was a little bit overdone and the secretariat could actually -- I know the agenda balance and richness balance is important. But the way these questions were asked to a workshop organizer, it was simply not possible to answer these questions in a reliable manner. And I think the numbers which came out of this questionnaire were not reliable as well. So I would propose just to rethink this process and maybe find another way or skip it. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Sandra, for those comments.
Remote comment?
>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: Yes. I have a comment from Andres Piazza who believes that the main themes for 2014 should include but not be limited to the three topics detailed here: Evolution of the IGF, developing multistakeholder models at national level, massive Internet surveillance. Also, regarding the evolution of the IGF, to him it is important that the IGF continues to show that it is evolving and, although these issues should be discussed at the Istanbul meeting, certain changes need to be promoted in advance so they can be implemented during the meeting. He believes that the IGF should face the complex challenge of producing concrete results based on the search for consensus without implementing formal negotiation mechanisms.
Some experiences have already been implemented, for example, at the WSIS +10 meeting organized by UNESCO in February 2013 and will also be used at the Net Mundial meeting in April this year. These experiences should be assessed, and the most appropriate mechanisms should be implemented during the 2014 IGF meeting.
Such mechanisms should include the prediction of preliminary documents that can later be updated during the meeting in an open and participative manner. This suggested change should be for 2014 and subsequently evaluated.
Also, related to this, it is important to consider the MAG's role between IGF meetings in order to strengthen the IGF as a key part of the IGF ecosystem and allow more concrete results to be obtained.
The forum (audio cutting out) where topics can be brought up for discussion at any time only during annual meetings.
In recent years, MAG candidate nomination systems have been much -- have seen much improvement which has made the group a reasonable representation of the community's diversity. Given this, between IGF sessions, the MAG could have a more active role as an appropriate forum for discussing Internet governance issues and promoting debate with and among the community.
This would further strengthen the IGF as the place to bring up Internet governance issues that are not being adequately addressed in other forums. Building such as space has been a long-time aspiration of various actors.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Thank you for these thoughts.
Next on my list is Constance.
>>CONSTANCE BOMMELAER: Thank you very much, Chair. And allow me to extend my congratulations for your appointment.
I'm Constance Bommelaer from The Internet Society. I'm a MAG member representing the technical community.
And very quickly, because I know we're out of time, to follow on Subi's intervention, ISOC is happy to volunteer to explore with others how we could concretely organize the best-practice forum.
I would suggest that those who are interested, we gather after this meeting and start the discussion in order to have ideas to share with the group tomorrow.
I would also echo Fiona's point. It is also important for us to have guidance from the Chair in terms of time frame so we have a clear understanding of what kind of time we have to present concrete proposals to the group. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Constance. And thank you for commitment on this best-practice forum.
Next on my list is Hossam.
>> HOSSAM ELGAMAL: Thank you, Chair. I'm a new member of MAG as well. I take the view of an African business association present in 12 countries with thousands of members. And we appreciate very much how IGF is useful to stakeholders. We look forward especially for recognition and engagement from developing countries, as Subi and Matthew highlighted.
I also welcome the comments from Kossi from Benin. They were very useful for our consideration.
Basically, I would like to refer to the comment from Mr. Chen from the ICC-BASIS and from the Chairman, that there are different dialogues related to Internet governance and Internet empowering opportunities, especially related to WSIS and at the Brazil meeting. Those are among only a few events.
I believe that we need to bring clearer the value proposition of the IGF to all stakeholders.
I wish to reflect -- to refer back to Virat's point about knowledge exchange but also to be able to embrace that diversity in viewpoints reflect -- (indiscernible) related to Internet governance and to be able to discuss enhanced processes using multistakeholder approach to answer different challenges we are facing and accordingly improve the IGF value proposition.
I also join Paul and ICC-BASIS' suggestion to involve IGF participants and potential participants in continuous online engagement with the MAG in a sort of open consultation once the themes and the framework are identified and validated, so to have the review in the different suggested workshops.
I don't think that limiting the number of workshop is the main issue, but to aggregate some common proposal is good. More importantly is to secure the important workshops addressing the main challenge do not overlap in time. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you. Taking into account the running time and our agenda, I will now draw the list of speakers -- I mean, draw the line on the list of speakers on this topic that we can go further to the next item to discuss and that is Giacomo, Michael, ICC-BASIS, Filiz, Virat and Peter. I understand that everybody wants to speak. I can take maybe one more, but then I need to limit in the length of those interventions. Please try to be as short as possible. And then I will put Council of Europe who has spoken only once until now. So that is the line. And we will then move onto the other topics.
Sorry, Subi. You benefited greatly from sitting right in front of me that I see every time when you raise the flag.
Giacomo, please.
>> GIACOMO MAZZONE: Thank you, Chair. I will try to be brief. My contribution is linked also to the next topic in the agenda because I think that we have -- we are managing wrong time processing in the agenda because I think the workshop has to be discussed after the next point. But, anyway, now we started like this.
In my opinion, the problem is the workshop and the plenaries are not enough linked at the IGF. While at the EuroDIG, for instance, there is a continuous process in which a workshop feeds the plenaries and vice versa. While, at the IGF, we keep plenary topics, even if they have no relation with workshops and we don't move this container according to the needs of the community.
My suggestion would be on the contrary that there is no problem in the number of workshops. We can have as many workshops as possible. The only problem with workshops are those that are linked to the plenaries. And we need to strengthen the link between the plenaries and the workshop.
The current situation we have just five minutes reporting at the beginning of the plenaries from the related workshop is not satisfactory, in my opinion.
We need to have an interaction -- a deeper interaction. We have to bring people from the workshop to contribute to the plenaries to which they are related. And we need to use the workshop as laboratories in which ideas that then need to be discussed in the plenary are able to be elaborated.
Only those workshops need to be under tight control because there, there is the possibility to drive the debate. This is my proposal, and I think we can come back over the next point.
And then I want to endorse some of the consideration that Sandra made about the complication of the requirements that we are asking for workshops, especially if we split in two categories the workshop and plenaries. I think this will be -- will help us to make a smoother process. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Giacomo.
I think that the idea is exactly what you described or intention is exactly what you described. So maybe practice is not as good as it is intended to be. But also every workshop should be on one of the themes or subthemes. And every workshop should feed the main session on that theme or subtheme. In practice, maybe that's not so.
Michael.
>>MIKE NELSON: Since I have already spoken on this topic, I will be very, very quick. This will be a flash session. I forgot to mention we give extra points in the evaluation process for innovative formats. We talked a lot about that. But by welcoming new ways of doing things, I think will make the conference richer.
12 years ago I was in Japan for the INET Meeting, and we did a policy slam. And people were given three minutes to stand up and tell us what needed to be done to foster the growth of the Internet. And there was a panel of judges with Olympic scoring cards. We had an amazing session. Still one of the most memorable sessions I have been to and some great ideas that led to further discussion.
Debates is another option, new types of audience voting.
The other thought, two other quick questions. Have we considered in the past structuring the agenda so that related topics fall on one or two days rather than being spread out over four days? Because if we're trying to get people from outside the Internet community to come, they're more likely to come if they see a full program on things they care about in two days rather than spread out over four days.
And the last question is: Have we shared or collected the data on the attendance from each individual session? Because that certainly would be helpful for me as I decide what topics might be of most interest to the IGF community.
And the last thought is on deliverables. I've been fortunate enough to go to Davos for the World Economic Forum, and one of the wonderful things that you come home with after Davos is a set of one-pagers describing each session. They're produced within 24 hours of the session. They're neutral. They're just reporting the big highlights. Incredibly powerful collection of insights.
And we might encourage proposals to include thought on doing that kind of one-pager.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Yeah. If I recall correctly, at least from the previous one, that was already required that each organizer of the workshop produce this one-pager at the end. Not everybody complied with that request, so that's -- that is --
>>MICHAEL NELSON: I'm not talking about workshops. I'm talking about every session.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Yeah. This is what I mean. Every organizer of every event was required to provide a one-pager at the end and that was not necessarily done.
In the World Economic Forum, these are World Economic Forum staff members who are doing that work, so we -- we're slightly in different categories. World Economic Forum has about 400, if not 500, staff members working for them.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: I think I could help find volunteers to do that. The fact that I've never seen one of those summaries is telling.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Okay. Thank you. ICC/BASIS, please.
>>ICC/BASIS: Thank you, chair. First, I should apologize. This morning, I was so busy focusing on remembering who to thank, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Chip Sharp from Cisco Systems, and two items quickly.
One is I'd like to associate with the comment from Constance and ISOC, and willing to work and collaborate on the -- her proposal.
Second is in the discussions on restructuring and re-architecting the workshops and formats, I'd like to request that the MAG keep in mind a couple of what we think are important principles. One is to maintain the bottom-up nature of the IGF and the second one is to try to ensure we don't lose the diversity of views or we should maximize the diversity of views, in the structure that we come out with. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you for this reminder.
Now, I call on Filiz.
>>FILIZ YILMAZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is Filiz Yilmaz. I'm here on behalf of the technical community. I work as an independent consultant. And while I live in the Netherlands, I'm originally from Turkey, so this is very interesting for me, to have the next meeting in Turkey.
Participation is essential for any open public meeting or conference, and so IGF is no different in that. And participation will increase, I believe, if we can have a good meeting with good content.
To achieve this, we need a good selection process as MAG, and it needs to be addressed to be implemented adequately, especially given the limited time frame now I just found out from you, mid-May, we have to come up with the selected number of workshops.
So I support the proposal to work on one such process and come up with an agreement on it before we leave tomorrow. I really do support that idea.
Transparency was also mentioned by many other members of the MAG and interested people here, and I agree it is a very important issue and we need to address that.
Publishing the agreed selection process publicly on the IGF Web site and addressing declined proposals on why they were declined and outlining the basis of final decisions where they were lacking which part of the essential criteria we were looking for constructively, I think this will increase the transparency in our work.
And participation quality I also believe is another angle to pay attention to. Not only increasing participation but having quality participation realized in the IGF meetings, and I believe quality will increase with the balanced program.
IGF in Bali in 2013 was my first real IGF that I attended in person, and I enjoyed the meeting very, very much -- thank you for that -- while I must say the number of workshops challenged me and they limited my contribution directly to these workshops because I found myself running from one session to another.
To that extent, I also support the idea of having limited but focused sessions, a focused number of sessions, so that the attention of the audience and the participants can be kept on a reasonable and high level.
Coming up with different formats, I believe is also a very good idea, such as (indiscernible) creative ideas that we can learn from other conferences will also help the quality of the program, I believe. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you for your contribution. Now I call on Virat.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Many of the points I wanted to make have already been made so I'm going to make it very short. Three points. I'm going to yield my time to the next speaker.
One, I suppose scores for formats, innovative formats, especially a suggestion was made about debates, because that allows not only eight people or 10 people to discuss, but interventions, questions, and move towards a sort of fairly frank, honest, somewhat fierce dialogue which then helps people decide their mind, rather than sort of polite comments.
I think that might be helpful.
Some scoring for developing country and first-time proposals, I think we should find a way to encourage that. I was going to suggest reservations but that's a bit too far. That might be a little over the top but I think we need to get a certain minimum number of proposals and one (indiscernible) to them, even if they don't make the cut or are just close to the cut.
And finally, I think I sort of associate myself with the comments made by ISOC. I think we should allow them to sort of lead this effort tonight and tomorrow morning and try and come back with some specific suggestions that will help drive the discussion tomorrow on the knowledge agenda and best practices discussion and how that could format itself into the main sessions. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you very much.
Peter? Peter Major?
>>PETER MAJOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me congratulate you on your nomination as interim chair and thank Markus for his activities as the past interim chair.
I've been listening very attentively to the discussions on the improvements which were suggested here. Some of them are contradictory but that's -- that's the beauty of the whole discussion that we have contrary views and that we will come to some consensus.
There was some mentioning about the implementation of the working group on the improvements to the IGF, and in more general terms about the extension of the mandate of the IGF and what -- what are the steps which are ahead of us.
So I've given some focus. As you may know, the Secretary-General of the U.N. -- United Nations has the obligation to report on the implementation of the recommendations of the CSTD working group on the improvements to the IGF. It was requested last year -- I mean it was requested already in 2012 and this was reiterated in the resolution last year.
So I'm pleased to inform you that the secretariat, Mr. Chengatai, who can't hear me now, provided the report to the CSTD secretariat to answer, and it will be in the Secretary-General's report for this year's General Assembly.
The following step I think will be that probably the secretariat will be asked, in accordance to the -- in accordance with the recommendations of the working group, to report on the CSTD next session in May of this year, and I expect that this report will be mentioned in the draft resolution of the CSTD, which will be followed by the session of the ECOSOC, and it will be in the resolution of the ECOSOC on (indiscernible) and this will lead us to New York where probably the second committee is going to deal with that, and finally, as I mentioned, it will be dealt with in the United Nations General Assembly.
So we have had already some good news from the U.S. -- or promising news, rather -- that in the previous resolution, the next venues have been already mentioned beyond 2015, which gives us some hope that we are going to have the extension.
But probably we have to follow very attentively and very diligently what is going on, and more importantly, we really have to implement the recommendations of the working group. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Peter. I think that this -- the last point that you mentioned is written in the terms of reference that we submitted to all MAG members where this is an absolute must. We need to follow those recommendations and implement them in every other decision that we will have.
So last on the list on this item is Council of Europe, and then we will move to one -- after that, I will make one proposal. Actually two.
Please.
>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to echo what Paul Wilson has said and Matthew Shears have said before about the reference to quality discussions, but I think from that -- I maybe sharing what they say -- I'm quite concerned about the discussion about the number of workshops.
I think it's very concerning to limit it so much. I mean this is a global event. For me, the added value is having discussions, quality discussions but lots of discussions, and that is really the oxygen of the IGF.
So I'll be very concerned to limit it too much and spend time on quality.
And just one -- one small point which is that we've -- we're all here and we all have lots of expertise and talent in this room to discuss issues, substantive issues, and in terms of narrowing it down and being more specific and focused, it will be a great shame if we leave Geneva without having discussed in a sort of an un-meeting type of a way really what are the issues based upon this synthesis paper, proposals for 2014, what those -- in more detail what those issues are, which narrow topics are we talking about. And because we have less time this year I would like to propose that for anybody that's interested, that we meet tomorrow morning at 8:30 here, if it -- if -- for anybody interested, in an un-conference type way, and discuss in a bit more detail, drill down, the issues that you think should be discussed in a more granular fashion, so we can really get to the heart of the topics that you want to see covered in IGF 2014.
So for those interested, 8:30 tomorrow morning. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you. Thank you, Lee, for this proposal and thank you for volunteering because you're actually reading my mind. I said that I would have two proposals, and those two proposals are the following.
Seems to me that the decisions which we would need to make by tomorrow evening are, first, what are the themes/subthemes we think the IGF 2014 should address. That would allow us to formulate the call for proposals on those -- on those themes. So that is one -- one thing.
And another issue that we need to resolve is what will be the method of selection of those proposals or evaluation and selection of those proposals which will come in.
So I would like to propose that we create two informal sort of groups, one addressing issues of themes/subthemes, and you just, Lee, volunteered to -- maybe to coordinate and facilitate a discussion of that particular subject and bring preliminary conclusions tomorrow morning to the -- to the session.
And another, if I -- if I would ask Susan and Fiona to volunteer and discuss in an informal way with those who are interested in the methods how we would evaluate proposals which would come in and how we would select the sessions.
Also, we need to factor in there were a number of proposals or ideas that we maybe need to diversify formats that we are using and what -- what formats we have at our disposal.
So one is the main session, one main session, and I will put aside ceremonial and statutory obligations. We will have opening, we will have all the necessary protocol things, but I'm talking about substantive things.
We have long plenary sessions, main sessions. We may have shorter main sessions which are taking place in a bigger room with a potentially bigger audience.
We have longer workshops, we have shorter workshops. We have longer roundtables, we have shorter roundtables. We have these flash sessions, we have birds of a feather type of sessions. We have my -- you called -- how were these three minutes --
>> (Speaker is off microphone.)
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Slam. Slam sessions.
So all these might be used in the reflection on type of events we're asking interested people to apply for.
So if that will be acceptable with these two groups, formation of these two informal groups, and one under Lee's coordinatorship and one under Susan's coordinatorship, and that will inform the debate we will have tomorrow morning.
Vlad?
>>VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: I just wanted to remind that for the last year, we prepared a Google Doc with a list of different formats that can be used. I think we shared it on the list. I can share it again. So it can be quite useful to fill that at least with other ideas of formats so we have a full pallet of different formats and we can attach to where a special session says, as needed. Thanks.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Please, do share that list again.
And Lee, if I may ask you to use as a -- as a departing point this list on the synthesis paper which have been collected from the inputs of the community already.
So thank you. I think this was informative discussion and that -- that discussion was mostly for you, not that much for me, and we had rather diverse proposals here and we will continue more structured discussion tomorrow morning.
I saw Fiona and Constance.
>>FIONA ALEXANDER: Thank you, Janis. I think I will talk to Susan. I don't want to speak for her. I think we would be happy to take this up. Is there a way to possibly get a room to meet tomorrow morning, maybe 8:30 or so? I think the meeting starts at 10:00. Perhaps if we could meet in the morning beforehand.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: From my previous experience which ended in 2007, all of these rooms here in Palais are open and it is easy to enter. What will not be available is the microphones and facilities; but room availability, I think it is relatively easy to arrange. But Chengetai will take care of it.
Constance, please.
>>CONSTANCE BOMMELAER: Thank you, Chair. Just for purpose of clarity, discussion on the best-practices forum and a possible track leading to policy outcomes or outcomes of some sort for the IGF, so that discussion would take place in the second working group, is that it?
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: I would rather think in the first on the themes and topics, that would fit in there, in my view, at least at this point in time. Marilyn?
>>MARILYN CADE: Sorry, Chair. I need to ask a clarifying question. In reading the proposal from ISOC -- and this is an individual comment only -- while I'm highly receptive to the concept that we are addressing, I think there's a lot of work that actually has to be done before we would understand how this change could be implemented in a responsible and accountable way.
So -- and this is one of the improvements that was addressed in the CSTD working group on improvements to the IGF. And I was one of the five business participants in that two-year activity. So I'm very committed to it.
I'm trying to understand the difference between examining the proposal and perhaps working on modifying it, evolving it, improving it, enhancing it versus putting it into the first discussion on themes -- I'm just trying to understand. I guess I thought it would have been in its own discussion in order to be able to deal with questions and perhaps modifications, et cetera. So I'm just seeking clarification.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Talking about the best- practice forum, it would be one of the -- (audio interference) -- as well as regional thread was governmental, ministerial, public (indiscernible) as well as access, diversity, and so on. So from that perspective, I think this is -- (coughing) -- conceptual discussion what would be those building blocks, what would constitute architecture or the structure of the 2014 event.
And then the other group would discuss how we would get from the proposals to selection of a specific proposal on whatever type of events we would accept to organize or would ask to have organized at the meeting.
A procedural debate may last extremely long. I would like to -- (indiscernible) -- for more broad discussion and maybe some information that was requested from the community.
I see there is a remote comment. And this is the last one I will take on this subject.
>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: This is from Veronica Cretu who is a MAG member.
So on the IGF and other international global initiatives, she mentions that is important to connect with important international networks and alliances working in other sectors than Internet or ICT4D but for home development is crucial for development for development like global partnership for social accountability or the initiatives focus on promoting the Internet and bringing citizens closer to the decision-making processes.
Extending the invitation for this year's IGF to leaders of this important international networks would bring an additional value to this year's IGF.
Other suggestions, Veronica thinks it is crucial as part of the IGF to keep looking for success stories so the IGF provide space for peer exchange, peer learning, and knowledge sharing. She supports the idea of having the broader IG community generate ideas for sessions, themes for workshops as mentioned by Vlad and Anriette. Even if there is already three pages of input from this year's IGF, this -- it might be useful to extend it to the broader community.
On the number of workshops -- sorry, this is about workshops, a quick comment.
Veronica thinks we should add quality, not add quantity. However, there has to be a brought spectrum of formats and styles and approaches considered in the context of IGF 2014 from flash sessions to festival area, open corridors, open forums, et cetera.
Also, thorny issues should continue -- (audio difficulty) -- which are being addressed at this year's IGF versus open government-related initiatives, privacy, et cetera. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you for input. I think we discussed all these things. They will be taken certainly into account. So for my part, I promise, tomorrow morning, to give you a slide with a timetable if we are looking at mid may decisions which I promise you will be very tight. We need also to factor in other events which are already known which will certainly prevent MAG from functioning properly. So let us discuss that issue tomorrow.
I will give at the end of the meeting to Lee and Susan to make announcements how they think they would organize work tomorrow morning most probably or tonight, whichever you prefer.
And now let us turn to another point in our agenda -- (audio difficulty) -- and, of course, General Assembly.
We are still awaiting the proposal on the modalities of the WSIS +10 review. As you recall, the second committee at the end of last year couldn't agree on modalities and appointed two ambassadors in New York, Ambassador of Finland and Ambassador of Tunisia, if I'm not mistaken. And they should come up with a consensual proposal by March. And we hope that the proposal will clarify the final modalities of the process.
That said, we're expecting that in early June, ITU will organize the second review event, the one after UNESCO's. And the outcome of that review then will feed into overall WSIS review process. There will be the regular reporting and examination done by CSTD in an upcoming session in mid May. Peter already told about it and the decision -- the decisions of CSTD will sent to ECOSOC as input in their deliberations and ultimately to the second committee of General Assembly again in New York at the end of the year.
I think every one of those events or meetings or processes will discuss in one way or another IGF, improvements of IGF, outcomes of IGF, impact of IGF to overall sort of Internet governance debate. And, therefore, we need to be ready to contribute in every possible way to inform that debate.
Secondly, there are a number of events which are exceptional -- (audio difficulty) -- some decisions of the ICANN board on developing ICANN as an organization and procedures. (Audio difficulty.)
-- about information we received last year, and that triggered a lot of debate on the evolution of Internet governance in general. So I am here referring to the proposed meeting in Brazil, in Sao Paulo meeting in April, and referring to the creation of the strategy panels within the framework of ICANN, which are about to produce the recommendations to the community that will potentially lead to some decisions of the ICANN board of evolution of ICANN as an organization and the procedures.
We're also -- so we'll have two ITU events: The World Telecom Policy -- no, not the Telecom -- Development -- World Telecommunication Development Conference. Sorry, I was a little bit lost in the abbreviations. And we will have certainly ITU plenipotentiary where Internet governance issues will be addressed in depth.
So all that shows how complex the landscape is. And now I would like to open the floor for any comments you would like to make on this subject.
Subi?
>>SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you, Janis. I'm very happy to have a small readout from an informal meets that held this morning. About 20 old, not so old and new MAG members joined us this morning. And we wanted to explore this exact same theme challenge and look at the (indiscernible), first of all, and see what we as MAG members can do and how is it that we can continue to make the IGF relevant, responsive, and also vibrant.
There were some excellent suggestions that came from the floor. And Paul in particular talked about the efficiency of the IGF and we as MAG members in ensuring responses to important policy questions and issues and also how is it that the IGF can create more intersessional processes.
Chen also talked about very lucidly the idea that we need to build consensus in improving the MAG and also being able to respond to questions quickly and in the manner in which is most efficient. And one of the big questions that we wanted to look at is how is it that follow-up mechanisms can be built in.
The breakout groups had a wonderful suggestion. One of the things that evolved organically were these virtual calls those of us that can't be present raise important issues on the MAG and make sure that there is some conversation and a outcome that comes out from these discussions.
For us to be able to take lead on this conversation -- and I think it is important that the IGF make use of this time and this space. And as the Chinese would say, they mean it as a curse but I think it is a fantastic suggestion, that we do continue to live in interesting times.
You just mentioned the full calendar that we have for Internet governance this year with many competing events.
It is ever more important that we make sure that the IGF stays relevant and looks at important discussions and questions. The Sao Paulo meeting is one such opportunity to integrate and to feed in and lead conversation on some of these essential questions.
So as far as what is it that we want to do and what is it that we can do between optimism and realism, the middle part that we sort of looked at organically again from the floor is to make sure that we create a list, or maybe on the same MAG list, certain suggestions.
And I think the idea of the best practices that ISOC can propose, just like the IETF, we cannot look at absolute consensus but broad consensus on how is it that the IGF can contribute more in the policy dialogue is an important step forward. And I think we as a MAG are ready to take that leap of faith.
That's what I had to say about how we can integrate better and also shape the agenda and the questions in some of these important meetings. Thank you, Janis.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you very much. United States.
>>UNITED STATES: Thank you, Chair. I really just want to echo Subi's comments that this is an opportunity, a great opportunity, for the IGF to take its rightful place in this calendar. All of these other events that have either existed before but are increasingly dealing with Internet governance issues or new events that have come up are really newer to this calendar than the IGF is. And we should keep that in mind.
I don't think, however, it is a matter of staying relevant. It is a matter of showcasing the IGF and the outputs and capturing better perhaps the outputs that come out of the IGF and the impact, as we've been discussing today, of the IGF, not only its annual meeting but the preparatory process, the fact that it is multistakeholder, that it is inclusive, and that it is -- does evolve as well as the national and regional IGFs as an output. We need to do a better job of packaging the outputs, and this is a perfect time to do it.
We should really look at this as an opportunity to do that this year when there are all these newer aspects swirling around.
I just want to make a comment about the UNGA process because two things have come up. I'm hopeful as well, Peter, that the way the resolution this year captured IGF is a portent of an extension.
But I just want to clarify that if you haven't read it, there was a caveat put in there, which was a bit unfortunate for Mexico's hosting of the IGF in 2016 contingent upon the renewal of the mandate. So we're just trying to be a little realistic and show we have some work ahead, but I remain hopeful as well.
Finally, I don't know whether or not the process with the two co-facilitators to resolve the modalities of the WSIS +10 review will take up the IGF component because it was addressed in a resolution that concluded in December, but it is something to watch.
Marilyn, please.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you.
My comments are going to address the growing number of dialogues, fora, extraordinary events, side events, existing conferences that one may know about where these topics are being addressed, and also raise a consideration to fellow MAG members about the importance of our taking a bit of a moment ourselves to ensure we have a good understanding of the various processes that both affect the IGF and affect our ability to play a larger role and a more meaningful role.
Some of these fora are not open and transparent and have limited opportunity for stakeholders to even understand the dialogue or participate in the dialogues that are going on there, and that presents a challenge that I will just reference.
Other fora are being introduced into an already existing extremely busy landscape and I think I find -- as someone who professionally spends all of my time in this area, I find myself totally overwhelmed by the noisiness and the busyness, and I am concerned that we in the MAG may actually miss some critical dates and activities that we need to make sure happen in terms of progressing into a broader understanding in certain other fora.
The CSTD is a very critical fora for us, I think, to be aware of in terms of the CSTD working group on enhanced cooperation and I'm looking at the chair of that group, Peter Major from Hungary.
There are a number of people in the room today, both government, civil society, and business and technical community, who are here today but were -- also just spent the last two days in the WSIS+10 working session where we added yet another four-day working meeting to that cycle of work.
So I -- I'd love to volunteer to work with the secretariat or anyone else to try to come up with a kind of a bit of a roadmap of the major events and even maybe a list of the Web sites so that people can have a calendar and a risk understanding and an understanding of what we should do as the MAG and what we should not do, because there are many things that we should not do as the MAG, but there are some things we must do.
I do think one thing we should -- so I'm going to quote my father, who passed, a former farmer, carpenter, from Missouri, and my father used to say, "Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good-looking."
We've been thinking that we're not good-looking enough at IGF, and that people aren't aware of what we do, and people don't fully understand us, and it's hard to get attention on the CEO's calendar or on the minister's calendar.
Well, we're lucky. We have a crisis, to quote some of my former colleagues. And now Internet governance is on the lips of heads of state. It's being discussed at the UNGA. CEOs are asking about it. Hey, I can have a conversation on a train or an elevator about Internet governance.
So I think it is vitally important that we take advantage of the -- the luck that has come our way and harness the energy, but also understand that's going to mean a lot of additional work for us to make sure that we both do the program and we also address, in an effective way, some of the challenges about the role of the IGF in the larger ecosystem. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you. Let me just remind ourselves the purpose why IGF was created. It was -- it was created to discuss issues to learn to understand and to bring back knowledge to the places where decisions should be made.
I think that this is a very important issue because the worst thing that one can do is to take badly informed decisions without understanding of different aspects of the issue.
And I -- I don't think that IGF should shy away from that primary function.
I'm not suggesting that IGF should not change. I think that only those who change survive in the longer run, because the environment evolves and every institution and every process should evolve together with the environment, but the primary function, we always need to keep that in mind.
We also need to keep in mind that already in WSIS, it was agreed by everybody that there is -- there isn't a single place -- there isn't a single institution where Internet governance issues should be -- or could be discussed, so this is a highly sort of diversified landscape and every element of that landscape is in charge of some thing -- bigger thing or smaller thing -- and we need to create that platform where all these different elements come together and meet each other.
So that is the added value of this forum and I -- and I think that that should be sufficiently appealing to CEOs and ministers to come and contribute to that town hall meeting as it was proposed.
It is just a reminder of the history.
Vlad, please. Now it's your turn.
>>VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Janis, and for the reminder, which is very valuable.
Adding on what Marilyn said with the complexity of -- and you also listed a number of fora. I recently blogged, trying to summarize something that I shared on the list, that I can share again, but besides the list that you mentioned, we also have a 1net initiative, we have this Global Commission on Internet Governance chaired by (saying name). We have the Freedom On-line conference. We have JIPO which is by the European Commission. We recently have a Swiss initiated Geneva Internet platform which basically wants to assist the developing countries, especially the missions in Geneva, to grasp this complexity of fora through regular monthly meet- -- briefings, through capacity building initiatives, and a June conference about the IG architecture in the future and so on, in follow-up to Brazil and what's happening with Brazil and WSIS+10 and so .
So the point is, there is a bunch of fora, but I believe that in fact it can only help IGF to be strengthened, if we act smartly, of course, because the IGF is the -- in a way, the unique, credible, and legitimate, so to speak, U.N. space where we can talk about IGF.
And a good example that Anriette mentioned earlier this morning is that in Bali we discussed -- at the IGF, we discussed the Brazil meeting.
So we should try to enforce more on that, to give IGF space or a place within the other fora.
Now, this links exactly to the agenda points of this meeting, which is links with the other fora, and the fortunate thing is that we didn't -- a number of these fora, like 1net, Global Commission, JIPO, whatever, there is a number of MAG members which are also in these committees, in the high-level committees, so there is a natural link, fortunately, between the IGF and these fora and we should use it and hopefully these MAG members will try to make the connection. But there is another important aspect which is formal links with the U.N., other U.N. institutions including the CSTD, ITU process, but also a link with the ICANN, where we definitely need a special advisor or executive coordinator, and I -- I really want to reemphasize that and probably pose a question maybe back to you if you have any more information -- and UN DESA also -- what's happening with appointing the special advisor and executive coordinator, because we need them desperately for also the links with the other -- with the other fora.
And to conclude, I believe that the IGF, exactly as you said, can be this kind of cook working in a kitchen preparing a menu of different best challenges and best practices and then offering it to different organizations if they want to follow up in their field of work.
We should use that opportunity. Thanks.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Vlad.
Do we have a remote comment?
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Yes. Thank you. Marilia Maciel would like to make the following comment: The fact that most actors take into account the IGF as an integral part of their model for institutional empowerment shows the value of the forum to the community. This should be taken into account by the United Nations General Assembly when they make a decision on mandatory renewals. But most of the actors also mentioned that for the IGF to be able to play this role, it should be strengthened and improved.
The current model with little outcomes is not fulfilling IGF's purpose. Concrete improvements need to happen this year in the IGF if the IGF is to have a place in the Internet ecosystem. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you very much for this comment.
I have the following requests for the floor: From Carolina, from European Commission, from (indiscernible) , (indiscernible), from Patrick, Mr. Chen, UNDC, Anriette, Bill Drake.
We have 45 minutes remaining for today's session, and I will see if Vyatcheslav is ready to answer question, a recurring question about the special advisor and executive secretary. Please, sir, if you're ready.
>>VYATCHESLAV CHERKASOV: Mr. Chair, thank you very much, and prior to addressing this issue so that I also would like to echo the previous information about this United Nations resolution, so that for your reference, you can put this A/RES/88/198.
So that this resolution expresses a big appreciation to the IGF and the host countries, and as well as welcome the offer from Turkey, Brazil, and Mexico with saying that it's subject of the renewal or the mandate of the IGF.
So actually the members of the second committee who participated in the discussion of this resolution and adopt this resolution also have been informed about the importance to adopt the -- and discuss the future IGF as soon as possible, so that they take into consideration the previous experience that we got that the resolution was adopted in the last moment and it was very strong negative impact on the process of -- with the IGF.
So that -- so that I brief the participants of the second committee about this situation in the past and I believe so that this is what resulted.
We have this 2016 mentioned, so even though the resolution has not yet been adopted for the discussion for the future of the IGF.
With respect of the -- this question that everybody is very much interested in, what is the status of the special advisor, so that I would like to inform you that we receive a number of the proposals for the post of the special advisor on the Internet governance to the Secretary-General, and within this entire list, saw that the most welcome one is the chair on the MAG meeting, so that then it was the result of this, so that we have the intensive consultations from the United Nations and the government of Latvia and Janis about the -- some legal aspects and relationship between the special advisor and the United Nations, which political willingness and the political agreement does exist among all member states and is within the Internet governance community.
So therefore, now, the process is ongoing and we are waiting for the feedback and information from the government of Latvia and Janis himself.
With respect of the executive -- the executive coordinator, as we just mentioned, you before saw that we initiated the process of the hiring executive coordinator, I believe a couple years ago. However, so that we were forced to close this announcement of the process due to the lack of the funding, and unfortunately this situation with the budget appropriation for the opening this post again is still in question. And we definitely appreciate the support from donor community to be able to launch this process again if the funds are available.
So that as you might be aware, so that we are going to have the regular meeting that we have during the MAG meetings and this year is going to take place on Friday, and I believe so that this issue of the sustainable funding for the IGF secretariat and the trust fund from which the IGF secretariat is funding is going to be discussed again and it's one of the big issues for everybody to have the sustainable financial mechanism for the IGF Trust Fund and how this mechanism to be implemented. It's one of the crucial points which is going to be discussed.
From our side, as you're aware, so that we are doing everything what is possible, so that we also initiated a number of the initiatives from our side to bring, you know, the highest attention from the United Nations senior management to the -- bringing attention to the needs of the IGF Trust Fund, including the various type of the donors meeting, which already right now took place not only during the MAG meetings and IGF and also outside the framework of the regular events and activities of MAG and the IGF forums.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Vyatcheslav, for this clarification.
So coming back to the list of speakers and I call on Carolina.
>>EUROPEAN COMMISSION: Well, actually it's Christina from the European Commission.
>>CAROLINA AGUERRE: Sorry. I have a bit of a problem with my mic.
Yes, I wanted to say that I completely agree with Janis and his perception. I mean the mandate that the IGF has, I mean it is very clearly defined in the Tunis Agenda.
I also think that Vlad's diagnosis of -- of where the IGF stands with respect to other Internet governance meetings, venues, conferences, working groups, is -- is very relevant.
The IGF currently is -- and our Brazilian colleague, Marilia Maciel, she just made quite an interesting comment saying, okay, the IGF is a valid place to discuss Internet governance issues but it's still -- it still has a problem with outcomes.
So going back to some reflections that we've had in previous IGFs, we do know that the IGF is the -- is the global forum and it has a very specific and important agenda setting function.
And I would like to say that we -- the forum has even like a pre-agenda setting function. It is a very creative space for the policy process, and if we go forward with Marilyn Cade's proposal of maybe having a calendar of events but even going a bit -- a step further and elaborating a matrix on what the current events on Internet governance are for 2014, what are its objectives, its main audiences, I mean how do these people have to participate, et cetera, then we will also see that the IGF will have really materialized. But the IGF has its very specific (indiscernible) space. It has its core values that it has promoted (indiscernible) existence and have validated the -- this experience, so I do think that it is an exercise that we could do and I volunteer to help start producing that kind of matrix kind of work to see where the IGF is currently fitting in this whole ecosystem. And in that respect, I think that we as MAG members, we do have a responsibility to liaise with as many people as possible in these other meetings and working groups.
Some of those working groups will -- are providing and will provide really valuable output that should be used in our sessions, in our discussions at the IGF, so we should really be careful of inviting these people, of trying to promote their joining in our effort and coming to Istanbul in September, and that is really, I think, a personal task that we as MAG members, we have to sort of work in that direction. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So now I'm calling Representative of European Commission. Christina.
>> EUROPEAN COMMISSION: I join the other comments in congratulating you, Mr. Chair.
I want to address the other issues that are being addressed by the other MAG members, which are very engaged and very active from what I can see from the conversation. I felt the comments were more relevant to this point on the agenda.
I think we all agree we are witnessing important movements in the global discussions around Internet governance, the European Commission continues to be involved in a multistakeholder model for Internet governance. And it has set as its objective to bridge the gap and find workable solutions. The IGF has a special value in this context.
We believe in the need of a more inclusive dialogue with all players, including those with very different ideas from ours and more capacity and confidence building to ensure everyone sees the benefit of a bottom-up, multistakeholder, and inclusive approach to the governance of the Internet.
Last week, the European Commission adopted a communication on Internet policy and governance with the title "Europe's role in shaping the future of the Internet." And we believe this is an important contribution to the global debate on Internet governance. Now this communication is open for discussion in the European Parliament and by the member states. But we are confident that it will be the basis for developing common ground and facilitate discussion in other fora on the global scene to which we are very attentive.
The communication clearly states that the Commission will engage with stakeholders to strengthen the Internet Governance Forum, taking into account the recommendations of the working group on improvements of the IGF.
We put great value in the IGF as a platform to facilitate forward-looking discussions among all stakeholders, many of whom had not cooperated closely before.
So it is important, however -- and we said this in the past already, but we feel that maybe now the time is really more mature. We feel that the IGF needs to improve the quality and the format of -- I'm sorry, the quality and the outcomes it produces, also to enhance its impact on the global Internet governance scene.
So the European Commission is an active supporter of the IGF and is committed to contributing and making it a real success. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Thank you very much for these remarks and the support of the European Commission to IGF. Thank you.
Now I call on Emesibe Sergius, if I pronounce correctly.
>> Thank you, Janis. My name is Emesibe Sergius, and I work with MTN-Nigeria. I'm going to talk about the relevance of the IGF and the involvement of governments in IGF programs.
I was going to ask initially in relation to local and regional IGF programs, especially in developing nations, how does the secretariat provide support in multistakeholder alignment in discussion of relevant local issues?
Again, I'm aware that everybody here has agreed that government participation is key come September 2014. And I'm fully aware that there are a lot of local, regional -- local, regional IGF programs coming up shortly before the September event.
And I was going to say that it would be proper and very good for us to -- for the secretariat to lend support to the local programs in sensitizing governments and wider private sector stakeholders before the September event.
If they were to do that -- say, for example, I know the Nigeria has a program planned sometime around June. If there is a proper stakeholder (indiscernible), I think there would be meaningful private sector stakeholder involvement and government involvement come September. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you for your comments. Now, Patrick.
>> PATRICK RYAN: Thank you. On the discussion that we had earlier, I thought it was very useful about the time frame that you have and the potential renewal of it. This is a topic I think that is really important for us to consider and to consider deeply.
The five-year mission that the IGF initially started out with was very similar to the five-year mission that the Starship Enterprise started out with at one time. They were loaded up with 430 crew and enough food to embark on its mission. And they would come back and reload on another mission.
And then ultimately because of the success, the Star Trek Next Generation started -- stopped talking about a five-year mission and started talking about a continuing mission.
And I believe no good Internet conference is a success unless there is a reference at least once to Star Trek and to Star Wars. So I have at least made one of those references.
We do need to think about this less as a temporary mission of five years that's renewed and more as an ongoing project.
It is frustrating for those of us that are not part of governments because it is not anything that we can directly influence. The ability to draft a resolution and to propose a longer term solution for the IGF rests solely in the hands of governments that can make that proposal and in the hands of the United Nations together.
And so I would ask that all of us really look at that very carefully. I was interested to hear about the option of a ten-year mission. And ten years is good in one sense because it is twice as long as five, but it is still a self-limited mission. And I see no reason for us to put -- put brakes on anything we do before we even get started.
There is certainly ways to be able to draft the resolution and to be able to think about this and to present the whole mission of the IGF as a way that's constantly reviewed and could be subject to cancellation. But, again, term limiting before we even get started is not a model for long-term planning and success.
My final comment and question is for Slava. There are -- one of the great developments I think in the past few months has been the agreement by United Nations to host an open session this coming Friday on finance. So I wanted to make sure that everybody here is aware that there is an open session available from 9:30 to 11:00 on Friday, and there will be some remote participation opportunities available for those that would like to listen in. And I don't know if those have been shared yet, but I wanted to ask Slava if he could share with us how the participants here might be able to join in on that conversation.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Patrick, for reference to Star Wars and the permanent mission. I know -- Star Trek, sorry. I know that this is the subject which is very close to heart of your boss.
Chen.
>> HONGBING CHEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is actually the subject that's most interesting to me personally. Based on my humble experience of two-year membership here, I would like to share my observations and some of my thoughts about the possible options -- the necessity, whereas the possible options for further improvement of IGF.
As we all know, there are a lot of new fora, meetings, venues appearing or emerging on Internet governance. It seems they are competing with us, with IGF.
But for me, I don't know see they are competing with each. Actually, we should make our IGF and other meetings and fora mutually complimentary to each other.
We should -- the job for us is to find the strength, the core value of the IGF and at the end, find the potentials of the IGF and give full play to its potential.
And for me, the strength of IGF lies in two points. First is official status. It is the only official forum within the U.N. system to deal with -- which is specifically tailored for suggestion about public policies about Internet governance. So this is one.
The second element, it is the broadness or potential broadness of our topics because according to the Tunis Agenda, IGF is mandated to discuss public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance. That is a very broad authorization, broad mandate. And it is up to us, it is for us to find the right topics or attractive topics which make our IGF more -- seems more helpful or useful to the users or to other people, to the public.
Since we are a member or a meeting or forum within the U.N. system, I think we should -- whenever we organize our work, we should consider the priorities of the U.N. organization. We should not go astray from the main theme or the main task of the organization.
And now it seems on the table of the Secretary-General that the post-2015 development agenda is a priority. This actually -- Internet can play a very important role in this respect. We should talk about this issue. This issue will be very, very -- oh, I mean, welcomed by all the public and all the sectors.
We can talk about the roles of Internet in promoting the realization or materialization of MDG.
We can also talk about Internet's role in helping LDCs' development. We can also talk about its role in promoting human rights as well as peace and security, I think. Although this is -- committee one of the General Assembly are dealing with this topic, I think in IGF, there is no rule that prohibits us from doing that, from talking about it, the peace or the security issues.
So, I mean, if we can concentrate, we can choose the right topics and highlight the prioritized topics surely to enhance the attractiveness of the IGF.
The second point or suggestion is the outcome. Many people have mentioned that we are losing attractiveness just because we are not producing any tangible results. Everything we discussed or the outcomes are non-binding.
Yeah, it is true that this is the mandate. It is the -- how to say -- boundary of our authority. But are we -- but that does not mean we can't do anything.
We can do something like the suggestions. I'm very happy to see that some of the public inputs have proposed that we can -- IGF can develop some non-binding opinions or recommendations or policy principles on certain topics. So in this way, I think the outcomes of IGF would be very useful to different sectors. That would also raise the attractiveness of IGF. And I hope that we can -- if we follow this line of thought, I mean, we can explore more areas which will be very helpful to strengthen the role of IGF on the international arena.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So, thank you, Mr. Chen, for your contribution. I could subscribe to almost everything you said. Indeed, you're really saying very pertinent things about our role and what we should do and also where are our limitations. One of the limitations is three days. In three days, you cannot discuss the whole range of Internet governance-related issues.
So, therefore, the MAG was created to identify those topics, themes, subthemes which are important at every given moment. And as you know, there is no taboo in IGF on addressing any issue.
I remember the first IGF, the hot potato was critical Internet resources. It was discussed. And we see there has been a number of developments since 2006 until today.
And then three years later, critical Internet resources session was one of the most boring sessions in that particular year because there was not really any topic which was really at the top of the agenda at that particular time. So this year, again, it seems that critical Internet resources may become one of the interesting issues to discuss and then things are in preparation.
So everything is changing. And the MAG's role is to identify what is the topic at this particular time that needs to be addressed in IGF.
So I call to Economic Commission for Africa. Makane, please.
>> ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR AFRICA: Thank you, Mr. Chair. To improve the (audio cutting out), put emphasis on our stakeholders' concerns to build on the knowledge by the stakeholders, knowledge exchange as indicated by our colleague from India earlier. Accordingly, we think that there is need to find means of working on best practices involving key aspects of the information and knowledge society, starting from the national up to the regional up to the global level.
Also, we need to speak a language which can be understood by policymakers as most of our policymakers in charge of the information society issues are not I.T. engineers. And, hence, our talks are too technical and is not of interest to them, like what Marilyn has indicated and also like you, Chair, have indicated.
Furthermore, we may need to consider, as suggested by ISOC, non-policy binding outcomes to be channeled to a laymen's way, something which is understood and understandable from the global to the national levels.
Finally, we have a lot of stakeholders who would like to participate but unfortunately are not able to take part due to a lot of reasons. In this connection, we may need to put emphasis on real eParticipation by putting in place the human, financial, and technical resources needed in order to enlist most of our stakeholders who would like to participate in face-to-face meetings but cannot do it. Thank you, Chair.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you, Makane, for your contribution.
Now I call on Anriette.
>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Janis. I want to go back to your earlier remarks about the mandate of the IGF and really say I could not agree with you more. Now, I'm really -- I'm really pleased that you emphasize that because I think that is the primary role of the IGF, is as a space for dialogue and debate.
And I think that the reason -- or the purpose of increased public dialogue and debate is to democratize and improve governance. And I think that's one of the great values of the IGF.
And we need to strengthen that. I think we need to strengthen, as has been said, the link between the IGF and other U.N. forums and other decision-making bodies. And I think the points made by Marilyn and others, that we need capacity within the secretariat for the IGF to be present and participate in these forums.
And we also need the outcomes of the IGF or of the dialogue at the IGF to be packaged in a way that makes it easier to feed the discussion from the IGF into those spaces. And these are all points that are made in the CSTD working group.
And I think I agree. I support the idea of Makane and others, ISOC, Chen, of producing more outcomes, having voluntary adoption of certain positions. I'm not opposed to that at all. I think it is a good idea particularly when it comes to broad-based macro issues such as principles for Internet governance.
But I would caution against transforming the IGF into a policy-making or even a concrete outcome-oriented fora.
With all due respect to developing countries and others who have emphasized this -- I'm from a developing country. I have been working with developing country governments for many years. And I've participated in many events that make decisions, that make policy recommendations that are then simply not implemented.
Working, collaborating with UNECA, we had an excellent African Internet Governance Forum last year. We produced a fantastic outcome document. What's the status of that outcome document?
Ultimately governments do what they do. And there are intergovernmental decision-making spaces.
And I think the value of the IGF is that without that burden of reaching consensus, we can engage in all these issues in one forum. And I think best practice and knowledge exchange is a key part of that.
And I agree with Makane from UNEC, I think what language we use and how we package that knowledge sharing is very important.
But I don't think we should let the continuation of the IGF be held hostage by whether it produces outcomes or not.
As Patrick was saying, I think we should be in the deep space, not the end stage by now.
I think what we want from governments is to commit to the IGF not because it's producing outcomes but because governments are committed to more democracy and more engagement and more public debate and, you know, that's what I really would like us to see.
But now just a concrete proposal for Istanbul and I'm not sure if it was made already -- the audio was quite poor for a while because these people back here talk all the time -- is that if we could have a main session at the Istanbul IGF where all these key events that Janis outlined this year could actually report their outcomes, so that would be the Brazil meeting on the future of Internet governance, CSTD working groups on enhanced cooperation, WSIS+10, post-2015 development agenda, and if they can feed into a main session to the IGF community and get some responses from the broader IGF community on where they are at in terms of their decision-making processes and future processes, I think that would be a very useful activity and it would also strongly position the IGF as a unique -- I think to quote Vlad, unique and legitimate space for dialogue and debate on Internet governance issues.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you, Anriette, for this contribution.
We have about 15 minutes to the end of this session. We have a long list of people asking for the floor. We will go until the end and then we will resume maybe a little bit tomorrow morning. Please don't worry if you will not be able to speak on this topic today.
Now I call on Bill Drake, please. Bill?
Okay. Sorry. You are on my list. I'm taking it further. Lorenzo. If you would introduce yourself. Press the...
>>LORENZO PUPILLO: Okay. Lorenzo Pupillo, Telecom Italia. I would like to bring the view of some of the telecom operators.
For us, last year in Bali -- I mean for Telecom Italia but also for some of the group (indiscernible) and also (indiscernible), they active participation to IGF was the first time in Bali where we were able to present some workshops. And by the way, I'd like to thanks also Markus because help me a lot in getting through all the process. And of course I have to congratulate also the chairman for his election.
And for us, it was a seemingly positive experience and we really appreciated the role the IGF play as a place to discuss in a very inclusive way, very also unconventional -- unconventional way, all the topics related to Internet governance.
So this experience should continue, should be made stronger, and I think we have a -- I would have a couple of suggestions.
One is I want to take what has been said regarding the outcome of the -- of the forum. I know that IGF is not considered as a political policy body, but I think that because there are -- basically the IGF is an incubator of ideas, so I'd like to say that we should find some type of not technology transfer but idea transfers, implement to some extent this idea, because why -- you know, all of us see that, for instance, we found it's in the marketplace it would be like the other institutions talk about it goes to (indiscernible) like three, four years later. Why maybe do not speed up this process of idea transfer?
And so I think that we should find the way to do that.
For instance, on this matter, I think that some ideas like the European Commission JIPO platform can be very helpful on that, because it should be like a repository but also some type -- should be -- should have some analytical tool that can help to streamline the wording, the main ideas coming out from the -- from the IGF.
So the idea of mainstreaming some of these ideas is seemingly important.
The other issue is how the global IGF is related to the -- to the national or the regional IGF. I find a lot of variation on this. There are some countries that do not do national IGF. Then there are regions that do regional IGF. So I think this is something maybe should be made more formal. In other words, there should be some type of bottom-up approach. This can be make stronger IGF. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Thank you for your proposals and certainly interest. We're very glad that telecom operators joined the -- sort of the forum because that is a unique perspective that you bring to the discussion which was absent beforehand.
So now I call on Maria Victoria Romero. I'm not sure which is the right -- how you're usually called because you have a -- three names to choose from. Please.
>>MARIA VICTORIA ROMERO: Mr. Chair, I take the opportunity to congratulate you on your appointment. I know it's almost closing time, but I didn't want to leave this opportunity. And also express our gratitude to Markus as we haven't been here in this forum before in the capacity of a MAG member, but we know his experience and his contribution to the process.
And Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to make a point on the participation of developing countries in the process.
Much has been said about the lack of participation and the lack of presence of the countries. I'm speaking on behalf of one of -- one country. I can see that we -- we realize there are parallel processes, one in the decision-making bodies which is with governments; and the other one in a forum like IGF where -- where it's a stakeholder model and we don't see that there is a certain equilibrium in the participation.
And here in Geneva, it's a pity that we have this kind of hub for different stakeholders and we could take advantage of that.
One of the colleagues before said the Swiss initiative of having this Internet governance platform, which is a very good tool in order to bring more developing countries -- in general, countries, but especially or particularly developing countries, and in the end of the day, these governments will make a decision in -- of the future of IGF in the General Assembly where not all the participants in this floor will be represented. So it's extremely important that we continue this outreaching from this meeting to outside and to colleagues here in Geneva, and also we offer our support to that and to contribute to really strengthen the participation and the presence of IGF and this group, the MAG, in -- in these processes that are going to be held in different parts of the world and especially the governmental ones in the CSTD on ECOSOC, and later on in the General Assembly.
Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Now I call on Xiaodong.
>>XIAODONG LEE: I'm Xiaodong Lee from CNNIC, the (indiscernible) registry. I'm new MAG member from China and elected by the Internet technical community.
Just also want to express my sincere congratulations to you, Janis, for your appointment as the interim chair, and I also want to stress us to pay much more attention to what happened globally on the Internet governance issues.
I think we need to investigate most important progressing work and what will be happening this year.
For example, the ICANN internationalization and also the Brazilian Internet governance meeting, and also at other regional and also some countries -- country meetings, and to discover what kind of influence did it bring to the IGF.
I mean, so I have joined the four of the eight past IGF meetings and I enjoyed the meeting but totally confused of many workshops because there are too many workshops to attend.
I also support suggestions to limit numbers of workshops and focus on the critical issues.
I think I also suggest the IGF to have good applications on meeting outcomes or achievements. I mean a summary is necessary, but how to spread it is a key point. Especially in different language. It would be very helpful to attract community members during the IGF activities and make contribution to this forum and use the concept of best current practice for their own governance issues. Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you for your proposals and welcome to the MAG.
Now I call on Olga. Olga Cavalli.
>>OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Chair.
Many of the concepts have been already addressed by my colleagues. I would just like to say that for governments, as a representative of the government of Argentina, the multistakeholder process is the real value. Sometimes governments don't have the opportunity to interact with other stockholders in an equal footing space, and I think this is the value of the IGF.
There may be other fora, but the IGF is the main global fora -- forum for Internet governance exchange of ideas and experiences, and the value -- the outcomes may be -- and I agree with Anriette on this point.
The outcomes may be valuable or not. The real value is what can you learn from your colleagues and what can -- can you bring home when you -- when you finish.
Some of the things have already been said.
I would like to point the fact that ISOC has a very interesting calendar. Maybe Constance can share it with us and we can enhance that calendar with other events and make it more complete. And also European Commission has these JIPO platforms that I think it would be very useful.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Thank you. Now I call on Towela.
>>TOWELA JERE: Thank you, Chair, for your indulgence in giving me the floor.
I just wanted to make a comment briefly about the whole idea of this role of the IGF in the evolving landscape.
I think when you look at how the IGF is currently positioned, it is probably the only forum that is the most connected to all of these different initiatives that are happening, and that connection happens through the issues, through the people, through the institutions that are participating, and I think that I concur with those that have said that this is a time for us to now be opportunistic in terms of trying to see how we're actually going to leverage that connectedness to all these different events.
And so for me, I think that there are two questions that are sitting in my mind. The first of which is that what messages can the IGF actually send to these various events and other forums, and how?
And then the second question is how will the IGF use the messages that come out of these other events to inform its work? Thank you, Chair.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So thank you. Thank you very much. I still have five speakers on my list, and I'm calling them out: Virat, Jivan, Matthew, Robert and Vlad. But we are really at the end of today's session, and as I mentioned, we would maybe continue tomorrow morning, or is there anybody who may not be tomorrow morning in the room out of those five I mentioned?
Okay. So then we will continue tomorrow morning, since we are approaching 6:00.
Before adjourning this meeting, I would like to maybe propose two things for you to reflect over, over this evening, and come back tomorrow with them -- with some proposals or reactions.
So there have -- usually IGF is criticized that it is just a talk show and nothing is happening, and as I mentioned, referring to history of this platform or creation of this platform, it was not intended to produce any sort of decisions but it was created to discuss and then make decisions in the places where they should be made.
And what is the missing element, in my view, in all these debates is the information, what decisions have been made as a result of discussions in the IGF. And I would like to propose to think about the idea of producing for every IGF session kind of a report -- and I'm not speaking about a lengthy report; I'm speaking about one, two pages in a bullet point style -- what decisions has been made by relevant organizations, let's say, as a result of discussions in IGF.
And if we would take a period of two years, the Baku IGF and Bali IGF, and we would call on relevant organizations to provide this on a voluntary basis, very brief information what decisions has been made on the topics which they brought to IGF or they learned at the IGF, and we would compile that -- the secretariat would compile that information and would bring it to the attention of delegates at the beginning of every next IGF session, I think that would inform and would maybe transform the perception that nothing is happening as a result of the IGF.
I think that many things happen. We simply are not fully aware of what is happening where, and how IGF impacted that session.
The second thing is about the potential outcomes or let's say how we bring the work which we discuss forward, and here of course we recall all of us that at the first IGF in Athens, a number of dynamic coalitions have been created, and not many of them have met the expectations which we placed on them. And the question is why? Why the intersessional work mechanism which was created in the first IGF and which were really coming back in (indiscernible) recurring questions as a weakness of IGF haven't produced expected results.
So if we could -- if you could think over those two things and maybe at one point tomorrow we could have an exchange or in the discussions tomorrow you bring maybe your thoughts on these issues to the table.
So that brings us to the end of today's session. I thank the interpreters for helping us to understand each other better. And we have now information from secretariat.
The rooms for informal meetings tomorrow that are available the following: Room 21 and Room 22. Those are huge ones. The big ones. They are available.
And then Room 3006, which would contain about 12 to 16 seats, and Room 3025, which would contain about 15 to 20 people are available as well.
So now I'm turning to facilitators with -- for announcements which room they would choose.
Susan, you start first.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Okay. Sorry. Just a quick question. Would any of the smaller rooms happen to have a whiteboard or paper and an easel? Would we be so lucky?
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Okay. Let me give a try. While we're trying to --
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Okay.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: -- seek a clarification, now I'm turning to Lee and maybe you will tell us which room you would choose.
>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Thank you, Mr. Chair, but that depends upon demand, doesn't it, really. It depends how many people would like to take part tomorrow morning.
How many people would like to go to each?
>> (Speaker is off microphone.)
>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Well, who would like to go to my session?
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Okay. The question is: Who would like to go to session -- the informal consultations on the themes/subthemes?
Why don't you stand up. It's better. Because it's -- there. Now, really, it's also a little bit of gymnastics.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 -- about 20.
>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Can I take the last room, then? The room for 20 to 25?
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So that room has a whiteboard.
[ Laughter ]
>> (Speaker is off microphone.)
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: Okay. Let me ask the question: Who would like to go to the consultations or discussion on evaluation and selection mechanisms? Please, if you would stand up, again, it's easier.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Stretch.
>>CHAIR KARKLINS: So about a dozen. So maybe -- maybe then we could -- we could see that the process -- no. The theme group meets in Room 25, the evaluation group meets in 3006, 3006, and we will try to get technology in the room. We will do our best. Thank you.
Time is 8:30 -- 8:30 -- tomorrow morning, so thank you very much and I remind that there is an invitation which is extended to all participants on the 8th floor restaurant. When you go out the room, you turn, you go through the corridor to the big -- to the big hall and then take an elevator to the eighth floor. Okay?
Thank you very much, and we will reconvene the meeting tomorrow at 10:00 sharp. Thank you.