The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during an IGF virtual call. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Good afternoon, morning and evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is MAG virtual meeting number 10 and just the usual reminders, the meeting is being recorded and being transcribed. The transcript will be made available immediately after the meeting on the IGF website, and summary report will be made available a couple of days later. There is a speaking queue if you want to speak and I think Luis has posted the link into the window. The documents which we may refer to during in meeting, there is a link to that as well, which we will repost to the link just in case anybody missed it. That's the document in the larger window.
I think that's it. And with that, I hand over the meeting to Lynn.
>> CHAIR: Good afternoon evening, morning, again, we move these calls to facilitate everyone's participation, I appreciate everybody making the effort even at less than or at those times that are outside of normal working hours. I don't actually have too much to say by way of introduction. Obviously we have really important work ahead of us here. I think the most kind of immediate, of course, is the MAG workshop evaluation reports what were, and this is by way of a heads up, we are asking individuals from those three Working Groups to talk through a little bit kind of the process and rationale that each one of them used, what the recommendation is, and if they have any specific questions or feedback they would like MAG advice on, we should cover that.
We also want to make sure that we start to get a look at whether or not there are any cross cutting themes across the workshops that might indicate we want to do something different or in addition, and we are expecting as well to have sort of tailing and topping sessions for each one of those three themes. That would not take up a main session slot, but be by way of introduction on the front end to the theme and the topics overall, and then on the back end, kind of capture the key messages that have come out of the themes and tracks from the traditional workshop reporting and specifically identify whether or not there are some additional work we might want to see going forward.
So that was just by way of sort of setting everyone's expectations whether you are going to do the presentation or are on the receiving end, and if we could make the best possible effort to advance those on this call, that would provide more time during the meeting for, again, some of the more strategic updates and specifically would allow us time to do some really thorough planning in our face to face meeting around the main sessions.
So by way of that, I will turn to the oh, we should specifically adopt the agenda. Let me see if there are any suggestions or additions to the agenda, and if there are any specific requests for any other business? AOB. I will give it the traditional sort of slow six count.
Not seeing any requests for the speaking queue, we will note the agenda is approved and move to the next item, which is updates from the IGF Secretariat. Chengetai.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Lynn. This time around I just have only one update, which is just to say that the registration for the face to face meeting is open until the 2nd of June, and I strongly urge people to please register. It will make the issuing of badges or passes much quicker when we get to Berlin. No other updates.
Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you Chengetai. Let me see if there are any questions or requests from the floor from MAG members.
>> A question, will on-site registration also be possible or only preregistration?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, there will be a possibility of on site registration, but we would prefer to know who is coming.
>> Okay. Of course, I have a new member on my team, but she is only arriving in Germany on Sunday, so she probably will not meet the deadline but could then register on the 3rd or 4th, June. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Think you Jutta. Chengetai, Sylvia put a message in the chat room asking that the recommendations and process documents from the three Working Groups be available as input documents to this meeting not only the spreadsheets.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: They are, if you look at the window, you see the governance preliminary, digital inclusion preliminary selection. The three documents there. If you look in the Web ex window, they are there and Luis posted the link.
>> CHAIR: Right, I did see that earlier. Okay. Great. Thank you both. Sylvia is saying it's a spreadsheet. No, I can't see the word documents?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: There were two word documents and one spreadsheet. It was given to us as a spreadsheet, so we just gave it to you, I mean, posted it as a spreadsheet, but the other two should be word documents if I'm note mistaken.
>> CHAIR: Maybe you can check in the background as I'm sure Sylvia will as well.
Let me just check, is Rudolf on the call? Are there any updates from Rudolf is there anything you would like to update the group on or? Comments?
>> RUDOLF GRIDL: No, not really. We are really looking forward to having you all in Berlin next week. I think as Chengetai said if as many of you as possible could use the preregistration not on site, but online, that would be really helpful. And we will have a full fledged MAG meeting with many interesting interventions also coming from our, from the heads of our ministry or even somebody from the Parliament will come and address the MAG or the parliamentarian issues. So nothing else to say at this moment.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Rudolf.
Rudolf just reminded me, although we did have a mag meeting in the midst of this but there was, of course, a session posted by the German Government, the Permanent Representative in New York from Permanent Representative of the UAE and from DESA as well, and I think it was a very, very good side event. There were, there were probably about 80 people there. There may be a more accurate count from DESA, Chengetai or someone. But some really good short presentations, good interventions, a lot of questions, and maybe even more importantly I think a lot of newer faces. And some newer organisations as well, so I think that was a really good event.
And then as well I was at the STI Forum, and, of course, talked about the IGF there as well. So a lot of comments and interest, again, as I said before, there is a fair amount of commonality between what they are trying to do through the STI Forum as part of the technology facilitation mechanism and, of course, what we are doing through the IGF, and its intersessional activities and it's NRIs as well. So I think that was a good effort from everyone there. I'm glad we managed to pull it off.
Let's move then to the reports from the MAG workshop evaluation groups, and the first one up, we will just go through the list as give is digital inclusion. I'm not sure who is meant to speak to that. Is it Paul Rowney or Maria or.
>> PAUL ROWNEY: Hi, Lynn, I can start.
>> CHAIR: Excellent.
>> PAUL ROWNEY: I'm hoping our Working Group team chips in. It was a collective effort. So I also want to point out it was a very tough exercise. It took a lot of time, a lot of coordination and I would like to thank everybody on the Working Group that participated. It was not easy, let's put it that way. Hopefully our report is not too contentious, but let's go through it, nonetheless.
Please, Working Group members, you know who you are, please chip in as we move forward. Basically we looked at the first 16, the top 16 in the inclusion track and provisionally they were accepted as through.
We noticed some recommendations for mergers within the top 16 which we reviewed and we will report back on those just now. We looked at the dynamics of the top 16 and recommended additional workshops and we tried to match strong additional workshops to fill the gaps that would fit in with the overall theme and the thread of the theme.
We did look at youth participation and gender quite strongly as well as disability and the focus areas. So this led us if we scroll down a little bit to the second page, the ones we are looking at here are the top 16 in order of ranking. And if we look at the first one, this is access inclusive Government infrastructure inclusion and this was a multistakeholder ICANN. This was ranked 1, a 90 minute workshop, and the Working Group approved this to go through as is.
Number two on the list dealing with access to digital divide, economic development, workshop 104, framework, key to realizing digital inclusion, 90 minutes. This talks a lot about a digital toolkit. There is another workshop that also talks about the same digital Toolkit. The latter one was focused on the toolkit, but the one that ranked number two was a much more diverse discussion, so our recommendation there is to reach out to the workshop proposers of 104 to see if they would be interested to collaborate with the workshop 96.
Now, we are not saying that this should be a forced merger. We just want to find out if they would be willing to collaborate to enrich that discussion with the other workshop, workshop 96. While I'm on this, are there any other comments that my colleagues would like to add to this particular proposal?
If not we can go to number 3, workshop number 30, data as a public good which deals with the digital divide and emerging technologies. Our recommendation is to accept that as is.
Number 4, workshop 101, what operator models for digital inclusion. The recommendation is to accept that as it is.
Workshop number 5, youth in Internet Governance for Internet ethics and digital inclusion. Distributed in a multistakeholder approach includes Government and outreach. Accept as is. It's also a note that this is a youth driven workshop that ranked very well, number 5.
Number 6, workshop closing the digital gap for marginalized communities dealing with access to digital divide, our proposal is to accept that as it is. Workshop number 7, I'm sorry, workshop 153, ranked 7, last mile of Internet it deals with affordability and social inclusion. This has been to dig deeper and we were unsure as a Working Group whether there might be compliance issues or not but this focuses on certain company products and services. So we really wanted the Secretariat's guidance on that to make sure that this is in line with the principles of the IGF. We can discuss that maybe later.
On the assumption that it's not in breach of anything, then it would be accepted as is.
>> Yes, we found that it wasn't
>> This is Susan. I would like to explain why. And I guess I would like to hear the Secretariat's explanation. I didn't realize that we had already asked for your assessment of this, but the reason why this was in the Working Group was because this session, if you read the proposal, it proposes three commercial products from one company and participants are asked to vote on the best one, the most innovative.
One of the founding principles of the IGF, the original principles is that it is non commercial in nature, so, I mean, with any company coming in and promoting products like that, even if it's exploring the different facets of these products and how it can enhance accessibility both in terms of rural connectivity and accessibility for people with disabilities, there should be sufficient diversity. So on the basis of that, I wanted to call this proposal into question and I think it scores very high on the criteria, but whether or not the proposal is commercial, promotes commercial products was not a criteria.
I think it's because it's just tacitly assumed. So for this reason, I objected to including this workshop in the theme.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: We found that it does feature commercial products, but we saw that these products were of giving an example if there are three under the same company, we can write back and ask them to have a little bit more diversity in what they were presenting. Yes, that could be a point that we could write to them. On the whole, when we read it, they were showcasing some of these products as examples, not as we didn't see them as if they were trying to get people to buy them as such.
>> I'm sorry, Chengetai, I think it's problem probably within the purview of the MAG to decide the workshop, not the Secretariat.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: It is, but you asked for our opinion, so we were giving you our opinion. If that's not correct, then, of course, the MAG can also look at it. I mean, that's fine. I wasn't answering the question, the specific question about our opinion, the Secretariat's opinion.
>> Okay. Well, I appreciate that.
>> Susan, please, which workshop are you talking about? I'm sorry.
>> Sure.
>> CHAIR: 153.
>> 153 and I think this should be a consensus decision, so if folks, if the collective will of the group feels otherwise then that is the collective decision of the group.
>> CHAIR: This is Lynn. Could I make a suggestion? I do think it's a sensitive matter and one that does need careful consideration. Could we perhaps post that, I don't know if we want to post the question separately to the MAG list although that's the probably the most efficient way to do and give MAG members some time to look the proposal over.
If the speakers are from the companies that are being suggested, for me, I think that probably crosses the line. If they are speakers from academia or other stakeholder groups or other organisations and they are talking about those products as examples, then that's slightly better, but I do actually think it is coming close to some lines which are probably apt to be more, the comments are probably apt to be more accentuated during the session itself then what, perhaps, is even in the posting.
But could we just maybe call that out separately to the MAG and get some thoughts on it when people have had a chance to review it.
>> Yes, thank you, Lynn.
>> CHAIR: Would that work for the Working Group? Yes, okay, good.
>> PAUL ROWNEY: From our perspective then, we will just leave it for the moment flagged for further discussion. Let's move on then. Next one, workshop 64 Internet accessibility, empowering persons with disabilities. This is design for inclusion, emerging technologies. There was proposals in the evaluation that this should be merged with workshop 404, which is similar and was the thought of the Working Group because the similarity of the two workshops made sense actually to merge them. So we have a recommendation to merge those two, keeping in mind that they are both in the top 16.
The next one is workshop 389, sex, work, drug use, harm reduction and the Internet, dealing with inclusion of women. We made a recommendation. This was a 60 minute workshop proposal, and we have a recommendation to look at having this workshop reach out to another work hope, which is workshop 113 that deals with similar things, but it didn't rank so well, but it does have representation from the host country. There was a Government, members wanted to speak.
So our thought as a Working Group would be as we got a span of 30 minutes to see if we can get those two merging and working together and trying to draw in the German participants into that workshop discussion which we believe would enrich that workshop. So that's our proposal there. Any specific questions on this or can I move forward or any comments from my colleagues?
Okay. Let's move forward then to workshop number 10, I'm sorry, 404, accessibility for disabled people, new participatory methods., that includes digital literacy. This one we proposed. That's the one we pro proposed to merge well workshop 404 looking to merge. The next one, 244, inclusion and representation enabling local content growth, dealing with digital divide, economic development, emerging technologies.
We determined that this should be accepted as it is.
Workshop 244, inclusion, representation enabling local content growth dealing with digital divide, economic development and emerging technologies. We propose that is accepted as it is.
Workshop 4001 inclusion online, diverse knowledge, new rules, (401). New rules, digital diversity and representation. Ranked 12. We proposed accept as is.
Workshop 200, rethinking the jobs of the future for vulnerable populations. Access to emerging technologies and social inclusion. We propose that this merges with a workshop 204, digital skills for women and girls in the Global South. This is a proposal that came through from the evaluations, so we endorsed, again, we think this will enrich the workshop and enhance the diversity.
Workshop 391, community network opportunities, challenges and solutions, dealing with access to community networks, digital divide. Our proposal is to merge with workshop 248, which is also the top 16, but they are very similar workshops. So running them separate is not going to get a variance in the stream. So we supported a workshop merger that was proposed during the evaluation stages.
Workshop 308, sustainabilities of NR Is sustainability for future IGF, Multistakeholder approach including Government, local Government. Our proposal is to accept that as it is. And then workshop 248 towards equitable sustainable community networks that is what we spoke of earlier, merger 248 and 391. Any comments or contributions?
So for filling the gaps, we looked at the geographic diversity, balancing the stakeholders, and balancing the issues so that we get an inclusive programme. So there were several proposals that were put forward by the Working Group, and these have been evaluated. So if we look at page number the next page, what page is that? We go to the next page on the screen. We looked at 342, digitally skilling our youth, varied global approaches. And another workshop which is workshop 98, emerging youth, and the proposal is to put forward a merged workshop between those two, both are youth led, youth driven proposals.
Both proposals asked for 60 minutes. So our proposal is to put forward that as one of the contenders for the remaining slots particularly because of the youth drive, youth focus and getting youth participating at the workshop level at the IGF. Workshop 293 unlocking the digital potential of the DLDC countries. There is a proposal to bring this forward because it brings Government participation to the table. It's also discussing digital skills, education and job creation in the developing and left Developed Countries.
There is a proposal to further reach out to workshop 285 of a potential merger to bring in the perspective of small businesses into that discussion. We then have workshop 252 equipping the work force for the digital transformation. And this was felt to be a strong workshop that deals well with the issues of digital transformation, which was not dealt with so much in the other workshops. So it's a general feeling of the Working Group that this should be one of the workshops put forward.
Workshop 410, everyone connected, a strategy for universal access dealing with access to infrastructure. This was a very strong proposal. It wasn't ranked so high. It got 41, but it's well structured, very strong speakers, very relevant, very diverse, and deals with the policy questions that fit well with the gaps. Then we have workshop 421, which is IPB6, why should I care. This is a 30 minute workshop proposal in the format of a tutorial, a very important topic, IPv6 is going to enable a lot we are not sure how to fit this into the programme. So this is something we wanted to discuss through the MAG.
Pretty much everything else will end up being a 90 minute workshop, so how and where we would slot in this particular workshop we are not sure, but we feel that this topic needs to be discussed at the IGF. Workshop 246 do Internet services deserve a syntax. This deals with local content and multi lingualism that's missing from streams.
Workshop 111, this business innovation foster digital inclusion, bridging gaps. Deals with the local content and multilingualism again. It's, again, fills some of the gaps in that area. And then the last one is workshop 216 online identity in the multilingual domain name space. So it's possible, possibility of merging own or two of those on the local content and multilingualism.
If we can move to the next page, this gives a bit of method to the madness when we are looking at the work groups, we are looking at a flow. In digital inclusion, there is some natural flow. When we look at Internet Governance and obviously into social inclusion, into design for inclusion, content, skills, access and community networks. So when we look at running the workshop streams, we don't feel that it's so pragmatic having two workshops of the same topic running at the same time in order to keep a flow because we want to build a story on the digital inclusion.
So you have got the look before the merger and then you have the look after the merger, and then what is more interesting is the variation 2 which is on the last page which actually looks at it from a bit of a reverse, but this is the sort of structure we are moving toward whether it starts with governance and policy or ends with governance and policy is less important, but this is the sort of flow we are looking at and how the workshops fit into that suggested flow.
And then there is just a comment we had at the end, workshop 409 that has been reported as a day zero event and not as a workshop. So we are not too sure whether the MAG needs to look at that as a possibly zero event or whether it's misposted within the workshops. We are a bit unsure there.
That brings me to a close. Any comments or any additions?
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Paul, are there any other introductory comments from any of the other team members before we open it up to the MAG.
>> I have some comments. I am in the queue.
>> CHAIR: Go ahead, Carlos.
>> CARLOS ALFONSO: Paul, very interesting, the effort. I would say it is very sophisticated. We did so well in this effort which is very complicated. I have some questions like we have 16 workshops which are in that list that you presented. Three of them are, we suggest they merge with others which are also in the 16 workshops list. So all of the three, I mean all of the six except we would have 13 workshops not 14, right? And I wonder if this, when we do the suggestion of merge, we are sort of imposing the merge or suggesting that they merge, but if they don't and they are already within the 16 list, it will be okay not to merge. Am I right or no? It's a question. I don't know if you understand.
>> PAUL ROWNEY: I can attempt to answer that question. Out of the merger suggestions, there is four workshops that are in the top 16. So if those workshops merge, that gives us two additional slots, so we would then reduce from 16 to 14 which would give us six free slots. Because of the similarity of those workshops are in the top 16, we felt as a Working Group it would be better to merge them because they are so much the same rather than repeating the same message and then create a more diverse discussion by having other workshops that were not discussing exactly the same thing.
So those particular ones in the top 16 we are proposing that these are forced mergers, but there are other mergers in there that we are suggesting that the workshop is very strong, but there is merit for them to reach out. So we are not, some of them we are saying we are not forcing a merger, we are making a recommendation to them that this might enrich their workshop and to see if there are ways that they can collaborate rather than merge.
>> CARLOS AFONSO: Okay. I understand.
>> CHAIR: I think that's a really good approach as well, and one that follows kind of past practices too. Jutta, you have the floor.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Lynn, for giving me the floor. I just wanted to step in because the question of mergers, suggestions or recommendations or force the mergers was also discussed in the group security and safety, and there were strong objections against discussing mergers at this point of stage. So the recommendation was that we should firstly decide whether we accept proposals based on the quality of the proposal, and then afterward during our face to face meeting discuss whether a merger would be beneficial to two or probably also three proposals and beneficial to the whole programme, but not to have this discussion in advance only by members of the Working Group in our call, but postpone it to the face to face meeting.
>> CHAIR: So and I think that's, you know, another interesting approach, and certainly when we do kind of a postmortem on this process, I think we can work with the MAG members to understand what worked best and make sure that that's, you know, taken into account for future recommendations. In order to make that merger discussion valuable to the Working Group members and the MAG, we would need the Working Group to, so this is for your Working Group here, not the one we just reviewed, we would need the Working Group members to kind of present the situation.
Not all MAG members, I can guarantee not all MAG members will read the possible merge proposals and they won't have the same sense as the Working Group members of the overall kind of composition. And I really like what the digital inclusion Working Group did with respect to the flow chart at the end that shows the various topics and issues and how they fit together. So if you could in the Working Group, and we are probably getting ahead a little bit, but if you have specific questions on mergers, then I think you need to provide enough context because I do think it's important that we minimize redundancy in the programme and do what we can to strengthen those workshops even if they were rated fairly high in order to meet some of the other kind of diversity and quality criteria as well.
I really think those recommendations are just best coming from the Working Group because you have familiarity with the totality of the proposal as in your session. So maybe when we actually go through yours, we can kind of keep that in mind and either start a separate discussion on the MAG list ahead of time or get one teed up for the MAG meeting itself. I think that's the only way you are actually going to get particularly insightful advice from the MAG as a whole because, again, we all won't have the same context you have had in the Working Group.
Let's just come back to that in a moment. See if there are any more questions on digital inclusion or comments on digital inclusion. Miguel put a comment in the chat room. He said it was difficult for him to speak so proposed mergers aim to reinforce the issues at hand, not to widen it but to give greater diversity either in speakers or the point of views represented. So I think it really was strongly oriented towards building a good thematic stream and improving those workshops that were in, and I also, again, support the merger approach on the basis of past experience. We have always had some kind of conditional, some this workshop will only be accepted under these considerations, others were kind of merely suggestions.
So I think, you know, that followed that past practice as well.
Timea, you have the floor.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you for giving me the floor and thank you to the colleagues who have worked with us on the inclusion track and trying to select these workshops. So thanks everybody for contributing to that.
I just wanted to say quickly that I agree with what Paul said, and thanks for giving such a good summary of our work, and I wanted to react to the question on mergers. There is quite a chat going on with Sylvia and Susan and Miguel contributing here. I understand that this year we were trying to streamline the agenda and making sure that we have focus on further discussion. So I agree with Sylvia in what she says that we have to be careful of the mergers and making sure that, you know, what we suggest goes into this approach and doesn't water down the subject. In this case, I think we did exactly that, and not only that, but we were trying to look into what workshops were accepted in the top 16, and making sure that while these top 16 workshops were really, really good, we don't crowd out other good ideas and other workshops that are proposals by accepting workshops that are basically the same.
So our idea for the mergers was not to merge workshops on the same topic, but we are really looking to if the same topics were really the same workshops as well, and think the mergers we proposed are pretty close to workshops in focus, so putting them together would allow for some other ideas to bubble up from below. And I hope that colleagues agree with that. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Timea. I will come to Sylvia and then Timea's comments and Miguel's which I read out. I and I do think one of the comments we have heard every single year is that there is a lot of redundancy in the programme, so I think making that a filter, if you will, for the, all of the proposals that make it in is one of the specific requests we have had, and I think mergers are always a complex process. I think if we are careful to give thoughtful direction around why we think it's a merger, maybe it's greater diversity of viewpoints, maybe it's pulling in other stakeholder groups, then I think those are all useful, useful suggestions.
Sylvia had a subsequent comment as well, and we will stay on this for a moment because mergers is always difficult discussion. Sylvia said that her, I think see shed she had experience from the previous years and I think she is talking about the widening versus the focusing on and proposal for the similarities. It will be great if we can proposals that are approved to focus on others that were similar. We can discuss more in depth. I think we are coming back to the same point.
We are all coming back to the same point which, of course, any merger ought to be about strengthening goes forward. We will use it to sharpen and focus the topic and not just broaden it for. It's probably worthwhile, it's probably good to craft purpose built notes and specifically talk about the things that are pulled in and why the merger was suggests. If you need time to think about it we can come back later but I do think we need to document the process and responsibilities for who is going to communicate back to the workshop proposers suggested.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Definitely the Secretariat will do the communicating with the workshop proposers or the initial communication at least. And we will put down the reasons for anything whether or not it's a conditional merger or merger with a weaker workshop or, we will do that.
>> CHAIR: Could you check with the working group at this point. We can be on copy with the communication, but, yes, we will do all of that communication. I think all of the communication should at least start through the Secretariat. Yes.
>> CHAIR: Again, just make sure you are looping in the Working Group members because they will have the kind of specific positioning and the specific recommendations.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Sure.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Chengetai. Any further comments or questions on digital inclusion? I want to thank Susan?
>> Sorry. I'm sorry, Lynn, I didn't comment.
>> CHAIR: Please go ahead.
>> I just had, so the group we had a discussion about the process and one of the last steps that we were considering as to how we kind of arranged the workshops in a flow throughout the week, and I just wanted to share one idea for what it's worth that I had going through the workshops. I would see workshops of infrastructure and inclusion and ensuring that the workshop is still there to broaden access and then there are discussions about applications and content and then policy about inclusion, so just one idea I wanted to suggest would be in terms of structuring the workshop that flow, it might be neat to start with the infrastructure focused workshop. So, for example, looking at just laying the fiber on the ground or ensuring there is IPv6, and then upon that you can kind of build to look at the layers almost like the OSI model of the Internet. And then at the top you have policy discussions throughout the week. So I just thought conceptually if we wanted to play around with ideas, if we wanted to get really refined and focusing a programme, that might be a neat way to go about it because I imagine there will be similar discussions or similar workshop proposals on infrastructure, applications and policy and other things. So I just, for what it's worth, I just wanted to throw that out as an idea.
>> CHAIR: I think that's an interesting comment, and I very much like the flow charts at the end. I think we should think about doing something similar for all of the tracks. Why don't we hold that suggestion and the one on flows and maybe that's something we leave for the face to face MAG meeting at the same time we also look for cross cutting issues as well to see if that suggests anything for the overall flow. I think that's an important point and it was noted.
If I could just quickly thank everybody, I know it's an awful lot of work and I do look forward to kind of the postmortem on this process certainly from the MAG's perspective and we need to find a way to do that for the community as well, they are the ones that participated and drove in support of the process, so I think we need to see both possibly in the face to face meeting, but then maybe there is even a separate workshop session slot or some other process at the IGF itself where we can kind of gather additional specific feedback to this part of the process since it's a very, very big undertaking and obviously critically important to the figure meeting itself. So we want to make sure we get enough time to follow up.
Let's move to the second one which is safety, security, stability and resilience workshop evaluation group?
>> JUTTA CROLL: Hello, Lynn. Hello, everybody. Jutta speaking, that was the group that we were working with and I hope Luis can put up the sheet, but before looking at it I have one preliminary remark with regard to diversity of stakeholder groups.
I had asked one colleague from my team to go through the proposals just to have a look to make herself familiar with proposals and speakers and everything, and what we realized was in a very high percentage, the affiliation as significant nation to the stakeholder group was not correctly done so we had very many cases where even company speakers were assigned to civil society. We had a lot of university speakers assigned to civil society, although I would say they are all in most cases technical community. If we look to the this with regard to diversity of stakeholders, we really should check whether private sector company representatives are assigned to civil society. I remember that we had a preponderance of civil society stakeholders overall in the proposals. And now to me it's slightly different image if several people were assigned to the wrong stakeholder group. And now going to the security, safety, stability and resilience proposals. When we had our call it seems to be easy because more or less the group found that the selection of the top ranking proposal was proportionate in regard of stakeholder and regional diversity and also in regard of the issues addressed by these proposals.
So given the time that we have time constraints, I wouldn't go through the whole list and talk about each single proposal. What we felt was that the topic IoT, Internet of Things, although it was prominent among the whole basket of security and safety proposals it was not well represented under the top 16 so we had to further look at the four proposals ranked 17 20 assessing whether these would address the under representation and at least one of these was also addressing IoT.
So the group decided that the top 20 could be approved conditionally, and then when we, after we pulled up the statistics for the top 20 proposals, this was kind of a confirmation to that decision the Working Group took because there was this one addressing Internet of Things and also the other seemed to be a good compliment to the whole list of the 20 then. We also suggested to the members of the group to have a further look into the proposal whether probably some of these or also some of the proposals further down the list might be considered for transfer to another group and there was identified proposals 170, 170 that was suggested to be transferred to the main theme data governance.
This is not on the list that you can see here now. It was just if the group data governance could have a look at proposal 170 to consider whether it could be taken over and transferred to the data governance group. Then we did an analysis of the duration of the conditionally approved 20 proposals, and revealed that five of these were replying for only 60 minute slots. So that potentially one or two more proposals could be accepted under the main theme of security, safety, stability and resilience, and then the group identified overall four more proposals that could be accepted within the theme security and safety. And there we mainly focused on the policy questions and thanks to the Secretariat's analysis we could see how the proposals ranked in regard of the policy questions separate to their overall rank.
So the proposals that you can see if, Luis, if you could scroll down, please, in the list just to see these additionally suggested proposals. Yes, these were transparency and control for the IoT, one to complement the IoT topic and then 150 or 150, hacking hate speech because there was the assumption that this issue also we had a lot of proposals with regard to misinformation, disinformation, hate speech was not well addressed among the top 20 so, therefore, 150 and also workshop 22 were suggested to be also taken in consideration if space was in this track.
And then finally 413, human values and Internet protocols, what can be done was assumed to be something of a new approach to security and safety and stability, and therefore this was suggested and if you have a look at the ranks for the policy questions, these are, this also ranks, has a score of 4.0. So this was also suggested to be taken in consideration. What I have to say is I really like the workshops, the chart that shows the workshops in a flow.
I think this could be done pretty good with the 20 or now 24 workshop proposals for the strand of security and safety, and I would like to work with the Working Group probably so that we can have this flow chart because we have our face to face meeting next week.
And as I said before in the debate of the issue inclusion, the group decided not yet to discuss mergers. This might be, the cause for this might be that we did not think that mergers, although there were some recommendations for mergers given by the MAG members that have assessed these workshop proposals, that it would not be beneficial to the whole programme to merge, for example, two or three proposals all dealing with misinformation, but having different, having lots of different perspectives so that we would end up with a merger session that is less focused than we want to achieve.
What we were talking about was like discussed in our last virtual meeting, that probably if there are three proposals all dealing with a topic like misinformation if it would be possible to have a main session, then it might be possible to bring them together, but in the format of a 90 minute workshop slot, we did not think this would be beneficial but we said before we could continue this deliberation at our face to face meeting. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Jutta, this is Lynn. Just waiting to see if anybody else is in the queue. I agree with your last observation, I mean, mergers of the two different workshops to three different workshops is always difficult and even more difficult if they are different formats. I think if we think about it as elements of various proposals that weren't accepted but that could help strengthen one that was, then that's a more successful discussion and I think everybody benefits. Even the workshop that wasn't but I think, I think it's more kind of elements of a proposal than full on mergers.
I think times when you can do a full on merger between two proposals, those are relatively rare. I don't know if that changes what you think with respect to some of the merger suggestions that came through the evaluation or if you were to go back and look at the 20
>> JUTTA CROLL: If I may, I do think we should then turn our attention to probably proposals that address issues that we don't have among the so far conditionally approved 20, and then have a look whether these that had a squad lower could be improved by merging them where another proposal, just to ensure that we achieve the diversity in regard of region of stakeholder, but also in regard of the issues that were addressed in the whole strand.
And to be honest, I thought from the beginning that putting security, safety, stability and resilience in one basket, which is already a broad topic, and we had tried to underline this also in the description for the topic that safety and security somehow are two pillars of the whole building, but, of course, they are now, they built the whole strand in the programme, but still people would say, okay, it's something different if I talk about the resilience of infrastructure or if I talk about the resilience of users who then use the infrastructure.
So it might, it might be more difficult to merge proposals in this basket than it might be in other, in other baskets.
>> CHAIR: I think that's a very important point. If you could the Working Group, taking a pass as you suggested looking at possible mergers and looking at whether or not some important areas are underrepresented and at the simple time probably whether others are overrepresented that would be very helpful.
If in fact you think, I mean, it was a broad category. If you think when you look at the proposals that came in, that one of those pillars, security, stability, safety or resilience was not adequately covered or covered in a quality
Then I don't think we are forced to find workshops to fit. I mean, we could even narrow the overall track down. So I think we start from everybody would be interested in one of the quality workshops that aim out of that and then what does this thematic track option look like not necessarily trying to fill every one of those four separate pillars. And I haven't thought that through myself, but just a piece of helpful guidance. And one last question, and then I will go to Ben.
So the proposals for further consideration, and it says in case slots are available, but you said earlier that a number of them requested 60 minutes versus 90 minutes.
Is it your belief that there is room for those additional workshops or would that require further consolidation or further selection?
>> JUTTA CROLL: So at least two more could be accommodated due to the fact that we had five among the first 20 that applied only for 60 minutes. So that would mean we have 15 applying for 90 minutes, and five applying for 60 minutes. That would leave room for at least two more, and if it's possible, then we could also accept the four more, but that depends on, I just remember it was said we could have 20 and potentially also 22, 21 or 22, so that would mean 20 plus two or the four that we had tested because of the fact that we had five.
>> CHAIR: Okay.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Deliberations on to exceed the amount of time for proposals, sort of considered a well-placed 60 minutes.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, thank you for clarifying your comments. Ben, you have the floor.
>> BEN WALLIS: Thank you, Lynn. Good afternoon, everybody. I was coordinating the Data Governance Working Group, so I'm just responding, Jutta, to your request that we consider workshop 170. And one thing that it would be helpful to know for us to look at that is how it ranks overall and how it's scored because I don't think that detail was provided outside of your Working Group. The way we approached, we shall talk about in a minute obviously the way we approached the process was taking into account how they ranked and how they scored and also looking at whether they fills any gaps that were, that came out of the top 16.
So there are issues or stakeholder groups or regions which were not representing the top 16, those were things that we looked to when we provided the last four slots. So I can obviously look at the proposal 170 on the Internet, but I can't see how well it's scored and ranked.
So that would be helpful for the group.
>> JUTTA CROLL: I will look that up while you are presenting and hopefully we can get back to that question. Would that be fine with you?
>> BEN WALLIS: Yes, that would be great. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: And perhaps even send the information to Ben online and he can make sure the whole Working Group sees it. I'm sure there are some folks not on the call today that would be part of the Working Group. Thank you very much, Jutta. Let me see if there are any other comments from any of your Working Group members or MAG members.
I very much appreciate all of the work and specifically this sort of extra step. Our hope, of course, is that it facilitates pulling together the final programme and supports the improvements the community has requested but also gets us ahead of some of the work for the face to face MAG meeting so we can use that for some additional discussion.
So, Jutta, if you could, based on some of the comments on mergers, some of your own suggestions, I'm trying to look at the thematic coverage across the four pillars, if there is any subsequent edits or changes for the MAG if you could possibly take a shot at that ahead of the MAG meeting or even, perhaps, on site during one of the breaks or something, that would be helpful in terms of allowing the MAG to move itself forward.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Of course, Lynn, we'll do so before Wednesday next week.
Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Excellent, thank you, Jutta, and thank you to the Working Group members as well. So the final thematic Working Group is data governance.
Ben, I think you said you were the one that was going to speak to this.
>> BEN WALLIS: Yes, thank you, Lynn. Yes, I was the person who coordinated the working group last week and I posted our recommendations to them on Friday. We had a, certainly compared to the digital inclusion group, we have a simpler less sophisticated process. I certainly admired the depth they were able to get into and the considerations they gave to mergers and all of that. We took it a more straight forward process, which I will outline now. So the starting point was that we decided to take the top 16 through as they were proposed. That's partly because we grouped the top 16 into sub themes and we were able to see that there was a fairly good spread of issues, no particular duplication. I think someone may be calling, user number 4 has their mic open. Just saying that's not me doing or maybe Jutta.
So, yes, we took the top 16 through, and it was partly because we were able to group them into sub themes and see that there was a fairly good spread of issues. There was no particular duplication. But it also came from a feeling that the top 16 the represented the collective view that came out of the Working Group evaluation process. It was basically a vote of confidence in the integrity and the value of the evaluation system and that the top 16 were the best on merit. So we took the top 16 through. We did not look at possible mergers. We did not place any conditions on the approval of the top 16, but we did provide suggested recommendations for how the workshops might be improved in a majority of cases.
Some of them scored well and there were no particular comments so we didn't provide any comments. So we focused our time on understanding first
To see what gaps there were from within the top 16, and then trying to fill those gaps with the final four workshop slots in order to help increase the balance that the data governance programme overall. So we looked at the statistical analysis provided by the Secretariat. We identified that there were some underrepresented topics, particularly ethics, there were underrepresented stakeholder groups, the private sector, Government, and the technical community, and that there were particularly underrepresented geographic regions, GRULAC, Latin America and Caribbean and the eastern European group.
We also acknowledged that civil society and as a stakeholder group and Western European and geographic region were overrepresented so we tried to avoid bringing into the final four any proposals which had too many WEOG civil society speakers involved. So that was our process. That led us to suggesting four additional workshops to make up our final four. We talked about how many minutes our top 20 workshops would come to. Let me see if I can explain this better.
So the starting point from the Secretariat was that they lasted 20 sessions at 90 minutes through each of the three themes, and once we looked at our 20 workshops and saw that they were not all 90 minutes long, some were only 60 minutes long, that gives a hypothetical additional 150 minutes still to be filled for the data governance thematic stream, and so we also suggested three additional workshops if there was additional space, and we listed them in the order of their ranking from the evaluation process.
So there is actually a list of 20 workshops which we recommend from the Data Governance Working Group, and another three which could be taken forward if there is room in the schedule. In our document, we did provide the rationale for why we brought in those numbers 17, 18, 19, 20 demonstrating how we felt we filled gaps they had identified in the top 16.
The only other step we took was to group the data governance workshops thematically. Again, not as sophisticated as the story that the inclusion work group has managed to produce, that kind of flow chart. I'm not sure. I could see a particular way of telling a story with the data governance workshops, but we thought it could still be helpful to organize them into themes and kind of sub theme baskets, and that that could assist the Secretariat in scheduling so that while we had two recommendations, one they could avoid scheduling that those are the primary workshops that those address. And it would be the secretariat avoids scheduling those at the same type because somebody coming to the IGF interested in human rights would probably not be able to attend both workshops.
That was one recommendation. The other was asking the Secretariat to consider the size of the rooms and the relevant potential amount of interest in any given workshop when we know there are two rooms assigned to each theme. So those were suggestions for the Secretariat to take on board when they do the scheduling. So let me leave it there and hand it back to you, and I don't see anyone else in the data governance work group who would like to contribute.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Ben. Let me see if there are comments first from Working Group members. Are there any MAG members who want to comment on have questions for the Data Governance Working Group?
Jutta, you have the floor. Jutta.
>> JUTTA CROLL: I don't have a question, but I have researched the information on the 170 proposal, and wanted to bring that in. Ben, I didn't know, I couldn't see from the list that was sent around the score for the 20 proposals that you had conditionally approved for the 170 proposal, the score was 3.8853. So it was more or less very close to the threshold of 4.0 that we had in the security and safety basket.
It's not a definite threshold, but still this one didn't score very much lower. It's close to the score for the proposals as well. And the reason I do think why it was also suggested to be taken in consideration was that it addresses somehow an additional target group because it deals with children's privacy and data protection, and I assume that it might be submitted under safety and security because of the term data protection or so I do think from having a look at the proposal that it addresses more issues of data governance and, again, I don't have a full overview over the proposals that were suggested for adoption for data governance, but I do think that the issue of children's right to privacy and data protection might not be addressed in these proposals.
Another idea could be that the perspective of children's privacy and data protection rights could be added to one of the 20 proposals that you already had recommended to be approved, but that would, for me, it would need deeper analysis of these proposals and probably the members of the data governance group can easily answer the question whether the perspective of children would fit into one of these 20 or whether it would be an additional perspective.
>> CHAIR: Thank you. Thank you, Jutta. Ben?
>> BEN WALLIS: So an initial reaction, numerically given that score it would have ranked 24th that it was scored against all of the other data governance proposals, so it wouldn't have gone through automatically in the top 16, but it would do fairly well compared to the others that we took through in the final four. I don't know to what extent it full tills the gaps we had fulfills the gaps we had identified in terms of it doesn't have any speakers from the underrepresented regions of data governance. It has one technical community speaker but it also has two civil society speakers and we already have, that's one of our overrepresented groups.
So just used using our simplistic the ways that we let things now and took things forward or not, I don't, I don't know that we would have necessarily taken it through. One thought I had was as both a safety component, child online safety and there is also a data component, and I wonder, therefore, whether this feels like feels like a cross cutting issue that cuts through several of the themes and, therefore, I know that one of the thoughts was to leave a little space. We may put 23 per theme, but also leave a little space for workshops which don't necessarily fall perfectly within one of those themes. Maybe this could be one of those. That's an initial reaction from me.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Lynn. Maria also put comments in the chat. Maybe all will read that out?
>> CHAIR: Sure, or you can as well. Does Maria have voice herself?
>> MARIA PAZ CANALES LOEBEL: Finally I managed to unmute myself. I want to add my comment is that probably this core of the proposal that we asked to the data track concealer it was effective in the scorer by our group because it doesn't belong to the track. So I don't think that necessarily the 3.8 reflect the fair valuation of the proposal if that proposal were evaluated in the track that really belonged. If they decide this is the way they want to go. Another option is what Ben already said that if they consider that the topics are represented in some of the proposals that have been high scored in that track maybe there is no need to do that.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Maria. That's a good point, and I think it's a good suggestion as well. If perhaps the Working Group could take another look at it. Any other comments from MAG members or Working Group members for data governance or anything else, Ben?
>> BEN WALLIS: Nothing else for me.
>> CHAIR: Sylvia has a good comment one thing to point out after listening to the three presentations is that without initial guidelines, every group did a very different exercise, all valid and interesting but inconsistencies are quite evident. It may be hard to come up with the process to adequately describe how it was done to the community, and process is very important. I agree with that, Sylvia, I do think that the narrative to the community focuses on the criteria that we asked people to consider when they submitted their workshop proposals, and the criteria and guidance that was given to the workshop proposers, partly through MAG meetings, partly through frequently asked questions that the Secretariat pulled together, the Secretariat and I sat in on, I sat in on two of the Working Group initial calls to try and keep kind of consistency in process approach, I guess, not process per se, but process, but the things they were trying to build towards in each one.
So I think there is more consistency in what they were, in what each Working Group was trying to address and trying to achieve, perhaps not in the working methods and I think that's an important distinction. And I think as we have said before that we need to do a postmortem on this process from the perspective of the community as well as from the MAG to really understand what pieces we would recommend continuing or recommend moving forward.
I think there is a couple of things I want to bring up with respect to next steps for the programme, but let me see if there is any further comment to Sylvia's comment or my comment and in the meantime, Ben, you have the floor.
>> BEN WALLIS: Lynn, in response to the discussion just now, it's a very good point from Sylvia that the three different Working Groups came up with three different processes that we spent the majority of our first call on the Monday and shortly after that online working out what the process should be. I think thanks to the work of the workshop evaluation Working Group over the last month or two, we definitely had made improvements to the evaluation process, and but this was a gap, and so I think it would be helpful to create an additional process for this additional element of the way that we broke out into Working Groups this year.
So my request is that the Working Group promotion evaluation or whatever it's called because I haven't learned the title be convened fairly soon while things are fresh, and I know we did have one call immediately after the end of the workshop evaluation process, but another one now possibly in the margins in Berlin, a lunch time meeting or something or in the week after, I think that would be really valuable for us to share lessons learned while they are still fresh in the mind and see if we can come up with proposals for a process for next year already rather than waiting until next February, March.
Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Ben, totally agree with the need to do it in a timely manner whether that's with the full MAG or the Working Group. I also appreciate Carlos' comment asking to point out any of the specific inconsistencies and I think it is important, part of what Sylvia said is that we communicate to the community our process and what we are doing with the programme here. So I certainly volunteer to work with the Secretariat to put together a communication that I think, again, goes back to the things we have been saying for some years, listen to the community, a more cohesive, relevant focused programme, focus on policy questions, focus on attempts to significantly advance discussions within each one of the workshop sessions and those sorts of things.
And I think all of those criteria or values were taken into account in the Working Group. The only thing I might ask specifically is if we think about acceptance of the top 16, again, I think a lot of the exercises were fairly similar. Possibly the exception of the data governance, and I guess I would like them to think about whether or not it makes sense to look at some of the merger suggestions again to see if the MAG members that evaluated those were suggesting were points that were, could easily be strengthened, if you will., so not merging two full proposals but if somebody suggested a merger because they thought a workshop lacked something, then I think that would be, and it sounded like you haven't looked at that closely. I don't think there is that much work. I don't think there are that many of them if we are calling it correctly, but that might also strengthen the ones that are in drive more consistency across the processes and be additional good feedback for those that weren't accepted.
So do you think, Ben, that would be a worthwhile exercise for the data governance group?
>> BEN WALLIS: I'm sorry. I missed the last bit. I'm rushing to the transcript.
>> CHAIR: It was whether or not it was worthwhile for the data governance group to look through in your top 16 those that had merger suggestions and just see if there was anything that was worth picking up and bringing forward because presumably if somebody saw a merger, there was something that they thought could be improved in one or both workshops and if it's in fact the one selected, it might be worthwhile bringing elements in. Again, that would drive for more consistency across the processes.
>> BEN WALLIS: Thank you, Lynn. Yes, I can definitely go back and pick out those comments about potential mergers and see to what extent we can either add those in as suggestions for the ones that we have taken through in the top 16 or it's possible that we even took the merge workshop through under the final four slots. So, yes, I'm very happy to take an action now after the call to look at that with the Working Group and let the MAG know if we have additional recommendations or any changes to the recommendations we suggest be provided to those approved workshops.
>> CHAIR: Thank you. We need to wrap this agenda point up so we can move on to the others, but just to Carlos' comment, I think as we put together the group, the memo that explains the processes, I actually think the process we are following with the mergers is the ones we always have. I mean, the key points are that the top proposals were never an automatic in. They were assumed, you know, that they would be, likely be accepted because they were rated so high, but we have always done checks to look for appropriate kind of diversity and appropriate balance in the programme, and then the remaining slots have always undergone a much more thorough review, and, frankly, across the entire set of workshop proposals to, again, look for various diversity or topics. So it's never been, you know, kind of as rote as the next four are automatically assumed or get split up either.
So I think the process we followed this year with respect to filling out each one of the themes follows the same tendencies as last year's process so and so I think in line with the community expectations. We do need to get to the next two in a moment, but some of the things and maybe I can put lists out, one of the things I would like the MAG to consider with the help of the Secretariat is I guess, and we can have this discussion at the face to face meeting is the policy questions. The policy questions are obviously a key piece of the proposals and of the rankings, and my question, I think, goes to kind of the quality of the policy questions and is there any advice we would want to give to those workshops that are accepted as they continue their preparations. They have several stages of sort of reports, prereporting, policy questions, expected outcomes, and if we think there is some general advice or general guidance, maybe even specific in some cases, I think we should consider that because I think the policy questions are one of the key drivers of the quality and success of the workshop.
And then the other things we need to move forward at our face to face meeting are, of course, what we might want to do with respect to topping and tailing these three themes, which is a discussion we had in the MAG previously. We obviously need to look at the cross cutting issues and determine, if they ought to come forward probably in a main session and then, of course, we have main session slots as well. So we will figure out how to structure those and put those into the programme. Let's move quickly on, and I hope everybody has had a chance to look at the 2019 scheduling template, and the face to face agenda are the two remaining items. Chengetai, do you want to give us a brief introduction to the 2019 scheduling template?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Can you hear me now?
>> CHAIR: Yes.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: I'm sorry. I was trying to unmute myself and it kept on not doing it. Thank you, Lynn. Yes, so I sent out a slightly updated par compliment template and I hope you have had a chance to look at it, Luis has just put it up on the website as well. Let's just concentrate on the workshop streams. We will start with them. As was, has been discussed, we have three basic, three workshop themes based on the sub themes, and each theme is going to take two workshop rooms.
So all, all of the sessions of that theme is going to be in those two workshop rooms so people don't have to, you know, run across the venue to go to another workshop in that same street. So I think that's one improvement that we have made this year. And as we discussed, there is the top, that's the introductory session of the three themes and when those are going on, those will just go on in one room, and as Lynn said in the beginning of the meeting that these are just the introductory sessions that may be setting the scene of what we are doing and then they will break out into the two streams.
And then at the very end on day 4 or day 3 of the actual meeting, there is also going to be a concluding session for those themes. And those can be the summing up and I'm sorry, just getting my notes to summarize the sessions, gather the key messages that have come out of the workshops of the themes and then all of these three, the summing up, can be presented just before the open mic session we have reporting in session.
I'm still trying to find a good word for it, but over there, I think you can see it, the summing up session and bringing it together because, of course, during the meeting all of the participants will not be able to attend all of the sessions, so it will be very good to have a summing up session, not just of the sub themes but also of the dynamic coalitions and Open Forums, et cetera. Now, also going back to the first day, also as you can see, we have also two workshop rooms that have been set aside for the Open Forums and the dynamic coalition sessions and the Best Practice Forum sessions as well.
We have also allocated six sessions for the national and regional initiatives. For the main sessions, these are also just suggestions that at the very beginning the first main session is the IGF for beginners where we can introduce the IGF to those people who have not been at an IGF meeting and maybe highlight the session they can go to and how to interact in the IGF or in an IGF meeting. The next sessions we have there is frontier issues session because last year, this is the response to the Secretary General, last year, he did in his message to the IGF, he did say that he would want the IGF to tackle these frontier issues to invite philosophers and other people who are not the regular people at the IGF.
So this session is a placeholder that we can discuss either, you know, things to do with the high level panel meeting, the high level panel on digital cooperation because the report is coming out on the tenth of June, and so we won't have time to discuss it or to look at it during the face to face meeting, but online, we can try and organize a session in response to that if needed or we can do something else in line with the SGs call.
The ceremony for the afternoon, unfortunately we have to start at 2:00 so the lunch for that day will be short. It will be a one hour lunch but the Chancellor can only make it between 2:00 and 3:00 so we are starting the afternoon session, the Opening Ceremony at 2:00 p.m. and then after that is the high level session which is going to be organized together with the host country. In between we have eight main sessions that we did not label, and these main sessions we have to make some sort of a decision what these main sessions will be.
There won't be the normal thematic sessions we usually have because those thematic sessions are more or less taken care of with the top sessions of the sub theme streams. For example, these sessions can also be the, I know the national regional initiatives one main session, the national coalitions are looking for a main session, but there can be other topics we can come up with if we have suggestions to fill in those sessions. At the moment, I have just put them in an hour and a half blocks, so but they don't have to be in 90 minute blocks. We can have them three hours, two hours, we can have them one hour. This is a discussion for the MAG to have.
And at the end, as I at the end in a day three, the last day, in the morning we have the legislative main session as we have said, as you have known and as you have been informed by the host country is that they are making a lot of effort to have the legislators from all over the world come into the IGF so in the morning of the final day, they will have the legislative session that will be done there, and it will be in the main hall, and, of course, it's open to everybody to come in and see and view.
The agenda for that has not been finalized yet, but I'm sure when it had finalized, the host country will let us know. In the afternoon, in the afternoon we will start off with reporting in session and, please, if anybody has got good ideas on what to name it, you know, we are all ears and we can put it in there. At the moment, we have named it as the summing up session bringing it all together. And then we have the regular open mic session only for one hour, and then finally, of course, we have the regular closing ceremony. I think I have mentioned everything that's there. And also you notice that for this year, we only have 10 rooms that are operational. So it will be smaller than previous meetings not counting, of course, the 2018 meeting, but previous meetings we have had eleven rooms and now this is ten rooms so this is in part responding to community input that the IGF is getting a little bit too big and we should be a little bit more focused. That's why we have the three main sub themes as you know instead of eight like we had in previous years.
I think that's all for me. If you have any questions, please ask, and this is a suggestion.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Chengetai. Just quickly on a couple of comments, yes, Paul, the IGF formal meeting is four days long and, of course, day zero takes place on the Monday, but this graphic is covering just the four days of the official meeting. And one other comment, and I know you were trying to move through quickly because of the time, the legislative or the Parliament session as well, I mean, that is meant to be an interactive discussion or certainly one that engages broadly with the community as well. So I don't know that that was clear from your comments and I wanted to make that clear. Of course, there will be much more discussion on this in the coming weeks and at our meeting next week.
Let me see if there is any more quick questions. We have Jutta and Ben in the queue. Maybe we will go to Jutta Croll while I catch up on this.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: There is one question about the setups. We are going to take a look the final workshop schedule and from that we will derive what kind of setup will be in each room because the rooms are highly configurable and so they will be configured to our needs and that also depends on the demand based on the final selection of the workshops and the sessions.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Chengetai. And maybe just before because I believe Susan put a note in there is an Internet jurisdiction meeting which is taking place Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday morning. The German Government has kindly arranged a bus to bring people over from the Internet jurisdiction to the MAG meeting in the afternoon, and we have had discussions, obviously we want to maximize topics that are of interest to the broader community that would be participating. Susan has made a suggestion that we move the, some of the workshop evaluation process and the briefing to the afternoon.
I think we need to determine what we think is of more interest to people at large. I mean, is that it or is it some of the intersessional work and how to strengthen those activities? I think the Secretariat and I have gone back and forth with Rudolf and Danella, and we also thought that maybe how to strengthen this of the activities the BFFs, Working Groups was possibly of one more interest to that group of people that would be coming over from the morning session. But, you know, it's certainly up to the MAG in terms of what they think is more interesting. Are there any other quick comments on that and then we will go to Jutta Croll and Ben?
Well, let me while people think, yes, all MAG members should be at the MAG meeting. Frankly, not at the Internet jurisdiction meeting on the Wednesday morning. I hope that's pretty clear.
>> I'm sorry, Lynn, I'm supporting my superior at that meeting and she is speaking during the closing session, so unfortunately that's an unavoidable conflict, but if there is some room in the schedule, if there is a way to understand and hear some of the briefings, I think that having readouts and updates and briefings, it's easier to read that on the transcript. So I think that given that deliberation on the programme is one of the main key tasks and that you can't really deliberate through a transcript, so that would be the rationale and suggestion that we try and accommodate that. Because that will be our focus.
>> CHAIR: Quick reaction. I want to cut the briefing time down to very brief, briefing remarks and really put the question in front of the community which is really what can we do to strengthen the various activities, strengthen the BPFs, the Working Groups, I think we need to do the same thing with respect to the NRIs, obviously hear from the NRIs so it was more about engaging the community on that. We certainly want to hear from them with respect to the programme process, but it is the MAG's responsibility to build the programme. But I think your comments are reflected there. Let's actually, maybe we can take the note to the list although we need to get the agenda out soon so people can make their own plans.
Let me go back to Jutta and Ben, thank you for your patience while we had that little exchange. Jutta, you have the floor.
>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you, Lynn, for giving me the floor. I just want wanted to say that I really appreciate that these introductory and concluding sessions for the three main themes are now proceeding in the programme and picking up on what you said before, Lynn, about the policy questions, I do think when members of the three groups go through their suggested proposals for acceptance they should have a close look at the policy questions and probably take in consideration how these policy questions could structure the introductory session and then also the concluding session when we look at the policy questions and the expected outcomes of these workshop proposals.
I do think the structure for both sessions for each of the three themes could be well guided by the policy questions and also by the outcomes of the sessions. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Very good suggestion, Jutta, thank you. Ben, you have the floor.
>> BEN WALLIS: Thank you, Lynn. At previous IGF meetings, there has been concern that there is not much time between sessions. There is a lot of rushing trying to get to the next session on time, that there is not enough time for networking and just having side meetings, and so I just wanted to recognize that the Secretariat has listened to this, and at least on days one, two and three has provided really decent gaps between the workshop sessions between the dynamic coalitions and BPFs and provided extended lunch breaks and so has kind of heard that concern and made an effort to work around it. So it was just recognizing the Secretariat for that.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Ben. Maybe we can just quickly go back to the agenda for our face to face meeting, which I think has been posted for some time. I hope people had a chance to look at it. Are there any further comments on the discussion we had a few moments ago with respect to how to structure the open consultation day? I think that's the one that's probably the trickier. The rest of the, you know, the next two days are kind of MAG working meetings and I think that's got some structures on the basis of the work we need to accomplish, but any discussion on that day? Anything missing? We would like to hear from the MAG in terms of thoughts on how to improve that day specifically for the community.
While they are waiting, Chengetai or Rudolf, is there anything you want to add to the day zero or, Chengetai, what are your thoughts with respect to perhaps flipping the timetable. And I think you are still on mute or muted, Chengetai.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, are you talking about day one, flipping the timetable for the
>> CHAIR: Yes, Susan had asked if that was possible.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Well, as you said, Lynn, it depends what we think the community is really interested in, I mean, we can, but I will leave it up to you, to the group decision to see whether or not we should.
>> CHAIR: Well, as I said, we did go back and forth on this a few times, and we, definitely we need to communicate with the community, obviously the programme, some of the improvements we are attempting to make through the process this year. But, I mean, I think, and we should certainly hear from them with respect to the process and how it felt going through, and I don't know if that's the right time to do it or maybe an online survey and then some time again at the IGF meeting itself we will actually know the fruits of this process, was it better, did it address some of the suggested improvements from the community? But I actually think a more open discussion which is what could we do to strengthen some of the component pieces of the IGF activities, and maybe that's a different way to structure the afternoon.
So some of that, of course, is the Best Practice Forums and intersessional activities. Others might be how we do our workshop planning. So I guess I'm leaning towards leaving it as is on the basis of some of the other discussions we have had, but are there any kind of other comments? Some of the comments are there. Some of the community, Susan will be there the entire day, but we are hopeful that some of the folks from the Internet jurisdiction will take advantage of being in Berlin, although it's such a lovely and interesting city, would come to the MAG meeting in the afternoon. Jutta Croll is making the point that aren't they already informed and would have made their own plans based on the agenda, and I'm sure that's true.
So and Timea is saying do we know how many participants are registered that aren't MAG members. That's an interesting point too. The Secretariat and I can take one more thoughtful review of the process. I do think it's time to get the agenda published and I think we can do better with respect to the timing and possibly do better with respect to asking the community ahead of time what are the things that would actually make consultation day most interesting and most useful to them. So maybe that's another improvement we can actually put going forward.
We are at the top of the hour and the end of the meeting. Are there any important AOB or any other final comments? Apologies for the fact that the last few items here were a little bit rushed, but I think it was important to advance the workshop perhaps. Not seeing any. I would like to thank, again, all of the Working Groups for all of the work they did. I know it's an awful lot and there was this additional step in the process. Hopefully that will free up a lot of time at the upcoming MAG meeting for more strategic discussions and thank you to the Secretariat, too, for everything they have done to advance the scheduling and the programming, and, of course, we are fortunate this year the German Government has provided us with lots of flexibility in terms of room and flexibility in interpreter schedules which makes the programme a lot less crowded as well.
So thank you, everyone. See you in Berlin. Travel safe!
Bye bye.
>> Thank you very much, Lynn, thank you very much, everybody!