The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> CHERYL MILLER: Good afternoon, everyone. If you would please take your seats. I'm Cheryl Miller, one of the Members of the MAG. It's an honor to moderate such a prestigious panel of experts, and I wanted to warmly welcome our Delegates here in the room and online to Setting the Scene, the title of this session.
I also want to especially welcome our newcomers and IGF Youth. I'd like to introduce today's panel. We'll begin with the MAG Chair, Ms. Lynn St. Amour. We'll be followed by a presentation by the IGF by Mr. Chengetai Masango of the Secretariat, the IGF Secretariat. Next we'll hear from Marilyn Cade about a session held this morning, Assessing the Role of Internet Governance in Sustainable Development Goals, followed by Mr. Juan Fernández Gonzales to talk about Sustainable Development, Internet, and Inclusive Growth.
Next we'll have Ms. Avri Doria, who will discuss the IGF Dynamic Coalitions. After Avri, we'll have Mr. Flavio Wagner, who will discuss Shaping the Future of Internet Governance. Next we'll have Ms. Jac sm Kee, who will discuss Human Rights, and following her, we'll have Ms. Renata Aquino Ribeiro discussing trade agreements and the Internet, followed by Ms. Constance Bommalaer, IGF Best Practice Forums and policy options for connecting the next billion. And last but not least, Ms. Anja Gengo to discuss the National and Regional IGFs.
So Setting the Scene is a very important main session, and it's actually one of my favorites, because it combines new voices to the IGF, with the voices of many experts in the Internet Community. This session is specifically designed to help all of you by providing some insight into the Internet Governance Forum and to assist delegates in deciding which sessions and which workshops you should attend.
There is so much going on at this meeting which is wonderful and hopefully this session will help you make choices as to where you should spend time after this session. The Secretariat has done a lot of work behind making sure that it's easy and it's well organized for you to be able to find your different special interest areas. So you can follow your special interests by this color‑coded schedule you'll receive.
The session also will look back on the perspective of the 10 year history of the Internet Governance Forum. We'll look at how it began, how did we get where we are? What recent improvements have been suggested? And we'll discuss where we need to go from here. This is a really special IGF it's our following the 10 year renewal. I want to thank the Government of Mexico for being a gracious host.
I'd like to now invite our MAG Chair to begin the discussion, Madam Chair?
>> Thank you, Cheryl, and welcome to everybody here. I'm going to do a very short introduction. I know, I can see a lot of faces here that have been in many IGFs so some of this you may find repetitive but maybe you'll be reminded of one or two things as well.
So the IGF was actually established by the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society, or WSIS, and WSIS was held in two phases, and Internet Governance was a key issue at both. WSIS 2 recognized the need for a broad based discussion of Public Policy issues relating to the Internet, and it requested the United Nations Secretary‑General to convene a new Forum for multistakeholder policy dialogue called the Internet Governance Forum. The mandates and Terms of Reference are set out in paragraph 72 through 80 of the Tunis Agenda and these summits were extremely valuable not only for formal outputs but also because it helped to build a community, establish the common terminology, gave a broad understanding of multistakeholder processes, and their associated expectations, and also helped introduce the stakeholders to each other, with their own particular set of expectations, as well. It really is well worth a read if you haven't read it before because it really is the underpinning of a lot of the discussions and a lot of the terminology and framework here.
So what makes it special? Or unique? It's unique in that it's convened by the UN Secretary‑General to be an open multistakeholder Forum, bringing all stakeholders together, as equals. Its UN mandate gives it convening power and a neutral space for all stakeholders. The IGF has its Administrative home in UNDESA, and because of the multistakeholder nature of the IGF, their contributions may not always be obvious, but their support is critical.
The IGF, and this is really very important, and really central to the success, is really at its roots a multistakeholder entity, a multistakeholder activity, that relies on processes and principles which are fundamental to successful multistakeholder processes, and I'd like to say that its DNA as well as its values and principles are based on that of open, transparent, inclusive and multistakeholder processes. Now, many of those principles had actually been processed ‑‑ had actually been established in some of the Internet organizations, in particular the Internet Engineering Task Force and IETF some 20 and 30 years ago. However a lot of those processes were not quite so familiar in some of the other stakeholder groups.
So the multistakeholder nature of the IGF coupled with the fact that it's convened by UN Secretary‑General gives us something of a hybrid institution, and I'd also like to say that occasionally requires flexibility and understanding from all parties as we actually work to blend or merge different working modalities, different expectations and different processes.
So how's the IGF supported? After WSIS 2, a small Secretariat was set up Geneva, currently led by Chengetai Masango. Who will be here in a moment. I saw him a few minutes ago but busy with another matter. Who I have to say does a tremendous job and frankly with far too few resources. UN Secretary‑General after WSIS 2 also appointed a group of advisers called the Multistakeholder Advisory Group or the IGF MAG. It's made up of 55 Members. Half of those come from Governments appointed through a process of their own choosing and one which is commonly used within the United Nations. The other half is split equally across three other stakeholder groups, private sector which I think is pretty clear, Civil Society which is equally clear, and a fourth entity that was not common in UN processes which came to be called the technical and academic community. I think these days it's pretty much called the technical community.
That technical community is made up of those organizations that are responsible for large parts of kind of the management or oversight of some of the Internet's core infrastructure and includes organizations such as the internet Engineering Task Force, IETF, Internet Society, ICANN, the five Regional Internet Registries, IEEE, W3C.
Approximately 1/3 of the MAG turns over each year, which allows new participation opportunities. The UN Secretary‑General also appoints the Chair of the MAG and I was fortunate this year to have been appointed. I usually take this opportunity to note as well that it's the first time the Chair has come not from a Government, but from another one of the stakeholder communities, and it is also the first time the Chair was a female.
So maybe just two more quick comments. This is a good opportunity I think to remind everyone that the IGF is something called an extra‑budgetary project of the United Nations. It means that the costs for preparing the Forum and support any of the year round activities relies on voluntary contributions, on donations and does not come from UN member fees. Obviously that can sometimes be a fairly limiting factor on what we can achieve.
The IGF was actually established to provide a multistakeholder platform and initially it was essentially an annual Forum. But it quickly became evident that in order to have more impact, it was necessary to continue work between meetings, and so over the years, a fairly full Program of intersessional activities began. I'm not going to comment on those here, because we have individual speakers to talk to those activities and where they're going to be represented in the Program over the course of this week. Thank you. And I think at that point I turn it over to Brian, I guess.
>> I think actually we go next with my Fellow MAG colleague Marilyn Cade. Chengetai is stuck. He has very specific information for IGF 2016, maybe we can end with him. So, Marilyn, if you could please continue, that would be wonderful.
>> MARILYN CADE: Thank you. The title of the session that I helped to co‑organize this morning with Igor and Segun is Addressing the Role of Internet Governance in the Sustainable Development Goals. It was held this morning in this room, and it lasted 3 hours beginning at 10:00 and ending at 1:00. The reason we decided to undertake addressing this particular topic and also the format we used was because we understood in the MAG that the importance of the SDGs and the relationship and Nexus to Internet Governance is extremely important to understand for our community but it is not well understood enough even in the communities that are working in Internet Governance for some time. So we were trying to create an awareness and a knowledge‑sharing opportunity, and also to provide a consultation, an active consultation, on the views of this community on how Internet Governance can help to achieve the IGF ‑‑ sorry, the SDGs.
I will just say very quickly, we started out with over 375 people in the room, and had close to 150 in the room, even at the conclusion of the session. We used a very active town hall where we set by stakeholder group so that microphones could go to the different stakeholders in a balanced way to take the three minute comments. Let me summarize one of our most interesting findings, and we do have an excellent summary prepared by David Souter who is an expert in both development and Internet Governance that will be posted that basically we reinforced the understanding that we started with, and that is: More work is needed by each of the two communities, the development community and the Internet Governance community, to work on how they together can help then to contribute to achieving the SDGs. This idea includes the idea of thinking about how we bring the communities together more aggressively in workshops and main sessions at future IGFs and at the National and Regional IGFs. Thank you, Chair.
>> Thank you so much, Marilyn. It sounds like a great session and thank you for being two minutes exactly on the dot. I think that's quite impressive. I'd like to turn next to Chengetai Masango to provide an overview of this year's IGF. Chengetai.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: I apologize for coming late and I have to leave a little early, but yes, I'll go over it with the overview of the structure of IGF 2016.
As most of you are aware this is 4 plus 1 event. The four days of official meeting and behave a Day 0 event where in Day 0 we have 24 events. Now, the events on Day 0 are not part of the official IGF Program so therefore, the discussions et cetera do not have to adhere strictly to the rules of the four day event from Tuesday onwards. We have the High‑Level Leaders Meeting which is by the Host Country, and then we also have other meetings like the giganet which is an academic meeting for Internet Governance issues.
So that's on Day 0. Now, for the structure of the meeting itself, in the bag you may have received when you registered and got your badges, there's this little booklet here, which is very useful. It outlines everything and it is color‑coded, all the sessions.
We have a total of I think over 160 events during these days, and we have 32 Open Forums. Open Forums are given to organizations to often international nature to advertise or to tell participants about their Internet Governance related activities, and then we have 8 main sessions, which is one of them is this one, and they all happen in this room.
And then we have workshops. For the workshops, we've divided them into several categories, and these categories are: Access and diversity, critical Internet resources, gender and youth issues, cybersecurity, Human Rights, emerging issues, multistakeholder cooperation, and then Sustainable Development and the Internet economy.
As you can see in this book, if you go to Page 26, it's all color‑coded so if you want to navigate the IGF, you can go by color. For instance, access and diversity is pink. Yes. And critical Internet resources is orange. We've also got a schedule application which you can access. It's been Tweeted and if you go on our web site you can also get the link to it and that you can register for events and also see who is participating in that event in case you want to meet people so I think that's a very useful scheduling or calendar application that we have. And as you can see I mean the venue is really large, and we've got signs all over the place, and also we try as much as we can to make it as accessible to people with disabilities so there are elevators. They're a little hidden but you can always ask the people in the orange shirts where the elevators are, but they are there. When you contribute to the discussions it really depends where you are. If you're in the smaller workshops, you just have to raise your hand and then the Moderator will note your name and then when you are called up to give your intervention it's very important to state your name clearly and also the organization and if you're speaking in your personal capacity you can say: I am of this organization but I'm speaking on my personal capacity about whatever subjects that you want, which is relevant, of course, to the subject being ‑‑ the matter being discussed at hand.
And this is because we have the transcription and some names are not very familiar to the transcribers, so we ask you to say the names very slowly and if it's a difficult spelling, just spell it out for the transcribers, and all this is recorded as well as everything is being webcast and after the event or if you miss the event you can go to the web site and just view the meeting, view the transcript and the transcripts are searchable.
One note is that these transcripts over the couple of days are raw transcripts. So they may not be 100% accurate, but after the meeting, the transcribers will go through the transcripts and make them as accurate as possible. In other meeting rooms especially in a big hall like this you may have microphones there where you can line up to make your interventions, now Cheryl is looking at her phone expectantly so I think I will stop there, but if you have any questions, please just feel free to ask any of the old‑timers. If you see me walking around you can approach me. We're very approachable. Or come to our offices for any problems. We have first aid station down. We have a prayer room for, or a meditation room, for people who want to use that. There is one on this venue. We do try and cater for all sorts of different types of people, of needs, yes, thank you very much. Of needs.
Okay, I'll keep quiet now and let somebody else speak. Thank you.
>> CHERYL MILLER: thank you for your hard work, Chengetai, thank you for your hard work. And thank you Madam Chair for explaining the IGF mandate, because that's important as well. I'd move next to my MAG colleague Mr. Juan Fernández Gonzalez. Juan?
>> JUAN FERNANDEZ GONZALEZ: Thank you, Madam Moderator. Since we're in beautiful Mexico, I'm going to speak Spanish. I am one of the organizers of one of the two major sessions that will take place tomorrow on Wednesday, December 7. The main session that I am co‑organizer of is called: Sustainable Development Internet and Inclusive Growth. As you all have noted, one of the objectives of that main session, as is seen by its name, is that it ties into two of the essential topics of the IGF 16. That is, Sustainable Development and Inclusive Growth.
Some of you may be asking yourselves why we're having this session, if we had something similar last year. Well, the thing is that this year, we want to move forward towards concrete results related to inclusive growth, taking into account that the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development is under way, the agenda that was approved by the UN last year, and as you know, a set of goals of Sustainable Development Goals were established in that agenda so now we want to see what Internet's contribution can be to the achievement of these Sustainable Development Goals.
In order to do this, we would like to exchange experiences of all participants in this main session to so that those local and Regional experiences can be shared amongst all attendees. We will also be focusing on developing skills, skill‑building, and training so as to meet the terms established in paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda in which training in developing countries is sought to contribute to Sustainable Development.
We also would like to see a better understanding amongst all actors arise in this session in terms of what each one's role is, so that they can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals, and inclusive growth, and that is why we believe that this main session is at the core of IGF 16, which as you know has the slogan of: Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable Growth. Thank you very much.
>> CHERYL MILLER: I'd like to turn to my other MAG colleague Ms. Avri Doria who has done tremendous work with our Dynamic Coalitions at the IGF. Avri?
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you, Avri Doria. So I'll be speaking about the Dynamic Coalitions. I'm the co‑organizer of a session that will be held on Thursday at 15:00 to 16:30. 12 of the Dynamic Coalitions have published issue papers on work that they have been doing. Most of this work is work that is relatively mature, or work that they hope will be mature within a year, work that they're talking about at this meeting. Dynamic Coalitions are the original mechanism created at the IGF for doing ongoing work, and all of the Dynamic Coalitions meet not only at the IGF, but they meet throughout the year at different venues and online.
All of the Dynamic Coalitions have prepared questions. These questions are on a survey that hopefully has been posted up there a URL, a survey which is possible to do on paper at the Dynamic Coalition booth, but is also possible to do online at the URL that can be found on the IGF Forum web site.
The sessions will be moderated and there will be a very strong attempt to include as many of the participants both remote and in the room as possible. So please be ready with your own questions from having read the issue papers, from having answered the surveys, and please come with questions. There will be one other Dynamic Coalition meeting later that day, which will look at how we better coordinate the work of the various Dynamic Coalitions. As some of you may have noticed at this meeting, we keep running over each other, and find that various Coalitions with similar issues are meeting at the same time. So we need to coordinate and we are going to talk about that at a second meeting on Thursday. Thank you.
>> CHERYL Miller: Thank you, Avri. I'd like to turn to my MAG colleague Mr. Flavio Wagner. He was very instrumental in last year's IGF and all the preparations in Brazil. Flavio?
>> FLAVIO WAGNER: Thank you, Cheryl. Good afternoon, everybody. The main session I'm facilitating together with other Fellow MAG Members is entitled: Shaping the future of Internet Governance, an open dialogue between pioneers and Young Leaders.
This has been designed to promote a conversation between different generations about the State of the art of the Internet ecosystem proposing a future agenda for this environment. The session shall address five main policy questions which are directly related to the engagement and contribution of the younger generations, the revolution of the Internet ecosystem and how they can work together with the older generations so we'll have 10 speakers, 5 pay nears, 5 Young Leaders, representing all continents and stakeholder groups. This main session will be held Friday with a total duration of 2 hours and will be compromised of two segments. In the first segment of the session from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., each of the five policy questions will be addressed by one pioneer and one young leader.
The second segment of the session from 3:00 to 3:30 p.m. will host an open mic dialogue session with interventions by the audience and remote participants. This main session connects to many other sessions in the IGF that directly deal with youth engagement. I mentioned for instance workshop 84 Wednesday noon, dealing with the youth in Internet Governance capacity building versus policy discussion. Workshop 126 Friday morning about safe and secure cyberspace for youth. The workshop 225 also on Friday morning on hands on youth driven initiatives. This main session relates to the youth Dynamic Coalition on Internet Governance which will have its meeting on Friday morning. We expect that as an outcome of the session a permanent track of cross‑generational dialogue will be created within the IGF ecosystem and also at the National and Regional IGF initiatives. So I'm looking forward to see you all at the main session on Friday, and expect a very lively discussion especially involving the youth, thank you.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you. I'd like to turn to my colleague Ms. Jac sm Kee.
>> JAC SM KEE: I'm broadening the conversation with Ginger Paque. What this main session aims to do is reflect, deepen and broaden the conversation on Human Rights and Internet policy and governance at the IGF. It's also going to be organized in three different sections. The first Section will delve into the area of civil and political rights. It will have a stock taking on how far we've come in addressing some of these issues including for example freedom of expression, right to privacy and freedom of Assembly and Association online, and what are some of the emerging key issues that we have to address in the near future.
The second Section will examine economic, social, and cultural rights, and the extent to which it has been taken up in the Internet Governance policy discussions and the urgency of examining this especially through the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals.
So for example, the right to health, right to education, participation in cultural life, as well as economic empowerment, and finally in the last Section, which we really hope for it to be very open and participatory to facilitate a conversation that will make interlinkages between civil and political rights as well as economic, social, and cultural rights in the area of Internet policy and governance discussions, so given that these rights are meant to be interdependent and indivisible and inalienable what those interconnections look like and what are the key emerging issues we have to pay attention to. For example, the connection between the right to health, collection and analysis of big or open data to this end, and the right to privacy and bodily integrity, what might this look like.
So we really aim to organize a session that is very open, very participatory and hopefully can facilitate a very dynamic conversation on this. We invite you to please come, bring to the session your questions, comments, thoughts, key issues, and please don't be worried to grab a mic and join in. Thanks.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Jac. I'd like to turn to my MAG colleague Ms. Renata Aquino Ribeiro who put together the first main trade session at an IGF. Renata?
>> RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Thank you, Cheryl. So about this session, trade policy and the Internet, the idea of the session is that the Internet Governance Forum was established as a multistakeholder Forum to address Internet‑related Public Policy issues. But an increasing number of such issues including Domain Name dispute resolution and access to registrant data, the use of encryption standards, source code disclosure mandates and cross‑border information flows are now also being dealt with in trade fora such as the WTO and in trade agreements such as the ones known as Trans‑Pacific Partnership, the TPP, and Trade in Services Agreement, TISA, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, T‑TIP, and Regional Comprehensive Partnership, RCEP. There is therefore a need to ensure these discussions on trade policy are not isolated from a broader multistakeholder discussions. In particular, because National Trade Ministries and trade negotiators do not always perceive these as being Internet Governance issues, it is crucial to enlighten the trade community about the importance of broader debate of Internet‑related Public Policy issues that are discussed in trade agreements. This is a timely moment for a main session of the IGF to bridge the gap between Internet and trade.
The objective of the session will be to open the discussion providing the opportunity for high‑level ‑‑ high policy interaction between trade officials, experts and Internet stakeholders. Participants will include Government officials, former trade negotiators, prominent trade experts, industry representatives, and Civil Society representatives.
Thank you.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Renata, I'd like to turn next to my colleague Ms. Constance Bommalaer who was instrumental in starting the IGF intersessional work around connecting the next billion and it's been quite successful and is ongoing. Constance?
>> CONSTANCE BOMMALAER: Thank you, share. Constance Bommalaer from the Internet Society. On Friday morning 10:00 to 11:30, the main session. So why are we holding this session? The goal is to present the outputs of a year‑long process of what we call IGF intersessional activities. And this is the IGF community's response to a call for more outputs. The IGF has traditionally been a Forum for discussion, and there was a clear call especially coming from the CSTD Working Group on IGF improvements for the IGF to evolve and deliver some outputs. At the same time it was made clear that we did not want the IGF to evolve into a negotiating body, so the primary purpose really is to exchange best practices.
A few words about the methodology, because this is really what makes these best practices and policy options quite unique, in line with the IGF tradition, the methodology is multistakeholder from the beginning to the end. Every step is multistakeholder, from selecting the topics to collecting contributions, using the network of National/Regional IGFs, and also of course editing the draft outputs currently available on the IGFs web site. For 2016 we have four best practices, one on IPv6 adoption, another one on Internet exchange points. A third one on gender and access, and a fourth one on best practices for cybersecurity. And finally, a horizontal track on developing policy options for connecting and enabling the next billion.
As I said, the draft outputs which have been developed with the community are currently available on the IGF web site. On Friday morning, they will be presented, discussed, with the IGF community towards their adoption after the IGF event. Thank you.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Constance. I'd like to next turn to Ms. Anja Gengo who has been instrumental in growing and strengthening our National and Regional IGFs, Anja?
>> ANJA GENGO: Thank you, Cheryl. I'm going to be speaking about the main session that is organized by the 79 National, Subregional, Regional and new IGFs, or as we refer to them the NRIs. The session is scheduled to be on Wednesday, December 7, from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. here at the main meeting room. The session will have 41 speakers that will be representing their respective initiatives, remote Moderators. As an introduction to the session and an overview of the landscape will be presented illustrating some of the underlying records we have so far.
The substantive major part of the session is divided into two main segments: During the first segment, colleagues will be presenting on two substantive topics, which are access and enhancing opportunity for the unconnected and underconnected, followed by the second one, which is: Secure, resilient and trusted Internet from the NRI's perspective. The second segment discusses the major NRI's work challenges, reliable and sustainable funding sources for the NRI events as well as challenges in how to create more awareness about Internet Governance and why stakeholders should be actively engaging.
As the session has many speakers and we are limited by time, the NRI presenters have prioritized the topics so they will be speaking for up to 3 minutes on one of the four topics that they have decided on.
After second segment we with will be giving the opportunity to all of you, participants that are present here in the room onsite but also on line on equal footing to intervene and ask whatever you'd like to ask the colleagues that will be presenting.
Instead of a formal conclusion of the session the Rapporteurs will be summarizing the main key points into messages that will be sent out to the wider IGF community. The overall objective of this session is to illustrate that issues that are related to Internet Governance require specific solutions as they are different across countries and across regions.
It will also bring closer to us the wonderful work of the NRIs and hopefully it will make us understanding how the NRIs are important for the global IGF.
Allow me just to use this opportunity to invite you to the NRI's coordination session that will be on Friday at 10:15 a.m. at workshop room 9. This session will look into the future of the NRIs and the global IGF relationship, taking into account the work that has been done so far, and it will hopefully propose concrete steps forward. And finally many of the NRIs have their own meetings, side meetings, for example the Regional IGF for Asia Pacific Region, the subregional IGF for south and Eastern Republic and I'd encourage you to look at the schedule and attend those sessions as those are the unique opportunity for you to understand what the NRIs are doing internally. Thank you.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Anja. As you can see there's a wide variety of topics that are going to be covered at this year's IGF. I want to just ask very quickly, are there any MAG Members that are in the audience or IGF long‑timers? Can you raise your hands?
So I want to point you all out to the newcomers and I hope I can volunteer you: If anyone has questions that they can go to you and they can ask you questions throughout the duration of the meeting and I'd like now we only have a few minutes but I'd like to have open Q & A with the audience and also our online audience as well. I don't know if we have any questions remotely first. Okay.
Any questions from the audience? We have a microphone that's being passed around. One in the front I see.
No idea who this gentleman is.
>> VINT CERF: I'm making a mess out of the translation system. My name is Vint Cerf. I'm here partly with my errand hat on and partly with my Google hat on, and partly with the hat from long days ago when the Internet was still at the beginning.
I have a question for the IGF attendees and for those that are on the panel. We exchange an enormous amount of information during the course of our week, and during the course of the year. It accumulates, but I don't know whether it's being curated. I don't know whether we have a history that we have captured for this amazing enterprise we've undertaken the last 11 years, a gigantic global and multistakeholder effort. I think Avri and I have talked about this from time to time so perhaps you could respond but I hope we find a way to capture this. It's really valuable information, not only for its historical record but also to help us gain insight from the many years that we've spent in this enterprise.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you so much for that question. Brian, would you like to try to ‑‑
>> BRIAN GUTTERMAN: I'm with the IGF Secretariat. You're absolutely right. There is hours and hours, pages and pages of great content coming from annual IGF meetings. Much of this is on the IGF web site, so we invite everyone to go there to see reports from past meetings. We archive all of the videos the transcripts. We try and get these up as soon as we can almost immediately after the sessions take place.
We certainly do have progress to make. We want to advance and make this content even more rich and fruitful and available, particularly to those who aren't here, and who might not know about the IGF but please do visit the IGF web site, and take a look at the content, because it is very good. I don't know if anybody else on the panel wants to touch on that.
>> CHERYL MILLER: I see a hand up. Avri?
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Indeed we've spoken about it and indeed there have been several pilot projects several times that started a curation and there are several observatories that are trying to use the information. I think at some point or other and I can't speak for some of the observatories now the pilot projects have run into a financial barrier where we've done it, the group has shown that it can be done, that they can cure ate it. They've also shown it's a lot of work, it's a lot of work to tag the information so it's accessible and so on. So I think the ideas are there, the pilots have been done. I think some of them even went to NETmundial initiative for funding but none have had proper curation but you're right everything can be found on the Web but it's not curated.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, and we'll take this back to our other MAG Members, as well. It's a great point. Next question?
>> Thank you, Cheryl. This is more of a comment. Hi, everybody. I'm Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro, new MAG member, but I'll be commenting in my personal capacity. I'd like to congratulate the panel and this is the first time this Setting the Scene is happening in this, and it's sort of a social experiment, but I can see that it's working, it's very short and substantive gives us even if this were my first time, it gives me an indication of the breadth and the depth of the wide plethora of thematic issues that are going to be discussed.
The other thing I'd also like to mention is that this is the 11th IGF, but really, it's the first IGF within this next decade, as Lynn had mentioned, the MAG Chair, and we live in interesting times, and the comment ‑‑ and this comment I'd like to share with my colleagues, and that's all of you here at this IGF, because it is all of us that together make the IGF what it is. And we live in a time where you now have ‑‑ traditionally you had Governments having three arms ‑‑ judiciary, executive, Legislature and then you have media as the fourth estate. We've just seen mainstream media take syncing and that sort of thing where people are revolting through the Internet and what not, but it's also a time where the Internet is, and we continue to advocate that in the past 10 years and also in the next 10 years, that it will continue to be open and free.
And so the challenge ‑‑ and this is just something I wanted to share with everyone ‑‑ is given that we're moving in terms of, as Juan mentioned, trying to get concrete outcomes, tangible outcomes, in terms of meeting the Development Goals, I think that the contributions that each and every person is going to make in the workshops and in all the thematic discussions is really going to be critical in leveraging the next phase of connecting the next billion. So with that, thank you.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you very much. I just want to check to see if we have any questions from our remote participants.
Okay, it looks like we don't have any but I want to thank you all who are on the line. I know it's never easy to participate remotely and we really appreciate having you all here with us.
Any other questions? I think we might have time for one more.
I see right in the front.
>> Thank you very much. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Abdul Youssef. I come from Lebanon, the President Director‑General of the public operator of telecommunications. My question goes as follows: We are at the 11th meeting of the Internet Governance Forum. We're here to discuss governance. I would like to specify the good governance of the Internet, and if we add good governance to it, that would be our expectation. I believe that this is not the only place where we consider all the problems and questions related to Internet Governance. There are other areas in the Academia. There are other research endeavors. There are societies that specialize on the Internet, and there are politicians, Ministers, and politicians that aim to find solutions, and give answers to all the problems posed by the Internet, and all the problems related to terrorism, to pedophilia, and to other attempts to extract personal data.
There are many other places where we are looking for a solution, and to think collectively to solve this question. But we need to identify the impact. We need to identify the effective impact of our actions and effect the results. I would like to provide my ‑‑ an attempt to answer this question. This Forum is a Forum where there is a large amount of people. It gathers resources, it gathers ideas, all of that, all of those resources, are mobilized, and probably to some extent we can measure the impact of our actions.
Madam Miller, could we have a specific Task Force to measure the true impact of all the work made by the IGF? Are we making some impact? Do we actually influence, as actors in the Internet. Constance, I've heard you talk about a connection, that one billion people, that's a figure, one billion people. Is that the only billion? Or one trillion dollars is what's needed. What are we doing? Have we measured our efforts? Are we making certain impact? Is there an impact and method, an indicator to measure the impact of all of this energies that we mobilize every single year? Thank you very much.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you so much for that. I think a few people want to answer, and I will definitely take your comments back with respect to Task Force et cetera to the rest of the MAG as sell when I see my other colleagues as well. Thank you. You had a hand up?
>> JUAN GONZALEZ: In order to be more straightforward, I will speak this time in English. I think that I want just to remember the origin of the IGF. The IGF came out from the Summit of Heads of States, Heads of States 2005 and the output was to create this multistakeholder space for policy dialogue. It was not as has been said in the panel, not to ‑‑ by design, not to negotiate documents for action.
It was perceived at that time that there was a need to put all the actors in the same place and to discuss all the options for policy to face those things that you mentioned.
During the time, there has been of course some needs and some discussions that the IGF should have more outputs, and that is why in 2013, there was created a Working Group for the improvement of the IGF, and this year, we even had that process was reinforced. We even had a retreat to try to improve the IGF in order to have more tangible results, as you mentioned.
I can tell you that the IGF is not something that is static on time. It's been improved, with comments like yours, I think it's very helpful for that improvement, and also the organization on the United Nations development Agency, UNDESA, that is in charge of IGF. It's also taking that path very seriously and this retreat has elaborated a Document that is going to be out shortly, and I think we have that. Your comments are welcome but please rest assured that the IGF should be improved for the next 10 years of mandate that last year was given by the General Assembly. Thank you.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you. Madam ‑‑ Avri, did you have a hand up?
>> AVRI DORIA: Yes, please, Avri Doria. I'd also like to add one thing to what was said on that. I think there have been a lot of impacts in other organizations where things that have been said here, where interactions and conversations and networking that occurred here among the different stakeholders had a spill‑over effect. I've seen it in the engineering organizations. I've seen it in the research. It might be a good thing for us to figure out how to measure that and describe it, but anecdotally, I have seen impact over the years in terms of who talks to who, who pays attention to which issues, and how we think about things. So I think there has been greater impact than we're actually seeing measured.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you. I see we have a question from our remote participant. We are running short on time, so if we can be brief, but we want to make sure that we receive your question. Thank you.
>> Remote Moderator: We have a participant from the Civil Society at OECD who asked the question and make the comment that it would be useful to explain to newcomers what the outcomes of this important dialogue are. Thank you.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you. I'd like to now turn back to our MAG Chair, Lynn.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Let me see if I can quickly answer a couple of the comments that have been made. We're sorry if this feels a little squeezed. The next session that starts in here at 4:00 is the opening speech and Opening Ceremony so we really do have a hard stop. We are interested in how successful this was and how it can be improved, since we're trying to improve a lot of these engagements so please, this conversation doesn't stop here.
Specifically to the question that you asked: There's also the WSIS Forum, the annual WSIS Forum which of course captures a lot of the efforts and reports on those activities, as well. I do think it's a very common question and common expectation to say: What is the impact of all this effort and resource? Some of them are less tangible than others. Some are measurable, some aren't. I do think it would behoove the MAG to maybe think going forward about whether or not there's some fairly innovative way or maybe working with the University or some other organizations to try and understand a bit better the impact. This community has always been great at identifying new work that would be useful, and frankly we've been great at resourcing it, as well. So I think we can try and be creative and maybe answer some of those questions.
So again, just quickly, the MAG has been working very hard over this year, both to respond to suggestions that we hear all the time on list, and here, and as well as to respond to the suggestions for improvement for the CS the TD Working Group for improvements to the IGF and a couple of the specific calls in the WSIS+10 Document. It is a continuous effort, so please do give us any additional feedback.
There have been a number of innovations at this Forum, and we don't have time to capture them now, but I'm committing to put them in the Chair's report at the end. They focus on youth, on new formats to reinvigorate some of the discussion. We're doing more with a lot of the intersessional work to give them specific concrete time and more focus here so I think we can, I'm sure there's many things I'm not recalling right at this point, but we will capture them in the Chair's report and again we're continually looking for ways to strengthen that.
Maybe the last comment I'll make is that this IGF has a very significant presence from Civil Society, as frankly every other IGF has. Without Civil Society, we probably wouldn't have an IGF, a lot of other things we wouldn't have in the world as well without Civil Society. But this year, they're just under 50%. Very, very interesting and very encouraging, Governments and IGOs are at 20% so in fact, the ‑‑ and private sector is at 17% and the technical community at 14%. We of course would like all those numbers to go up, in absolute numbers and frankly some of them probably even in percentage terms because the whole purpose of multistakeholder dialogue is we're talking to other stakeholders but I think that's a really good trend as well. We don't have the final registration numbers yet but the registrations to date were possibly the highest ever. I'm not sure about that but the online registrations coming in here were over 3,000.
So I think we're, as a community, doing a lot of things right.
Quickly on the outputs, Constance talked to that a little bit. A lot of the juice puts are just captured in materials that are on the IGF. A lot of the intersessional work is trying to make the work that's done here more tangible, more accessible. The connecting and enabling the next billion project in particular is about localizing policy options and policy activities that were identified last year so we're trying to find ways to make the output much more tangible and concrete.
And with that, I think I really need to stop. Thank you.
>> CHERYL MILLER: Thank you. Thank you so much, Lynn, and thank you to our whole panel. I also want to thank this year's hosts of the IGF. Really, really appreciate all the hard work that's gone behind this and the organizers of this main session, my colleagues, and all of you. Have a great IGF. Thank you. We did it in time!
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