The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2019 Third Open Consultations and MAG Meeting in Berlin, Germany, from 5 to 7 June 2019. 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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MAG Meeting - Day 3
7 June 2019
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We're about to start our final day of the MAG meeting. If we could all take our seats, please.
Thank you. And just a regular reminder that the meeting is being recorded. There is a transcript. And it's also being webcast to YouTube. There will be a summary report that will come out sometime next week as well.
There's a speaking queue, and you can find the link to the speaking queue on the front page under the meeting information. I think it is Speaking Queue, just click on the tab and you'll see it. And I think it will also be posted into the Webex room for those remote participants who want to intervene. With that, I will pass it over to Lynn to start the meeting.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai, and good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming back nice and promptly. This particular meeting and the MAG meeting schedule is so critical because we have so much work to do all the time.
I think we made great progress yesterday on the workshop selection process, and not only that we managed to get through it quite timely but I think the process that we actually used this year actually did contribute to a really good flow and a set of hopefully kind of somewhat integrated discussions on the three main themes which the community had told us were important. So I think that was a really good process this past year. I would like to ask the working group on eval to think about doing a survey of the MAG members so we understand how the process worked from the MAG perspective. I also think we should think about doing kind of a brief survey maybe to all those that submitted a workshop submission, and then just in general to the community. And I say that because I think we could actually do a targeted one to those who took the time to do the submission by a mail list, which I assume we could pull together from the secretariat. They'll have a particular perspective, those individuals that actually went through the process. And then, of course, there's the larger community process which is how did they feel and what did they understand about the process overall, what might be improved. So maybe we can think about what that looks like. I don't actually know how many surveys it is, but I think it would be helpful to kind of do that for the near time so we actually capture any suggested improvements and any thoughts on the process overall.
The work in front of us today, and I'll turn in a moment to Daniela and to Deniz for any comments as well, the work in front of us today is mainly around advancing the main session planning. So we'll come to that in a moment.
I did send a document last night. It was quite late. And thanks to Eleonora for all her support in terms of pulling it together. We -- and I think they're all now posted under the meeting materials on the website as well, or being put there as we speak.
We just captured the main items. If there was a specific note or we could capture a short description from the transcript, that's included. What we would like to do is to come back to that plus some of the -- there were a couple of kind of meta observations on the process. We'll come back to that shortly.
Again, the goal today, we'll come to the approval of the agenda in a moment, but the goal today is that we identify the main sessions that we think are of interest. If we had our dream wishes, we would actually walk away with some high-level, very drafty titles, a paragraph or two talking about what that main session was going to do, what it would accomplish, our own equivalent of a policy question or at least policy area, and identify co-facilitators such that the work can continue over the next couple of weeks. And by the end of week three June, the MAG would have reviewed and the secretariat will have posted the high-level title and a brief program description so that they can post the full program up by the end of June.
So I said those are our druthers. Unfortunately, there's actually not a lot of slack in the schedule because if we don't do it when everybody is still pretty much here, in July and August things always slow down measurably. And I think we can't wait to pick this up in any substantive way in September. That's just too -- it's too late for the community, it's too late for planning, and it's certainly too late to get the level of speakers I think we'd like to pull in.
So that pretty much is today's agenda. Again, we said yesterday if there was time, there's one final item on the agenda, which is to look at the multiyear strategic work program and some of the activities there. And if we can get to that today, that would be fantastic. If not, one of the areas is well under way, that's the output and reporting. Well under way in the context of, I think, having a high-level idea of what we're trying to do and an ad hoc working group to help advance that. And then the second area which was sort of options for assessing kind of viewpoints is one that has been in and out of the MAG for a few years now, and it was picked up on the MAG list. Jeremy Malcolm, a MAG member, sent a comment a couple of days ago, and we could continue that on the list and possibly bring it into in a virtual MAG meeting.
So that's what we want to get through today. The next step, of course, is to call for approval of the agenda. I wanted to take a little bit of time and really walk through the agenda items so people knew what our goal is for today.
Are there any comments or questions on the agenda or any suggestions for AOB?
Just giving it a moment here, but not seeing any, can I call the agenda approved?
Then the agenda is approved. I want to thank everybody. And I will now turn to Dr. Bronstrup. See if there's any comments or reflections. Thank you for being with us here again today. I know this is an incredibly busy period.
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thank you, Lynn. I just want to welcome all of you again, and I'm very happy that after the thunderstorm yesterday, we managed to have sunny weather again and the weather forecast said that will stay over the weekend. I so hope that all of you can stay in Berlin and take a little bit of advantage. Looking forward to working with you here today.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.
Deniz from UNDESA.
>>DENIZ SUSAR: Good morning, everyone. I can only remind that the draft Terms of Reference for the MAG chair was posted by the IGF secretariat. Government stakeholder had a meeting yesterday morning to discuss their views on the MAG chair. So UNDESA is available if another stakeholder would like to contact us and with any questions about the MAG renewal or MAG chair appointment.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Deniz.
So what we're going to do now, I think, is we can pull up, and maybe we can show on the slide here as well although, again, you have it in your email and it will be posted, and I think it will show up under the meeting materials. If we can put it up in the room here, that would be better.
The list includes all the suggestions that came up yesterday and a couple of kind of meta observations. One other point that I think might also take a little bit of -- I hope kind of pressure off some of the discussion is we could easily, on different points today, break out into a number of small breakout groups, you know, to try and advance some of those and bring them forward, if that was a faster process. I think we should keep that in mind.
The -- We had I think two kind of meta-level approaches to this discussion yesterday. One is a series of suggestions and topics that we thought would be interesting on a basis of what we saw come in from the workshop submissions and on the basis of what we see happening in the world. Again, we're an advisory group to the Secretary-General for the annual meeting program, and we obviously do that with community input and community engagement, but there are both those components of our responsibility here as a MAG.
There was a suggestion that we start with the narrative that was behind each one of the three themes, look at the program that was proposed and approved for each theme, look at the policy questions that were embedded in that and bring forward main sessions following that kind of logical flow, if you will.
A kind of variant of that was I think a lot of people said we should probably make sure that we have main sessions that tie to the three themes we put out, and, therefore, we should probably consider having one that is related to digital inclusion, another to data governance, another to safety, security, stability and resilience. I think a variation on that was that we probably get there through some of the suggestions. One of them was the digital inclusion of the Global South, for instance, and the need to increase skills and those sorts of things. That could clearly be one that would fit under a digital inclusion label.
And then there were another subset which was -- which were issues that were identified from the cross-cutting issues of the thematic working groups. And that was jurisdiction, AI, and Internet of Things.
So I think the -- you know, what we can do is put -- if everybody is looking at the list, the first thing is did we miss anything? So I'll come back to that in a moment. I think there are maybe a couple that are potentially kind of redundant or duplicate or could be combined. We have seven slots available to us if we recall. There was the one that was called frontier issues or something, I think. So we either have that one reserved for a substantive discussion looking at U.N. issues, whether that's SDGs which was the suggestion yet or frontier issues, but -- or HLPDC was another suggestion for that particular slot, but in total we have seven slots across these, so far, 17 identified -- well, actually, it would be at 15 identified sessions, because already that assumes one for DCs and NRIs.
So let me see first -- the first question in front of me is is there anything missing? And I will go to Ben, and then would just like to open the floor up for kind of any overall reflections, observations, suggestions.
Ben, you have the floor.
>>BEN WALLIS: Thank you, Lynn, and appreciate the late work last night to be able to bring us this list today and to kind of take the discussion forward.
One question and one comment. I think we can establish that the main sessions will be two-hours long in principle. I wondered -- I think we also decided yesterday that one main session would be allocated to the DCs and one to the NRIs. So I just wanted to confirm that with those two aside, there are still seven more plus -- so there are ten in total. DCs, NRIs, frontier --
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Nine.
>>BEN WALLIS: Nine. Okay. Got it.
Chengetai is hiding behind his...
[ Laughter ]
Okay. That's his thinking. Right.
My reflection towards the end of the discussion yesterday, and also seeing the comments online overnight, was that I -- I understood -- I appreciate a concern to try and avoid duplicating the discussions from the working -- the workshops in the main sessions and not to repeat what's already been done. And what I wanted to offer was that I'd see the main sessions as distinct in a few ways. That the workshops are going into detail on very specific issues. Main sessions, by their nature, have to be broader. But also that main sessions provide an opportunity, and by their nature with the exposure they bring, they provide an opportunity to bring in the high-level speakers that we all talk about needing to get to the IGF. So there is value to have main sessions on these themes with speakers that won't be there and will be at a more senior level than those people coming to engage in the workshops.
So I just wanted to offer my reflections why I think there is value in having some of these main sessions related to the themes, even though there are obviously also workshops related to those themes as well.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Ben. Let me just confirm. It is nine main sessions in total, seven against the full list if you exclude the DC and the NRI.
Two hours are available for each one. We're not insisting they be two hours. If somebody comes up with -- a working group comes up with a in main session and says we're fine with 90 minutes or something, that's fine. There's not an obligation for two, but there is up to two hours that we can make available.
And, yeah, Mamadou did have a good comment online which is I think it's important that we all make sure that there is enough distinction between kind of any topping or any of the workshop sessions with the main sessions, which was Ben's last point; that I do think there's a clear distinction to them but it is something we need to be thoughtful about and pay attention to.
Any other kind of general observations or comments or anything that we forgot?
And Daniela as well. I mean, someone is coming to the list from a fresh perspective. Please, everybody, jump in.
Then maybe if we just come for a moment to the -- sorry. Go ahead. Daniela, please.
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Yes. Unfortunately, I missed the end of the discussion yesterday, but I would like to come back to the cross-cutting issues.
I mean, the working groups identified AI, jurisdiction, IoT, and I already mentioned yesterday I had the impression there was another issue, which is human rights, which is cross-cutting as well in a way. So if I take up Ben's point on saying that maybe we shouldn't duplicate the themes, then the main sessions could be the opportunity to address, nevertheless, in a way the themes in a way that then we are talking about the cross-cutting issues over all three themes. So in my way, it would be a good idea to take them on board.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's a good point.
By the way, we could post this up in a Google Doc if people thought that was easier to edit on your own or edit later. For the moment, it's probably better that we are all working from the same version of the document. That's easy enough to do. In fact, that's the way it started.
So I don't -- maybe the first thing we can do is there were different types of discussions yesterday about how close these main sessions should be to following the three thematic working groups and I think several different suggestions on how we might get there.
Jutta had made a suggestion which said thought it was important to follow the process we had started with the call for issues, the narratives, the selected workshops, the policy questions embedded in those selected workshops, and then any other observations from those particular tracks overall and create a main session following that kind of logic.
There was some support in the room for that and some who I think thought it was -- there were possibly other ways to get to the same point of having main sessions that did reflect the three thematic interests. I don't know if we need to kind of take that one off the floor because that's some of what's embedded in here.
I mean, maybe the question is to Jutta. If we were to have a session on ensuring inclusion in the digital transformation, for instance, and that was a main session, there's two questions. One is for people that were engaged in that track and that work, that would be Paul Rowney and that group. And the other one is kind of Jutta's comment from a process standpoint, does that sort of fulfill the need of having a main session that we can say clearly were calls or integrates with, links with, the three main themes that we established for this IGF? Or is that a point we need to drill down on a little? Just trying to understand whether or not there are any metaprocess points or meta kind of approach to this before we get into which of the workshops. It's confusing if those points come in later.
Jutta.
>>JUTTA CROLL: I was just going through the list of the 17 that you had sent yesterday late. And I'm sorry, I didn't have a chance to have a look at it this morning. But I was wondering if we only have seven available main sessions because we have nine, and two of them are already reserved for NRIs and DCs, whether it would be a good idea to go now through the other 15 on the list and try whether it somehow fits together. Because seeing on the list there, there is, on the one hand, listed 15 thematic track main sessions; but on the other hand, the themes for these main sessions are already among the other 14 somehow.
So it's like the list is good to sort it out, but it has some kind of an inner structure. Maybe that could -- for example, we have number 10, cybersecurity which would be one of the main themes.
We have hate speech and content regulation, which is also overlapping, like the SDGs are overlapping with digital inclusion. Maybe it's just like we try to bring the things that are on the list together and then we will have a discussion how these sessions can be organized.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jutta.
I would support that approach. I push on the process a little bit because I know we all think about it differently. We all approach it differently. I'm trying to make sure we're okay with the point that was made several times yesterday about needing to make sure that the main sessions clearly link back and reflect the three themes that we heard.
I think as you just said, they do do that if you scan the top 15 points. I wanted to make sure there was nothing we were leaving hanging.
So then I will turn to Sylvia. Before I do that, I would like to ask people to come in and comment on anything they see in the list that they think could either be consolidated, anything -- any kind of general observations in terms of what's there because I think what we need to do quite quickly is narrow the list down so we can start to have a more substantive discussion on a smaller number of topics. So while everybody is thinking about what they might do to help advance that process, that question, I'll turn to Sylvia.
Sylvia, you have the floor.
>>SYLVIA CADENA: Thank you, Lynn. Good morning, everybody. Sylvia Cadena, technical community.
Just to let you know that last night Lucien and I briefly talked about how to merge the first proposal that I presented yesterday and number 14 on that list. And based on the comments from Jeremy Malcolm on the mailing list, I also contacted Jeremy to see if he is interested to co-facilitate putting together a proposal around the Christchurch, Paris call, hate speech, et cetera, tough issues. So we will try to figure out a way.
And I just get -- I get -- I guess it would be a good idea just to agree to probably use the template from last year just to keep it simple, I guess, so that -- and have a deadline of when these main session proposals have to be submitted so we can get to work on those. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sylvia. One quick question. The transcript missed the name, and I was asking Chengetai a question. Was it Jeremy Malcolm that you said --
>>SYLVIA CADENA: Jeremy Malcolm sent a note to the mailing list about the Christchurch call and you replied. And Lucien is the other person, but he is here.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Maybe I could ask Eleonora -- you know, we edited this in a Google Doc. If you can pull up the Google Doc. I don't think we need to show it just now but maybe try to capture the state of these discussions, maybe keep this one there so we have that as a template. And then I think one of the suggestions or maybe even just as a note below it or something would be there's a suggestion, an idea, proposal, to sort of merge 1 and 14 or the notions behind 1 and 14. I just want to make sure we kind of keep a current tracking state of the discussions. So whatever you think works best to do that.
Paul, Paul Rowney, you have the floor.
>>PAUL ROWNEY: Thank you, Lynn. I'm probably going to repeat much of what's been said.
But I think we do have to be very careful that we don't replicate the workshops, and I see some of the session topics look similar to some workshops. So I think a lot of them could quite easily be taken out.
I do like the main sessions around the cross-cutting issues that are not necessarily attached to any specific theme. And I'm thinking about the idea of having the main sessions on the thematic tracks and seeing how we could build something so each thematic track could go away and give some thought of what they would feel could be a main session that doesn't compete with the main sessions but does build on the policy questions. Just being very careful that it doesn't seem as a workshop that's been elevated out of the track. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Paul. Some very good observations.
Other comments? I absolutely can appreciate it would be hard what we might say about X when it's just two to five words in the title. But, I mean, I think that's the next work, is if we can get to a list that we think on the surface is interesting on the basis of what we think we could do with those topics, then the next step is to go away and pull it together.
Maybe should we have a discussion then on -- there's a cybersecurity, which is 10. There was 9 which was a consolidated session on major policy proposals which included a lot of the same things, Paris call, Christchurch, Microsoft, cybersecurity.
And I'm not even sure what the multidisciplinary Internet governance in the private sector, whether that's sort of the same thing as well. But any thoughts and any kind of stream of consciousness from anybody that would actually want to just say here's some things we could actually think about addressing in that sphere?
Susan. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't even see in the chat if they were there. If you don't mind, Susan, I will go through the chat and then come to you.
Sylvia, is that current hand or old hand? Old hand.
Raquel, you have the floor.
>>RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you very much, Lynn. And I'm sorry if I'm repeating some of the discussions yesterday that I missed. But I see on our call for making some sense on the topics, perhaps I can provide a fresh view.
So besides merging, for example, the 14 and the 1, I see 9 is also about consolidating the major policy issues. And the way I see, it's all about the regulatory approaches that are emerging. Some of them are sort of facing in terms of security, like the Paris call, calling for some principles. And then the Christchurch call, calling for some action. You might also have at the domestic level some of the examples and best practices that you can feed and bring from the BPF and so on and so forth.
So the 1, the 9, the 10, and the 14 perhaps are part of the same trend of regulation. And it's sort of in the facing of the topic of security. I hope that helps moving.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Raquel. It is helpful. I think, again, when we start to get to the next level of possible definition, we'll be able to understand if it's one or more workshops.
Mary Rose, you have the floor.
>>MARY ROSE OFIANGA: Thank you, Chair. And good morning, everyone. While looking at the list, I like the main session, again, on SDG which I support -- I support other colleagues.
But I'm more on merging it with emerging technologies as mentioned here in the cross-cutting issues like AI, IoT, and other emerging technologies and how we can relate it to SDGs because number 12 is just SDGs. For me, it's too broad. And I think we have to narrow it down and want we want to talk about SDGs.
And also see number 14 and 4, like hate speech, disinformation, content configuration, and I want to relate that to human rights, like the open Internet and freedom of expression online.
I think those are, like, the main sessions that I want to combine. Thank you, Chair.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mary Rose. That's a very good observation. Thank you for taking the floor as well. I think that was the first time over the couple of days, and we really want to hear from everybody.
Helani, you have the floor. And Helani is online.
>>HELANI GALPAYA: Thank you, Chair. Much of what I was going to say has already been said by the previous three or four speakers. I agree that 1 and 14 are a huge opportunity for merger.
2 and 12, I'm just wondering if there's an opportunity there, the holistic policy framework on ICTs and maybe combining -- I mean, what is the point of policy is to ensure rights respecting development, enhancing Internet experience. Could we tie that with the SDGs at all?
Without having seen the proposals, it's a bit hard because policies towards SDGs or something is how I would think about number 12. And if we think about policies for SDGs, then 12 might match. Again, I don't know what the specifics are.
Number 4, human rights I feel is way too cross-cutting and, frankly, should be addressed in almost all the thematic main sessions, if there are such, or even the cross-cutting issues. And there will be because human rights touches upon all the things, whether it's a policy session, whether it's AI/jurisdiction session, and so on and so forth.
The other thing is number 9, I think it was already discussed by a MAG member that it also could lead to very well combining with 1 or 14 because that's about the platforms, jurisdiction, and security-related calls. Or at least combined with one of the other sessions or combined with the cybersecurity, 9 and 10. Seems to be an opportunity for creating a substantive main session. Certainly redundant if you have as two.
And my final question is I haven't seen the NRI proposal. 11, multidisciplinary -- as opposed to multistakeholder -- I think that could be an interesting session if it's just about multidisciplinary versus multistakeholderism. But I'm not sure why private sector is particularly highlighted in a main session as opposed to broadly discussing the concept and the challenges.
And if multistakeholderism and private sector participation is coming up through the NRI sessions -- because I know a lot of what they struggle with is convincing national-level stakeholders about what on earth the multistakeholder process is and why it should be promoted and why it's important. We could possibly pick up multistakeholderism in the NRI session if that is the way they're heading. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Helani. Those are really good -- really good comments as well.
Ben, Ben, you have the floor.
>>BEN WALLIS: Thank you. I wanted to talk mainly about 1 and 9 and 14. But on proposal 11, I think that might be the shorthand description for what I was talking about yesterday which was about policy approaches to ensure a multidisciplinary approach to Internet governance to avoid policy-making silos. And that way it looks at the challenges that the High-Level Panel was seeking to address, and it looks at ideas that have been put forward by the OECD and International Chamber of Commerce as ways you think around policy making to make sure you bring in groups that aren't otherwise included, whether that's government departments that wouldn't normally be party to discussions on Internet governance or developing countries or thinking about policy issues from all the different perspectives rather than only thinking about it in a technical way or only thinking about it in an economic way.
So I think the word "private sector" is maybe misleading there if that's -- if number 11 was referring to the proposal I was putting forward.
Very much a cross-cutting way that isn't looking at a particular policy issue but rather at how policy making is done around Internet governance and making sure it's done in a multidisciplinary way. So really feeding into the whole reasons for the establishment of the High-Level Panel.
So I just wanted to correct any misunderstandings around that proposal. I know I didn't phrase it particularly eloquently yesterday. I'm not sure I have done a much better job just now. It's not about the private sector particularly.
Do you want to come back on that?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think it probably was that topic and I think you actually phrased it quite eloquently. But if anyone else wants to claim it, let us know in a minute. I do think that's exactly what that particular topic -- that number on the list was meant to address. Just if anybody else kind of claims it, then let us know.
>>BEN WALLIS: Thank you, Lynn.
In a way, that would distinguish it from all the other main sessions in that it's not looking at a policy issue; it's looking around policy making. And that could be another reason why it would be interesting because it would set it apart and give us a different kind of discussion.
I know there were lots of proposals here and people are very helpfully looking at how all of them could be married together.
I only really wanted to talk about 1 and 14 and also 9. I think they all go together.
And I know you asked me yesterday about the Paris call and should that be a main session, the Paris call. And I think my reservation was about seeing President Macron's comments last year as suggesting that the IGF has ownership. I'm actually very interested in this idea of -- it's maybe a main session about trust in cyberspace and that the two particularly prominent examples are the Christchurch call and the Paris call. And we could bring in the French government and New Zealand government particularly to speak about those.
But also recognizing that there were others that weren't involved in developing them and what are their views as a way of finding out how signatories to these calls are implementing -- implementing these calls that they've signed up for, whether it's a year on or nine months on from those calls being announced.
So I think there's a way of marrying all those together, having a broader title about maybe about trust in cyberspace which, again, makes it a cross-cutting issue which picks up various elements of the three themes as to Helani's -- I think it was Helani who just talked about human rights.
I think trust in cyberspace goes to issues around freedom of expression, around privacy, but also about how you protect society as well.
And so I think that could be really interesting.
I just note that in number 9, there is also the inclusion of Microsoft's Digital Geneva Convention. I see that as different in nature. This was something that Microsoft -- kind of a call for action that we put out two and a half years ago for a focus on cybersecurity issues at the international level, but it's sort of multistakeholder call. It's not the Paris call. It's not the Christchurch call. So I would take that out as an example, but I think the Paris call and the Christchurch call provide really great focuses for such a discussion.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's a really good set of comments, Ben. Really thoughtful.
I'll come back to the queue in a moment but Mamadou has put a comment in that I think picks up a little bit on what you said as well. So I'll just pull that in. He said: The context and environment that we are living in now, Internet, impacting elections, et cetera. And there's a long list of et cetera we could put in. Makes him want to call for a main session on geo politics of Internet governance given the attendance expectations this year including high-level government reps and parliamentarians.
So that's kind of an interesting thought because there's also another school of thought in some parts of the community that a lot of what we're seeing today are just ills of society, and the Internet kind of, you know, is a different scaling and a different application of a lot of those kind of societal pressures. But, you know, a lot of people question why do we need Internet governance? Do we not already have processes and systems and rule of law, et cetera, that could actually address some of these?
And maybe there's something that we could combine between some of what Ben is saying, Mamadou is saying, and that kind of view, which might answer some of the kind of unstated questions about, you know, why do we have Internet governance? Why aren't kind of existing institutions and rule of law and those sorts of things, why aren't they adequate? You know, is this really something so fundamentally different in terms of its I impact that we actually need kind of this focus?
And I only put it out there because I know there are some people that are actually questioning that and I think that may be why we don't get kind of the attendance and participation we think we should at some of these processes as well.
Can we get this transcript like this afternoon from this morning's session right away or can we save it or something so that if we go into breakout groups and people want to capture some of the -- or quickly search "Ben said something really terrific," we can find it? Rather than waiting until the end of the day, it's posted?
Okay. Thank you, Eleonora.
Kenta. Kenta, you have the floor.
>>KENTA MOCHIZUKI: Thank you, Chair. My name is Kenta Mochizuki, Japanese MAG member from business sector community.
I just, you know, like to make a general observation. Actually, I took a look at the B20, Business 20 joint recommendations published by B20 Tokyo Summit, and under the chapter of Digital Transformation for All, there are five points. So the one is develop policy frameworks to utilize data, so data issues. The second is promote international cooperation in the theater of cybersecurity. A third is accelerate digital transformations throughout society. And the fourth is promote AI utilization with trust. And last three launched the (indiscernible) project.
So all these topics are already included in the list, so, you know, for my personal opinion, the current list is totally fine for us.
And you know, when it comes to the SDGs, of course, you know, I also support there should be a main session on SDGs. But as Mary Rose said, you know, SDGs should be everywhere. So SDGs should be reflected in every main sessions.
So I'm not quite sure whether we should have specific SDG main sessions.
And lastly, you know, both Japanese government, also the private sector strongly support to have a number three main session, digital governance and digital trade. So as everyone knows, you know, our Prime Minister said data free flow of distrust in this year's Davos forum, so we now, you know, see this digital trade, digital governance is one of the most important issues. So we really want to have this kind of main sessions.
So that's it. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Kenta. Very helpful comments.
I'm trying to capture kind of what people are saying to see if there's a next iteration on the list that we can kind of winnow down. So I really appreciate the specificity.
Susan. Susan Chalmers, you have the floor.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you, Chair. Susan Chalmers, NTIA. Good morning.
So on the meta-level question about structuring the main sessions, that is whether main sessions should track the main themes, I think that would be nice but not necessary. I would agree with Paul that we should be careful not to create main sessions that would be redundant of material in the workshops.
So this -- so following from that, I think the cross-cutting issues are really interesting. I agree with Mary Rose that if we take cross-cutting issues, it's a way to create a bit of contrast in the program when we have the three tracks. We will have the topping and tailing sessions, and we are finishing I go that -- just that document, by the way, on the topping and tailing sessions. We're working on that right now. But -- but I think that could create contrast if we have some different topics in the main sessions.
In terms of focusing main sessions on specific initiatives like the Paris call or the Christchurch call, just these very specific initiatives, I think that could have an exclusionary effect, as Ben had mentioned, to -- to those parties that did not participate or who are not signatories to the call. So I would caution against naming or focusing specific main sessions on those -- main sessions on those specific initiatives, but of course these initiatives can be spoken to under a more cross-cutting that session could be more inclusive.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Susan. And just to clarify, I know when Ben said earlier that -- he suggested that I was suggesting that the Paris call to be a main session. My comment actually was to be more broad with respect to what does this room think we ought to do with respect to responding to the Paris call, because it was the President of France standing up in front of the IGF suggesting some very concrete things. And my comment was that as a courtesy, we should at least have considered what he asked us to do and consider what the right thing for us to do is and respond. And I still think that's something we should do quite consciously, whatever it is we do or don't do; right? If we say it's not appropriate, it was an inappropriate request or the topic isn't or it's too -- but I don't think we should just leave it there fallow, if you will. So that was my comment. It wasn't to force it into a main session or anything but that the MAG take a conscious decision with respect to what a response should be to a very specific request that was -- that was given to us.
Susan.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Just -- not coming back on that but I forgot one more point I wanted to add.
I see a lot of session topics that deal with content and the different problems that are related to content. It might be useful to consider consolidating those into a content governance discussion, because that could be a better way to capture some of those issues.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.
No, good -- good point.
Let's see. Rudolf. Rudolf, you have the floor.
>>RUDOLF GRIDL: Thank you, Lynn. Rudolf Gridl, Germany.
I wanted to say similar things as Susan said. On these specific initiatives like the Christchurch call, the Paris call, and so forth, the Microsoft proposal, I think these are too specific and too narrow to cover a main session. It's not -- A main session should, in my view, be a place where themes or developments are being discussed that have a little broader scope and go a little bit beyond today's preoccupations. So it would be perhaps a good idea to have and overview of what's going on in the Internet governance world with calls and UNESCO and Council of Europe and all these different initiatives and make some kind of mapping or do some kind of -- yeah, mapping and seeing what's going on. How can the IGF feed into these developments, something like that. But, rather, broader than to focus it on one specific initiative. That's one comment.
And another comment would be I want to make again the case for our proposal on the digital governance and the digital trade. And perhaps you could even merge it or see it also under the angle of jurisdiction because there are so many initiatives and actions going on at the moment in the digital policy-making around the world that affect trade and somehow the free flow of data and the free flow of even -- not even data but even equipment, I.T. equipment. So I think that is something, we could rephrase it or broaden it, but I think that's really an issue that should be covered by the IGF because it's something that is dear to so many of us, and it is something that the public would probably not understand if the IGF would not in some way discuss these issues.
One -- One last point. I -- I do not yet get exactly what the -- what the proposal SDGs should look like, because the SDGs, there are, I think, 20 of them, and so what -- perhaps somebody who proposed it could explain a little bit more in detail what this session should really bring as input and output, because I think just to say the SDGs are important, that's perhaps not enough.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Rudolf. I think those are both really important points. And in fact, we actually have a dynamic coalition on trade as well, and so there was a lot of activity in the IGF a couple of years ago and a main session on trade too.
With respect to your last point, maybe speakers in the queue can just kind of quickly reflect on this as well, but the SDG, a number of people mentioned it in the context of SDGs should be assessed, included, evaluated in the context of these other discussions. And so far today, there's been like three comments on SDGs and they've all suggested, I think, if I captured it correctly, that there not be a separate SDG main session but that the SDGs be incorporated in and discussed as a part of these other topics where there's a relevant fit.
So as I work towards a shorter list, I'm taking the SDGs off as a shorter workshop on the basis of the conversations so far with the notion that it would be incorporated in the others. So if somebody wants to speak, you know, against that or argue for a separate session, then please do so in the next -- you know, the next round of interventions. And again, just trying to say what I'm taking away from the conversations I'm hearing to get to the next -- next round on the list.
Let's see. Carlos. Carlos, you have the floor.
>>CARLOS AFONSO: Thank you. Carlos Afonso.
I, of course, echo the perceptions that we need to speak to specify more the themes of several of the main sessions. And I would recall that in the intersessionals, there are the dynamic coalitions, which is more than a dozen, I think, 20 or mole coalitions, and we have, of course, the NRI process, and both are contemplated as with the main session and the Best Practice Forums are not. I think that the Best Practice Forums could be prepared to provide at least a report for debate in a main session in November, because they are intersessional and they could prepare that.
So I want to suggest that we include a main session for the BPFs as well.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So I should just ask Chengetai to say what he's just asking, but in brief, just so everybody has the same kind of profile, picture, the BPFs have their individual sessions as part of a workshop slot, and there will be a report out on the appropriate BPF activities in the Friday taking stock as a part of here's what the IGF is advancing and moving forward. So there is some coverage there. That doesn't take away from Carlos's point that I think he was suggesting that there should be a main session focused on them.
I think my perspective on that would be just as we always say we want to integrate the appropriate pieces of intersessional work in all the activities of the IGF, you know, for instance, if there was something on cybersecurity or looking at some of these different kind of challenges or proposals, that we would integrate the BPFs' activities and work and views in those sessions as well.
Jutta, you have the floor.
>>JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Lynn, for giving me the floor.
I do think that the main sessions should somehow justify or the issues for the main session should somehow justify themselves not only by the format, that we have two hours and that we have the translation, but also by the character of the session, and that means by the themes that are addressed in the session. And considering that when I look at the list, for example, 14, hate speech, disinformation, we have under the security and safety track now, I do think, three workshops -- after the workshop, we will have three workshops addressing misinformation and we will have three workshops also after merger addressing fake news, hate speech, and freedom of expression. So these issues will already be none within the safety and security track. And if it should be justified to draw that also to a main session, then I do need -- it needs more of an overarching character of the theme. It could not be just re-duplication. So I do think the decision that we made on main session topics should also be seen in relation. And I know yesterday I said for having these main sessions in relation to the three thematic themes, but couldn't it just be that we take one issue out of the track and say, okay, this issue goes or this topic goes to the main sessions.
And if I look also on the list, on number 4, which is human rights, of course human rights is related to other things that are listed there as well. Human rights can be infringed by artificial intelligence. Human rights can be infringed by Internet of Things. So I would not like to see a main session that have these different aspects of human rights different in different main sessions. They should be drawn together.
We had yesterday also identified from the workshops list the issue of children's rights and privacy. That was identified as a cross-cutting issue. I don't see that now on the list of the 17 as a separate cross-cutting issue, but for me it's the same. Like the other things, it could go into the human rights main session, but then also like artificial -- artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, should be treated the same way. Have a look whether they are linked to more overarching topics.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jutta, again, for a very comprehensive set of topics. Deniz has asked to come in on the SDGs, and we will continue with the queue in just a moment. Deniz.
>>DENIZ SUSAR: Thank you, Lynn.
There are, as you know, 17 sustainable development goals and they all have 169 targets. And these targets are monitored by 232 indicators. And out of those 232 indicators, six or seven of them are ICT related.
So for the SDG session, I just want to bring to your attention that the last WSIS Forum, the entire forum was for SDGs and a lot of discussion happened there. They are mostly since STI Forum. That also had science, technology, and innovation for SDGs. That was the main theme.
So I think if we bring SDGs to the IGF, we should think how we can complement other fora and not replicate and what would be the unique entry point from our side.
And, also, one last point is about the artificial intelligence, AI for Good summit which is organized by ITU, that also had the main theme for SDGs. So there is this kind of different discussion going on and it's all the same. So I think we should try to find a niche for us. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's a very important point, Deniz. Very important point. It's a huge, a huge undertaking.
Maria, Maria Paz Canales, you have the floor.
>>MARIA PAZ CANALES: Thank you very much, Chair. Maria Paz Canales representing civil society.
I have a couple of points. Some of them are converging with some of the things that have been raised before.
But regarding the first session topic, the proposal that was presented by Sylvia yesterday, I think that there is a slight different angle in which this proposal can be seen. I agree with what Ben and Susan have raised before regarding that it could be risky, like, to focus a main session on specific initiatives.
But I think the reality is that the topic that Sylvia was proposing, it's more than looking to a specific initiative in which maybe -- because we are trying a shortcut, we are naming it, that these proposals look to a specific problem inside a broader context. I think that Susan's idea of making a content governance session, it's a very good one. But I think that this particular proposal goes to a specific issue inside that broader topic that also could be covered by a main session tried to address. And that is not exclusive from the Christchurch call.
And it was previously identified by another situation that happened around the world. And the policymakers here in the private or public side have failed to find a more definitive solution or a solution or a set of tools that allows to avoid this problem keep coming. And people feel frustrated because there is not a set of tools to kind of tackle these problems.
So I think that maybe like a good compromised solution to rescue the value of this proposal that is considering a lot of interest by many actors is rephrase it as dealing with content in emergency situation. And invite to be part of this other initiatives that in other moments have dealt with this. This specifically include, for example, many situations that happened in the Global South in which this is very common. And not only focusing on the initiatives that until now have been coordinated and leaded mostly by Global North decision makers but also making more inclusive acknowledging this is a relevant problem that we keep seeing. And there is a urgent from the general public to try to move forward and finding a set of tools for tackling it. So that's the first thing.
For the second one, I would like to have more clarification about what we are talking about when we are seeing holistic policy framework on ICT. Because for me, that's everything that is covered by the other sessions also.
So I think when we propose such a broader topic, we risk to get lost in the confusion.
From the 3 to the 8 proposal, I consider are interesting, cross-cutting topics that should be considered in the agenda.
In particular regarding the human rights main session, I think that we should very mind to make the most cross-cutting possible this session, as Jutta was mentioning before, because I am consistently seeing a kind of approach that isolate the topic of human rights from the others. And human rights should be, like, all around the different sessions because it's from the mental angle, they need to be covered. Either we're talking about digital trade or cybersecurity or anything.
So just be sure that when we are, like, devoting specific time for a main session on human rights, make it really comprehensive of other topics that will be discussed in other sessions.
And, finally, I mentioned already a bit but just reinforce the idea that I think the 14 proposals that was now a target of hate speech, disinformation, and so, I think it will be good to rephrase it as to some proposed as to content governance session. And in that session, to provide more space to talk about other kind of issues that are not relating with emergency situations.
So those are my comments for now. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Maria. Very, very good comments.
One of the things I'm taking away from some of the discussion, in fact from yesterday as well, was we put in the topic for item 1, the topic that was in the email that went out yesterday. But, I mean, in fact it could be anything from Internet platforms and timely well-informed rights respecting regulation addressing how do we actually participate in a timely manner in some of these.
So I think -- from my perspective, what I think Sylvia was describing yesterday was it was less a focus on the Christchurch call and more about how we actually do timely, rights-respecting regulation in a world where there's a lot of pressure to move quickly. And that has in recent times meant that it's been relatively kind of closed government regulatory process. Maybe there's a way to combine some of those notions and make it a little less about one topic, since there's been a number of comments that kind of commented on that.
Or it's Internet platforms and the challenges of online content moderation in a multistakeholder participation to support quick action or something like that if, in fact, my earlier restatement was going further that what the group was intending. Just throwing that out there for a different perspective.
And then agree on the human rights. Everybody says you need to design security -- and I also think we should be designing human rights into all of our discussion and a lot more attention to rights respecting in everything we do. Not if you are interested in human rights you go to a human rights session. I think there's arguments to be made for both calling it out separately and really focusing on it and really getting everybody to just embed rights respecting in everything we do. And I think there's kind of -- both kind of threads are important. So we'll see where the group gets to later on that.
Raquel, you have the floor.
>>RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you very much, Lynn, for giving me the floor again.
I would like perhaps to follow up on some of the comments that Ben started, you, Susan and others on this big picture. I'm going to take three of the topics, right? The main session on the actions -- the call for actions on the trust agenda; the jurisdiction one, which is I think the 7; and the SDGs comment connecting with the CENB work that has been done in the past.
But on the major main session, taking the big picture that we started with, the IGF friends with the theme of the Internet of trust, I think it makes sense to look what has happened in this regard, including the calls -- not a main session focused on the calls per se, the Paris call or the Christchurch call or others that might come to November, right? So Kenta rightly reminds us that there is G7, there is G20. There are other policy-making decisions in the way to November.
So this main session perhaps could look to those approaches. They are related to trust from Paris to German -- to Berlin and build into this cohesive narrative.
I think it could -- it could be a way to look into the agenda. And it makes sense also as we are looking to streamline and make it more cohesive also between one and the other what is building and how the IGF is really addressing those.
Regarding the jurisdiction -- the cross-cutting issue on jurisdiction, I think Susan mentioned the Internet governance and the ecosystem. I think it's also a matter of understanding the Internet model. And it could be playing with the theme of this year, IGF jurisdiction and the global Internet. I'm trying to avoid our fellow ICANN's jurisdiction and "one Internet" to understand also these complexities when we are talking about this global network of network and a jurisdiction that brings a very territorial approach.
And, last, on the SDGs, we've been working with the CENB, the major intersessional policy track. And one of the successes it brought was when we broke down year by year into some of the topics because it allows people to understand and to bring their experiences and their best practice on how the Internet and all the digital transformation can bring the change and achievement of the SDGs.
So I would suggest not only that it is focused by topic that we can capture. And perhaps that's an exercise that we can do with the tailing or the outputs group. I think it's really important to dialogue with the broader U.N. discussion and, again, bringing the IGF to be relevant into those discussions and what we are really capable of doing.
I also -- during the conversations, I don't know if we dropped -- one of the comments Timea made, I think, in one of the calls from the MAG, each main session, when we were talking about human rights being cross-cutting to have -- to tackle the economic, the social, and the technical aspects in each of them. I think this is important. This brings us back on how also we streamline. So I hope I'm being helpful in moving this forward. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Thank you, Raquel. I really appreciate everybody's substantive and fairly specific comments, too. I think it's helping us to narrow the discussion down. So very appreciative.
Titi, you have the floor.
>>Concettina Cassa: Thanks, Lynn, for giving me the floor. This is Titi Cassa, government stakeholder group.
I think it's important for the main session to try to avoid duplication with the other sessions. And I am quite agree with what has been said by Ben, Rudolf, Susan, also Raquel, about the session related to the cybersecurity and trust. I think we should have a main session and having, I think, the Paris call and also the Christchurch call as two examples also explaining what has been reached in this last year and so forth.
About number 2, holistic policy framework on ICTs, number 11, I think I agree with the comment that's been made before, that the multidisciplinary Internet governance should be left as it is and not relate to the private sector. Maybe I don't understand why private sector and not maybe technical community or other things.
And maybe we should be more specific in specifying what is included in number 11 because there could be some community. Because also number 2 is addressing the importance of multidisciplinary Internet governance discussion to improve coordination between actors. Also maybe there could be some community between 2 and 11.
So about number 3, digital governance and digital trade, I think it could be added also something like jurisdiction because jurisdiction is important. I mean, digital trade is very important.
I also think that cross-cutting issues could be merged. I mean, the one on artificial intelligence and on IoT.
And about SDG, I think it's important to have a session on SDG. But at the same time, I think it's important to be more specific to understand what we are going to discuss because SDG, I know that there has been a session on the last ITU convention on AI for Good. I think we should be a little bit more specific on what we want to handle.
And then I also agree that human rights is something that involves more main session. Okay. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Titi. Again, very useful comments.
Maybe I could ask whoever suggested the holistic policy framework on ICTs, number 2, if you're not already in the queue to come back in the queue and talk about that a little bit more because the notes that we've captured say it's to address the importance of multidisciplinary Internet governance discussions and how to improve coordination between networks.
And I think when Ben gave some additional background to number 11, saying that it really was more about policy approaches to ensure multidisciplinary approach to Internet governance is a better phrasing for that. And I do agree there seems to be a lot of commonality. But I'm also worried we may have missed something else that was captured in a holistic policy framework on Is. So whoever brought that up, if you could speak to it, that would help advance us here. Timea, you have the floor.
>>TIMEA SUTO: Thank you, Lynn. I have a couple of comments on a number of session proposals.
But to start from what you just asked about the holistic framework and multidisciplinary IG, I think, if I'm not mistaken -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- I think those two are basically the same proposal.
If I remember well what Ben said yesterday, I think it was about making sure that we take a holistic policy framework and discuss how many we build; the different policy elements around any issue in Internet governance; how do we ensure that that is inclusive of all stakeholders and of all disciplines.
And I think the idea was also to make a link to the call from the Secretary-General on the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation to be open to all disciplines and to foster dialogues around policy issues with all stakeholders and all those who are concerned. So I think those two proposals are basically the same.
If I'm wrong, please correct me. But looking at a couple of my colleagues in the room, I think that is the case. So I would propose that we look at those two as one.
And following from there and building on what Helani has said before, I think we can go further with the holistic policy framework and add the SDG angle into that. In my mind, we are looking at -- I know there's only six indicators that mention ICTs directly. But I think all indicators and all SDGs should consider ICTs as a tool to further those development goals.
And I think if we look at why are we constructing holistic policies around digital technologies, we are doing that with a reason. And that reason is all states have agreed years back that there should be sustainable development goals. So I think that constructing a holistic policy framework to enable digital technologies towards the sustainable development goals as a theme for a session.
On some of the other ones, I just wanted to support colleagues who were suggesting some sort of a merger between session proposals 14 and 1. I think I really like the idea of the way, I think, Ben, you put it, trust in cyberspace, and to include a couple of other elements in there.
These are very, very hot topics right now. I think we -- it's very impressive that both states and private actors are calling for cooperation on these very important issues. But calls come out and go. Until November we might even have hopefully positive calls, but we don't know what happens.
I think we need to be sure that whatever session we put forward gives a more broader view on these issues and tries to move the discussion forward around really forging a safe cyberspace where people can interact without any issues infringing on their rights, on their privacy, or they can trade safely, they can make sure their data is secure and that the content they receive online is legitimate.
I think we need to be sure that whatever session we put forward gives a more broader view on these issues and tries to move the discussion forward around really forging a safe cyberspace where people can interact without any issues infringing on their rights, on their privacy, or they can trade safely, they can make sure their data is secure, and that they're -- the content they receive online is legitimate.
So I would propose again a merger around those sessions. And if we do that, I think the human rights angle should be, as you said, all inclusive around all those. And I see themes for, as Titi said, for emerging technologies coming out like AI, IoT, and any others. I wonder if those could be either included under the holistic policy framework for SDGs and have a specific -- not all technologies but maybe have a specific angle on that, on emerging tech for SDGs and encouraging a 360 policy view around that.
So I'm just wondering if those could be picked up that way and to streamline this list into really impactful sessions.
Another point that I'm not sure if we underlined yesterday or not, I haven't had time to look through all the transcripts, but considering the sessions from the National and Regional IGFs and the dynamic coalitions, I recall Jutta saying it was a really good exercise last year that the MAG and the dynamic coalitions collaborated on topics. I would love to see what are the topics that these communities are interested in to see if they align with what we had or they're completely different. But I think in either case, it would be -- it would be a useful exercise to repeat what we had last year and work together on those -- on those sessions. I'm not saying that we need to take over. I just want to be sure that those themes that they bring out complement what we have here. And I'm happy to, as we worked together last year on dynamic coalitions, I'm happy to do that again with any of the constituencies.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I mean, I think two-way complementarity is really good, and I think we all want, you know, good integration between all the elements. So I think we can do that in the next step when we get down to a closer list here.
Thank you for all your comments, Timea. But I'm going to keep going through the list, and then I'm going to try to see if I can capture where I think we are on the second round of lists, unless there's somebody else who would prefer to do that. That would be helpful, too. And what we'll do is then try to put a couple of lines under each one of them.
If we could get to kind of a potential draft of these workshops, a draft -- list, a draft list before lunch, that would give us some time to kind of kick some ideas around at lunch and then come back after lunch and advance them as well. So I think that would be a good goal to shoot for.
Ben.
>>BEN WALLIS: I just wanted to -- your question before Timea, I just wanted to clarify that having looked at the list, number two seems much closer to what I actually talked about yesterday. So maybe number 11 was somebody else. I don't know if someone needs to step forward and own that before it gets disregarded, but -- yeah. I think I was too quick to jump into Helani's comment around number 11 and associate it with what I was talking about, and now that I see number two, I think that's more what I was driving at.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think there have been a number of comments, I made notes here, that two and 11 are close enough that we should, if it makes a short list, combine them and explore that as an idea.
Afi, you have the floor.
>>AFI EDOH: Hello, everyone. Thank you for giving me the floor.
This is my comment, is session 6 and 8, please can we merge the two of them?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So session 6 and 8. The transcript didn't capture. The question is sessions 6 and 8, cross-cutting AI and IoT. What is the question or the comment?
>>AFI EDOH: Can you merge both of them?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So merging both --
>>AFI EDOH: To make one session.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Right. And there was a similar comment as well. I think Titi had made the same one. So that's a note here as well. Thank you. And we'll pick that up when we go through the next iteration. Paul Charlton, you have the floor.
>>PAUL CHARLTON: Thank you, Lynn, and good morning to everyone.
Just a few comments, and coming this far down the speaking list, there's always a risk of repeating some things that other people have said.
As one of the people yesterday who supported a main session on the SDGs, I certainly -- I agree with the comment that was made earlier on this morning that the SDGs itself is far too broad a topic, so it needs to be specified. It seems to me in this context that perhaps combining 12 and 13. So having the SDGs and talking specifically about inclusion in the digital transformation is kind of a natural combination. It feeds into one of our main themes as well.
Also, on the topic of content, I think it was Susan who proposed putting the -- I think it was 1 and 14 and maybe others that dealt with content into one -- into one session, and that makes sense to me as well.
And finally, on the topic of session 9, I think it was Ben who suggested framing this, instead of consolidated session on major policy proposals, he suggested framing it in terms of trust. I think that was the case. So Ben with correct me if I'm wrong. And I think that would provide a good framing, and it would also respond to the discussion we had in April when we talked about that, in addressing issues, in addressing proposals or developments like the Paris call, the focus wouldn't be on the initiative itself but on sort of -- sort of elements, common elements or the substance of what these -- what these various initiatives are trying to do. And I think, therefore, that makes the session more inclusive. It covers the wide range of initiatives that have happened and are happening. And yet to the extent that the Paris call would be one of the many initiatives that that session would cover, it also demonstrates that we haven't ignored President Macron's proposal or suggestion to us from last year to -- to consider the Paris call.
And I think handling it this way is a way that's appropriate for the IGF and appropriate for the -- for the context since many other developments have happened since then. So we would have one session with a common theme that talks about many different initiatives and what exactly they're trying to do.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Paul.
Mary. Mary Uduma, you have the floor.
>>MARY UDUMA: Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor.
And at the risk of repeating what others have said, I want to support what Avenue said. For me, I want -- I'm not going to make long speeches. I'm just going to say some of the -- how I relate the different sessions.
I looked at first, and I'm relating 1, 9, 10 and 14 on that trust because they're all the calls that we'll be making.
And 2 -- and 2 and 11 look -- are related. Two -- number 2 and number 11, I relate them. And I think that's what I was raising concerning the -- the call by the U.N. Secretary-General the last meeting.
Three plus 13 plus -- I mean 3 plus 7 plus 13 because has got to do with digital. And why I'm saying this is that we are moving from Internet governance to digital governance, and if we are to move with the times, I think we should be looking at 3, 7 and 13 together.
Then I believe that 6, 7 -- no, 6 and 8 are related with 12. Six, 8 are related to 12. And I agree with the last speaker that we also add 13 to that.
And I also would like us to see whether we have covered all the baskets, the usual baskets that we have named in the Internet governance, like the trust, privacy and openness, (indiscernible), data governance and that. So any topic we are taking, we should also look at it.
And those are my comments. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mary. Also very comprehensive.
Did you want to come in, Daniela?
Paul Rowney, you have the floor.
>>PAUL ROWNEY: Thank you, Chair.
I'm just wondering and thinking aloud, but do we need to have nine main sessions? Are we just trying to fill them because they are there on the schedule? They compete against the workshops, the dynamic coalitions, the open forums. It's fragmenting where people are in the IGF. And the thought is why don't we reduce the number of main sessions and maybe have four, one per day, which could possibly be a three-hour thing, and try and consolidate some of these issues. So there isn't just one track of main sessions that goes through the four days, pulling people away.
When you look at the workshops, you know, this is my thought of what we really want people to engage in. And we're now working to pull them away from those sessions.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's a good, good point, Paul, and one that came up yesterday. And the answer is no, we don't need to fill every hour with a main session slot.
I think the real test is do we think this is adding something significant to the discussion at the IGF? And I think that ought to be the overall factor with respect to whether or not we move, you know, one, four, or seven of these forward.
And I think we ought to apply a really kind of critical lens and say, you know, is this adding something beyond the other -- all the other sessions that are at the IGF? So maybe we can come to that in just a moment when I see where we are.
Ben in the queue and then I'm going to ask Daniela and Chengetai if they have any additional comments as well.
So, Ben, you have the floor.
>>BEN WALLIS: Actually, that was an old hand, so sorry about that.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Excellent.
Daniela? Thank you, Lynn. Yes, I wanted to come back to one point that was raised earlier. The possibility of merging the cross-cutting issue AI with the cross-cutting issue IoT. I would advocate against that, because in my view they are two different things. AI is about deep learning, about data, big data, governance of data. And in my view, IoT, that's the interconnection of basically everything. In my view, there is more focus point on security issues rather than on data issues. Of course that has also to do with data because IoT, connected things are collecting data. Nevertheless, in my view, they are two different issues, and I would advocate to keep them separate.
Having said that, and taking up Paul's point, do we really need nine main sessions or seven if we agree on having NRI and DCs? I have a suggestion for a set of six instead of seven.
I try to gather a little bit your comments on merging themes, and I have a suggestion now. Coming back to Paul who said we sudden have one session on policy-making instead of a specific policy field, I think that's a good idea. So one session could be policy-making in the digital world, different approaches to Internet governance, and then that could be merged with the idea from Paris call to a Berlin call, including Christchurch call. That would then, in my view, merge the numbers 2, 7, 9 and 11. A second group would be human rights in respect of a world with even quicker action. That was, I think, the idea that was behind the Christchurch call suggestion. So that would merge 1, 4, and 14.
Then it would come back to our proposal of digital governance and digital trade as a third point. The fourth would be AI. And then as I just mentioned, I see there a reference to one of our three themes; namely, the data governance theme. So I would focus AI changes and challenges to data governance.
The next one would be IoT, and they have another reference that on cybersecurity that could be IoT, interconnection of everything, how to guarantee security and safety and resilience. And then there's the third theme, and I also see there the point that was just made to interconnect 12 and 13. So that could be SDGs, ensuring inclusion in the digital transformation. That could be focused even further, I think, but, in fact, that would merge 2 and 13.
Yeah, and sorry, I forgot to mention IoT -- the IoT theme that would be merged, 8 and 10.
So if I counted correctly, we have basically gathered all of the themes that are on the list. So that would just be a suggestion for regrouping.
Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So I think I just captured five of those. Let me try to go through them again. One is kind of human rights respecting in a world that's demanding quick action, something like that. And that was 1, 4, and 14.
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: One, 4 and 14. Yes.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Right. The second was policy-making in a digital world with 2, 7, 9 and 10.
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: 11.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Sorry, 2, 7, 9 and 11. Let me look at my notes more closely. And then three was the digital governance and digital trade which was number 3 on the list. 4 was the Internet of Things which was 8 -- that included 8 and 10 because of the security aspect. I actually number 10 and the cybersecurity, including the Paris call, was in a number of places, as you said.
And then I had 12 and 13 which was ensuring inclusion in digital transformation and incorporating the SDGs there as well.
So I saw just those five.
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: And you missed AI, changes and challenges to data governance, which is 6.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. AI. Just 6.
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Yeah. Maybe others are captured as well, but I mean, my counting, that was six.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So that's a proposal. I'll let people think through that. I think that's actually pretty close where I was as well. I had one -- you know, the one that Daniela is calling kind of human rights, respecting in a world of quick action, I think some of the conversation said it's an Internet of trust and that sort of thing, and maybe it's 1, 10, 14 and 9, but basically the same large subset of workshops.
So I think that was one kind of aggregation that was emerging from the discussion in the room.
The policy-making in a digital world, I think that's actually a nice way to capture some of the proposals that are there. I did actually have digital governance and digital trade as another area. There was some support for combining AI and -- you know, and incorporating some of the other kind of data elements and that sort of thing.
And the same thing for IoT and the same thing for 12 and 13 that you were -- so I think in terms of the conversation I was trying to capture for the room, I don't think we're all that far apart.
I want to come to Chengetai to see if he has any kind of general observations, then let everybody think through that and figure out what we do next in the process.
We can clearly put together quickly a couple of kind of spreadsheets that consolidate these a little bit differently, or we go away with small groups of people to try and -- maybe it's just we split into two groups and each one of them gets three or four buckets to try and think through a little bit.
I think at some point, we can let this specific list and titles go, and we need to go to the next level of depth in the discussion and really figure out what we mean and what some of the key focus points would be.
Let me go to Chengetai and then we'll come to you, Ben.
Chengetai.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Lynn.
I think most of what I will say has been said. I did make a comment earlier to Lynn at the beginning. It was basically in line with what Paul said.
We shouldn't forget that this year we're -- we are trying to focus the IGF meeting a little bit more and streamline it. So we really shouldn't be having competing workshops or sessions. We have the three thematic streams, and those are already split into two. If we have another main session that competes with one of those, then, of course, we are sort of taking a little bit of a step backwards and people's attention will be divided into which of these will come.
And those -- and that session or stream will suffer when that main session is there as well. So we should take that into consideration.
And there's room for merging in this list. I mean, there's a lot of room.
And, also, with my observation, yes, with the IGF we should concentrate on the issues. And we can have specific illustrative examples, which is in very welcome instead of the other way around, if you know what I mean. So I'm not saying we shouldn't focus on a specific event or area. But the thing that comes first is the issue, and then we can have the illustrative examples of what happened then and how to react. I hope that comes clear through.
And, yes, for the main sessions, it may be good to look and see what gaps should we fill and use those sessions to fill those gaps.
And, also, I will do -- okay. I'll make a little break there and also do a little bit of a push for the session -- for the thematic session for the frontier issue session as well. I do think we have to show that we are responding to what has been said by the Secretary-General. So I'll do a little push for that. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think those were all very good points, Chengetai.
Ben, you have the floor.
>>BEN WALLIS: That's the same old hand. On my screen it says I have no floor request. I will put my hand down. Sorry about that.
[ Laughter ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Noted. So then let me -- there's two possible threads of the conversation here. One is kind of purpose of main sessions and role and how many and ensure they're adding to the program, not taking away or kind of diffusing the increased focus.
Another possible thread is kind of exploring in a little more depth some small number of emerging potential topics for workshops.
Along the proposal Daniela put out, I said I could certainly go with that. I think it was very similar to what I was capturing from the discussion in the room, which is where I think hers was coming from as well.
Let me see if there are any kind of general comments or observations first.
Daniela.
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thank you. Maybe just one clarification. Number 5, in my view, that's clear that we will have that. That's why I didn't include that in my list, right? Okay. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Ben, are you signaling or -- is your mic lit?
>>BEN WALLIS: Yes, I actually do mean to put my hand up now.
It was a question really about -- and I really appreciate that you and Daniela have kind of grouped these as we go along and provide a basis for looking at these as a next step now.
And it was -- I think the second grouping was 2, 7, 9, and 11. And the first grouping was 1, 4 and 14. Sorry to just be throwing numbers.
So 1 and 14 both related to the Christchurch call, and 9 which you put separately talks about the Paris call and the Christchurch call.
I think a lot of us talked about looking at those as two examples that could be put together alongside a broader discussion. So I was wondering why -- I was questioning the wisdom of separating 9 from 1, putting 9 and 1 in different places. I would have thought it's 1, 4, 9 and 14 in the first basket rather than putting 9 with 2, 7 and 11. I'm getting a bit lost with the numbers myself, but that was the gist of it.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think if we think about putting just -- I don't want to say a placeholder title but just something so we know what we're talking about on all these groupings, in fact, what we think might have been included in 9 could be in the human rights respecting or the policy. It could be in both. If we went away and developed those, we would try and take whatever kind of concepts or notions we thought were embedded in 9 and bring those elements into any other consolidated proposal, whether it was the human rights respecting or what some people were calling earlier with 1, 4 and 9, kind of an Internet of trust focus or in the policy making in today's digital world. I don't think we need to be kind of pure about putting them in one or the another.
I think it's more important that we use these titles to grab the notions of what we wanted to talk about, figure out what kind of aggregated grouping is, and then continue to flesh that out or continue to dive down from there.
Again, all this is assuming when we get to the end of this process we think this is an important topic, a relevant topic, different enough from what else is in the program and one that does actually deserve to be at a main session level.
So, Jutta, you have the floor.
>>JUTTA CROLL: Thank you for giving me the floor. I just wanted to support what Ben said just before. I do think that 1 and 9 belong together. And I have a bit of concerns that with the combination that was suggested, that we reduce human rights to only the issue of disinformation, fake news, like bringing that together with 14 and with 1.
I do think that human rights still is a broader issue and it needs to be underlined that everything that is going on in the area of digitization, human rights can be infringed not only by misinformation and by hate speech and that. So I do think it's a broader theme, and probably it deserves to be dealt with in a main session that is overarching.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay, good. That's what I was going to ask. Your proposal would be that there was a main session. It really focus on human rights. I think if you could kind of add a couple of sentences that said what would the session be.
I was going to ask you when you first started speaking whether or not you thought human rights should just be much more preeminent in many of the sessions or if it was for a separate session.
>>JUTTA CROLL: Yes, that's the difficulty of the hen and the egg. Once we know what is in the other sessions, we will see whether it's overlapping and then that should not be the case or whether it's something that's overarching, which is different to overlapping.
My only concern is we should not have a session that reduces human rights to the issue of misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech; that we address also the other issues in the same main session on human rights.
Looking at 1 and 14, these are two strong topics. And that's my concern that among these two strong topics, human rights as a broader theme could be a little bit submerged and needs more attention.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: As I said earlier, I thought we ought to be elevating human rights concerns in every one of our discussions, particularly today. So I think that's something we should all keep in mind as we go through this, rights respecting and elevating that discussion.
What I might encourage you to do is just separately think about if you were to put together a session that was focused on human rights, what would the specific focus of it be? And not try to wait and see whether or not we think it's adequately covered in all of the others.
Thank you, Jutta.
Maria, you have the floor.
>>MARIA PAZ CANALES: Thank you, Chair. Maria Paz from civil society.
Just want to second what Jutta just mentioned. I think it's relevant to do both things, like to keep the relevance of the human rights discussion by keeping this space for identifying things that will not be covered in the other session but also link it to my previous comment. It's important, like, to keep in mind and in each one of the other topics we should be addressing the human rights consideration as you mentioned.
I also want to agree with what Ben said before regarding that there should be separation between Number 1, 14, and 9. So I think at least these three proposals should end in two different buckets.
I will redirect my opinion that I raised previously. The way in which I see is more logical to do that is by separate the general conversation about content governance, moderation, whatever we want to call it, and the specific issue of emergency situation. I think that's a more useful framework that keep referring to a specific initiative because of the risk of exclusion my colleagues have raised before.
I think that will be, like, the better way to make it, like, enough broad for everyone to feel part of the conversation but enough focus so we don't emerge two topics that have slightly different favor. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Maria. Can I ask you to do the same thing we just asked Jutta, which is can you put a couple of sentences down that you talk about what you think content governance -- And I would encourage everybody to do the same we asked all the workshop submitters to do, is to really dial in on what you think the policy question is you are addressing. What do you want to achieve with the session? What specifically are you trying to advance?
I think that would help determine whether or not it was a substantive-enough topic and a substantive-enough question.
Ananda, you have the floor.
>>ANANDA RAJ KHANAL: Thank you, Lynn. I think I was not there when this proposal was discussed.
I believe we should have at least three sessions -- three main sessions on the themes that we have decided on data governance; digital inclusion; security, safety, stability, and resilience. So that compose three sessions.
And to capture the global trends on how ICT policies, legal and regulatory frameworks are drafted and practiced and what is their implications for Internet governance, I think we should have a very comprehensive session on ICT global trends and ICT policies, legal and regulatory frameworks, and their implications on Internet governance.
A fifth session could be on emerging technology trends and their implications for Internet governance. So that includes a lot of related technologies. Could be IoT, AI, and machine learning and so many other things.
A sixth session could be on Internet governance in the light of democracy, freedom of expression online, hate speech, fake news, content regulation, privacy, and so many things that are more on the soft side.
And, finally, because everything we are doing for the good -- and then one session on how Internet governance is important for addressing 2030 development agenda; that is, sustainable development goals.
So if we have this -- three plus four -- seven sessions, I think that will capture.
Now the problem is mapping all those 17 proposals onto these seven themes. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Ananda. Yeah, I did try to capture what you said. And Daniela just asked if you could repeat it as well. Let me just give you a moment to do that.
I think we need to not -- there's nothing that says we need to find a home for all 15 of those at all. And actually there's really only sort of the top 14 because 15th was more of a kind of process question I thought that was open.
And I also think that we don't need to think that if we want to keep a particular proposal there, that we can only assign it to one of these other major buckets because there are components in them that clearly, as we have all said so many times, could fit almost anywhere.
So I don't want us to be too, too focused on either finding a singular home for each one of them nor finding a home for all of them.
And I think if we could get maybe at the next step to -- maybe we need a high-level view of kind of the titles and then a quick which ones would fit under that and then we could go away from there.
I think you gave a couple of new aggregations and titles that I'd just like to hear again, if you don't mind going through it again.
>>ANANDA RAJ KHANAL: My proposal is three sessions on the three priority themes that we already identified: Data governance; digital inclusion; and third, security, stability, safety, and resilience.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And, Ananda, just so we can try and close on that, I think everybody -- there's strong support that what we have in the main session should actually reflect the overall themes.
I think we were pretty close to agreeing that -- and Daniela said in her comments, other people said it around the room, that with a lot of the high-level titles we're associating with, there is residence and linkages to the current themes. So I think that's a given. And we should keep that in mind as we go through the shorter list to make sure we can identify them all . But I think there's -- I'm trying to close some questions and make sure those that I think are closed already are really closed and we can just keep building forward.
>>ANANDA RAJ KHANAL: Because we have received a sizable amount of proposals on these three themes, we can also highlight what are the issues that people want to see in those themes. So that will make a good session for each of our themes.
The fourth session is on global trends on ICT policy, legal and regulatory frameworks, global trends on ICT policy, legal and regulatory frameworks, and their implications for Internet governance.
Because I realized having worked with the ITU for a long time, the Internet governance and the ITU activities on the ICTs are not very much aligned. People in the Internet governance don't really take into consideration the massive work ITU has done on the related issues.
I don't see any of the proposals talking about works done by ITU, especially in my data security, safety, stability resilience. 86 proposals, none of them mention ITU.
ITU started this global cybersecurity agenda back in 2008. And they produce every year global cybersecurity index measuring the five components how countries stand with a lot of indicators. But the ICT community, they don't refer to any of the work of ITU.
We talk so much about Paris call, but we have not talked about other things that are similarly done elsewhere. So I think we really require a comprehensive view on the global trends, how ICT policy, legal, and regulatory frameworks are being practiced and their implications for Internet governance.
And the fifth session is on Internet governance in the light of democracy because there's much talk that the liberal democracies' future are being questioned by the emergence of technologies like artificial intelligence, how people's mind can be maneuvered by technologies, like that. So I think in the light of democracy, freedom of expression online, hate speech, fake news, content regulation, privacy, whatever topics are soft and politically inclined. So this we can have one session.
And the final session that is seventh, is on how IG is important, Internet governance is important for addressing 2030 development agenda, the sustainable development goals.
That makes up seven sessions that I proposed.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. I have noted before I thought your six was emerging technologies and trends.
So this we can have one session.
And the final session that is seventh is on how IG is important. Internet governance is important for addressing 2030 development agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals.
So that makes up seven sessions that I proposed.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. I had noted before that I thought your sixth was emerging technologies and trends.
>>ANANDA RAJ KHANAL: Right, yeah. Emerging technology trends and their implications for Internet governance. There we can talk about artificial intelligence, IoT, machine learning, big data, data analytics, and so on, so forth.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Jutta, you have the floor.
>>JUTTA CROLL: Thank you for giving me the floor. I just wanted to make a practical suggestion. I do think that the grouping that Daniela did before was very useful to get an overview on how these suggestions could be grouped, and I also heard some very convincing titles that Ananda now has phrased.
So if we could get that as an overview, we're now looking on the list of the 17, but we probably need to have a look on that grouping. I wasn't quick enough to write that all down, what Daniela said how the different suggestions could be grouped, and then also having these proposed titles from Ananda, and then we might be able to bring it together, both thoughts.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Agree, that's a good suggestion. We'll come to Paul and then I think I'll just get -- it would be helpful if -- I think we need to leave the list up there so we all know what we're referring to when we say 9, 4 and 14. But maybe we can ask Eleanora to start a Google doc which would actually just kind of capture, in maybe a draft title or two, these proposals that would fit under that, and then we can send that out to everybody's mailbox. See if that works. And appreciate all the pragmatic suggestions we had through this, so anybody who has more, please jump in.
Paul Rowney, you have the floor.
>>PAUL ROWNEY: Thank you, Lynn.
Okay. Not wanting to sound controversial, but I see only three main sessions.
[ Laughter ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Every time you take the floor, there's one less.
[ Laughter ]
>>PAUL ROWNEY: I see one that deals with the cross-cutting issues. I see one that is the high-level panel and frontier issues, which can include the emerging issues, and one on the major policy issues.
So from my perspective, I think we can consolidate all of this into three main sessions and allow the participants to focus more on the workshops, the IGF in general.
If we consolidate down to three, I don't think there's really a pressing need for the NRIs to have their main session or the DCs.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: With some respect, I'm not going to open up that discussion again. I think we need to recognize the NRIs are an autonomous entities, and we're trying to find a way that we can kind of get a good neighborhood going here where we can actually kind of share some space that supports their needs, very clearly stated needs, that support them in their activities as they go back home and this room. It's a two-hour slot we're giving them to advance theirs. To be really clear, I don't actually feel it's the MAG's decision to absolutely say yes or no to them. I mean, in one level, they're very clearly an autonomous set of activities who want to integrate and work closely with the IGF. The MAG could declare they don't want the NRIs there. I think that would be, frankly -- I think that would be a terrible, terrible mistake.
>>PAUL ROWNEY: I think what I'm saying, though, is changing the focus of the main sessions, which may change people's thought processes of why they want to have a main session, which might negate that conversation.
Anyway, I'm just putting it out there.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No, and I -- I appreciate that. And maybe we can come back later on and have another round of making sure that what's in front of the MAG is what the NRIs are currently thinking there. It's clear that they want to work with the MAG and integrate the MAG and ensure that their activities support the overall program, which was built by the community in terms of the call for issues and then the subsequent themes. So there ought to be, at a natural level, good alignment there. And the same thing with the DCs as well.
So we can come back and figure out what we need to do to ensure there's good alignment between kind of programs and initiatives and supporting actors, but I really want people to think kind of carefully and respect the -- which is why we went to that program component document three years ago, was to make clear that the MAG understood sort of what the kind of guiding documents and the linkages were between all the component pieces of the IGF ecosystem and the MAG. And I'll also point out that of course the MAG is to advise the Secretary-General on the annual meeting program of the IGF. And it's very clear, frankly, in everything we all do, but very clear within the U.N. system as well, that supporting local, national, and regional efforts at the local, national, and regional level is critically important. Obviously meets all sorts of goals with respect to inclusion and that sort of thing.
So I think we need to pay careful attention to what they say is not just helpful but really essential to their own good, solid activities at, again, local, national, regional levels.
So let me let you finish your comments, Paul, because I think I may have interrupted you there. And then we'll go to Carlos after.
So, Paul, you have the floor.
>>PAUL ROWNEY: No, no, I'm finished. I'm just throwing a different train of thought into the air.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Thank you, Paul.
Carlos, you have the floor.
>>CARLOS AFONSO: Thank you.
I really liked Ananda's speech, and I think that every effort by larger organizations to frame, understand better, quantify, qualify the efforts regarding cybersecurity and safety, et cetera, are very relevant. ITU should certainly be present here somehow to expose that effort.
Now, I think, taking advantage of the mentioning of ITU, that the future of ITU is in managing and governing the spectrum. That's clear. And it would be great if the ITU proposed a session or something which would show us their efforts to democratize the spectrum; to make sure the community can use the spectrum and it is not only hoarded by the large corporations, telecommunication corporations. And what are the efforts that the ITU is doing in terms of its proposals, its regulations, et cetera, and harmonization efforts to make sure that the community can use the spectrum and provide universal access, access at the local level in a very significant manner in order to enhance digital inclusion.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Carlos. Those are very helpful points as well.
Chengetai is trying to see if, in fact, the ITU has an open forum, because I would say there are lots of organizations similar to the ITU that we engage in and involve in deeply that have just as much relevance to the things we're doing in IGF as others. We could argue kind of WIPO, UNCTAD, OECD, UNESCO. All of those organizations have very substantive interlinkages, and we need to make sure we're interfacing or working with all of them appropriately. And in fact the open forums were created specifically to give them space to come in and talk about their activities as it links with the kind of questions and concerns and interests of the Internet governance community.
So we'll come back when we understand who's on the open forum list or not.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: They did say that they did submit an open forum. I'm just having trouble locating it, but they did submit it. And as Lynn said, yes, UNESCO is will as well and almost all the organizations that have -- UNICEF as well, et cetera.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Carlos's point was, of course, a little bit different than Ananda's, and it would be interesting, actually, to go to the open forum and ask some of those questions as well.
Veni.
>>VENI MARKOVSKI: Just to comment on Carlos's point. ITU actually also does the WSIS forums every year. So many of the topics that they would have -- they would cover at the IGF, they actually have the opportunity to do in an environment which is also open, and, you know, at -- multistakeholder with participation of some of the people who are actually in the room as well.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That's a good point, too.
So let me -- Paul kind of has made the comment several times, said we ought to have fewer main sessions than what we're sort of currently anticipating and have historically had. I'd like to open up the floor for kind of comments on that? Comments? Observations?
Is there any strong feeling one way or the other? Maria?
>>MARIA PAZ CANALES: Yes, Maria Paz Canales from civil society for the record.
I think that one good thing that Paul tried to raise and maybe got lost in the criticism of narrowing down too much is there is like a power of signalizing what is really like the main when you have few of the main. So I think it's value in that sense because we are really giving the main session a place that is clearly differentiated from the other workshop sessions.
So I will say that is not something bad to have few of them. I think it's good in terms of how we want to really give this discussion an important and differentiated place among all what will be happening during the IGF.
That's my opinion. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And I think that's a very good point that Paul made, and thank you for calling us back to that as well. And Paul knows I certainly appreciate all of his creative thinking and opening up the discussion here as well.
Really interested in other MAG members' comments or reflections.
Giacomo.
>>GIACOMO MAZZONE: Just to complement the word that was said by Carlos. The ITU will have its two years' conference on -- biannual conference on spectrum exactly between October and November. They will finish on the 10th of November. And there will be conclusion of that conference that will be available. So eventually this can be something that, if we want to have a report to be discussed, probably can be inserted in the open forum that they have. This is a message that can be passed to them easily, I think.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Giacomo.
Not getting any kind of traction on the other question, let me propose something, I think building on Jutta's contribution here, is we can, all of us, working from the list we put together, try and put some high-level titles to a few sessions, identify the numbers that fit under them from this list that's in front of us, see what kind of profile that gives us, and then we can either split into some -- a couple of breakout groups to see if we can kind of come up with a key policy question or something that we believe would signal kind of the main intent of the session, the main value of the session, and then later in the afternoon come back and look at that and use that to determine. Again, I think there's two things to consider on the number of sessions. We should only put sessions up as main sessions if they truly are substantive, adding value, bringing in significant speakers, new viewpoints. Significantly add a different value than a normal workshop.
I think the other consideration is the one that Paul and Maria have stated, which is what we do in the main sessions does signal both the importance of the main sessions but also kind of signals in maybe a reverse way, kind of the importance of the rest of the program as well. So I think that's a consideration to take into account when we think about how many.
Is that a path we could kind of go forward here or is there any other quick suggestion?
So let me then try, just in the interest of trying to move things forward, let me at least start along the path that I think Jutta was suggesting, and I think the room was kind of merging towards, and see what that actually tells us. And if I could ask Eleonora to try to capture that so we can see it later on in a Google doc or Word table or something, that would be helpful.
There was something which the various parts of the community had kind of labeled an Internet of trust or a human rights respecting in a world which requires quick policy action. Those were the two titles. And the workshops that were under -- sorry, the topics that were underneath that variously were 1, 4, 9 and 14.
Susan.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Thanks, Chair. I think that title might run the risk of completing the content governance issues with the cybersecurity issues. I think those two should be kept separate because they're pretty big.
So I'm also wondering if focusing the discussion on reaction times might necessarily limit a more comprehensive discussion on content governance. Like if we're just talking about time frames, I think that's certainly an element, like the ability to be able to react quickly in this world. I think that's certainly an element that needs to be incorporated into the discussion. I just -- I would caution against focusing that in the title.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. So that's a good -- so let's maybe -- let's kick around what the title ought to be, because I actually do agree with the quick action. I may also agree with leading with human rights respecting, when I think much of what everybody -- in that I don't know if that's appropriate in that really what people are talking about is kind of content and governance policy models done well or something, I think.
But is there anybody here who can actually suggest kind of a high-level title that captures the discussion we've been having around those series of issues?
Anyone?
Maria.
>>MARIA PAZ CANALES: I think I also already did, but I can restate. If we are, like, talking here about the emergency quick response issue, I would say dealing with content in an emergency situation with a human rights perspective. If we are talking about organization of what content, Susan was trying to clarify that it would be good to separate from other things.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Totally agree with what you just said, just I'm trying to process our way through it.
Susan.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: So human rights and content governance would be one idea.
>>MARIA PAZ CANALES: Yeah, but in that case that come back to the idea that there are two different things. One like if we want to talk broadly about any kind of content governance and another thing related with the quick emergency situation. It's my view that I have been trying to raise every time in the conversation but still think that it's a valuable point. If you consider it's not, then I'm going to shut up; this is the last time I mention it.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So is the high-level one really about -- I don't know if it's human rights and governance but it's about content and governance policy models done well, you know. It's open and inclusive and multistakeholder and it's with those that need to participate in the discussion. And, you know, whether it's done quickly or not. I mean just because it needs to be done quickly doesn't mean it should be done differently or badly.
So maybe we can -- and I think that's where -- in that grouping was where the Christchurch call, the Paris call, where the other components were. They were kind of examples of processes that --
>>MARIA PAZ CANALES: Sure. It's one specific inside that. The only thing I want to try to highlight, originally the proposal that sparked this conversation was devoted more to that type of situation. It's a strategic decision that we can make as a MAG to say we want to put all in the same bucket because substance, they belong to the same. But is a specification of the other.
.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So let me -- Maybe I could ask -- so we were...
So one is content governance policy, how to do it well is one. What Maria was bringing us back to is there was kind of a subtext or subtopic in there which is in a -- because of some specific examples. Do we want to focus on those because they were -- and did they need to be done quickly? And in this case they were not done particularly well, in our view. So how prominent a role does that play? I'll give the floor to Daniela but maybe also Sylvia since it was Sylvia and a few other people, and maybe Ben since you were involved in some of the Paris call. But Daniela.
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thank you. Of course, I see the point that we have the time issue in the headline and that changes the subject. But, in fact, I think there's good reason to do that because time is a critical issue here. When we are talking, for example, about terrorist content on the Internet, the question is how fast can we take it down and how fast should we and how fast should we react. And reaction times are getting -- let's say, the dynamic on the Internet is getting quicker and quicker. And the question is how should democracies and enterprises and the civil society react to that. And that's why I would advocate still to focus also maybe one session, and having others focusing on that issue is I think adequate. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Daniela.
Jutta, you have the floor. I think, Giacomo, you're an old hand. Jutta, you have the floor.
>>JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Lynn, for giving me the floor. When you phrased content governance, how to do it well, I do think that is very much related to something else that Ananda phrased, the developments in regard to democracy. And I do think relating it to democracy is a bit broader, but it would help us to cover it in a broader way. So I do think this relation to democracy -- I don't have the phrasing that Ananda used, but I do think that was very helpful.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jutta.
I'm trying to see if I have got it here in my notes, too.
Raquel.
>>RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you, Lynn. I would like to make a suggestion, perhaps, on one theme or title: Challenges for quick policy reactions regarding online content.
I would like to highlight here when we talk about challenges, we are talking about the why, the good, and the bad in this discussion; the quick reaction, the policy reaction; and online content. We're talking about content governance, but I think we need to highlight it's online governance and we are not confusing the communication means that we want to go through here. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's an interesting title as well. Is it -- I thought when the proposal came forward, I mean -- if something needs to be taken down because it's extremicity, it needs to be taken down quickly every time.
But what's the right way to determine who should do that, on what basis, and what's appropriate. That is, I think, a more thoughtful process that we would argue needs to be much more open and inclusive, which I thought was more the thread of the proposal that Sylvia had brought in yesterday. So it's not how do we do take-downs quickly in somebody's mind because somebody has -- that's a different proposal. Honestly I'm not sure that kind of rises to a high-level main session. But let me keep going through Ben and then Veni and see if we can capture this well enough with the four titles underneath us so we can try and go to the next one.
Ben.
>>BEN WALLIS: Thank you, Lynn. I don't have a particular problem with content governance. And I think there's ways it can be made broad enough to capture the ideas that Sylvia and Maria both brought.
I'd just note that the Paris call was about security of networks, not about the content that goes over it. So very happy to have a content session which captures the Christchurch call. Just a note we would -- that wouldn't cover the Paris call. We'd either take the Paris call somewhere else or we wouldn't have it in a main session, but it wouldn't be part of this. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's an important point as well since, of course -- Maria is giving two thumbs up. Of course, security is a critical topic and obviously one of our main themes.
Veni, Veni, you have the floor.
>>VENI MARKOVSKI: Thank you. Just sharing some personal information from last year's work of the high-level expert group on fake news and disinformation online to the European Commission in which I participated, the question about taking content down quickly was discussed in a number of sessions that we had. And perhaps this -- I mean, there's a lot of workshops that are dealing with fake news. And perhaps that's one of the ways where you can get -- whoever is organizing the sessions can invite somebody from that group to explain the rationale and what was -- what was the intention behind also calls of the European Commission and after we published our report last April, I think, or March, to see to see what happened and what's the current status and what are the online platforms doing, et cetera, et cetera. That's a fascinating topic, but I'm not sure under which of those session topics it will fall.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That's a good -- good suggestion with respect to following up on the other sessions.
What if we for this bucket -- I almost feel like the conversation is now split into two. One of them is kind of content online platforms, what does a good policy model look like. The timing piece comes in, I think, in the fact that clearly what nation states do, they need to be able to have -- and private sector to react quickly. I don't think it means that -- but I think the policy for determining when that's done, how it's done, who does it, under what circumstance, who's notified, that's the piece that needs the thoughtful process; and then the other quick kind of take-downs happen.
But that's different from as, Ben was just pointing out, kind of what was the intent behind some of these other security pieces.
We could for right now maybe just say -- without putting a title on it, just say this one session which would incorporate pieces from 1, 4, 9, and 14 would look at challenges for good policy making in the content online platform world, something like that. That's really kind of clumsy. Again, it's not a title we want. I just want to make sure we're pulling the appropriate pieces in.
And the term Ananda had used earlier was "Internet governance in light of democracy" which I think is some of the rights-respecting pieces as well which, of course, we want to make sure that any of those developing-policy processes were rights respecting and multistakeholder and that sort of thing.
Now, is there -- and if we put those, like, buckets together and a group went away, would a group be able to go away and say: Here's the policy question we'd like to address here? Here's the specific topic we'd like to advance. Could they use that to narrow down on one that focused on that component rather than kind of the Christchurch -- sorry, the security, cybersecurity Paris call components, which might be separate? Does that work for anybody? Does that not work for everybody?
I mean, I think all we're trying to do here is identify some small number of groupings -- it's probably in the neighborhood of six or seven just in terms of kind of manageability -- that we can go away and in some smaller groups spend a half-hour or an hour brainstorming a little bit so we understand whether or not there's something substantive enough there to go away and further develop with a main session in mind. And all we need to do is to find enough way to put the right -- it's almost like put the tags in a bucket with this kind of discussion as the background context.
Let me try a different one then and see. We'll come back to that one in a moment.
If we wanted to say digital governance and digital trade, which was number 1 -- the third one up there, is that something that people understand enough what's kind of embedded in there and would support that being a possible main session that we would ask some people to go away and spend some time outlining kind of either the policy question or paragraph that would support it? I'm trying to figure out if it's the process which isn't working or if the first one was just so complex with all the different pieces and the threads.
Raquel.
>>RAQUEL GATTO: Okay. Thank you. Lynn, I think it moved fast for the third one. So can you go back and restate what was the first option?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Yes. I'm trying to -- I'm obviously trying to figure out a process going forward. So I chose a kind of single issue which said if we said we wanted a working group to go away and look at session topic number 3 here, digital governance and digital trade, does this room feel that a group of people could go away, look at digital governance, digital trade and, come up with a paragraph or two subscription or policy question or two that they think would say this is what we think we would do with a main session on digital governance and digital trade? Because if the answer to that is no, then we'd want to know whether people didn't agree with the topic or it's the process.
What I was trying to separate out is the first one is pretty complex because of all the different threads. So I was trying to go to something that was more kind of a single focus and use that to advance the process, if you will.
So, Deniz has asked for the floor and then Ben, unless you wanted to come back in, Raquel.
>>DENIZ SUSAR: I actually want to ask a question about digital governance and digital trade. One of our works in the U.N. is on digital government. We produce U.N. government survey every other year. And I cannot understand "digital governance and digital trade" and what actually we mean with "digital governance" in this context.
If we talk about digital economy, for example, that's another area maybe clearer to people. But digital governance and digital trade, how do they go together?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Do you want to come in on that, Daniela, since it was your suggestion yesterday?
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: First of all, I would volunteer probably with Rudolf and hopefully with others to go into that subject in more detail.
Our idea behind that was, in fact, there is an interlinkage between digital issues. And maybe "digital governance" is not the right term. But what we meant is cybersecurity, for example, also free flow of data issues and trade issues are interlinked. And that's what shall be dealt with in that session. That was the main idea.
And to cover the different subjects of the digital policy. I think it was Kenta who already mentioned that. That is already covered inside the digital governance track among G20. That should be incorporated also having in mind when writing down the concrete issues of that topic. And maybe that was a little bit short and putting that all under the headline of digital governance. But that was the idea behind.
And Rudolf just told me there is lunch already downstairs. In case you would like to have a break now instead of half an hour, that would be possible.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.
I think we probably need to figure out what we're going to do with this process this afternoon before we break or I fear we will lose the afternoon to continued process discussion.
Ben, you have the floor.
>>BEN WALLIS: Thank you. And it was in response to your question about the digital trade and digital governance and Daniela's additional comments there.
It feels like it's the only one of the 17 that's clearly related to the data governance theme. That's how I read it. It was about the free flow of data and challenges around that and different approaches to digital trade and different views around that.
It's one of the topics. I think one of 20 workshops looks -- now, a couple -- two of them look at that issue. So it's partly covered within a data governance theme. It's relevant to the data governance theme. It would provide a main session linked to one of the three themes. But obviously there would be challenges of doing it in such a way that was broader and distinct from the workshop discussion.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We'll go to Helani and then come back and see if this will work. Helani.
>>HELANI GALPAYA: Thank you, Lynn. Just to -- thinking if there's scope for this digital governance track that we're talking about, I do think of itself of an overarching panel on digital economy issues with a particular focus on governance of trade and the governance of labor or employment. So it's really about trade, if you think about employment, digital employment as one mode of trade, right, where people are not co-present. Because there are a couple of workshops that came on the issue of employment, labor, good work, et cetera.
Then there are the trade issues. And all of these are about cross-border issues. So we could pick up the economic angles possibly in this. Because I feel like the security, if we bring into this the cross-border data in terms of pure data security, that would possibly be well-covered in another panel and keep this to more digital economy stuff. Just a thought. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Thank you, Helani. Very helpful.
I think one of the things you point out is obviously as discussions progress, we would want to go back and look at the workshops that have been selected and understand what's being covered within them to make sure that this is complementing, obviously not redundant, and also look a lot of the intersessional activities as well, so dynamic coalitions. Are there other activities happening in the NRIs and things?
So I think maybe the right way to proceed through this is we have these six kind of major buckets. And the discussion we were just trying to have a moment ago was about the first bucket, which was 1, 4, 9 and 14, whether or not it's a focus on content or it's a focus on, you know, how do we do speedy regulation fast, whether or not it incorporated kind of the Paris call sort of components or not, those are questions maybe that are left for a smaller working group, to really sit down and take an hour and try and work through.
So one proposal is that we would actually take the six working kind of groups that we were talking about earlier, we captured earlier, and break out, sit down, and take the next stab as is there something substantive here. Do we think we can put some policy questions or a topic that we think would be of significant interest and rise to the level of a main session. And if we did that, we have got that organized before lunch, and maybe from 3:00 to 40:00 or if people wanted to start earlier, they start earlier and come back and at 4:00 we come back and try to walk through these six. Is that a possible approach?
I don't know if we're going to make a lot of progress here trying to go through each one of these with everybody in the room.
So while everybody's thinking that through, let me remind everybody if you can't see quickly. We can send the chart out to you.
What Eleonora has done, she's left the topic numbers the same but moved them up and color coded them to are the big groupings which are there on the right, which is extraordinarily helpful.
So whatever the possible title is: "Human rights respecting a world of ever-quicker action," "Internet governance in light of democracy," or "Challenges for good policy making in the content online platform world," all those and other variants were suggested as possible titles, they all had referenced parts of 1, 4, 9, or 14 in their grouping. That was one.
The second one was grouping 2, 7, 9 and 11. And again, that was also kind of policy-making in a digital world, different approaches to Internet governance, the Paris call, you know, et cetera, the Christchurch call, Berlin -- Berlin meeting.
The third one was a suggestion that digital governance, digital trade and maybe the cross-cutting issue of jurisdiction would be captured as another bucket. Try to focus a little less on the title.
The other one was the cross-cutting issue of AI. I, frankly, would probably even take 15 out of there because 15 wasn't a proposal, per se. It was me actually trying to capture the fact that there was a request that we kind of start with our process that had the call for issues, the major themes, the approved workshops, the policy questions embedded in those workshops, and whether or not that ought to lead us toward having a main session, having follow that train of thought.
A parallel idea there, of course, was we ought to have main sessions tied specifically to the three main tracks. I think there was, you know, a fair amount of support in the room for saying that with the main buckets we have identified here, we think we have enough that would tie to the safety, security, stability, and resilience; another one that would tie to digital inclusion; another one that would tie to data governance. Unless we think we want a more specific stream built up from that. But then I would suggest that we probably have the topping session, so we could actually use to do that without having yet had the topping discussion fully.
And then there was the cross-cutting issue of IoT and a notion that sort of cybersecurity fit in there. Again, I think cybersecurity is a little bit like human rights. It's in a number of places. I think the issue really is whether or not we think we need a significant separate focus on that.
And then we had the ensuring inclusion, digital transformation, and the SDG kind of component.
So those are the sort of six main things that I think Daniela had come up with as far as your construct. It actually matches pretty much mine as well. And again, the other one that we're actually missing is the HLPDC frontier issues one. Right. Yeah, so there would be another one, which was the HLPDC.
I think Ben and Helani are old hands, so I'll go to Jutta -- because I never saw them go down.
So Jutta.
>>JUTTA CROLL: that you now, Lynn, for giving me the floor. I also wanted to mention that we had left out the HLPDC. That was the first point.
And the second point is looking at the possible titles, I do think that the first group and the second group are too close to each other. Both are dealing with policy-making in the digital world, and we need to differentiate. It's just too close, and if we go now away in smaller groups and one is dealing with one and the other, that's not separate enough. We need to clarify which one of these first two mentioned is dealing with policy-making and which one is dedicated to the other issues that all have...
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jutta. I think that's a good observation. One thing we could do would be to ask one breakout group to look at those two and clearly -- clearly drive a distinction between them, which is believe probably the clearest way to do that. And maybe we have a third working group that might focus on the digital governance and digital trade; another one that might focus on the artificial intelligence, Internet of Things bucket given some of the comments that were made earlier as well. And then I think the ensuring inclusion is probably a fourth one.
Would that be a way to proceed?
Do people want to split up into breakout groups and do that? do -- I mean, again, we always have the time pressure. We basically have about three hours of group working time left together, and this kind of conversation you cannot do over an email list, and we can't do it in two -- two-hour calls every other weeks either. So we need to find a way to make substantive enough progress that we can go away and do the work offline and virtually.
So looking for specific comments -- I'll come to Ben in a minute -- which is could we get four breakout groups along the lines that I've actually just said, and maybe Eleonora could quickly kind of color code in a different color the human rights respecting, policy-making as one group, AI and IoT as another group, and that would leave digital governance, digital trade as one and ensuring inclusion as a fourth one.
Ben, you have the floor.
>>BEN WALLIS: So in response to Jutta's comments, I think that the top grouping that's around -- seems around -- it's around content, and the second grouping is around Internet governance, policy-making generally, the kind of issues the high-level panel was driving at, and multidisciplinary approaches. So something needs to be done with the titles but I think there's a clear distinction.
And then, secondly, I fully support the idea of us working. I think we can break a little early for lunch and we can come back at 2:30 and work for an hour in groups. So I thank you for suggesting that process, and I'm happy to do that.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. And I do like your comment. So maybe what we do in the first bucket is make it clear that's a content focus. And what one -- where would you put to the second bucket?
>>BEN WALLIS: Multidisciplinary. It kind of captures the high-level panel. It captures multidisciplinary Internet governance, if you want three words, yeah. But it's about policy approaches generally rather than policy, a policy.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So policy. So policy-making or policy approaches, maybe, so it doesn't feel like it's so centric to those who make it.
Okay. And then we have digital governance and digital trade as a third bucket.
How do people feel about connecting the AI and the IoT bucket buckets or are those two separate buckets?
>>RAQUEL GATTO: Lynn, if I may.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Raquel.
>>RAQUEL GATTO: I would suggest -- I also support your approach to break earlier and come back and use our face-to-face time to get it done. I would suggest perhaps two breakout groups. I think the three ones are very connected, and perhaps we can move quickly into making the distinctions between jurisdiction, the content approach and the policy approaches.
And then the second one is -- well, digital transformation in general, and then AI, IoT. And there are distinctions in there, but I think within the group, those are the two big breaks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. I mean, that's a good point as well, because if we read -- the AI bucket says chances and challenges to data governance, and the IoT is the interconnection of everything, how to guarantee security. So you would leave that as two breakout groups, is what you said; right? And then we have ensuring inclusion with the SDG component. I don't think we need a breakout group on the HLPDC frontier issues now. I think we wait until we see the report, get our own community consultation going and figure that out later.
So that would mean -- one, two, three, four, five -- no, six. Six breakout groups. And I think, you know, we have this room here. We could come back and huddle. We could probably, you know, get the secretariat to flip over the place cards and ask these different groups to huddle at different parts of the room so you know where you're going. I mean, I would ask people to make sure that we do try and kind of staff all of them to some extent. And if we did come back and meet at 2:30, I mean, even earlier than that if people want a shorter lunch break, come back and maybe plan -- what? Like 3:30 to convene again as a...
And I would actually like to suggest that -- you know, there are other people in the room that aren't MAG members. They've been here all day several days. Personally, I always like err on the side of being inclusive. I would say if they want to participate in some of these working groups and bring their expertise and experience, we can, frankly, use the bodies and all the help we can get at this point, clearly recognizing that as we go forward it's obviously a MAG decision. But is there any objection to inviting those people that are here in the room to participate in the working groups?
No? Everybody is supportive of that?
Okay. And Helani is saying she's reachable on a WhatsApp call if people have data connectivity. So maybe, Helani, we'll just -- You just want to participate in the digital trade governance group. So we'll do what we can to facilitate that.
Let's -- Can we send this list out to the MAG so that those MAG members that are participating remotely have it as well, Eleonora?
And I don't know if people -- if you want to work within these documents in your groups, we can send you the Google docs or whatever actually works in terms of capturing -- capturing ideas. To the extent you could actually capture it in writing, that would certainly help our subsequent activities.
One last question, which is how do we actually want to do the group selection? Do we want to just find six corners in the room here and we'll ask those MAG members that are participating online if they want to participate? And to signal that and we'll find a way to get you in in WhatsApp or Skype or whatever would work. Do you want to just kind of everybody come back -- We can agree a time we all come back and see what kind of distribution we get around the room or do you want a more formal process right now to figure out who is going to go to what groups?
I'm suggesting we just set up six groups with place cards around them, and if people could -- everybody just do their best, even if it's not maybe your first group, if you see a group that's not represented well, go and participate.
So are people comfortable? It's about eight minutes to the hour.
What time would people like to kind of reconvene? 2:00? 2:30?
What time?
2:30? 2:00?
So let me just do a quick apologies to those that are online. Show of hands. If there's a strong preference online, please put it in the chat room here as well but who would like to come back at 2:00?
For those that are on, a small number. Like eight, nine maybe.
2:30?
Certainly more for 2:30. So let's come back at 2:30. A little bit of a break is probably a good idea anyway.
If everybody could come back at 2:30 in the room, we'll get the Webex and everything up, again, for those that want to participate.
Maybe if somebody in each one of the groups could keep the Webex open. At least there's an ease chat screen there or -- you know what? There's lots of tools. Everybody can sort themselves out with respect what's the right way to participate with anybody who wants to participate online within your working group.
Any other advice or --
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I was saying that one suggestion is we can make four Webex rooms and then we'll just put the links into this room once it's done, and then people can break out that way.
>> (Off microphone).
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Ah, well then we have to use this -- sorry. Then we have to use appropriate technology. We just have to -- I mean, because we're in small groups; right? So, yeah, just turn the PC. Turn the laptop when people are speaking.
>> People will have to use their smartphones or laptops with the Wi-Fi.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So let me just make sure we're all kind of clear what it is we're hoping to go away and do here.
We're going to have the six working groups. I think everybody has been sent or will be sent shortly the spreadsheet that's here. And sincere thanks to Eleonora for capturing it as well.
What we'd like to do is everybody spends an hour, so at 3:30 we come back to the big room. If you can have looked -- if you can come back with kind of -- the most important thing is sort of a paragraph saying what the main session would address. If you can do that concretely by, you know, getting a very specific policy question with, that would be great. If you need to take two paragraphs to actually get it kind of bounded for discussion, that would be good. But the real deliverable is what would this main session address? What would it hope to advance?
We need to then, you know, fairly quickly, but I don't think we need to do that today, get to a refined description, policy-level question, and a draft title. But we actually have probably a week or two to do that.
So is everybody clear on what we're asking everybody to do? Because typically you lose 15 minutes, a half hour every time you go back out and come back after lunch and start up again. It's pretty simple. Something which really defines what you think this main session would address, would help advance, that would contribute to the IGF discussions.
Susan.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Just logistically. Would it be possible for somebody to kind of identify the corners where each of the groups should meet? Maybe with a piece of paper or something?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yeah, on the table or something. But we will do that.
Thank you, everybody. Sincere appreciation for working through this. And I hope you have a good lunch. It is downstairs. And we'll see everybody back up here in an hour and a half. Thank you.
[ Lunch recess ]
AFTERNOON SESSION
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Make sure that anybody that's participating here in the meeting remotely actually can see the document. And I guess everybody is probably in the Webex room, so should be able to see the document. Is that a --
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. Online participants should be able to see the document.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. If that's not the case, if somebody can let us know.
Thank you, everybody, for coming back so promptly. I think what we want to do in this next phase is we'll ask the -- each one of the groups to take a few minutes and tell us about where they got to, what they're sort of thinking. The task, again, was to try to put together a paragraph or two which says specifically this is what the session would address, with a focus on being as kind of concrete as we can about the policy issue or policy question or what we would expect as some outputs from the session.
And at the end of the day today, we need to decide which ones we think are worthwhile pursuing, continuing to develop, and if there are some that we think are just not kind of substantive enough and cannot be made substantive enough with some further work in the next week or so, then I think we would set them to the side.
I don't think there's any need for us to try to get the six slots plus the HLPDC and frontier issue slots filled. If we say that one or two are really not ready or not appropriate, I think that's fine as well. We would simply have a few less main sessions, and Paul Rowney's mission would have been achieved (laughing), so I don't think that's kind of a forcing function either way.
And just quickly by way of -- I think the people that went away -- it was Susan and Maria, yesterday, that went away to document the topping and tailing discussion we had yesterday in the group. I think it was a really good discussion yesterday, and I saw quick -- took a quick review, but I think the document looks quite good. And I think we don't need to come back and spend time on that today. We have the ad hoc working group that we're going to send a charter and an email list and sign-up that we can take that work off online, but I do think it's important because I think it will help people understand how we're threading all these workshops and all these different sessions together.
So I think they did a great piece of work, and thank you very much for turning it around overnight, too.
>> (Off microphone)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Hmm?
>> (Off microphone).
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And Timea, too. That's right.
Let's just start with the top, the group 1. At some point before the end of the day today we need to decide whether or not it's complete enough and we can go forward or not, and we can do that after each one of the session reviews or we can go through them all and then come back. It's really as the group kind of feels.
So we can start with one and see what process feels best.
>>SYLVIA CADENA: Thank you, Lynn. Sylvia Cadena.
Well, the group was Danko, Paul, Christine, June, Raquel, Nebojsa, Jutta, Adama, Sylvia, Lucien, Arsene and Peter. And Anriette. Sorry.
And after one hour of discussions, we have a title. So the title proposed is Content Governance -- Content Governance, Rights, Responsibilities, Responses and Risks. And the idea is that we will be working on the subscription and the policy questions later on. We were not able to agree on the specific, all the text. We have the elements to come up with the text but not to propose it straight away, to present straight away.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Can you say anything about the key elements that you think you would be pulling in? And maybe a little bit about where you would or wouldn't touch some of the cybersecurity issues since that was one of the questions from earlier or points from earlier?
>>SYLVIA CADENA: Well, I guess, and members of the little group if you don't mind to jump in. If I sea something that I shouldn't, please go ahead.
The part that we discuss was trying to focus on one stream of content, more around what is extremis, violent, or harmful content but without specifically mentioning it on the title; otherwise, it was going to be too long. So that will come in the discussion. And it will be around the regular 30 different regulatory approaches, including core regulations, self-regulation, and any other mechanisms in terms of responses, and what are the responsibilities of those that implement them and design them. And what are the risks around human rights in that respect.
So it might be the case that cybersecurity is part or touched in that discussion, but it is definitely not the focus of the session. The session is -- the focus of the session was content governance. And then those elements around rights, responsibility, responses, and risks from a multistakeholder perspective and all of that.
So I don't know if Susan or Jutta or Paul or someone else wants to add something, but I don't want to say too much because we don't have an actual paragraph to agree with, so I don't want to take too much of your time.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That was very helpful, and Jutta does have her hand up but that was very helpful. Thank you, Sylvia, for jumping in.
>>JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Sylvia. I think you covered it very well. There was one thought that I would like to add to what you presented, and that was there is an ambivalence between the right to freedom of expression and the right that could be infringed by some types of content that were mentioned before, like extremist content and terrorist content. And we wanted to stress that with putting right into the title that we do see this ambivalence and would like to address it in both directions in the session.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jutta, that was another good point as well.
Could I ask separately, maybe just in the Google doc, everybody just put who worked on this particular document. You mentioned in the chat room, but maybe -- Everybody has editing rights to this document; right? So maybe at some point.
Yes.
>>ADAMA JALLOW: My name is Adama, MAG member, civil society organization.
So I'm part of the group 1, and then I was taking some of the notes. And I just wanted to add to what Sylvia has already mentioned, some of the things that we are going to be dealing with under the content, governance, human rights responses -- responsibilities and risk.
So some of the things that will be -- the issues that will relate to this will be extremism, violent content, and then also regulatory -- like regulatory approaches. And then also regulations that would guarantee content, freedom of expression, and prevent -- prevention of freedom of religion. Those are some of the issues that we've also mentioned would be added to the descriptions regarding this theme.
Thank you for the floor.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Adama.
I just want to be clear, I think all the names that are up there on the speaking queue were from before the lunch break; right? Because they have been there for a long time. So I wanted to make sure there is not somebody who is really looking for the floor just now.
>> Can I just ask a small favor? It would be really appreciated that people log into their Gmail accounts with their names or something that is recognizable. Having comments coming from anonymous unicorns and others is really strange because you can't follow where it's going. So if that's okay with those that have access to their Google accounts, that would be really great.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's important. And it's important for -- obviously for transparency, as well, of content.
Any other questions from MAG members for the working group?
Thank you, Sylvia, Jutta and Adama, everybody who jumped in with additional comments because I think it helped really kind of flesh out the discussion.
Group 2. Who is going to speak to Group 2? Ben?
>>BEN WALLIS: Hello. So I'm going to basically read the text out which you probably can't see on the screen because it's small. This is the paragraph and the title that myself, Maria, Ananda, Veni and Jennifer came up with over the last hour. And obviously I would invite them to come in if they want to add anything to this presentation.
We've proposed the title -- just slightly -- drawing on what I think you gave us when we came out of the morning session, expanding a little bit to call it A Multidisciplinary Framework for Policy-Making in the Digital Age. We're not suggesting this as a final title. We didn't want to spend too much time going over the words of the title because we wanted to manage to get a paragraph, too. So we provided a title and noted that it's a holding title for further refinement.
And here is the description. There are many different approaches to Internet governance, but as we heard from the U.N. Secretary-General IGF 2019, there are challenges to avoid working in silos and to create policy-making approaches that are truly multidisciplinary and involve a full range of perspectives and actors.
What should be the perspectives and which stakeholders and disciplines need to be considered? What ideas and examples can we look to to help policymakers? Indeed, beyond public policy, what lessons from the private policy policy-making, private sector policy-making can be used? Companies are looking how to take account of perspectives and in some cases include external stakeholders in their decision-making.
This main session will look at a range of recommendations and case studies from different cultures and regions which could potentially illustrate some best practices to create more multidisciplinary approaches to Internet governance policy-making.
We could see this as a relevant place to mention and include discussion of the high-level panel. It might be the only main session where this provides us an opportunity to do so, but we wanted to wait and see what the recommendations were before we try to weave that into the proposal. So that's left in square brackets there as a note. So, yes you might want to check whether anyone else from our group has a comment, but that's what we managed to come up with.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Veni.
>>VENI MARKOVSKI: Well, first of all, there is one grammar mistake there in the last line. It says, "but not we want," "but we want to wait," it should be. So whoever is editing this text should put -- you had should remove the "not" on the last line of the group notes, because it's confusing.
Yeah, I see someone is editing, hopefully.
And, secondly, I want to thank Ben for taking the lead on that because his British sense of writing notes with his American spell checker were doing miracles. So I think we try to -- we had a long discussion given the time that we had, but we had a long discussion on figuring out what exactly we want to do. And that's why we chose carefully the wording in terms of trying to bring together the -- to find out from different cultures and regions what's happening, because in some cases it's not necessarily that a whole region has unified policies, public policies on Internet governance, but there are differences within the different cultures in the same region.
So we hope that we'll be able to hear some folks who have examples of policy-making, whether this is a multistakeholder or whatever their legislation processes. It still will be interesting to see how the different cultures and different regions, how they develop their Internet public policies in the digital age.
So thanks again, Ben. I'm saying it second time so that he feels more uncomfortable now.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Veni. Any further comments from the working group members before we open it up to the MAG?
Just one quick comment from me is I would -- we probably still need a separate HLPDC frontier session. I mean, so far the indications from the Secretary-General's office is actually looking for a consultation sort of thing. So we need to see what that looks like. That's probably a main session just so it has the interpretation given what it is. But I do think this is a substantive set of topics by itself, and I would like to make sure we did these justice. And maybe we'll all achieve more if we actually had a kind of more focal consultation process for the HLPDC. So obviously reference it where we think in the topic, but I'm not sure I would try and mix an HLPDC consultation in with the topic.
What do the MAG members think or want to add? Maria.
>>MARIA PAZ CANALES: Just a reaction to what you just said. The idea of making this reference to the report of the HLPDC, it's only focusing in any aspect in the report that could cover something that is connected with this. It is not aiming to cover all the content that was possible to have some kind of link with the topics of the IGF. It's only for that part because there was a specific reference from the secretariat -- General-Secretary last year in the opening of the IGF to the processes.
And we think that in the report will be maybe a section covering this, and that part will be something that we could add in this proposal but not the other aspects, just to clarify that.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So that was my understanding from there, but really wanted to underline it as well.
Any other comments, reflections?
What I thought we would do is go through each one of them and come back, I think, of take a view and say how do we feel about these sort of six. We can come back and revisit them individually, if we need to.
If there are no more comments or questions on that one, we will go to group 3, which I think from memory is digital governance, digital trade.
Carlos.
>>CARLOS AFONSO: Yes. Group 3, we ended up with the title of "Free flow of data and ICT products in a multipolar world." And the description is: This is a crucial point in time where data flows in ICT products are subject to scrutiny and the international trade is subject to discussion. Countries all over the world have begun to regulate the free flow of data and free trade. This main session should shed light on the following questions: How can we ensure free flow of data and ICT products in a multipolar world? What is the role of international bodies like WTO, OECD, WIPO, UNCTAD and others? What are the applicable rules? Are there any conflicts of laws, extraterritorial effects of national actions and how to solve them? What are the roles of bilateral or plurilateral trade agreements and how to make sure the implementation of international rules is achieved.
That's basically what we propose.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Sorry. I was taking the moment to read through the description since it just popped up on the screen. Give everybody else a moment to do that as well and ask if there are any other comments, contributions, further details from other working group members?
I have to admit I'm not sure I would have thought that was the title and the focal point was based on the discussion in the room earlier. But if that's where the group is with respect to this particular title, that's fine. If we think we're leaving something else on the table from the earlier discussion, this would be the time to say so.
In particular, I'm sort of looking to Daniela as well since I think it was one of the first topics you put up yesterday, in fact.
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: If you ask if I'm fine, yes, I am fine because I was part of the group. Maybe I just add -- there was a discussion also about labor and human rights; and, of course, that touches as this is cross-cutting this topic. But we decided this is dealt in other groups mainly. And that's why we left that out, just maybe as an addition.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think it looks like a very interesting session as well.
I think I have Maria and then Jutta.
>>MARIA PAZ CANALES: Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor again.
I just want to point out precisely to the last point that Daniela was mentioning, the need to make a link here with human rights consideration. Increasingly trade negotiation and many of these things related with data touch in a more intensive way the way in which human rights can be exercised. And I think that not having any reference in the questions that are posed here is problematic from the perspective that we talked before that human rights should be something that should be added in every aspect of the topic. And, currently, it's something that is really very debated in each one of these fora.
So it should serve some place in the description and in the policy question, in my opinion. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Maria. Just catching up with the reading again as well.
I do think obviously everything we do in the room here, I think we need to be rights respecting. We need to ensure that's kind of front and center. I suspect it would come up as well in respect to a lot of the processes and particularly look at a lot of the organizations, a lot of them are not as open as we would expect them to be or the trade discussions and that sort of thing either. So I suspect some of those would probably come in in the discussion itself. It's a good point.
Jutta.
>>JUTTA CROLL: Yes, thank you for giving me the floor. I do think the description is very well thought through.
I got the same feeling like Maria that the human rights aspect could probably be addressed in one of the questions. And I would like to volunteer to help phrase probably a question that addresses this issue.
And for the possible title, I do think that the term "ICT products" sounds a little bit strange to me, a little bit like only tangible products, at least are also products that are kind of data only. So I just would like to see that maybe we can replace "ICT products" by something else. I don't know yet. We can think about that.
I'm not sure whether you had the intention to think only about tangible products. Both? Okay. It might be possible to phrase it slightly --
>>CARLOS AFONSO: "ICT resources" could be?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Let's just maybe leave that with the members for a moment to think about it and let's go to Helani who is in the queue and I think was part of your group as well, from the list there.
Helani, you have the floor.
>>HELANI GALPAYA: Thanks. Thanks, Jutta and Maria.
As one of the people in the group who brought up the human rights angle, I would suggest we have at least one question on human rights in the questions listed here.
And on the wording of digital products, perhaps there's something else that is rights facing. Could we look at (indiscernible) UNCTAD or to the definitions because there is actually a definition for ICT-related (indiscernible). There's a product and services dichotomy. (indiscernible)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Helani, I think some of what you said was unclear. Perhaps there's something else that -- and could we look at where there's action in the definition for ICT related -- maybe you can look at the transcript or come back in and type it in the room if there's something helpful missing.
In the meantime, let me go to Susan.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you, Chair -- I think this stands to become a very interesting session, and I think the discussion about the conflicts of laws and interoperability of different legal regimes would be part of the discussion.
My only suggestion would be for the possible title, "Free flow of data and ICT products," I think, "in a multipolar world." The word "multipolar" seems a little bit kind of reductionist. If we could consider replacing that with a digitally networked world, with a interconnected world because I think we're talking about the free flow of data and products across more than just poles.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Sorry. So we can change that right now, change the "multipolar."
Was there any movement on ICT products, just to capture the current state?
>>JUTTA CROLL: "ICT-related products and services," would that cover your -- not leaving out the "data," of course. Keeping the "data."
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: I was discussing this with Rudolf because, in fact, we had a little bit of discussion inside the group. We had first "goods" and then Rudolf made the point that "goods" was a little bit unspecific and then we came to "ICT products." And if we now have "services" again, maybe it's better to have "ICT products and services" because it's "goods and services" normally in the trade debate.
I'm at least -- I don't know. I'm looking to Carlos.
I would be fine for "Free flow of data and ICT goods and services in an interconnected world." For me that's fine.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I see heads nodding around the room.
Kenta, you want the floor?
>>KENTA MOCHIZUKI: Sorry I didn't use the queue. But I very support what Daniela said. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. I think that's being updated in the document here. So if I remember what it was, "It's free flow of data and ICT products and services in an interconnected world," something like that. So we'll get the document updated and move forward.
Any further comments, questions, reflections? Not seeing any -- Helani, are you back in the queue or is that an old hand?
>>HELANI GALPAYA: That's an old hand. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Helani. Thank you for hanging in there and participating remotely as well. It's not easy.
Let's leave that one and go on to the fourth group, if we can scroll up to group 4 collection.
Who is going to speak to that? Natasa.
>>NATASA GLAVOR: I will. Hello, everybody. Natasa Glover from Croatia.
We were group 4 dealing with AI and data governance and the members of our group are Heiki, Sorina, Sam, and Marinela. And we identified ethics and responsibility as keywords connected with this topic.
And according to that, we propose a title of the possible main session as "Ethical AI prerequisites, responsible data governance and technology ecosystems." That would be one version. And the other one would be "Responsible data governance and technology design as prerequisite for ethical AI."
Unfortunately, we didn't manage to prepare a paragraph or two, but we prepared some policy questions. A few of them are here.
What is ethical AI? What are parts of the technology ecosystem? We tried to identify some of them. But, of course, outputs of the main session would be that part of the ecosystem as our key speakers -- keynote speakers and audience, of course, would identify.
And then we would like to present best practices of data governance.
Then the next question is: What is the role of regulation with AI?
And a very important one for IGF perspectives: How can stakeholders work together to develop appropriate frameworks for responsible data governance?
So that would be all from my side if my colleagues had to add something, please.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Are there any other working group members that want to add?
Thank you, Natasa. I just see that there's only one question in the document. Is it that it just hasn't been fully populated? Because I think your comments went further than the one statement that's there.
>>TIMEA SUTO: I think the Excel sheet is larger, so Natasa's comments are further to the right. They don't show up here but they are actually in the document if you look at it on the computer.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. We'll find them. Pull them in.
That's under IoT. I thought they were more under AI.
>>NATASA GLOVER: You might look at column G. If that's the case, that's the duplicate of the additional name proposal, so I'll fix it. I'll remove that field.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And then next question is: Comments or reflections from MAG members on that particular grouping? Maria. Thank you, Maria, for jumping in here.
>>MARIA PAZ CANALES: Thanks, again, for giving me the floor. I'm suspecting at this point that I'm going to reiterate the same comment in all the sessions. You can have an idea of what I'm going to say.
Again, here's a place in which I would like to see the interconnection with human right international standard.
I understand that artificial intelligence pose very complicated questions from the ethical perspective, but those are not totally new for the framework of international human rights. So even if there is a mention later about the role of regulation, that I like very much because it doesn't stop the idea only with ethics but go to the question of regulation, I would like to see some way the question related with which kind of ethic we are looking for, for AI. Also to be connected with the international standard that are existing and are relevant to answer some of those questions. So thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Maria.
Any other comments or observations?
Any reactions from any other working group members to Maria's comments? Maybe just take it on board for further discussions.
Okay. We have two, we have Xiaofeng and Ben.
>>XIAOFENG TAO: Yes. For Internet of Things, security is very important, but at the same time, privacy also very important. So I don't know whether we can change the name, how to guarantee security and privacy. I think privacy may be more important than security for Internet of Things because many, many persons with several, maybe more than ten, sensors in the near future.
Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.
Ben.
>>BEN WALLIS: Just to clarify that we are talking about AI, and maybe Xiaofeng's comments were related to following topic, so we should definitely come back to those when we get to that one, that group.
I think that human rights could be considered across the main sessions without necessarily having the name in the title, but a way to do it here could be if we take the first of the two titles, it could be applying human rights and ethics to AI, colon, responsible data governance and technology ecosystems. And if that helped, I think Helani wanted to make sure there was one main session that talked about human rights. I think they are all about human rights but I think if there was one main session that had "human rights" in the title that might provide some comfort. So that's one suggestion.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think for me the test is when people leave these sessions and leave the IGF they feel that human rights and rights respecting was a solid theme across what was being discussed, which honestly to me is paying attention to make sure it's embedded in the policy questions and the topics that we're trying to accomplish than, per se, in the title, which I think is really what Maria is pointing at. So I think we're in agreement there.
Raquel, you had the floor? No? Raquel doesn't have the floor. Raquel doesn't want the floor.
So any -- So that was AI. Any further comments or reflections? There are further questions and they are over in column G as Natasa said. So they will be pulled over and all put under there in that one section so we can see them more clearly.
The next one is group 5, Internet of Things. And Xiaofeng, I think your question was to the IoT. So you can bring it back in afterwards, but who wants to speak to group 5?
IoT.
Thank you, Melinda.
>>MELINDA CLEM: Melinda Clem speaking for group 5. I want to thank you, Lynn, and the MAG for inviting me to participate in this session. I appreciate it.
For this session we talked about the reality that the Internet of Things doesn't live at one layer of the Internet, and that that is a complicating factor with security. So we thought it would be a good idea to look at each distinct layer and have a stakeholder that can speak both to the security challenges for their discrete layer as well as what happens to security as the service progresses between the layers.
We think that a case study approach would be good here, and as one example, it would be best to have a couple that looked at different sectors, but one example was what happened with the DDOS attack with Dyn about two years ago when devices were turned and used for other purposes.
Some of the specific security challenges that we wanted to be covered here were -- a lot of them had to do with how you update and what are the protocols for updating, whose responsibility that is. Is it a manufacturer? Is it a service provider? Is it a consumer? If it's the consumer, how is that consumer educated?
And then obviously something -- another important aspect was data and how is data management offered. Is the user allowed to control the collection, broadcast, and storage of information?
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Melinda.
Any other working group members that want to comment or add to that?
Was there anybody in the group who was familiar with the work on the dynamic coalition on the Internet of Things or the Best Practice Forum which is AI, Internet of Things and big data? Because if not, it would be worth kind of running the next round of this discussion through those two groups and fully incorporate them.
Any other comments from MAG members or...
Xiaofeng, do you want to come back to your question? And then Ben?
>>XIAOFENG TAO: Yes. Actually, IoT is my research area, so in this area, I know this one very much.
As I said, privacy is more than -- maybe the threat of privacy is more than security, because as I said, in the near future, within ten years, each person maybe with ten -- more than ten sensors. So privacy more important.
So I hope in this theme we change the name "how to guarantee security and privacy." The theme. The theme important.
Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Xiaofeng. Thank you. I'm just reading the comments there.
I think Raquel is in the queue, and then we'll come to Ben.
Raquel.
>>RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you very much, Lynn. Now it's my hand.
Just to comment on -- to make a suggestion in terms of the approaches and the case studies, that the group might be looking into the policy-making approaches at the domestic level. And Paul was with me in the other group, so I don't want him to be surprised but with Canada, really the multistakeholder process is an effort within one year to arrive at recommendations on IoT security. They looked into three major aspects of network resiliency, the consumer protection aspects within the trust mark, and labels and the consumer education.
So I think it's a valuable experience to bring along, and perhaps there are others that we can make inputs.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Raquel. I would think it's important to bring some of the other pieces of work, as we said earlier, particularly through some of the BPFs and DCs.
Ben, you have the floor.
>>BEN WALLIS: Thank you.
So my -- my suggestion or observation here is that if we wanted to have any of the main sessions that want to look at the Paris call in any way, this might seem to be the most obvious place. Is there anything in the Paris call which provides guidance in how you can secure the Internet of everything? I don't even -- I couldn't tell you whether the answers are in the Paris call or whether it's relevant. I just observe that this seems to be the most relevant place if we want to have any main sessions that look at the Paris call. Of course, I've already said we'll have the BPF which will be considering the Paris call amongst its work this year.
And I know it wasn't quite closed whether group 1 might end up including the Paris call, but I don't think, as I said before, the Paris call is not about content. It's about securing the networks. And it looks to me like group 1 is going down the road of content, which seems perfectly fine to me.
So just a suggestion to take on board for that group.
Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Ben.
When we finish -- we'll go through 6 in a few moments. Go through the queue, go through 6, and then we might just want to come back up and see all six of the possible titles there and say is there anything that we think is missing from the earlier conversations we had yesterday and today. I mean, Ben kind of just alluded a little bit to the security and cybersecurity. Is that something that people thought would have been addressed differently in a main session? Are we happy with what's there? And just an overall view as well.
Going to the queue, we have Maria.
>>MARIA PAZ CANALES: Thank you, Chair, again.
My question go to the point that this is already a session from the proposal that was identified by the group, the working group that I was taking part, the security and safety group, but it has very good policy questions that may overlap a lot with what I'm reading here.
So my suggestion will be like to (indiscernible) refine what we want to achieve with this main session, look into how it's overlapping with what already we have selected as one of the work stream session in the program.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Maria. I think that's probably a step we need to do with all of these as the next step, is go back and look at the workshops that have been approved in the streams and just make sure we're kind of implementing or building on them.
Sylvia.
>>SYLVIA CADENA: Sylvia Cadena, Internet technical community.
To the risk of being repetitive and annoying to several people here, I really hope that people can add the comments to the document with their names. There is someone adding comments to the group 1 that apparently was not a member of the working group and is adding things about Internet addiction that were not discussed in the group. If we are working on a whole document to capture the discussions on the working group, other things that were not part of the working group and have not been discussed should not be added there as if it was part of the working group.
So I guess if we are agreeing on a way of doing things, we should follow it. So please watch your groups as well. There is other comments coming there, nothing to do with what you are saying.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sylvia. I think that's an important point. It's an important point not only for kind of transparency but also for follow-up for the good points.
Melinda, you have the floor.
>>MELINDA CLEM: Thank you. I just wanted to make an observation. It sounds as though, over the last day, that there's a lot of repetition, specifically in this IoT area, both with dynamic coalitions and Best Practice Forums. Maybe the complication here was the gathering of both IoT and cybersecurity. If that's the case, it could be -- you know, it could be more beneficial to pull the IoT aspect out of it and just look at the cybersecurity dimension.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Or vice versa.
No, I think the -- I'm just very aware that there is a Best Practice Forum, of course, in that area. And the same comment would have gone for a lot of the other ones. There's a dynamic coalition on trade, for instance, and we've got other ones that are focusing on data and focusing on human rights. So there are a lot of DCs that I think we all need to take into account and look at as we progress these. And then of course we do have the BPF work. And we need to find a process to actually engage the NRIs as well so the NRIs know what we're doing in terms of developing here and that they actually have the opportunity to kind of augment and integrate whatever messages are key. And that's something we made a point of really trying to facilitate last year and I think we want to facilitate it again this year. And I know that they all want to ensure that their sessions are complementary to the rest of the sessions in the annual meeting program and not redundant. So the more information we can give them and the earlier, the stronger the entire neighborhood will be. The whole program will be.
So, yeah, let's just keep that open. They're all open for a moment, but I think that was one of the ones that maybe it's either maybe one or the other, depending on where the room wants to go. But thank you for all the very good work from this small group, I think it was.
>>MELINDA CLEM: Thank you. I really appreciate it. I'm going to have to leave soon, so thank you, and I'll see you soon.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So it's not offense at the comments. It's planes.
Working Group 6. Who wants to speak to 6? And if we could move up to the last working group.
Oh, sorry. Chenai. Okay. Thank you, Chenai. You have the floor.
>>CHENAI CHAIR: Thank you very much, Chair. I was in the Working Group 6, and after very much exciting discussion, we came up with the proposed session title which is Achieving the SDGs in the Digital Age. So the proposed session will be focusing on SDGs by addressing issues of achieving digital transformation, addressing the issue of the unconnected, and discussing policy gaps and providing policy guidelines.
The main session, of course, will be a high-level discussion with the high-level participants. We'll be taking advantage of those who have been invited by the German government, by the German parliament, and we will also have selected participants to respond to the issues that have been raised in terms of achieving the SDGs.
The discussants will be people who will be bringing in -- or stakeholder group representatives who will be bringing in their linked experiences, such as youths, people with disabilities, as well as people representing the gender perspective.
The session aims to actually come out with action points for the high-level panelists that they'll be working on in their specific regions. To make it interactive, we will also propose -- the proposed discussants will be responding to what the high-level participants would have stated so that sort of in a way of holding them accountable and also sharing their own experiences towards achieving SDGs.
We actually, prior to the session, hope to draw questions from the different stakeholder groups that may be posed to the high-level panelists by the moderator that will be selected, and we really hope to get a really good moderator for the session.
I invite my other colleagues on the group to comment on this. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chenai.
Any other comments from the working group members?
Paul.
>>PAUL ROWNEY: Thank you, Lynn. Just to add to what Chenai covered, and she covered it very well. Our thoughts around the session was really trying to highlight that without digital inclusion, if we don't achieve digital inclusion, then we're not going to achieve the SDGs. So they're interlinked. And there's a hope that we will have some government participation, and we want them to go home with a message. So even if this is the only workshop they go to, they realize the importance of digital inclusion and that they have to do something. And this doesn't apply everywhere, but where I come from, the Global South, it's very pertinent that our governments start to look at digital inclusion and actually achieving it rather than just talking about it, because it does impact the SDGs.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Paul.
Maybe could you or somebody else say a little about the title, then? Because if I remember correctly, it was almost as though the title were backwards. SDGs first, whereas what you just reflected was digital inclusion is critical to the development of the SDGs, which would, I think, maybe echo some of the points Deniz made earlier around the purpose of this forum versus all the SDG activities been the United Nations and of course with the SDI forum and WSIS forum and that sort of thing.
So I don't know if I remember the title correctly or not.
>>PAUL ROWNEY: The title that we've parked, and as I say, it's not cast in stone, is achieving the SDGs in the digital age. And we did talk about having digital inclusion or digital transformation in the title, but we thought it would be better not to have that there. And that was a discussion that we had, but it's not cast in stone. But right now it's achieving the SDGs in the digital age, which sort of now clashes with Ben's title, because now we have two workshops with digital age.
Something for thought.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Any other comments or -- I mean, Deniz, any reflections as well? Anyone on the -- you know, the pitch that was here?
>>DENIZ SUSAR: I joined the discussion in the group, so I think that was a good discussion, and this was the outcome.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Miguel.
>>MIGUEL CANDIA: Thank you. Thank you, Lynn, for giving me the floor. Miguel Candia for the record. First want to thank everybody in the group because it was a very fruitful and very nutritive discussion to get to this product, I would say.
And wanted to just add to what Paul just explained to us, that I think the title has a content and an idea that is very well-intended in the sense that what we are trying to focus is that in achieving the SDGs, Internet governance is a place of a fundamental role because good Internet governance policies will accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. And the idea of the SDGs is inclusive, leaving no one behind, those further behind first, and so on and so forth.
So we are actually giving an input to the main product basically of the U.N. system by now that is guiding all efforts in every country. So that's basically the idea behind the phrasing. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.
I think those are all still old hands in the queue there, right? Raquel.
>>RAQUEL GATTO: Just a comment, also a suggestion to include the CENB work into this main session, not just start from the zero but building on the four years of the past intersessional work in the IGF. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think there's still a slight disconnect for me personally with that title because I don't see this room as responsible for achieving SDGs. We're responsible for doing a lot to facilitate activities, policy making, the ICT space to achieve -- to support them. It's not something -- when I saw it and I saw it reversed, it just felt kind of like the reverse of what the earlier discussion in the room was. But I think with all of these, we have to continue kind of fleshing them out and continue to revisit the descriptions and the titles.
I think at this point, I want to do two things. Daniela actually needs to leave at 5:00. So I want to make sure we give her some time at the end for some comments.
I want to see if between now and ten minutes to 5:00 we can figure out what the next step is in this. We have these six main session proposals, and we had the seventh one which is some sort of HLPDC or frontier issues kind of session.
How do people feel about them? Is it a reasonable set? Is something missing? Is something overdone? Are they areas we feel with the start we have here today that we could go away and build on in the next week or two?
Ultimately this turns into an exercise where that people that are involved in the working group need to take responsibility for the full session. Just like every other workshop organizer and all the workshop proposals you revisited, it's taking responsibility for the session, the speakers, the panelists, the moderators, the theme, the context, the orientation, the reporting, rapporteurs. So that's the work we want to -- we need to advance this work enough so that other work can continue frankly over July and August.
By the third week of June was the secretariat's desire we had working titles -- I mean, the titles can always change slightly later -- but working titles we would put in the program and a very brief program description as well so when they put the full program up, this is kind of equally populated.
I don't know how we want to go back -- by the way, some of the notes here don't all show up. So we just need to make sure that's fixed for, like, 6. And one of the other ones it was over in another column. Just make sure it's there so we can all look in the same place for them.
Is there a way, Eleonora, to collapse any of these so we see the six possible titles in one? I'm not sure who's driving this screen at the moment.
So then the question is: How does the room feel about these six main sessions? Are they covering? Not covering? Gaps? Still too many?
I'm sure there's lots of questions on the content, which is, you know, have we -- people would not have had time to go back and look in any depth at the workshop proposals and the policy questions that are there. We always have a lot of knowledge in the room and in the working groups because of the work we just finished with that process. I still think a more kind of robust check is appropriate. Plus, there's the DCs, the BPFs, and the NRIs that we all want to engage with as well.
Paul Rowney, you have the floor.
>>PAUL ROWNEY: I just wanted to comment that it's probably a bit early to pass too much judgment. I think if we're determined that we're going to have all of these main sessions, we just need to have a set of guidelines that we all understand that we build the main sessions around.
And I think we all understand those, but I think it should be documented in any case because we don't want to replicate workshops. And some of what we see there is replicating some workshops.
So maybe if the working groups that have now been formed have some time over the next couple of weeks, maybe before the next call, to form a better proposal that can be presented and then forward it before the call and then discuss it at the next call.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Paul.
Let me ask those -- there are a couple of people in the room that are very close to the workshop guidelines -- the main session guidelines that were developed in past years. And you know who you are.
Do you think that that process as documented is appropriate? I know Sylvia is actually saying she hopes we continue to use that.
Do we still think that's a reasonable document? Does it need to be updated for anything? Because the next step would be, of course, to ask the working groups to go away and begin populating those documents, which would give us -- presumably they have all the information we need to continue to evaluate and improve on these. That would also give us consistency across the presentations, which makes it a lot easier to go through them.
Do we think that document is okay as the next step? Is it appropriate to ask? And we need to come back to kind of working groups and populating them.
But is it appropriate as the next step to ask the groups to go away, use those main session guideline documents to take the next turn on this?
Susan.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you, Lynn. I think I just -- I don't have it in front of me, so I might need to dust it off and take a look. But I think it will serve as a solid foundation. So if you could just give us some time. But I think that would be a good way to move forward.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes, Mary Rose, you have the floor.
>>MARY ROSE OFIANGA: Thank you, Chair. Rose from the private sector.
Just want to comment that this comment on how can we ensure -- like, under the group notes, "how can we ensure free flow of data and ICT products" is not our notes? It was, like, we arranged earlier when the rows and columns were merged. So it can be confusing if we include those notes under our group 6. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. So we need to clean up the current spreadsheet and get it consistent. And I think maybe Eleonora can help do that as long as the working groups have actually put the right content in.
So through the discussion here in the room, if you want to update your content, just make sure it's updated and that Eleonora is aware of it. And then she can make sure it's sent out to the MAG appropriately.
Timea, you have the floor.
>>TIMEA SUTO: Thank you, Chair. And thank you to all the groups who have worked on this. I think it's a pretty good roster. So thanks, everyone, for the quick and good work.
Just one point I wanted to make. Although I was late to the group 6, I was also part of it. I don't see my name. So if there's going to be mailing lists or communication for the group, I just want to make sure that I'm part of that because I think it's a really good group. So it would be great to work more together.
And another question I had is how are we working with the other main sessions proposed by the other constituencies? Are they going to be asked to see if they want to take part in these? Or will they have that option? Or are we considering them stand-alones? I'm not sure if the themes have already been selected for them or not. Just a question of how are we doing that. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No, thank you, Timea. I did try to cover that a few minutes ago. We will go through that. It's fine, just to make sure we're not forgetting about any them. It's not an afterthought either.
Just one quick comment, checking the chatroom. There's quite a number of good comments in the chatroom from Helani and Anriette as I was scrolling through quickly. Let's just make sure we pick those up and that the working group is aware of them as they go forward.
I'm sort of forgetting who was in which one of the working groups. So they may even have been from those working groups.
So where I think we've got now is we've got this document in front of us which has some kind of working titles or draft titles.
We have some kind of description and some policy questions. I think we need a specific -- either we say we're using -- and maybe, Sylvia, I don't know. We say we're using the current main session -- we're using last year's main session guidelines document or we give people two days to look at it and turn around and spin it. That's one question. If you have one view on it, I would like that. I would like Susan to give the answer.
I'm asking Sylvia what she thinks about last year's main session guidelines document so we can figure out how quickly we can turn that around and get it out so everybody can work with it.
>>SYLVIA CADENA: The main session guidelines were fairly simple. They had a good flow with the reporting mechanisms after for the online gallery for the reporting and the main messages and all of that. That is already in the system.
The guidelines do not go into what is the content, just what feels what we are collecting. I really don't think we need to reinvent a whole new template for it. It's fairly basic.
And it will not be scored or reviewed in that sense so I don't think that is necessary.
What might be useful will be to send that template to the MAG list with the agreement in this room about the different approaches, for example, to focus on the policy questions before jumping into speakers, for example. I don't know. Something a little bit more practical in terms of process.
And the comment that you made about if we sign on to do these, we are responsible to actually bring the session to the -- to a good report, safe and secure and then deliver it which is the very difficult part.
So there are -- the document is one page or a couple of pages for guidelines that were from previous years and was reviewed. And then the template is already in the system.
So if we can use that, that will simplify the work for the secretariat and also, you know -- I don't think we need to reinvent it, but open to your views.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sylvia.
Susan, do you have a quick view?
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Nobody's suggesting we reinvent it. I just want to take a look at the document, make sure that -- you know, there are just minor changes that might need to be made, but the substance of it should remain fit for purpose. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And the one thing I would like to make sure is in the document is a really substantive-enough focus on policy questions or being really clear as well on what it is we want the session to achieve or to accomplish. I know we spent a lot of time in the workshop proposals this year making that even more clear. So if we can just make sure that's reflected.
Is it just Susan or is there anybody else that wants to work with Susan quickly on turning that document around so everybody has it, like, no later than the weekend? Paul Rowney said he would. Okay.
So Paul and Susan, if you could just take -- and Sylvia and Raquel.
If we could just get that out -- and Natasa.
I'm sure it's very, very close. I think taking a good look at it would be very helpful. Whatever you all think as a working group, I think if you just put it out directly to the MAG, we don't need another spin through the MAG for a review.
Just quickly, because I want to get to Daniela, I think what we're saying for the next steps is we have these six draft main sessions with draft titles and draft notes. We've said for virtually all of them, we need to go away and look at the workshop proposals that were accepted, maybe even some of those that weren't accepted if there were critical policy questions that we think should be pulled in.
We want to look through the DCs. I don't mean we just kind of look through the DCs. I think we ought to get a process together. Maybe the secretariat can help us with this. So the DCs are aware of what we're doing in all these sessions and they are invited to come in and participate and review and contribute where possible as well so that there's a two-way look at each other's sets of work, if you will, to make sure we're pulling those pieces together appropriately.
It's the same thing for the BPFs. And we need a process for the NRIs as well so the NRIs have full visibility into what we're doing here. And, likewise, we're working with them on their sessions as well.
Again, I know everybody, absolutely everybody, wants to make sure this is a really good, solid, complementary, value-adding process that builds on all the previous work. Nobody is looking to do something that's redundant. So I think if we can build those processes to ensure we're doing that, the whole program would be a lot stronger. That's going to require the secretariat, I think, to step up and help drive those processes between what's here in the MAG and what's in each one of those intersessional activities and what's in the NRI processes as well. But I know that's what you all do all the time anyway, so that shouldn't be an issue.
We have no future calls scheduled, I think. I'm sort of thinking we might be well off having a call towards the second part of next week because the week after that is EuroDIG which takes a number of people out. Plus, we start to get awfully late to the deadline that the secretariat is giving us. I will ask Chengetai to look at that and suggest some times for a follow-up meeting. But I would suggest that probably the only agenda item on it is the review and preparation of this main session set of activities.
And, again, I just want to remind everything the timetable we're working towards is the secretariat has said by the end of the third week of June they would like a working title -- again, there can be some changes downstream -- and a paragraph or so to put in the schedule when that moves forward.
We do need specific working groups, and we need to have co-facilitators identified for each one of these main session working groups as well so that the secretariat knows who to ping and to follow up with at key points of the process.
My only -- I'm going to put this question out there, and then I want to turn to Daniela so she has got plenty of time. We need to figure out how we establish the working groups. Do we go forward with the working groups as they kind of evolved here? Or were people just stepping into groups because these were the groups and they were in the room and some were underrepresented? We need to think through what that process looks like a little bit. I don't think we need to overprocess it. But I will come back to that in a moment.
Because the last item we want to do today is maybe just quickly -- quickly go through kind of topping, tailing the ad hoc reporting process because I think that's what ties this whole program together.
And we'll do that in the last hour. And actually we've still got a few other little hanging things. But if we don't get to them, we can get to them on the list.
I want to thank Daniela before she leaves, again, for Germany's fantastic hosting of this meeting here and, of course, all the just superb support we're getting for the IGF process. I mean, it's just -- it's really exciting. Feels a little bit like a breath of fresh air to have had the time to do this because of the timely appointment of the MAG, to have the fantastic support, to have the early announcement of the host. It's really just, I think, enabled us -- and I think we can see in the process here, really enabled us to step up the game a little bit.
So I'm just very appreciative, and I want to thank you and thank you for all the time you've spent here as well. I know it's an incredibly busy week given other events in the world.
So thank you. And the floor is yours, Daniela.
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thank you so much, Lynn. In fact, it's a pleasure working with all of you, so I really appreciate that. I appreciate that you have been coming to Berlin, and I really hope that you enjoyed it as well.
Maybe just very few words, Lynn, but summing up what I take away from the meeting.
I think we really made progress on the program. I think it's a really well-structured program, coming to -- I mean, thinking about newcomers. We talked about addressing new groups, integrating others who haven't been to the IGF. I think it's important that we made that effort to make it easier for them, I think, to get an overview what the IGF is and what kind of discussions are going on.
I think it was a very good idea to have these topping and tailing sessions. I take away that, for the topping sessions, there shall be sort of an introduction of the working stream that will come. And we saw that -- the interesting flows through the themes yesterdays. I think that's also important. And then for the tailing sessions or the wrapping-up sessions, it will be important, in my view, that we have a good -- yeah, that we have rapporteurs that are really going with the workstreams through the days and that in the end they will really report what we have done during the week, what are the take-aways. Not in the sense that there must be consensus all the time but just summing up what has been discussed, and maybe there was consensus and where there are different views and what has been discussed.
And then as we have the final wrapping-up session, it is clear that all the three work streams will come together, making sure that of course they are all interlinked, and then, in the end, I'm sure we will show that there are cross-cutting issues.
And concerning the main sessions, I also think that we really made good progress today. I have the feeling that this is a well-balanced program of the I think it is really important that we will have a slot, important slot for the discussion of the high-level panel at the beginning, and it's on sort of a frontier issue. I think that's a good idea. And then we have a good mixture from today. Also cross-cutting issues that are maybe filling, also, gaps because we shouldn't have redundancies in the program, that's for sure, but I think the main sessions we have discussed today are really adding something to the program, and I think that's important.
So in my view, this will be very interesting IGF. I'm really looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to seeing all again, then, in November at the Estrel. Unfortunately, not in this building because this is not big enough. As we expect at least 3,000 people there, we have to go a little bit -- it's not outside of Berlin. You know, Berlin is a very big city, so it's still inside of Berlin. It's more to the border of Berlin. And, yeah, I'm looking forward to that.
I thank you all for the very constructive work, and see you soon, then. Bye-bye.
[ Applause ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you very much, Daniela, and it just gives people an opportunity to see a little bit more of beautiful Berlin.
This is really funny. If you fly into D.C. and you get on those little people-mover buses, there's a voice comes on and says -- it makes it a benefit: I hope you appreciate that you're being protected from the elements while you're being moved from one part of this airport to another fantastic point of the airport and allowed you to see sunlight after your journey. And it's 200 people jammed into a small metal tube as you drive across the tarmac. But it's not actually that far out, and as we have been told, it's great transportation. So I don't think we should overfocus on that.
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Yeah. That should be easy because public transportation in Berlin, usually -- maybe except for some thunderstorms like yesterday, but usually is very good in Berlin. So that shouldn't be any problem.
And everyone who is coming will get a free ticket for public transportation for the whole week.
[ Applause ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you very much. And have a great weekend!
>>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Lovely weather.
So what -- Susan had just sent the topping and tailing document that she and Natasa and Maria and Timea had gone away to pull together on the basis of the discussion the MAG had yesterday. And I think, in my quick kind of review, they did a good job.
I'd like to, if they don't mind, walk through it quickly because I think it helps to kind of cement this whole process and what we're doing in place a little bit.
So I've asked Eleonora, I think, if she can get it prepared, which she may not have seen yet in the Webex chat room, for display. But you do all have it in your mail as well.
So, Susan, maybe you could just, in terms of time, you can -- sorry, Susan, Timea, Maria or Natasa, just quickly do an introduction and maybe just talk about what you're proposing. And again, I think you did a good job capturing the discussion in the room yesterday for the topping session. And then we'll take some comments on that. We can come to the tailing after.
Thank you.
>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Yes. Thank you, Chair.
So I just sent a link to the Google doc, so I don't know if we're able to put it on the screen, but in any event, I'm very happy to just describe it here.
So the purpose of the topping session would be to set the scene for the week on each particular theme. So by providing IGF attendees with an orientation of the week's planned activity in relation to that theme. Specifically, the session would cover the theme's narrative, outline several subthemes or areas that are within that -- within that theme, and perhaps there could be a discussion of some policy questions, but the idea is not to set that policy question in advance, but just to more so look at the subthemes, and to give attendees something to think about as they go throughout the week, as they sit through this theme.
There was -- I've also included in the document a suggestion for kind of an energizing speaker to speak to the themes, to set the scene.
And then finally, I think it would be useful to create a space for workshop previews where workshop organizers can choose to -- and not all workshop organizers might be able to attend but if workshop organizers or participants want to choose to preview their workshop under specific subthemes -- so if you had -- for example, in digital inclusion, we have access and infrastructure as subtheme, and we have a youth inclusion subtheme, we have jobs as a subtheme. So if workshop organizers under each of those subthemes wanted to give a preview of their workshop, just very brief, maybe even a minute long, then there could be discussion or questions asked on that. And then we would wrap up with a conclusion by one of the MAG members who is involved in that working group.
So the structures overall, it's meant to be able to get people kind of primed and ready and interested and excited about the program for that specific theme over the course of the week. And so I will leave it to Maria or Timea to address the tailing session. And just we might want to consider giving these sessions more generic names, because as I understand it, topping and tailing relates to washing babies.
[ Laughter ]
So -- But also vegetables. It depends where you are in the world. So...
Okay.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Are there any further comments on this front end of the process? We do, obviously, need to find a better name for the....
>> (Off microphone).
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Any further -- let me just see if there are any further comments from the four folks who worked on the document, and then see if the MAG members have any kind of comments on it.
But we'll keep it open -- we'll keep it open for comments for a few more days, but just to give people a sense of the flow we're trying to work within here in the schedule.
I guess the only thing that sort of came into my mind when I was looking at this is maybe rather than asking the workshop organizers to preview their workshops, maybe it's a preview of what's happening in those subthemes or something, which is still a little more detail but not, you know, a long parade, because it would still be 20-odd people if they all did, and I think it's hard to do anything substantive in that. But that would also, I think, make it clear that we're trying to look at these pieces in the flow. So...
Mary Rose, you have the floor.
I'm using the queue because I can't often see whose hand it is down there.
>>MARY ROSE OFIANGA: Thank you, floor, for giving me the floor. I would like to commend Susan, Timea and Maria for pulling the topping and tailing sessions together. I really like the flow and the concept of it. I'm just wondering if we can, at least at the end of the topping session, there's like a take-away for the participants, and I was thinking about if we are doing, like, a pre-event survey, are we already doing that? And maybe that's the about he is time for us to give that survey to them.
I know -- I understand that we should go digital, but based on my experience, if we go digital on survey, only less than 3% people will respond to the survey, especially if they are back at their work.
So if we can hand them -- this is crazy -- a printed survey form that we can distribute to them, and they will give us back during the tailing session in exchange for something, like free stuff. Who else doesn't like free stuff; right?
So this is just like a suggestion. If you can have a take-away for them. And I'm also wondering if we have, like, a mobile app for the program where people can create their schedule, and the topping session will give them the idea on what's the flow of the sessions that they want to attend, and that's, I think, the best time to introduce them the mobile app and how they can schedule the sessions that they want to go on the next three days. Yeah, I hope we have a mobile app for the program.
And please allow me to mention also my suggestion on the reporting session, because I think we are on the flow of, you know, concretizing the flow of our program.
On the reporting session, I know that there was a template for the synthesis by the rapporteurs, and I want to share our -- my experience during the Internet Freedom Forum that we have a ether pad for the documenter to fill in the template, and it's easier to synthesize afterward. So all the information on the ether pad will go through like a consolidated form by the -- maybe whoever is the assigned person to consolidate that, then it's easier to synthesize for the tailing session.
I can share the link of the sample ether pad that we used in the IFF, and we can just incorporate the template that we have already, that you have been using for the past IGF.
Those are just my suggestions, Madam Chair.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much for your suggestions. We'll see how we can implement all of them. We'll discuss it with the group and with the host country.
For the mobile app, there will be one, and it's going to be based on the Sched. I don't know if any of you are familiar with it except for Timea and Sylvia, but yes.
>> (Off microphone).
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, sched, Yeah.
>> Depending how you're pronouncing it "shedule" or "skedule."
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, exactly. And it will be available via the Apple Store and Google Play as well.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai.
Are there any more questions on the front end of these workshop tracks?
Then could I ask somebody to walk through the back end of the tracks? The tailing session? Timea?
>>TIMEA SUTO: Thank you. I see people already are editing the documents. I like the proposal for wrap-up session, just thinking about it. So -- But for lack of a better word. So if I'm going to refer to the tailing session.
So what we talked about with Maria and Susan for this is to prepare already, through the tailing session, a way of reporting out from the tracks. So we thought about how to best do that. It's quite a consistent description here, so I'll try to be brief, but the whole aim for the end session would be to distill the conversations from the three tracks, and also to include not just the workshops but to reach out to all the other sessions that happen through the IGF that have a link to the certain track. So that would include the BPFs that have relevance to either of the three, the NRI session, the dynamic coalition session, the main session. So any of the other open forums as well. So those who feel they have been part of a certain track, to be able to also report back from there.
And with this we hope to provide a holistic sort of 360 view on the topics discussed and capture those without creating a situation where we negotiate a solution or a particular message, but, rather, give a concise summary of what was raised throughout the week.
So we would ask session organizers that in preparation for the end session to already think about they're reporting out. And we really liked last year's approach of having a short and a long summary for each session. We would ask that the short summaries be sent to the secretariat and shared with the organizers of the end sessions as soon as possible after a workshop has ended. So hopefully by the end of the day or before the session. And the short summaries, in our view, should include what were the policy questions that were discussed in that session, the different aspects of the policy issue that came out during the session, including social, economic, technical, legal, governance aspects. The most compelling elements that came out from those sessions, and that would mean also case example, good practices, questions and challenges, any new solutions or issues that the workshop -- or the session brought up.
And then also to capture some of the proposed actions or next steps that the session participants were talking about or promised to take.
And, therefore, we would hope that each session organizer allows a couple of minutes at the end of the session to -- where the rapporteurs and the moderators would work together to distill some of these ideas out that could be then included into a short -- two or three paragraph short summary.
And at the tailing session itself, we would see this reporting back, but not in a long queue of one session after the other, but take the same format that was at the topping session and talk about the reports and the outputs in the working groups that would be organized in the subthemes or the thematic tracks or subtracks. I don't know how to call them but you know what I mean.
And then in order to report back in a concise manner from each of the three tracks, the messages from the -- the breakout groups would then be incorporated into a report for each track, and that would be the report from the track. And that could then go into my initial idea to see how would those messages from the breakout groups could be incorporated under the -- under the policy buckets.
So that's our thinking so far. We're looking forward to hearing from you, if you liked it, if you have other suggestions.
And one note that we mentioned that was, I think, proposed by Daniela yesterday, that there are artists or graphic designers who are creating flowcharts or word bubbles or maps or mindmaps or whatever as sessions are unfolding. I think it would be a really fun idea to bring those out, depending on how the resources go. But if not, at least creating perhaps a word bubble. There are apps already that are doing that, conference apps that could be working. And I think it would be fun if we link back to Rose's idea, if we do a word map in the beginning session and a wordmap at the ending session and see how those compare.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Timea. I think there are a lot of good discussions there. And I think Daniela's sort of idea of it is more of like a Mindmap. It's one of those really graphic pictogram kind of things.
Let me see if there are any comments on this. I want to come back to a couple of pieces in a little more depth, but just see if there are any general discussions, observations first.
So I think one of the things that I think would be really helpful. I think we need to think about the chart at the bottom and how we make it helpful, not just X was mentioned but, I mean, it needs to be -- we were talking about the ideas and things, it needs to be something which is more substantive in terms of that I think a lot of the reporting has been in the past. So I think we need to think about that a little bit more so we can take it to the next step where we say this is who ought to be thinking about this or concerned about this or these are places we can bring it or something. But it needs to be something I think that indicates there's a next step to the discussion. So maybe we can think about some samples with respect to what we would actually capture in some of those boxes.
What I would like to see is if there was support for -- and then the MAG takes so much time following, of course, all the time that the submitters put in to putting in these workshop proposals and putting together a really good program, as do, of course, all the open forums, DCs, BPFs, NRIs, et cetera. I don't mean to exclude anybody.
I don't know if we need to include them all the time. I certainly should have included open forums when I said earlier when we are actually looking at what we're doing in the main sessions to make sure we're looking broadly at all organizations.
But if -- when we pull these together, I think there could be a really sort of substantive document that says, you know, the IGF looked at digital inclusion. We had this framework. It was this flow. There were these kind of sessions and points made. But something -- everybody holds up the WSIS report and says it's a great report. The WSIS report is basically everybody's prepared speeches bound in a glossy cover. And everybody says, We need outcomes, we need outcomes.
We have so much information in the IGF. But I think as we have all said before, it's not packaged particularly well.
I'm actually wondering if there's a way to get a small number of rapporteurs -- and I guess we would need eight or ten of them or something -- that could follow each one of these themes or tracks or workshops so that we had a consistent reporting style. We had kind of a consistent view of the discussions that were brought up and actually prepare a document at the end of the IGF that says: This is the substantive discussions that took place at the IGF. I'm not talking about recommendations or conclusions but something fairly substantive.
And one of the models that actually keeps coming to my mind is some work I have seen Samantha Dickinson do. The work she does in some of that is a little bit different because they start with very formal council documents and there's discussions on council documents and things move in and move out. But something more substantive than just aggregating the messages at the end with people who really understand the topics, understand the IGF, understand the multistakeholder community.
Because if we could walk around afterward and say: This is the data governance set of discussions we had at the IGF. This is the, whatever, digital inclusion. I think it would be a really impactful way of kind of categorizing the work that actually happened at the IGF and showing the substantive expert discussions that go in.
So there's -- obviously we should -- I'm interested in whether or not that's of interest. And then it is, of course, there's funding and resources for it.
I'm hoping we have a couple of different options there. And I know in the past we've had journalists and various people come in. We've had people from policy programs in schools. And maybe there's even some other resources or something that we could kind of tap and direct.
But any thoughts on what else we could do? This is part of what we were going to take up in that ad hoc working group, that ad hoc MAG working group we were going to establish.
But any initial reactions?
I sometimes feel like I really fail at phrasing these questions somehow.
[ Laughter ]
Or I've gone too far and said too much or said not enough.
But I think my intent is to without having to go away and take six months afterwards, after the fact, capture what happened there in a substantive way without, again, going into negotiated text or recommendations -- I think Deniz wants the floor, and I think Mary is contemplating taking the floor but maybe not.
Deniz.
>>DENIZ SUSAR: I just want to ask a clarification question actually to all of us. I think I missed the discussion yesterday, that part. But we will be getting a report from the workshop organizers for each session, right? Which helped us last year tremendously to prepare these IGF Messages for each main session. So that's something I think UN DESA is planning to coordinate this year with German government. So that work is still there. But what you are asking is in addition to that and more thematic discussions summary. Is that right?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes. We are still expecting the same level of reports from the workshops. And I'm sure we will still have the formal U.N. chair summary. But I was looking for a more thematic kind of community-based view of the discussions that took place in the IGF. So, yes.
>>JUNE PARRIS: Hello. Sorry, June. Going back to your remark about rapporteurs doing the same kind of format, I'm thinking that we really need to have the same source. If you're going to have those sort of rapporteurs, we need to have them from the same source.
Is it Deniz? He just mentioned something like that, just before I could say it.
Because you can't bring them in from different groups and expect them to do the same thing. They have to be trained up to do the same thing. so.
But I agree with it. It's a good idea.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think resourcing it will be something we need to be quite thoughtful about, so they know the topics, know the community, know that kind of multistakeholder nature so we make sure that, frankly, that kind of permeates the thematic reporting.
I have Jutta -- I'm not sure if I have Mary or not. Jutta, you have the floor.
>>JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Lynn, for giving me the floor. First of all, I would like to say I think that's a great idea to improve the reporting by rapporteurs that are appointed to the tracks.
With regard to the workshop reports that were produced by the workshop proposers or organizers, I do think we need to update that a bit because it was based on last year's form and especially pay attention to the policy questions and what came out of discussion of these policy questions.
But going back to the rapporteurs, somehow I agree with what June said. They need to have the same, like, basic information. I'm not sure whether they completely need to be familiar with all -- what "Internet governance" means. It could also be that they have a certain amount of professionalism for journalism, for example, because if you have a journalism application, you know how to approach a topic. You know how to do your research and then to write something.
With regard to resources, I would suggest that we probably approach some of the journalist schools that we have in Germany, and some of them are based in Berlin. So that could be an opportunity to bring in young people, not very young but young journalists who have the journalist education and who probably -- it would be beneficial for both sides.
>>RUDOLF GRIDL: Actually, we have been contacted by one of the journalist schools already. They are planning to cover the IGF without any mandate, just for themselves. But perhaps we could get into a dialogue and see what comes out of it.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jutta and Rudolf. I do agree with your points in terms of doing that as well. We might also be able to put kind of a lightweight steering committee over each one of those thematic groups because we have the thematic working groups that actually put together the proposal and the track and reviewed them in the first place. So maybe there's a body that could help both in terms of up front orientation and even kind of steering and tracking of messages afterwards.
I think we all know how to manage a lot of these conversations that are responsible to all parties and give the flavor of what multistakeholder Internet governance discussions and processes are like. So it might be another way to provide a little bit of support to that.
Maria, you have the floor.
>>MARIA PAZ CANALES: Thank you, Chair. Maria Paz Canales, civil society. I'm just concerned about this idea. I think it's very compelling the idea having, like, something that is more structured and allows us to have a quicker sense of what are the main things that we heard during the days of the IGF. But I am really concerned about how it does not end in a moderation of the content that would be driven from those conversations in a way that could be later perceived as, like, too much information in the creation of that content that's finally raised.
I think maybe that could be partially addressed by the idea of having these students that would be, like, more neutral and hopefully well-trained in doing objective journalism.
But I am a little bit hesitant in considering that will be, like, the final solution for this because we were, like, trying to put a lot of effort in the way in which we presented the topping and tailing session flow in a way that it's clear that we are not, like, providing a recipe but we are providing a set of options that are based on what was heard in the different discussion.
So I think that, again, like coming back to the point that IGF place is a place for surfacing that knowledge and trying to find new creative ways to address the issues but not provide, like, setting stone recipes. And I am concerned a proposal of this type of reporting could, like, lead a little bit more to that impression.
Maybe it's not the intention but could be considered in that way by external actors. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I hear your concern. I think what, in my mind, the proposal is to try to kind of factually capture the discussions that were held in the context of the narrative we defined and the stream we built that says this is kind of the context of the discussions that were had at the IGF. Not that we really cast anything in stone.
But if we can't find a way to say this is what happened and in a way that kind of reads well, has a flow, speaks to the narrative we put in place, then I think we're just missing a tremendous opportunity to get that information out as broadly as we'd all like it to go.
Sylvia, you have the floor.
>>SYLVIA CADENA: Thank you, Lynn. Sylvia Cadena, technical community.
I'm not sure if I am lost in the conversation, but I think it would be -- I would like to reinforce what Maria Paz just said but also would like a little bit of clarification then on how then the efforts from the DiploFoundation with the daily reporting will fit into this because there is already a daily report session that comes out of what they do that feeds into the daily summary, right?
And then each workshop proposer has their own organizers, have appointed a rapporteur. That means we already have two reports that will come, not necessarily at the same time, let's say.
But will not make more sense in terms of management of those resources to just discuss how Diplo is doing those reports to see if they can assist in how this is implemented? They have already, like, a system in place. They trained the people that are doing it. It's done very well, very -- used by a lot of people.
I just think that we should try, when possible, to strengthen efforts that are already happening, improve and grow from those instead of launching a new one and not recognizing the big effort that they have done for so many years to get to that point.
Bringing new, I don't know, journalists from a journalist schools from Germany to participate or be supported by Diplo to learn about this process would be fantastic. I have no idea if Theresa and Diplo can actually manage a larger size of people.
But my comment -- and I know who has the answer for it. But my comment will be on trying just to make reasonable use of the resources that we have and strengthen the efforts that are already recognized.
People follow the reporting from the DiploFoundation for years. So that is an audience that is already there, that is used to following this. And it is actually very good quality.
They actually help us to put our report together because they capture things that the transcript didn't. So it's very important to, in my opinion, strengthen things that are already working. Thank you.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. We totally agree with you there, that the point is that we should coordinate all our efforts. And we should also -- because, also, Diplo has a certain style, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. It is accessible to people who read it and they enjoy it.
We have our own certain style as well, which we must adhere to which is a little bit drier as well. And I'm sure the host country has their own style.
[ Laughter ]
So, yes, we do have to coordinate -- instead of having three separate streams, we do have to coordinate. I mean, we don't have to produce the same output. But at least we can share the information, share the resources.
And if Diplo wants their report-out every single day, they shouldn't change it. Yes, they can have it. But as well they can help us and we can help them. We can feed into each other. And maybe they change their format slightly and we adapt slightly as well and there are better synergies that happen.
That being said, we do still have to look to see whether it's good idea to have these students. And I think it's a good idea for them to come in and report as well. And their report is, again, another different objective style.
And if they do it and we can use it, that's good. They learn about Internet governance. We get fresh eyes on these topics because if you have been in this field for so long, you kind of miss certain things, right? And they may bring in a new angle. So, yes, it's just a matter of coordinating. Yes, we can have different outputs; but we should coordinate and make all our outputs stronger in that way.
>>SYLVIA CADENA: If I could add one point to that, is that most of the reporting that is done from external people, especially for the technical community, is full of errors, right? So there is a lot of misinformation coming from people that are posting -- documenting reports on sessions where they don't understand the technical content that is there.
So having that coordination that you are mentioning, Chengetai, is really important, especially to check the technical details are not misinformed. Because it will not work in our best interest with the authoritative source on Internet governance if we get wrong the technical parts of how the Internet actually works on a report that people will quote and use in media and things like that. So that's slightly my point.
And I give the work back to Rudolf.
>>RUDOLF GRIDL: I have not a lot to add to what Chengetai has said. Perhaps -- perhaps we have to, however, make a distinction. I mean, there is freedom of speech and freedom of commenting.
So, I mean, everyone can come to the IGF and comment on it and tweet on it and make a summary or whatever. So that is free and it should stay free.
And I would rather not engage into some coordinating work with these kind of people because it's their right and it's their privilege. So this is one thing.
The other thing when it comes to more official documentation, more official -- or let's say to what will be the outcomes that we all approve upon and so forth. I think there we definitely need to work together. We are in contact with the Diplo Foundation already. They will be again reporting, and I think it's definitely worth the effort to sit together and have some joint efforts, as you said. And I think on that basis, we can probably get a very good outcome. Also for this tailing exercise that we are endeavoring.
So that's the points I want to make.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, everyone.
We'll go to Mary. Thank you, Mary. You have the floor.
>>MARY UDUMA: Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor. Sylvia has said it all, and Chengetai has reported, and I agreed forward the coordination because I was worried about what is already existing and how we can leverage on what Diplo is doing. And if we add the infographics that Germany students will be bringing on board, I think it will work very well.
But having said that, I needed to know what is the time slot for the topping and the tailing? Topping, how long will it take? And tailing, how long will it take? And how often will they happen? Will they happen every day? Will they happen, you know, at the end?
And we know that we still have stock-taking at the end of the program, whether that is factored in.
Now, looking at the table that Timea -- I think it was Timea that made this presentation where you have the tracks and the issues the issues that will be coming out of the tracks, economic, social, cultural, technical, governance. I don't know whether I'm mixing it or I'm missing it, where we stated the road where economic goes to the private sector, social culture, will it go to the civil society or what? And then technical and the government only go to governance. Governance is beyond government, so will they go to government?
So how do we, you know, dovetail all these to the stakeholders that earlier stated were going to report to each stakeholder and make concrete recommendation to each stakeholder group. So I don't know whether I'm not seeing properly, I'm not thinking well again. The social culture. Is that where the human rights will come, human rights community will come? What they are daring from all that will come out from the IGF process and workshops that we are going to organize.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mary. Let me try and answer your questions quickly, and I'll go to Mary Rose.
There are three topping sessions. I think we said there were normal workshop slots of 90 minutes each. That's obviously one for each one of the main themes. And the same thing, there are three 90-minute tailing sessions for each one of the three major thematic tracks.
And then the discussions from those three tailing sessions is what will feed into the report to the community on the last day as part of a one-hour slot that's there, the traditional one-hour slot for taking stock, open mic, and then a formal closing ceremony.
So I think that was your first set of questions.
So three slots for topping, three slots for tailing, each nine minutes. And the discussions that come out of the tailing will be what feeds into the bulk of the reporting at the consolidated wrap-up session or something on the Friday.
With respect to the second set of questions and your stakeholders, I thought yesterday we sort of went, and maybe I should double-check, and said not sure if stakeholders is the most valuable because, you know, even though you're a stakeholder, a private sector stakeholder, you could still have a concern or an interest or a responsibility in something that would be identified as technical for inclusion, for instance, or -- again, the example would be for any of them. That it was more appropriate to look at the intersection both from the thematic tracks and kind of the implications for society as a whole or for the technical community as a -- or from a technical perspective.
But is there a different perspective on that? Or do people think that somehow we need to capture another (indiscernible) cube? Because I don't know if there's a one-on-one alignment with an idea being brought up and any one of the three tracks having kind of a singular stakeholder focus.
Maybe we can play around with a couple of examples and see if that's helpful. I don't think there was any -- any objection to it. I just think people thought maybe it wasn't kind of broad enough or inclusive enough.
But I think we all should think about that whole process and that piece of the reporting out, and maybe, you know, keep Mary's question in mind and move it forward.
Mary Rose, you have the floor.
>>MARY ROSE OFIANGA: Thank you, Chair. Mary Rose from private sector.
If I understood it correctly, following the discussions, we are trying to come up with a way on how we can synthesize all the thematic issues, like, after the IGF. Is it correct, Madam Chair?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: It wasn't even so much synthesize. It was more recognizing the fact that we built this set of three programs around a narrative with a lot of thought to kind of what the flow was and that we actually wanted to make a significant contribution to advancing the discussions around digital inclusion, for instance. What can we do to take that narrative to the next step, which is figure out what kind of a narrative or thematic track report-out is that isn't, you know, to use Chengetai's words, so dry as one style of reporting and maybe so --
>>MARY ROSE OFIANGA: Okay.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: -- lightweight as another.
>>MARY ROSE OFIANGA: So my thoughts on that is since we already have working groups for each thematic -- for each theme, and each group for sure, we are the ones familiar with our theme. Like from the -- writing the narrative, selecting the workshops, and coming up with a consolidated report from the rapporteurs afterwards. Then what if you just -- as a working group, we will work on that report and come up with another narrative in response to the narrative that we come up before the event. So like what transpires. Taking all the reports and the synthesis from the rapporteurs, come up with, again, another narratives to move forward for the next IGF. I mean, in short, I would suggest that the working group would work on that narrative instead of asking universities or students or journalists to write them.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's an interesting idea as well. I'll come back to that in a moment but I'll to Ben just now.
Ben.
>>BEN WALLIS: Thanks, Lynn. I wondered if it might be helpful to respond to Mary's question about this grid and the perspectives. I'm certain that there was no thought that this related to stakeholder groups. Indeed, I would hope that ideally every workshop is looking at an issue from the perspective of all the stakeholder groups.
To give an example, like IPv6 addresses, from an economic perspective, what would be the impact of not moving over to IPv6? Is it going to make it more expensive to access the Internet? Are those costs going to be passed on to consumer if IPv6 addressing isn't taken up? From a social perspective, are regions left behind because some regions have lots of IPv6 addresses, some have lots of IPv4 addresses left, some don't, so then moving over to IPv6 more quickly. From a technical perspective, how technically would you move over? Why would you move over? What's the issue with the Internet that requires the move over? And governance. Is it the responsibility of private sector? Is it the responsibility of governments to do it?
So I think that's what's meant by trying to understand where workshops are coming from, what kind of angles were looking at an issue from.
I don't know if that helped. I know Timea has left, and I thought it would be good to provide an additional response to yours, Lynn.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Ben.
>>MARY UDUMA: Excuse me. Yeah, I understand what we are coming -- the explanation giving here, and I'm saying that stakeholders are responsive, so they share responsibility in making such happen. Would it not be the right message to send to each of the stakeholder groups? Okay? Economic will make it happen in the -- we are talking about technical. So the responsibility of the stakeholders in that group.
I think that's what we're aiming at, and not just throwing, you know, those issues out, but making concrete recommendations that they can go home with, they can take away and, you know, try to work on it. I think that's the essence of this platform called Internet governance where they come to learn and take back to constituencies. That is the idea that is occurring to me.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mary, for the further.
Ben, any comments on that?
I'm going to try to wrap up this conversation and then hit two other items quickly.
When I put this forward, it was because I still think it's a very useful tool to have something that builds on the narrative and the streaming and everything we try to do in terms of pulling this set of workshops together, to talk about what happened in that thematic track and in those streams here. And I like Mary Rose's suggestion that maybe it's something that we do which is a relatively small report that is done by the thematic working group, and maybe we can find some consultancy support or something to do that. But something that's owned by the IGF community, frankly, you know that we can put out a document and say this is what the IGF community did, not that this is what another organization reported on happened at the IGF community, or at the IGF meetings. And one that I think that really reflects the things that matter to the community, as evidenced by the program we put together, and reflects a lot of the multistakeholder values and those sorts of things.
So it was both kind of a -- I don't even like the term marketing but an outreach tool, something that documents the work that we've done, the discussion from our perspective of the community with the community's perspective and values, and building on, again, the narrative we had this year. And maybe it begins to suggest, you know, a future narrative for next year, or at least it should give us some learnings for next year's narratives.
But I think at this point maybe what we should do is take this discussion into the ad hoc working group, ad hoc reporting working group we were going to set up, which, again, when we're through this meeting, we'll put a little (indiscernible) out. And I think we can figure out how we tie all these pieces together.
We don't, of course, direct Diplo. The German government has actually contracted with Diplo. I'm sure the German government is willing to work with us to get something that works for everybody. But I do think it's really important that the IGF has something that the IGF owns; that says the IGF says this is from our community and this is what we did, trying to be really clear here. But let's take it up in the working group, and clearly we want to work with all the people that take the time to report out from the IGF, because it's critical and it does reach a whole broad set of stakeholders. So we're not trying to, you know, stop any of that. I think it's more just a matter that we're hitting kind of a couple of key targets, if you will.
The two things I wanted to come to quickly was we still need to establish a process for that newcomers' session. I think we can probably put a request out on the group there. I don't actually know what the current state of the work is, if there's sort of an expectation of what we will do with a newcomers' group or if there's been learnings from past years that the secretariat could even say here's what you'd recommend we do from the newcomers' perspective or how do we best advance some of that work.
Anja.
>>ANJA GENGO: Yes, thank you. So as you know, since 2016 we were implementing the newcomers' track that has its own unique structure. So perhaps the best would be if the secretariat would share the structure of the previous newcomers' track with the MAG, and then we can all work together on improving that track. It was a collaborative work between the secretariat and the MAG. Because I know that we are almost about time, so I don't want to take time, maybe, for going through that structure, but let us send that proposal, then, on Monday.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. That would be good. We probably have some time to do that as well. But yes, if you could actually get us that of the current state and any recommendations we might have heard from last year's processes that we might want to take into account moving forward.
With respect to the next steps here within the workshop, we'll try and put together a timeline which we can send out, but I think we've asked for the main session guidelines to hopefully be updated by the end of this weekend. I believe we're saying that the folks that began working on the six main sessions are probably the folks that we expect, at least some of them, to stay engaged. And of course there are other folks we can reach out to that weren't a part of this MAG meeting. That we would take the next step in terms of the template. Chengetai is pointing out that our next MAG meeting is June 26th, and I guess the question to him is if we were to have a substantive discussion on June 26th around these sessions, does that meet the timeline or do we need to move the meeting up? Up a week or something?
I don't know if there's a magic timeline or a magic date there as well, but that's obviously only two and a half weeks away. That would mean the working groups would be meeting over the next two weeks to flesh out a working title, to begin filling out the main session proposal, which would include a small paragraph or description that would have to be put into the program. You need to appoint co-facilitators and then you need to shall each of you, establish your own process for actually organizing that main session with speakers, moderators, rapporteurs, et cetera.
So we probably can't realistically do that work in less than two weeks. And if we asked everybody to have the report out by the Friday the 21st, that means we would all have time to read only six reports between the 21st and the 26th. Because on the 26th, we need to be prepared, I think, to call whether or not we move forward with these main sessions or not.
Jutta and then Ben.
>>JUTTA CROLL: That would be the last day after EuroDIG, so that would be the EuroDIG week, and that might be a little bit difficult for some of us to have it ready on that Friday. Probably better on Monday. Then we could at least have the weekend and the traveling time to finalize.
>>VENI MARKOVSKI: I also want to make -- some of us here will also be at the ICANN meeting which is also that week and the 26th is actually an active day. And maybe instead of, you know, having the weekend, as Jutta is suggesting, which is -- maybe we can just -- you guys can tell us whether we can have the call maybe a week later instead of the 26th, if that is not going to ruin a lot of your work. Because for certainty there will be us and a couple of others who will be there.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, we can do it. It just seems that in the past that 30th of June was the magic date, and then after 1st of July everybody goes on break. So that's why we wanted to keep it in June. But if you can -- if you will be all around. And we had --
>> (Off microphone).
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah, I mean, we can do it.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: July 1st or 2nd is that Monday, Tuesday.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah. So, I mean, we'll be here. It's just -- just from past experience, if nobody is going on July break because we usually had those. And then that's the same week as 4th of July, et cetera. So we're -- the secretariat is fine with it so to speak. We can delay things by -- by a week. It won't do that much harm, as such.
>>VENI MARKOVSKI: So maybe July 1st or 2nd is still better. I agree, July 4th is obviously...
But maybe the first Monday, Tuesday?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So we'll shoot -- Is there a different perspective on that? Or do people think shoot for July 1st or 2nd to update the meeting calendar?
Could I ask the secretariat to just kick things off to set up mailing lists for each one of the main sessions and have the MAG members that participated in the room here in that mailing list. We should then advertise that to all of the other MAG members so that people can sign up for additional working groups and those that weren't here can participate.
The main sessions have always been the responsibility of the MAG to organize. I think some organizing groups have invited in other people or had discussions with other experts to flesh out the topics and things a little bit more. I think we can leave that decision or determination up to each one of the working groups.
If there's somebody you know that's an ex-MAG member or somebody dying to be a MAG member and they have specific expertise in a group and they would help the group in their work and deliberations, then I think there's no reason not to bring them in.
I think the co-facilitators have to be two MAG members, though. And I think that's one of the things we need to identify quite quickly so the secretariat knows who to ping and follow up with as we go through this process.
So I think we need to get kind of a memo out to the MAG of outlining this kind of main session process and time line and mailing lists and all that sort of thing.
Is there anything else that we're forgetting in terms of how we process our way through getting organized for those meetings?
June, will you --
>>JUNE PARRIS: Hello. I'm June in case you don't know me. I just want to remind people about the charter. We need to have the charter approved on outreach and engagement.
We just sent the email out again. So if you could have a look, please, and approve so that we can start the process before the IGF. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No, thank you. That is a very good -- a good reminder. I don't know if people have had a chance to look at it and if we want to try to do it quickly here or do it online. Probably doing it online as everybody says they're going to do it and only a handful do. I know they have had some positive comments and feedback already. And it's been out in front of everybody for some weeks.
Why don't we give people til Monday and if there are any kind of comments or points of disagreement, people have until Monday to say so. Otherwise, it's approved.
Again, I say that on the basis on the reviews that have already come in and comments that have come in. Also, it's been in front of us for some time.
My last comment was simply on, again, earlier in the week -- seems like a long time ago but it was only two days ago, Wednesday -- there was a discussion on the HLPDC report which obviously will be launched on Monday and agreement that the secretariat would put up in the commenting platform the report so that we could use that to kick off a process across the IG community.
I think we need to see the report and read the report to figure out how we might structure and what we might do in terms of breaking out some of the discussion.
Maybe one simple point is we do it by chapter or something so we can keep those comments at least organized consistent with the way the work is. And we may, in fact, need to break some of the chapters out into kind of other subsequent ones just to -- but I think Chengetai has said that they can have that up on Monday with the launch.
And he and I will work on a cover note that we can send out to everybody as well.
Is that still possible?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Technically it's possible. We have to see the format which the report comes out. If it comes out in a Word document, then it's easy. If not, then we might have to go -- have a little bit back and forth. Yes, Monday. I don't just want to give a 100% yes, but yes.
[ Laughter ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Do we not have somebody that's very close to the secretariat that surely could simply get it saved in a different format? One that we need to post once it's done?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I can investigate that, yes.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I would suspect that it might already be done as well because it's probably being translated in six languages.
So I'm just saying --
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: As I said, yes. I just don't want to give something I'm not 100% sure of.
>> (off microphone).
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Nebojsa, sorry. Use the mic.
>>NEBOJSA REGOJE: I was suggesting to share an advance copy to all MAG members.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Sure. If you can send it to me, then we can, you know...
>>DENIZ SUSAR: I think that's a great idea. I think SG's office would be very happy because since we know they will be starting a consultation, as we already have.
But as Chengetai said, if the report is available only in PDF, then we may try to get it Tuesday or Monday/Tuesday. And then as soon as we have the Word file, I think it's easy to do it, yeah.
And I think it will be chapters -- executive summary chapters. And the platform allows to put everything together and then comment on specific pages.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay, good. Thank you. And we can work on that in between.
Xiaofeng, you have the floor.
>>XIAOFENG TAO: Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor. Sorry for re-opening the workshop process.
I do recommend that workshop 271 in data governance should be conditionally accepted because it need more interaction to strengthen the workshop.
I also wanted to recommend 277 to integrate into 271 workshop. 271 and 277 are two highly ranked workshops on big data.
Moreover, 277 is our first option in data governance theme. It deploys big data and partnership for SDGs. And, therefore, it appears quite related to the global data governance for developing countries. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Xiaofeng.
This was obviously within the data governance thematic work stream, I'm guessing.
>>XIAOFENG TAO: I'm sorry.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Because you're asking the MAG to do something which would mean sort of opening the process back up. And I think is also, you know, an opportunity that wasn't afforded to other workshop proposers.
>>XIAOFENG TAO: Yes.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Nor other MAG members.
I'm assuming that the working group was kind of made aware of this request and dealt with it in the thematic working group meetings. I don't know if, you know, we want to get any additional background on this or not or if there's -- from what I understand is that one of them, 277, I think, is one that was actually recommended -- is in the program that was ranked quite highly. The other one was not ranked particularly highly. Didn't make it into the program.
And we did ask all the thematic working group members to look at possible suggestions for mergers if, in fact, it strengthened the proposals or helped gaps or diversity or that sort of other thing.
I don't know if that was done or if there's an opportunity to do that. But I think the only opportunity they might be in -- I think we need to ask the MAG to comment on whether or not they think this is a fair process given the way we've treated all the other workshops.
But I would think that probably the only way to address this is if the thematic working group folks thought it was appropriate to ask the -- those that were in the accepted workshop whether or not there was any points they would care to pull forward from the other workshop.
And I don't think to do it the reverse, which I think is what you were suggesting, Xiaofeng, is appropriate.
So I think there's two questions, how the MAG feels about running kind of an exceptional process to do this with this one working group. To me it's a slippery slope and probably contravenes some fairness. But I think we need to hear from the MAG.
Obviously there's been a little bit of discussion on this in the background already, but we really need to hear from the MAG.
Ben.
>>BEN WALLIS: As I coordinated the data governance working group, maybe I can just explain a bit the process and where we ended up to give MAG members a bit more time to reflect on how they might want to respond.
And I don't know if Eleonora has the document. Fantastic, thank you, Eleonora.
So we did -- we looked at the top 16 so we did put them through. We then discussed within the group which other proposals might make up the final four slots. And within the group, we kind of ranked -- gave our individual rankings. And so we identified four more slots, four more workshops.
And we made suggestions, as you said, for where these accepted workshops might consider merging -- or not merging but incorporating ideas. We didn't suggest for any of them that we put in any conditions. That was an approach that our working group took, but rather that they in some cases -- and this is one of them, that workshop 271 look at workshop 277 and see whether it could bring in some ideas, some speakers to broaden its workshop. And that was something we did in relation to five different workshops of our top 20.
You will remember that we suggested in the recommendations at the bottom of the page that if there was additional space found, because five of our workshops are shorter than 90 minutes, that three workshops could be put through and we put them in order. And, in fact, the first workshop out of those three that could be put through, if there is additional time, would be workshop 277. But that really depends on the secretariat going back after everything and seeing whether there's additional time.
So there are -- the process we went through and the recommendations that we made to the MAG and the lack of objections yesterday allowed both for workshop 271 to look at -- specifically look at 277. That was a recommendation. And possibly for 277 to be given time.
That's the process that I organized the group by and the one that I would stand by. And I would see this as making an exception.
But, obviously, it's up to all MAG members to provide comments on whether they would like to look at this differently.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I might actually change my opening comments then because I didn't realize that it was actually on the "if there was room and it could be improved, there could be a potential slot." So at one level, we're not looking for an exceptional process. It's the same process we ran for every one of the working groups where we said if there's additional room in the schedule and we wanted to maintain still the two rooms per thematic track, that we had asked the workshop groups to recommend additional workshops.
So in this -- given that, I would say we could move it to the secretariat, at least the next step of the turn of the secretariat, to see what we actually have for room. Sounds like there is room, particularly because what Chengetai said is we don't want to have two rooms that are dedicated to data governance and then we just slip into security workshops. I mean, that kind of runs away.
So those two days' worth -- those two rooms' worth -- two tracks' worth of rooms were dedicated to data governance. It seems as though there would be room. So maybe it's a conditional acceptance if it is strengthened along the lines of what the working group suggested which, I guess, is part of the normal process for the secretariat.
Is that true?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: That's true. Is it okay if you leave it to us? And we'll get back to you next week and give you a definitive answer for the workshop 277?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So I think it -- I think it's a fair process. I think it's an equivalent process across the three working groups.
I think we said earlier the secretariat was going to look through the approved workshops now that they know exactly which ones were approved and the time that's allotted and if there is extra space -- and most of them said there was some extra space -- would look at the proposed additional workshops. Those that are -- have conditions associated with them, they would communicate with the workshop organizers if the conditions are met. And if there's space, that they would be accepted into the workshops.
I think it is just a standard next turn of the process.
>>MARY UDUMA: Excuse me, Chair.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Mary.
>>MARY UDUMA: I think the request is -- they already do match.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: The working group wasn't suggesting a merger. They had a very strong stand-alone policy.
>>MARY UDUMA: We suggested they be merged, isn't it? We made the suggestion that it could be merged with 271, and I think they are ready to have it merged.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Ben.
>>BEN WALLIS: I can read out the recommendation that we would made, that we would approve workshop 271 with the following suggestions: Firstly, that more interaction could strengthen the workshop.
Secondly, we recommend you look at workshop 277 to see whether there are any concepts or speaker ideas that could be integrated into your workshop. 277 explores big data and partnership for SDGs and, therefore, appears quite related to the global data governance for developing countries. The IGF secretariat will be happy to put you in touch with the proposer of that workshop.
So we proposed that they looked at that to possible strengthen their workshop. We didn't propose any of our workshops were merged or that were approved on condition that they merged.
We took a softer approach, and we judged the top 16 went through on merit and should be allowed to stay as they were. But we made suggestions for improvements. That was the process that our working group took.
I know that some of the working groups required some mergers. That's not something we did for any of them. So this would be an exception. That's my concern.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Thank you, Ben.
I'm going to go to the queue in a moment. But I want to be fair that I think we're not asking for an exception for this workshop, that this is within the next turn of the wheel on every one of the tracks that the MAG already approved as a process.
Just because I think it wasn't quite clearly understood the other way in the first instance.
Raquel, you have the floor.
>>RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you, Lynn. First of all, as part of a silent member in the data governance group, I just want to stand by the process that Ben outlined and to support the fairness of the process that has been done.
But that brings me to another point. And I'm sorry, I was looking to the transcript from yesterday afternoon to see if this was raised. If yes, just point me out.
But the lightning sessions that we did in the past, there might be an opportunity also. We've used the best-ranked up to a certain grade for showcasing some of those initiatives into a different environment, if there is also a possibility within the venue.
If this is something the MAG wants to consider as one of the formats, it depends on the venue. It depends on the grading. But then I think we approach the first-come, first-served basis of requests from those rejected workshops but good standing workshop proposals.
In terms of the details for the process, perhaps if this is something the MAG wants to follow up, we could invite the former MAG members -- MAG member Miguel Estrada who was leading this effort to outline and we could consider. But I just put on the table. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So I think most of your comments were to the lightning process which we did discuss yesterday and we will kick off that process once we're through all that, which is important.
I want to make clear here I think we actually have the next steps in front of us. We asked the working groups to identify which of the workshops they might pull up, if there was additional time, and put them in an order of priority, which is exactly what the data governance group has done.
I think we've heard there are additional slots and time available because some of the ones that were accepted were not 90 minutes.
We have the number 1 proposal that should be pulled up right there. I think it's probably a straight-forward pullup.
So let's just go through the rest of the comments quickly and see if there's anything we're missing. But, again, I think we're just following kind of standard process here.
Your point to the lightning workshops is good. We need to come to that as part of returning to the workshops.
Jennifer, you have the floor.
>>JENNIFER CHUNG: Thank you, Lynn. Jennifer Chung, private sector, for the record.
Actually, I think Ben and yourself and also Raquel have illuminated the next steps for this process quite well.
I guess I just wanted to point out that I do really respect the processes that each -- each evaluation group did come up with. I'm not part of the data governance group. I'm part of the security group that Jutta very skillfully led through. And we also have more than 20. We have the 20 conditional accepted workshops, and then we also went through and looked at other workshops that we could pull in after calculating the time. So I do respect that. I'm sure the IGF secretariat will be looking at, you know, available time slots, and then the next ones will be put in. So that's actually a good thing.
Another thing is I really do respect that the suggestion was to look at other workshops to bolster different parts of diversity, which it looks like maybe data governance workshop has done so, to look at different speakers, different regional topics which are very important. So I definitely do support that part.
Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jennifer. That was a good recap of the process, too. Thank you.
Paul Rowney, you have the floor.
>>PAUL ROWNEY: Thank you, Chair. I'm guessing I'm adding on to what most people have said, and I can't speak on behalf of the data group, but I know from our side we went through quite a comprehensive process.
I think if the workshop can be accommodated, I think it should. It's already in the parking lot, so there is a possibility that it can be included, and I just also wanted to mention that when you look at the workshops that have been identified so far, China is very underrepresented. So I think we also need to keep that in mind as well, that it's of the interest of the MAG to have that level of diversity and to bring in countries such as China.
I don't think we should change the process. I think we should see how the process can accommodate including the workshop or some of the speakers that are involved in those workshops as well. So that should also be considered.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Paul. Some very good, very good points.
Mary, you have the floor.
>>MARY UDUMA: Thank you. I had it down, so I don't know...
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Thank you, Mary.
Then I think, you know, as has been stated a couple of different times, it follows the next logical turn of the process. We should wait and let that process run its course. It sounds like the prognosis is good, Xiaofeng, and we'll let the secretariat do their work. And at the same time, I think we do want to be careful about not kind of using our position on the MAG here to inappropriately advocate for our workshops, which is a concern I've had a few people express to me.
So with that, I think we've gone through virtually everything on the agenda except for one item, which I'm not proposing we do now. On number 9 we'd had the strategic priorities where we were going to talk about IGF outputs and reporting mechanisms, including outreach and communications. I think we've kind of hit that at a couple of different times over the course of these few days, and we can pick that up in this ad hoc reporting group we're going to set up.
The other piece that was included in there was the multiyear work program. And I think we can continue to take that forward on the list. And as I said, many pieces of what we want to do with the multiyear work program are already in place or under way, and I think there's one kind of open item which I really would like to kind of figure out if we're going forward, not going forward, this year, next year, just so it's not continually hanging out there. And I will work with Jeremy Malcolm and a few of the other folks that have interest in terms of making sure we bring forward to the MAG at an appropriate time.
With that I would like to say a very big thank you to everybody. Certainly to the German government, as I said earlier. Rudolf is going, okay, enough. Yeah, let me go home, let me go home.
And to DESA. Give thanks to Deniz. But I do really appreciate DESA's support and interest. I think Wai-Min has been in the Webex chat room for most of the three days as well, so I think this is a really good partnership.
And also to the MAG members who have all worked tremendously, tremendously hard over the last couple of months on the workshop review process. And obviously we have kind of one more big push ahead of us with respect to main sessions and some of the activities there. But just thank you very, very much. And I really think this is kind of the more cohesive sort of programs we've had for a while, and I hope really result in a significant sort of stream of substantive output, which is, I think, the next step we need to do in some of the work here that really shows the contribution benefit and value of the work, which, of course, is one of the repeated requests for improvements we have.
And, Deniz, I'll give you have the last word.
>>DENIZ SUSAR: I know, I know, it's too late, but I just wanted to thank everyone as well, starting with the MAG and also the German government for the venue. Venue is excellent. I've never seen somewhere like that. And also for involving other stakeholders in Open Consultation, and also for these two days. You've treated us very well.
And also last but not least, we should also thank Lynn. This is, I think, her last face-to-face MAG meeting. Maybe. I'm not sure.
[ Applause ]
So thank you, everyone, and have a nice flight.
>> But I hope we will see Lynn face-to-face at the meeting in Berlin in November.
>>DENIZ SUSAR: I meant chairing. I hope -- I meant chairing the meeting.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I'm committed to this through the IGF, which is, of course, when the next -- that's when the chair position ends. Fully committed over the next four months or so.
So thank you, everybody. Safe travels.
>> Thank you, everybody.
[ Applause ]
>> Actually community, please. We have five-minute meeting.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Sorry also the transcribers and the technical team behind us as well:
>> And the 7:00 rule applies also today for the door.
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