IGF 2021 - MAG - Virtual Meeting - XI

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

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>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Okay.  Thank you very much.  Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen for joining us today for MAG meeting number XI, virtual MAG meeting number XI.  As you know, it's being recorded and there's transcription and a summary report will come out later on this week.

And just very quickly before we start for apologies, Paul Charlton, Gunela said she would be present.  But Paul Charlton cannot attend and Alicia from the OECD can't make it.  So with that, I will hand over the floor to our share Anriette Esterhuysen to start.

>> CHAIR: Thank you very much, change take.  Welcome, everyone.

I'm Anriette from South Africa and really good to be with you in this MAG meeting.  A special welcome to our MAG members and past MAG members and observers and our Secretariat.  Today is a big meeting for us because we are starting the work of evaluating the workshops.  So the primary goals is to give you all a chance to ‑‑ to get firstly a report from the Secretariat on the submissions received, and then next an overview of how to do the evaluation and how to use the form and the criteria, which the workshop on ‑‑ the Working Group on workshop process has developed.

I would say the second goal for this meeting, really is for you to ‑‑ to use this opportunity to ask any questions you might have.  That's why we will have breakout groups for quite a long time.  And I want you to use those breakout groups to express any uncertainties, any questions or make any additional suggestions.

I know that it has been a steep learning curve for new MAG members, and today is an opportunity to express any questions that you might have, and I have also talked with Anja about us doing a workshop for new MAG members on how to do evaluations.  Please, in the course of the meeting, if anyone feels that would still be useful after today, let us know.

So the agenda, I will just review it quickly before I hand over to our cochair.  And we are going to get the short update from the Secretariat on general matters.  Then we dive with item number three into evaluation process.  We will look at the proposals received, we'll look at the groups that you have been grouped into.  We'll look at what the tasks of this group will be and step‑by‑step how you go about evaluating proposals.

Chengetai will then give us a timeline, and please, everyone, try and internalize what the hard deadlines are, because we do have hard deadlines to work with here.

And after that, we'll go into the breakout groups.  These breakout groups will be in your workshop evaluation groups.  In other words, today, we will use Zoom groups, group you into the same groups that you will be working with in the coming weeks on evaluation of the workshops.

So while you are all evaluators and individuals and score as individuals, the evaluation group is there for you to ask questions, to share the experience, to deal with challenges and also to reflect on the ‑‑ the category, the issue area that you are evaluating, and the extent to which the proposals that we have received cover that.

And that you will do at a later stage.  These same groups will also continue working ‑‑ but primarily just on the evaluation of the workshop proposals.  These are not the same groups who will organize main sessions.

We will come back to that.

The other task for the groups is for you to agree on your working methodology and agree on a facilitator and you might want to agree on when to get together and at what point in the process.  Maybe it could be useful to first do a benefit evaluation before you get together or you might choose to start the process with the call.

Then we'll come back into plenary, and then I want you to ‑‑ you have to nominate a rapporteur and a facilitator ‑‑ if you still have any questions about the workshop evaluation process.  You can also flag other questions at this point, even if we can't deal with them today, it will be good to note them.

But our priority will be the evaluation process.  Then we'll have a plenary discussion to address all of these concerns.  And then you can share with the plenary what you decided.  This is quite useful for people to learn from one another.

After that, we'll do a short overview, five minutes ‑‑ not ten minutes ‑‑ if we stick to time of the preparatory phase.  But we won't delve into that today.

That involved different types of activities for MAG members, but we'll get to that in more depth later.  We'll just update you today and then we'll have our closing.

So quite a complex and long agenda, but if we keep time, we will make it, and I hope it will be a very productive meeting.

And Wiktor, I hand over to you.

>> WIKTOR SKWAREK:  I have the pleasure to represent the host country, and some updates we are going to have and we can't wait to see you all in September.  The situation in Poland COVID‑wise is getting better as the vaccination rate is growing.  So Poland should be pretty much vaccinated by December.  And the other thing is that the lockdown is partially over in Poland and the event try is waking up after months' long lockdown.  So it looks positive and we are very positive about that.  We will appreciate updates from MAG members as far as how your COVID situation is and if you will be able to participate in Katowice.  We hope very much you will.

And day zero as, the host country, Poland also has a small call for sessions from local stakeholders and we already closed the call.  We received some applications and we will work closely with the Secretariat once the ‑‑ to know how to create the rooms and how to choose the workshop that we have on day zero.  Thank you very much.  Have a successful meeting today.

>> CHAIR: Thank you very much, Wiktor and it's a pleasure to have you as cochair representative today.

>> WIKTOR SKWAREK:  Thank you.

>> CHAIR: And I see there's a question from June, June Parris on what the non‑MAG members will do during the breakout groups.  June, I suggest that you sit it out.  You can stay in the main room, in the plenary room, because they have been preset up for the MAG members to the specific groups that they have been assigned to.

So ‑‑ but you are welcome to come back to participate in the plenary report backs.

Chengetai, on this note, let me just check, are there any questions about the agenda?

I don't see any hands.  I don't see the speaking queue.  So I will now hand over to Chengetai Masango for an update from the Secretariat.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Anriette.  Today we are focusing on the workshop and I will do a quick update on all the sessions.  Anja will give a more thorough briefing on the workshops later on, in agenda item 3.  So we closed everything on the ‑‑ well, almost everything on the 26th of May for the sessions and we had a total of 367 sessions proposals that were submitted.  16 of which were Dynamic Coalition sessions, 23 town halls, 40 open forums, 10 launches or awards, 6MRI sessions, 4 networking sessions, and then ‑‑ oh, I've got ‑‑ supposed to be 203 workshop sessions.  Sorry that were submitted to us.  We did remove, I think two of them, but Anja will give you more details on that litter on.

The networking sessions will remain open to accommodate people on demand because we do feel if we are going to meet together, it's very, very important that we do push the workshop ‑‑ sorry, the networking sessions.  And people may not know who is going to be there at this present moment in time.  So we will leave it open for a little while longer as per demand.

And then yesterday, there was the youth ‑‑ part of the youth track, we had a webinar on ethics and the Internet.  The MAG chair participated, and I just wanted to point this out because there was really a record registration of 8,000 plus.  So a lot of youth are very, very interested in the youth track, and I would like to, of course, also congratulate the host country for all the effort that they have put to it.  And it was, really, really well done.  So congratulations to them.

Two other things.  This is really the final call on any MAG member that is living in the global south.  If they would want some support for their network costs for the June meeting, please send me an email by tomorrow.  Also cc Anja, please, and then we'll close it down then.

The last thing I would just like to say, just ‑‑ just ‑‑ Wiktor just reminded me, about the vaccine situation.  Yes, in Switzerland as well, the vaccine situation is progressing really, really fast.  And we are opening up.  I think on Monday they decided to open up restaurants, et cetera.  We still do have restrictions on the number of people that can meet, but I think just totally my view, I think things are looking up, as far as a face‑to‑face meeting is concerned for September.  We'll see how it goes but things are looking up.  That's just my report as per victor's request.  Thank you very much, Anriette.  Back to you.

>> CHAIR: Thank you very much for that Chengetai.  So as I said in the chat, I had my first shot of vaccine.  The process is starting in South Africa as well.  So I feel optimistic, just like Chengetai.

We have now ‑‑ we can now move on to item number 3, evaluation process, and Chengetai has already started with that by chairing with us the overview of session proposals received.  My feeling is that we have really done well.  I was quite anxious about the uncertainty that surrounds IGF 2021 and that impacting on the number of proposals.

But I think that while workshop proposals might look like down, if you look at the overall numbers, it is good.  I think the decision to introduce different formats has worked.  39 lightning talks.  You know, that definitely indicates that there's a demand for that type of session.

23 town hall proposals.  So I think this decision that the MAG made earlier to have different types of sessions in order to ‑‑ to create a framework whereby the workshops can really be content ‑‑ policy content oriented, I think has worked well.

So let's now go back.  Luis, let me look at the agenda again, if you don't mind.

Or do you want to review the statistics further, even though I know Chengetai has gone over that.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Anja has a presentation.

>> CHAIR: Perfect.  So Anja over to you.

>> ANJA GENGO:  Thank you very much, Anriette.  This is a proposal on the 282 proposals.  The call for workshops was opened for four weeks.  We received 228 submissions.  At the end 206 proposals were submitted as finals.  After the clearance process, the Secretariat did submit 203 proposals as eligible as formal criteria.  The clearance process related to looking for duplicates and those which were identified submitted through the wrong form.  And there are two that are submitted in French and we requested the proposals to translate into English as soon as possible during the day.  So we will keep you informed on that, following the practice as of last year.

In regard to session formats, you will see that the round table is the format, which dominates the proposals, the duration which dominates is 90 minutes followed by 60 minutes preference.

If we go to look at who are the stakeholders as part of organizing teams, then we could see that all involved.  We had 633 individual stakeholders out ever witch 504 are organizers, only one workshop, which means 129 are involved in organizing more than one workshop.  So up to three.  It's interesting number to see that 53% of those that submitted indicated that they are the first‑time organizers.

And over 35% of those that are ‑‑ that are organizing traditionally sessions or workshops that the IGF are organizing them between 6 and 15 years.  I hope on the screen you can see a solid balance by regional group of the organizers with WEOG dominating again the overall numbers, as well as the stakeholder group, with civil society being represented about over 50% of the stakeholders in the organizing themes.

This year saw an increase in co‑organized balanced by gender, in favor of female around 2% compared to last year.  So 51 proposals indicated that there are female.

In terms of the speakers, we have 789 stakeholders, which are involved ‑‑ indicated as provisionally confirmed speakers, for the workshops, 673 appear only in one workshop, while the rest appear in more than one workshop.

Regionally speaking, again, a solid balance in favor, of course, of WEOG dominating the overall group with 35%.  Stakeholder‑wise, civil society is dominating again with 48%.  While others hopefully you can see on the screen there's a solid balance between the other stakeholders.  Gender‑wise again, we have 53% of overall speakers which indicated to be female.

As for the issue areas, you know that the stakeholders were able to choose among the preidentified issue areas and to select policy questions overall, up to two policy questions overall, 336 policy questions were selected.  If we look at which focus area kind of dominates or receives the biggest number of parkings by the proposals, then it's most certainly ‑‑ the main focus area on economic and social inclusion and human rights, closely followed by trust, security and stability as one the emerging and cross‑cutting issue areas.

Here you can see the numbers that ‑‑ the difference between the first and the second one is almost doubled, close to be doubled.

Emerging and cross‑cutting issue on environmental sustainability and climate change received least number of proposals, 21, among 203.  This is how the balance in percentages look like.

And then, of course, I don't want to take a lot of your time.  You can look at the presentation.  I believe Luis shared the link in the chat.  Just to see the balance of the policy questions selected per issue area.  It's very interesting to see.  They are all presented on ‑‑ in this presentation, but I'm not going to now take your time to go through them.  You can see them in the ‑‑ in the proposal.

Finally, just to conclude, there were a couple of other questions we asked in the form such as, for example, whether the proposers are willing to have their sessions hosted in the preparatory phase, so completely online.  36% expressed the interest.

In addition to that, 21% of the proposals indicated their preference to host the sessions online instead of in a hybrid mat.

In responding whether the session proposals need the moderation training, 49% confirmed positively.  48% also said that they plan to use other complimentary tools or platforms to increase participation and interaction during the session.  Well when you start evaluating the proposals, you will see that there are a number of branded tools which are already suggested by stakeholders.  They relate to collaborative boards, survey tools, quizzes, presentations and even strategic use of social media.

And finally, in terms of the ‑‑ sorry, I see that there's a type, in the title.  The top selected SDGs, it depends how we look.  Overall partnership for goals, quality education, industry innovation and infrastructure, would be the top maybe rated as the G selected by proposals.  But it's interesting to look at the SDGs per the interest area and, of course, you can see that when you evaluate the proposals or in a more detailed ‑‑ detailed analysis that the Secretariat will be producing in the coming days.

Thank you very much.

>> CHAIR: Thank you very much, Anja for that excellent presentation and the team that worked with you.

And I think what I really find interesting about this is how the analysis is going to help us also look at the issues.  Of course, the breakdown of selected proposals might look differently being but as you can see, the way in which we have used policy questions this year, by having predefined policy questions will make it easier for us to ‑‑ to get a clearer sense of what the content will be and what kind of outcomes we can achieve.

Next, can you give us an overview of the evaluation groups, especially for new MAG members who might not have been through this process previously?

Luis, will you give us an overview of how these groups have been formed and what they are.

>> LUIS BOBO:  Thank you, Anriette.  Certainly.  Thank you.

I'm going to start my camera.  Basically, you have on the screen there are three groups and we have shared like 30 minutes before in meeting, the composition of these groups in a link, okay?  And you can see how the groups are organized in terms of the stakeholder group and you see that all groups are well balanced.

So basically, this is the idea that more or less all of them have the same number of reports to evaluate and they are balanced as far as stakeholder group, gender, years at the MAG, et cetera.

We have also taken care of main facilitators of the groups to be put there.  So, for example, we have in the ‑‑ in universal access group, we have Carlos and I think Karim and Roberto.  And similarly in the other groups, okay?

We have also created three mailing lists that allow you to collaborate among yourselves and you have received an email, a welcome email to this mailing list last Friday.

So you can start ‑‑ after the meeting, the breakout rooms that we will have today, you can start already discussing if you need to do so, organizing the meeting as usual.

That's all from my side, Anriette.  I don't know if ‑‑

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Yes, if anybody has not received the email, please let us know now by the way.

>> CHAIR: Thanks very much for that, Luis.

I'm going to open to questions, but before we do that, let's just ‑‑ Luis, if you can bring up the MAG dashboard on screen so we can just review the tasks for the groups.

And then we can open to see if there are any questions at this stage before we give Roberto the floor to present the evaluation process.

Thanks a lot for that Luis.

These are the groups that evaluate workshop proposal clustered into the issue area for your group or if your group is dealing with more than one issue area for both of those issue areas.  And the numbers are balanced to try to spread the workload.

As Luis already explained, the groups are also made with diversity of perspective taken into account.

And so some MAG members have asked me for an estimate of time.  And it was really quite difficult to do that, but I estimated that you will have to ‑‑ even if you spread it out, it's going to take you between three to five, full long days of work.  And so it is quite time consuming.  Each MAG member will have between 60 and 80 proposals to evaluate.  There's an online platform to do that.  But Luis will assist you if you have poor connectivity, if you don't find it easy to work online and the Secretariat will assist you with giving you an offline spreadsheet to work with.

So really, the next task is for these groups to assign a facilitator or if you would like two people to facilitate, you can do that today, but if you can't do that today, during the breakout group, please do it soon.

And then it really is a case of all of you reviewing the criteria.  If you haven't done that yet, to be sure that you understand what they mean, and how to apply them, and hopefully by the end of today's meeting, we'll have that kind of clarity.

Very important thing, when you start the process, is to assess the proposal for conflict of interest.

So if it's a proposal that you are affiliated with or involved with, in any way, then the form will make it very easy for you to tick a box and that immediately means you will not evaluate that proposal.  The Secretariat will reassign it and they will assign something else to you.

And I think that's really it at this point.  You know, the next steps now is just to do the evaluation of the workshops.  I urge you to start sooner rather than later, because leaving it closer to the deadline, often means having to work through the night.  It means becoming exhausted.  I have been through this myself as a MAG member.  And then that can actually impede one's ability to do justice to the pro e session proposals.

The hard deadline for you to finish your work in evaluating proposals would be 17 June, end of day, 23:59 UTC.

Anything else?  Luis, if you can scroll down a little bit.  Once you have done the initial evaluation, then we will go into the fourth step that we have on the dashboard, finalizing the evaluation of workshops, and that is ‑‑ when you talk together as a group, you raise any questions, any queries, and we want to have an initial result to discuss during the MAG and open consultation process of 22 June.  I think the MAG meeting itself will be on 23 June.

And then you can go back and make any final decisions.  You will often find that there are workshops which might have been rated very differently by different people.

And then you need to discuss how to approach that workshop or you might feel that in ‑‑ last year, for example, we had a workshop proposal that MAG members felt would work better as the main session.  So they worked with the organizers to change it from a workshop to a main session.  So that's analyzed by the Secretariat and we discuss it and during the MAG meeting during 23 June.

After that, you have time to finalize it, but the final deadline when we go public is 1 July.  And, again, obviously, whenever the MAG finishes, it's work.  There always has to be some time for the Secretariat to process results.

So Luis, that's enough for now, actually.

This check list that is on screen, is available to all of you on the MAG dashboard.  You just need to be logged in to the IGF website and it will take you there.

So are there any questions at this point?  Our next item on the agenda will be for Roberto Zambrana to present the evaluation process and criteria for you.  There are any questions before we get to that?

I'm just waiting a few seconds.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Yes, I would just like to also say that it's very, very important that all of you just read through the workshops.  You don't have to work them, but just read through.  You get a sense because if there's any changes, anything that's wrong, it is better to know it now instead of three days before the deadline.

So a quick read through is very much advised.

>> CHAIR: Chengetai, just to build on that, are you advising that MAG members actually scan all the proposals they have to evaluate before they start evaluating?

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: That would be my suggestion, yes.

>> CHAIR: Yeah.  I think that's very wise, because I think I agree with that, because otherwise, you also tend to start off by reading them very carefully, and then you rush towards the end you kind of just take a glimpse.  So I ‑‑ I really strongly support Chengetai's advice.

We also have old MAG members in the call, and I welcome them to use the chat to share any of the lessons that they have learned over time.

Okay.  I don't see hands.  I don't see anyone in the speaking queue.  You can ‑‑

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Sorry, just one more thing.  Sorry, Anriette.

>> CHAIR: Chengetai, you can interrupt me any time.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: I see in the chat that some people did not receive the emails.  Contact Luis.  As written in the chat, that it sometimes does go into Spam, about you Luis can easily resend you the details.

>> CHAIR: Thank you for noting that, Chengetai.  It's extremely important.  And you really should do that today, because you need to start evaluating today if not tomorrow, if not today.

And now I have the pleasure to hand over to Roberto Zambrana who will take you through the working process, that MAG has developed.  Thanks to him for his hard work and everyone who supported him.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA:  Thank you very much, Madam Chair.  Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, everyone, I'm Roberto Zambrana from Bolivia.  Second year MAG member, for the record.

I will share the screen.  I will start chairing what we did last year, what are our base of work that we had so we could understand a little better how was the evolution during this year in the work of the Working Group.

In the last year, we had six criterias.  We started with policy question, with the weight of 20%.  As you remember, the idea of the policy questions back then was for the proposals to actually propose different policy questions.  Not to select the ones as we did in this year.

We also had evaluated relevance with another 20% weight.  We had mat with the just 10%.  We had diversity with 20%.  We have other content evaluation with 20%.  And also interaction with the last 10% in order to ‑‑ to have the full 100%.  That's what we did, and that's ‑‑ and that was our base of the work.  So we have for this year.  First we discussed a lot in the Working Group for workshop evaluation, in order to have first a closer approach with the adjusted criterias that we will evaluate for this year and also that were present in the call for proposals.

And those adjustments are, of course, reflected in this ‑‑ in this six new criterias and also we have some difference about the weights that we selected.

So in this year we have session, content and description as criteria one, and this document is included in the inputs document for your review, for this meeting.  So you will have full access to this information, because are you will base the evaluation using this document, and perhaps it will also be important if it's not clear enough for you to ask during the break ‑‑ the breakout group sessions.

So as I was saying, in each of these criteria, we will include what is the target of the evaluation for the criteria, what are the elements that as evaluators we need to consider, and which will be then the ‑‑ the great ‑‑ the points that we're going to assign to each of these ‑‑ of these criteria.

You will see, because we're going to see a little bit of evaluation form, that we can select one of these five different grades in each of these criterias.  So if we talk about quantity for each element, it's from 1 to 5, and considering the weight that each of the criteria have, then we will have a final score for each of the ‑‑ for each of the proposals that we are going to evaluate.

Also, we all foe that this is going to combine with all the other evaluations for the other members of the evaluation group that are also looking at the same proposals.

So continuing with the description of the criteria for this 2021 evaluation process, we have the criteria one session and content description.  We have criteria two, response to policy questions, which in this new ‑‑ in this new evaluation process, of course, must have an important weight because most of the proposals are going to be evaluated based on how the proposals are facing this selected policy questions that they are going to include or they included in their proposals.

Another important item is relevance.  Then again, you have all the information that you need to consider in order to evaluate the proposal.  We have as criteria four, the format, as we had in the past.

And we do have this particularly adjusted criteria regarding interaction.  And this time, this is very related with the hybrid nature of the session, and hopefully to ‑‑ to evaluate how the proposals are ‑‑ are foreseen, the interaction with the online and on‑site participants.  So this is also very, very important for the evaluation.

And finally, the one that was also included last year, but now with lower weight regarding diversity.  And if we just let me find the weights, I will share the other document with you.

And going through the criteria for the weights for content and description, 25%.  We have our policy questions 20%.  We have relevance 20% too.  For format, 10%, and interaction 15%, and diversity 10%.

I will ‑‑ coming back with this I just want to quick show you how the form is going to work for you, and I will come back with this, but you will have the ‑‑ this is another link that you have in the document inputs.  And you will receive the same ‑‑ the same link for your evaluations as ‑‑ and you will first after ‑‑ and following the suggestions that you have ‑‑ that we have heard before, to go ‑‑ to go through all the proposals initially, while once you are ready to study the evaluation process, then you will have to select each of the assigned proposals.  Let's start just as an example with the very first one.  And then you will have to declare if you have or don't have a conflict of interest.  Because if you do have a conflict of interest this particular proposal is going to be achieved in your case, and it will be notified to the Secretariat.

And if you don't have any conflict of interest, then you will start ‑‑ then you will have the form.  So it's not quantity, it's more as a concept.  It's more clear for the evaluation.  But you have strictly the same information that we all saw before in the document.  It was the base for Luis to prepare this form, and you need to start marking the grades that you think this evaluation will receive in each of these cases, in each of the six criteria.  And as you can see, as far as you go, marking what is your evaluation decision regarding each criteria, then eventual that result and score for the proposal.

And finally, in this section, you have three other comments, one supporting comment and the idea that supports the resulting score.  You have feedback for proposal organizer, because it will be important for the organizers to have a comment about what perhaps was a weakness in the proposal and finally, you have the internal comments only for you to see, only for your review later when you are going through all the proposals.

So this is the form.  And as I said, the last thing I want to share with you is about the criteria weights.  A minor suggestion that because this ‑‑ this one, that you are looking at is the final ways that we have in the Working Group, but after reviewing this or Madam Chair, Anriette suggested to increase a little bit policy question, with 25% and reduce a little built relevance so it will ‑‑ it will come with this final approach.

>> CHAIR: Just to explain the reason for this, Roberto is because previously, we ‑‑ we did not have specific policy questions in the same way that proposers have to select and relevance was a way of evaluating whether, in fact, the proposal is relevant to the theme that it's selected, but this year, we are much more directive about the selection of issue area and policy questions.  So if you look at relevance, you will see it's ‑‑ it's ‑‑ it doesn't play as vital a role as it did in past years.

Thanks very much, for that Roberto.  Are you nearly done.  Sorry to interrupt you.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA:  That was my last statement.  I wanted to invite if anybody from the Working Group had something to add.

>> CHAIR: Thank you very much, Roberto.  Roberto had a very small group to work with, but everyone who contributed, contributed value, and Luis thanks very much for your close collaboration with the Working Group.

I would like you to reserve most of your questions for the group discussions, but are there any questions for clarification at this point?

Sooki, you have the floor.

Please go ahead.

>> SOOK‑JUNG DOFEL:  I solved my problem.  I found the list of the proposals that I will evaluate.  I'm fine for now.  Thank you very much, Anriette.

>> CHAIR: Thank you, Sooki, I will flag Sooki's question and that is how do you know which proposals do you have to evaluate.  And the answer is it's very easy for you.  The moment you log in to your evaluation interface, you will see there the list of proposals you need to evaluate.  And it's also very satisfying because as you complete them, you will be able to see which ones you have done and which ones you still need to do.

Courtney, I see you have your hand up.  Please go ahead.

>> COURTNEY RADSCH:  Thank you very much.  Could you provide clarity on the difference ‑‑ or what to consider in evaluating the policy question, versus the relevance?

>> CHAIR: Let me suggest that you discuss that in your Working Group, because I think that it's an interesting question.  And I think what you can do in the Working Groups ‑‑ what I suggest, in the breakout groups is to look at the criteria.  But what I will say in shorthand is that the policy question is that's where you evaluate the extent to which the proposal effectively addresses the policy questions that they selected.

So remember, they can collect at most two policy questions.  So that's really where you match up the content of the workshop and the workshop and make sure it will produce interesting debate or dialogue or discussion or even outcomes related to that policy question.  Whereas relevance is a much broader ‑‑ a more ‑‑ a little bit more open.  And the other challenge is the relevance to Internet Governance.  I think it might be a little bit different this year, because the questions and the issue areas are so closely predefined and they are much more detailed than usually when we just have broad tracks.

But I think it is a ‑‑ it's worth dwelling on that, but I suggest you do it in the groups because other people might also want to discuss that and then we can get back to it in plenary.

I don't see anyone else.

So at that ‑‑ I think Luis, at this point, we need to go into groups.  I have just would like to review, Luis, if you can scroll down a little bit.  So we are running a bit late.  But you will still be able to have 30 minutes, if not ‑‑ actually, we can make it 35 minutes in your groups.

So what will happen now is that Luis will automatically break MAG members into the evaluation Working Groups that you have been assigned to, and observers, old MAG members and others just hang in there, and have a cup of tea.  And then come back.

And the tasks for the group, Luis, if you could just go back ‑‑ actually, I have it here on my notes.  Tasks for the group are firstly, just quickly assign a voluntary chair and rapporteur.

It doesn't have to be for the duration of the group, if agree on the facilitator for the duration of the Working Group, that's good but you don't absolutely have to.

And then just discuss if you have any questions.  And I would really urge you to ‑‑ to ‑‑ to go around and give every person in your small group the chance to speak.  And just check in with one another that everyone is clear on the process, among what their responsibilities are.  Chengetai will give us the deadlines, in case you have questions about the timeline.

Then please review the workshop evaluation process that Roberto showed you, raise questions, such as the one that Courtney just raised.  And ‑‑ and then after that, agree on how you will work together as a group.  You don't have to go into a lot of detail, but, for example, June Parris from the past MAG suggested that it's useful for groups to have a space where they can chat on Skype or using ‑‑ using messaging app like WhatsApp, for example.

And then that's really it.  That's all you have to do.  And just note for reporting back to the plenary any questions, uncertainties that you have, and if you can just briefly share what you have agreed on in terms of your working methodology.

So I think on that ‑‑ Chengetai, before Luis breaks everyone into groups.  Can you please go over the deadlines that MAG members have to keep in mind when they review the process?

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Oh, I just posted the deadlines into the chat.  And are the general deadlines, I think I posted it to the MAG list maybe two months ago or so.  So we are still keeping to those deadlines.  Right now we are on the 1st June to 17 of June.  That is the evaluation by the MAG.  And then the ‑‑ so the next deadline that the MAG has to keep in mind is the 17th of June and as Amrita said, better to start early than to start late.  We don't have any real leeway to extend any of these deadlines.

>> CHAIR: Thanks very much, for that Chengetai.  Remember that when you break into groups, you won't have this chat available to you.  So I just urge people to copy relevant links and the timeline.  We can also go and put them in your groups but it's good to ‑‑ to hang into that.

So Luis is going to break you out now into your groups.  It will take a few minutes for those of you who are used to Zoom, you will know that it takes a little while.  But we'll remain in the plenary remain.  Anja and Chengetai will be there to guide anyone who is not in the right group.  And, yes, see all our other participants later.  We will be back in ‑‑ let's make it 30 minutes.

30 minutes from when you start.  We'll give you the timeline.  So that would be 12:30 UTC.

(Breakout groups).

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: We'll also be popping in and out of the groups in anybody has any questions.

>> CHAIR: Chengetai, while we are waiting for the groups to break, to start, there was a question about the deadline for the application for network support.  So if you can just check in the chat, he was just asking if that can be extended, and whether that is related to ‑‑ to travel or also for the evaluation report.  So if you can just look into the chat, and respond to him before the end of the call, please.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: While I'm looking for it, no this is only for the June and we would like to close it tomorrow, but does anybody ‑‑ because ‑‑ in fact, we are a little bit late, as it is.

>> CHAIR: So Arsene, I think it's only for the June meeting, and they do need to close it tomorrow, if that's okay.

Is he still with us?

>> Arsene had the same question.  So ‑‑

>> CHAIR: I'm sorry, Adam, did you have the same question?

>> I don't.  But Arsene did from ‑‑

>> CHAIR: Yes, Arsene.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Same answer.  Same question.  Same answer.

Good Arsene.

>> No, sorry, Anriette, when you mentioned my question, I lost my network.  So I'm sorry.  I did not hear the answer.

>> CHAIR: So the answer is that ‑‑ I will ‑‑ the answer is, Arsene, that the support Chengetai referred to is only for participation in the June meetings, and the deadline still has to be tomorrow, because they are already running quite late.

So just contact the Secretariat today or first thing tomorrow for the request for support.

So we are starting the groups, everyone.

>> LUIS BOBO:  Yes, people are starting to be moved.

>> CHAIR: Luis, I can't see the groups.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: There's the square thing ‑‑

>> CHAIR: I think you have to be a host or a cohost.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Lewis, can you make Anriette a cohost.

>> CHAIR: Thank you, Chengetai.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Yes.

>> CHAIR: Chengetai, I need to step away for just a few minutes.  I will be back by the time the groups come back.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Oh, okay.

>> CHAIR: Thanks a lot.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: All right then.

(Breakout groups).

>> Back to the main room, I guess.

>> Yes.

>> CHAIR: Welcome back, to plenary, everyone.

Luis, will you just let me know when everyone is back?

>> LUIS BOBO:  I think everyone is back Anriette.  Thank you.

Anriette, I said, I think everyone is back.

We are not hearing you, Anriette, for some reason.

>> CHAIR: You can't hear me?

Can you hear me now?

>> Now we can.  Now, yes.

>> CHAIR: I just muted and then unmuted.

Thanks, Luis.

Welcome back, everyone, from your groups.

Let's just jump straight ‑‑ actually, Luis has a special request.  Just before we start the breakouts, there was one point I didn't make, which Luis pointed out to me, and I think some of you would have discussed that in groups, and that is that you can go back and change your evaluation of a particular proposal, until 17 June.

So, you know, you might find you have some questions, and that's why you have that field in the form, with saving notes for yourself is so important.  You might have questions and then you can go back into a few days and change the rating that you have given it.  That's something I didn't point out but maybe that's one of your questions.

Is there a group that's ready to share their report with us?

Let's start with the group on inclusion and rights.

>> MARIA PAZ CANALES LOEBEL:  I think that should be me.  We were volunteers for facilitating the group.  We tried to encourage the first‑year MAG members.  They are a little bit shy at this moment, we are looking forward to working with them during this time of the work of the evaluation group.

So from our side, we can report that we fried to share, interchange during the conversation, as much as possible the previous experience that we have, the ones that we have already gone through this process and I'm trying to provide the critical recommendation on how to address stressing some of the recommendations that already was shared in the group discussion ‑‑ in the general discussion, sorry before.  And we were asking, particularly for the ones new to the process, about specific question or doubt regarding the different criteria, but finally, as was pointed out by some of the members, they feel that that will be something that it will be more clear what are the issues or the doubt when they go through the process effectively.

So we agreed in setting some kind of communication tool that will facilitate to provide support to each other in those consultations from the new members but in general, among all the members of the Working Groups.

I think that in the general recommendation that I can share also with the whole group, in order to stress some of the things that are relevant for the process, some of the main questions were linked to what ‑‑ what was the mission of this Working Group, and we stressed the idea that if we provide support to each other in the scoring process, in the individual scoring process of the proposals, but also to prepare for later making the group discussion about the strategic significances that are needed in order to ensure balance in the program, in the different topics that can be part of this broader topic of human rights inclusion and social inclusion.  And we encourage everyone in that sense to make a strategic review, maybe using this offline document tool for notes and getting back to facilitate the exercise.

There were questions from the MAG members who went through this process and some of them not, and they recognize the value in doing it and they welcome doing this in this new iteration.  So Amado, I don't know if I missed anything.

>> AMADO ESPINOSA:  No, I think it was very clear.  Thanks.

>> CHAIR: Thanks for that very much, Maria Paz and Amado.

Next, can we have the group that is dealing with universal access?  And that cents combined with trust and security cross‑cutting area.  Let's hear your report.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA:  Thank you very much, an Rita.  It was a very interesting session.  Mainly, answering some concerns about how to provide evaluations and using the tools, but we have a couple more.

Mrs. Amrita.

>> AMRITA CHOUDHURY:  We had an evaluation of how to fill out the form.  There was a discussion on how to make changes because we had a query if we can make changes even after making a submission before the 17th and Luis confirmed that we can.  There was also a discussion on how we differentiate while evaluation between a policy question and relevance.  And the group decided to communicate over mailing list, and there was also suggestions that should we change the ‑‑ should we suggest to change some percentage, assigned to certain criterias, but there was no final answer on it.  Roberto, would you like to comment on the last part?

>> ROBERTA ZAMBRANA:  Thank you, Amrita.  Yes, it's the question about the weights.  We ‑‑ I presented what will be the arrangement about the relevance and policy, which actually was to increase a little bit the policy criteria, and to decrease the ‑‑ the relevance and there was another suggestion that we also saw in the chat regarding diversity.  That's when we actually had to ‑‑ we came back to the plenary, and that's something that was left without discussion and the suggestion was to increase a little bit the ‑‑ the diversity criteria, and reduce it from interaction.

I was explaining, but I want to do it again, that interaction actually was a very important aspect that we need to evaluate right now, and that's why this criteria is higher.

That's ‑‑ that's all we have.  Thank you.

>> COURTNEY RADISH:  And one thing that came up is a PDF will be given to us in the next two days and if we went to do a pre‑read, it will be very helpful.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Yes, it will.

>> CHAIR: And so it can be offline.  You can read it at your leisure.  You don't have to sit and interact with the website.  Thank you very much for that report, Amrita and Roberto.  We will come back to all the issues that have been raised.

And now let's go to the last group which dealt with the remaining cross‑cutting issue areas.

>> JOYCE CHEN:  Hi, this is choice speaking.

>> CHAIR: Hi, Joyce, go ahead.

>> JOYCE CHEN:  Our group because we comprised mainly mostly new members, I think we were just trying to get around what exactly we were supposed to do in terms of the task and so we didn't really go into any more substantive discussion.  We just talked about how we would organize ourselves and what we would use to work on in order to facilitate our group discussion.

We had a question on what would happen if we were to individually submit our proposal, but that has been answered so we can make changed.  The work we did also here is even if you didn't submit your score, it would still be saved.  So I guess for our group, we can choose whether or not we want to submit it or just not submit the ‑‑ the scores and then have the discussion.

We also agreed to work off a group of documents pending if there were any other previous, you know, similar sort of documents, just to tabulate the different scorings from everybody.  Our approach was we wouldn't try to discuss every single workshop proposal, but only the ones that stood out, either because there were very differing scores or there was new proposals that we wanted to highlight for discussion.

And so this document would kind of help us to get a sense of which workshops are worth highlighting.

And then we also talked about so many when we would meet before the 17th June deadline.  So I think we will meet ‑‑ we will probably have two meetings at minimum to discuss all the different evaluations and the second meet before the 17th June deadline.  I think that's about it.

If I missed anything, then my group, please help me to fill in the gaps.  Thanks.

>> CHAIR: Thanks, Joyce.

Anyone else that wants to add from that group?

>> ADAM PEAKE:  Yes, hi, this is Adam.  Just to emphasize what Joyce said, about any forms that previous MAGs have used, previous members have.  It would be helpful.  While Google Docs are not hard to design they quite easy to design badly.  And it would be a shame to waste a day.  So if there's any previous examples that previous MAG members would use, we would ask you to share them.  Of course, they have to be empty.

>> CHAIR: Adam, can I just get clarification on that?  Because you have ‑‑ there's an existing evaluation form.  You are not expected to create anything.

>> ADAM PEAKE:  I meant for our intermediate process.  Yeah, yeah, as a very ‑‑ as a small group, when we are working together, sharing, you know, what tools have people used in previous MAGs, just ‑‑ I mean, we can design something, but we ‑‑

>> CHAIR: Actually, before you ‑‑ before you go further, let me actually respond to that.

So I'm going to start responding to these questions, but I invite Chengetai, Luis, Anja and other MAG members to jump in as well.

I want to start with the issue raised by the last group.  And I think the one thing you have to remember is that the idea of having you work in a group is not so that you can compare scores.  So, in fact, the process normally, what it would be is that you score individually, and that only after that initial period, when 17 June when the Secretariat has compiled the scores, that you then start discussing as Joyce said, workshops that ‑‑ proposals that stand out.

So while it's really good that you are all talking together and providing support to one another.  Also keep in mind that this is an individual process, and each MAG member is expected to ‑‑ to score a workshop on their own.  So you ‑‑ the idea is not that you discuss how you are going to score proposals, but that if there are any issues or any uncertainties that stand out, that you can raise that with one another.

But once you have done the scoring, and the Secretariat has analyzed it and what they will do for you, to help you in your discussion as a group, is to point out where there are strong divergences.  You might find a proposal that some people scored very highly, but other people scored very low.

And that immediately stands out as a proposal that needs further discussions.

So Adam, I'm not sure if that provides more clarity about what platform or forms you would use, but the idea is that you ‑‑ you really have a general strategic discussion.  You support one another, but that you only get to discuss actual scores after the period of 17 June when the Secretariat has done the compilation.

So I don't know if that's clear, and I invite Chengetai to add, but I will move on.

I think the question about the PDF of all the submissions has been answered, and I think you will find that, you know, the Secretariat always tries to support you in ‑‑ in ‑‑ it easier for you to do this.  So that PDF is one way in which they do it.  The offline scoring is another way they do it.  So please feel free, if you have any difficulties with the interface, with the platform, just to ask the Secretariat for assistance.

Then I wanted to respond to diversity and the weighting of diversity that Roberto mentioned.

The one factor to take into account with diversity is that what you see now in terms of diversity of speakers is not necessarily final.

So, you know, you might give diversity greater weighting now, but you will find that once the final proposal has been confirmed or consolidated by the organizers, that it might ‑‑ that the breakdown of speakers, for example, might look very different.

But I think that's also why when you score for diversity, you really should look not just at speakers, but also at content, at approach and perspective.  So diversity is ‑‑ there's a holistic approach that the MAG has developed over the years to diversity.

And then I think the balance in program and strategic mission of the groups that Maria Paz mentioned, I think it's very helpful.  And I think it relates to how you handle discussing your scoring.  You are not supposed to score selectively, but the mission of the group is really that you support one another, and that you look at ‑‑ at the balance of all the ‑‑ if you look at the sum of all the proposals in that focus area that you are evaluating, it will give you a sense which policy questions are covered well and which are not covered well.

And that can then give you guidance in how to design the program.

So ‑‑ I mean, are there any ‑‑ Chengetai, do you want to add anything to the points that came out of the groups?

Or Anja or Luis?

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Can you hear me now?

>> CHAIR: Yes.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Thank you, Anriette.  I think you covered it all very well.  As you said, with the speakers for diversity, these are proposed speakers.  They are not confirmed speakers.  So, yes, I mean, they will very well change when the ‑‑ the workshop is there, and remember after the workshop is accepted, they get ‑‑ they do get given some more time to confirm their speakers.

And as you said, with the scores, we do calculate the variance of the scores.  So we ‑‑ it will be very easy to highlight which ones have got the highest distribution of scores, where there's the most disagreement.  So those also can be discussed in the June meeting, when you did discuss it as well, with the variance.  So I don't think you have to concentrate on that now.  I think it's just your individual scoring, and then if there's a lot of variance some of these workshops, that's part of the time while there is that time that we give between the first day of the MAG meeting and the second day of the MAG meeting as well, you know, for all of those discussions to take place.

But that's it for me.  I don't know if the others have got any comments.

>> CHAIR: Thanks, Chengetai.  We are down to the last ten minutes of the meeting, and so I would like us to move on to other agenda items, but does everyone feel okay?  I don't see any hands.  Are there any further questions about this process?  Please put up your hand or ‑‑ or join the queue.

And then I also want to ask, what ‑‑ you know, just by show of interest in the chat, would some MAG members appreciate a separate workshop just on how to do the evaluation?  Would that still be helpful?  If it is, just indicate in the chat and then we can work with Roberto and the Secretariat to set this up for you.

I see no hands and no one in the speaking queue.  So thank you very much, everyone, to the facilitators, the rapporteurs.  I hope you all feel a lot more confident about this process than you did before this meeting, and Joyce, for your group, you clearly had a lot of new MAG members, please feel free, even after today's call just to get in touch with myself and with the Secretariat and we will organize a further workshop, but I also think that once you start, the questions will become easier to ask and to answer, and that's why you have your groups.

So on that, I will close this agenda item and thank you, everyone, for your participation and for getting us to this point.

So just to take us now into the next agenda item, we really won't spend much time on, it but we just wanted to alert you that aside from working on the workshop evaluation, the MAG also needs to start thinking about the preparatory phase of IGF 2021 because we would like to share a draft agenda of this with the community for further discussion during the open consultation that will be on 22 June.

So if I can ask Anja or unless the Secretariat has dedicated or allocated this to someone else, just to ‑‑ to briefly review what that process is.  In fact, it's all on the dashboard.  So we can refer back to the dashboard and you will see that Section B of the tasks that added for you focuses on the issue teams.  This is also during our last call, Wim presented this to us.

Anja, if you want to run through this.

>> ANJA:  The dashboard has been perfectly populated with what was presented on the last call.  I will quickly remind on the concept of the preparatory phase and then we can go through the other steps.

So let me share maybe my screen.

Yes.  Hopefully you can see it now.

So it's just very briefly ‑‑ okay.  Now it's moving.

There are three main components of the peremptory phase Wim presented last time.  The first one is the buildup phase which will start in July roughly, towards September related to engagement with the IGF intersessional activities.  So what we will be doing now speaking with the MAG chair and the MAG chair will communicate to the MAG, is to engage directly with the facilitators of the Best Practice Forums, the Dynamic Coalitions, to understand if they are interested to organize sessions which would be linked to the IGF 2021 issue areas.

That would be very helpful to get inputs from these specific groups and update the IGF 2021 guide on issues and policy questions.

In addition, very soon, our concrete to‑do list will go to the MAG issue groups on organizing the so‑called introductory or the stock taking sessions on the IGF 2021 issue areas, as well as strategic discussions which would be linked to the issue areas organized by the group of MAG members which as you know, we already defined like by the MAG chair, and everyone else that is interested from the MAG, but I do believe all MAG members are in the groups.

In addition, the Secretariat and the sidewalk ‑‑ on the high level leader track, as well as on the commentary track, we work closely with the host country and the host country parliament, and the IPU, and we will try to communicate as soon as possible the updates on how this will develop, but the idea is that ‑‑ but the idea is that we don't just organize a set of sessions but a set of activities which would be of our capacity development nature, leading into the 16th IGF in Poland and hopefully the topics that will be subjects of these tracks will be closely linked to the issue areas and outputs from those exchanges would be excellent inputs to the IGF 2020 guide on ‑‑ the 2021 guide on issues and policy questions.

And then I will speak very shortly about the capacity development activities.

Another part of the preparatory phase relates to the ‑‑ an intersessional event, possibly linked to the third MAG meeting, which ‑‑ and open consultations which is planned to be hosted in September, possibly be composed of the BPFs joining and organizing sessions on their own work, not necessarily linked to the issue areas, but I'm somehow confident that because of the issue areas, although they are very concrete, they are covering a broad range of topics and from the BPF folks, obviously, there's a good overlap there, so I think we could also benefit in that additional regard.

The same is the Dynamic Coalitions to understand if they would like to meet intersessionally over online event organized on a substantive area of their interest.  Just yesterday, the MAG chair joined the preparatory call.  We had a very good discussion on the NRIs engagement in the preparatory phase.  There seems to be a lot of interest from the NRIs to organize this type of session, but, of course with careful consideration to the format and especially to forming the outputs.  And we will be exploring that in forming.  And finally, we have the MAG‑led sessions on main focus area and issues area.  So we will be working with the MAG chair as well, that each group of the MAG members receives a concrete to‑do list for your consideration.  Maybe that will speed up the concrete implementation process and timeline for all the groups.

And the last is the capacity development framework.  There are a number of activities that we will organize starting very soon.  They relate to ways of engagement in the IGF.  So do expect the MAG members which are involved in, for example, Working Group on hybrid meetings, for instance, to ‑‑ that we will approach you for our inputs to these events.  In addition how to effectively host and participate in a hybrid IGF 2021 will be in the form of a training and that's something that is still on the plan, but we are hoping that it should be finalized.

They do run their work already in a completely open collaborative manner.  We still like to give much more support than in past, in terms of the outreach and engagement to development of their work focused on the concrete policy question.  Hopefully that takes the form of online concrete sessions with concrete agendas, which would attract participants from all parts of the world.

One thing under discussion, but we hope to finalize that it was announced sometime back, our collaboration hopefully with Microsoft Team, policy team on developing a set of capacity development workshops titled my digital future and focused on the processes of digital transformation, within a safe and secure online environment.

So we will be informing on this very soon, as you can see, that July would be basically starting date for some of these activities.  So just to repeat the concrete to‑do list to the MAG members in regards to your involvement.

And I just want to say additionally that the Secretariat internally works on mapping, which stakeholders are historically unrepresented or underrepresented at the IGF's annual meetings and looking also at the participation in the intersessional work streams.  A number of countries are identified as historically underrepresented or even some unrepresented meaning with zero participation.  So we are hoping that this year we will remedy that through this hybrid nature of the meeting and especially through this targeted stakeholder engagement within the capacity of development activities, as well as the development of the issue areas that I just mentioned.

Thank you very much, Anriette.  I do understand that this will be on the agenda for the next MAG meeting, for detailed discussion, but I will stop here.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Anja.

It is top of the hour, but I think Sooki has a question, please.

>> SOOK‑JUNG DOFEL:  Could you update the IGF calendar.  I think the last meeting that is shown in the ‑‑ in the calendar is the one in June, and I would like to have for planning purposes the dates for meetings in advance if it's possible.

The other question I have ‑‑ and I got a little by confused because you also mentioned some request form for travels, are we going to meet in June in person or is it a virtual meeting.  In the calendar it's indicated as a virtual meeting.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Yes, it will be a virtual meeting. the one on the 22nd of the June will be fully virtual, we do recognize that Internet costs can be very high in the global south.  So that was what the call is.

And then ‑‑ sorry, if I'm giving you too much information, but to answer you fully, the MAG meeting in September, hopefully that could be a face‑to‑face meeting, given, what has been going on with the vaccination drives, et cetera, and the opening up the economy.

>> SOOK‑JUNG DOFEL:  We don't have that exact date?

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: I was hoping to set it in the June meeting, on June 22nd, but we could set it up earlier, if you think that's better, but hopefully by June, we will also know ‑‑ because I know in Switzerland, they do plan to open up more on the 1st of July and they would, of course, announce it before.

So that will also give us that confidence rating to see how things are going.

>> SOOK‑JUNG DOFEL:  And on June, I think it was the 15th and the 22nd we will meet?

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: No, we will meet on the 22nd and the 23rd.  So the 22nd is going to be the open consultation day.  That's when everybody is invited to ‑‑ to give their input, is the 22nd and then the 23rd is going to be the MAG meeting day one where we are going to be discussing what we heard on the 22nd and also start the conversation for the final selection of the workshops.

And then we are going to take a week's break and meet again on the 30th of June to finalize everything.

>> SOOK‑JUNG DOFEL:  If you could send the dates or just update the IGF calendar, that will be fine.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Okay.  We will do that.

>> SOOK‑JUNG DOFEL:  I need to plan.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Fully understand.  I'm asking if Luis can just update the calendar with those dates.  Thanks.

>> Thank you very much.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: All right.  Joyce?

>> JOYCE CHEN:  Thank you very much, Chengetai.  This is Joyce speaking.  I wanted to give an update, as probably will be that the IGF department association is now open for NRIs to request funds.  I will put the link to the website in the chat where you can find the request form.  I think the same update was given during the NRI planning meeting yesterday.

So this is just for MAG members if you know or have links with your own NRIs, do let them know that the IGFSA is accepting funds.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Thank you.  Adam.

>> ADAM PEAKE:  I think the MAG speaking queue is not working.  I'm there and Roberto is there.  I have three points.  One question is about the Microsoft my digital future.  Is Microsoft alone or multidigital speakers or is it a Microsoft thing?  That's one question.

The second is I put this at the start of this call, I put a question that ‑‑ the questions and the discussion when the call started about hybrid meetings and challenges people were facing understanding those and so on.

Please put ‑‑ please put those questions to the hybrid Working Group and I will put the Working Group list address into the chat in a moment.  So anything you are hearing about hybrid Working Groups and so on, then we need to start discussing those because the details will become increasingly important.

And the last point, which is slightly related to this is earlier on, you mentioned that various proposals had talked about different tools they would use to enhance the interactivity and so on and so forth.  Could the Secretariat pull out what those tools are?  Because we will need to look at are they basically technically compatible with Zoom?  Do you as the Secretariat have the ability to support them?  Because we will start scoring on these and if they are not supportable because they don't fit with Zoom, then that will be a bit of a problem.  So if you can pull out what those are, then we can start to look at those not that add‑ins and the rest of it are not a good idea.  They are a good idea but they do have to be compatible and workable from your technical support point of view.

So we better look at that now.  So those three things but the Microsoft one is actually a question, I think.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Okay.  I will answer your questions in reverse order.  For the tools ‑‑ the tools that they said they are going to use should not really have any bearing on the grading, if I'm ‑‑ if I have got this right.  It should not.  We are going to extract that.  Luis is going to look through them.  I'm sure there are some things that we cannot use, and then that is fine.  We just tell them that this is not supported.  But I really don't think it should have relevance on the grading but, yes, it is very much worth just taking a look at what they have said and we will do that and we will also share with the hybrid group any of the ‑‑ I mean, there's no use discussing we can't support, but those that are of interest and that we think we can, we can discuss it with you as well.

So your second question not really a question, it's a statement.  So the first question is on the Microsoft.  As far as I know, it is a joint collaboration between Microsoft and ‑‑ if you want, I will ‑‑ I will give ‑‑ this time around, I will say I give Secretariat/UN DESA, and it's just not going to be UN speakers and Microsoft speakers, no.  It's, of course ‑‑ I mean, this is the IGF.  So it is more stakeholder and there will be speakers from all the stakeholder groups.

I hope that answers your questions, Adam.

>> ADAM PEAKE:  Thank you, yes.

>> CHENGATAI MASANGO: Okay.  Thank you.

I will just give it a six count to see in anybody has got any questions and while people are thinking of that, please here is the next MAG meeting.

It will be on the 15th of June at 1500 hours UTC.

With that, I see there's no other questions and we have lost some people.  So ‑‑ oh, sorry, I ‑‑ yes.  Thank you.

So thank you very much.  And we'll see you online and just please remember if you have any issues whatsoever with the grading, with the evaluation system, don't wait.  Just contact us immediately and we will do our best to help.

So good evaluating, people, and thank you very much.

>> Thank you very much, Chengetai.

>> Thank you, bye‑bye.

>> Bye-bye, everyone.