EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES – ENHANCING MULTI-STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
OCTOBER 23, 2013
10:00 BALI TIME
1023IGF
Inter-Regional Dialogue
The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Eigth Meeting of the IGF, in Bali, Indonesia. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
>> Check. Check. Check. Check.
>> MODERATOR: I think we're going to get started.
I'm going to act as moderator. I'm Marilyn Cade. We're trying to be coordinators for the integration of the national and regional initiatives into the programs. I would like to do scene setting and to move into focusing on the dialogue with all of you as coordinators or as participants in national/regional IGFs. If we're ready to get started, I think we'll just kickoff. People will be joining us. We'll end promptly, many of you have other commitments. We'll speak and the remote moderator will let me know if someone joins.
I would like to say a few words to kind of set the scene about where we are in terms of national and regional initiatives and what has evolved. For many of us, we're so busy in implementing, supporting the initiatives, we may not be aware that the call for such activities is actually in the Tunis agenda, the IGF is called for in paragraph 72. There is a number of subsequent paragraphs relevant to the issues and the focus and the way that the Internet Governance Forum itself will be established, called for by the Secretary General of the United Nations. There is no such relationship directly to the national/regional initiatives, there is paragraphs which support national mechanism, paragraph 11 for instance, paragraph 80 encourages the development of multistakeholder processes and paragraph 101 references exchanges of information and sharing of best practices and policy debates, paragraph 110 urges avoidance of duplication of activities and proposes information exchange, creation of knowledge, sharing best practices and assistance in developing multistakeholder and private/public partnerships. The reason I mention this to all of you, while there is no official relationship between the national initiatives and the regional initiatives and the IGF itself and why we call them initiatives is there an organic, bottom up development and emergence of the influence really of the IGF itself. They're consistent with other paragraphs that are called for but there is no official relationship.
Coordinators work together informally to try to come up with guidelines and by consensus they're used to govern which initiatives are listed in the ‑‑ on the Web site. All of you will continue to be participating in that. That's particularly important because what we've found, we talked about this in our organizing session on Sunday ‑‑ just checking. I'm having trouble with my days ‑‑ the relationships that are beginning to emerge between the initiatives, they're one of the byproducts of us working together, today we'll work about gathering information on three things and he can changing the information about three topics.
First of all, I'll ask you to respond. First of all, we have a sign‑up sheet that we'll pass around, ask you to sign your name and the name of the initiative and the ‑‑ thank you ‑‑ and your e‑mail address.
Secondly I'll ask Anna to distribute two tables, I need both back, if you look at the tables and verify in the information on the tables is accurate about your initiative. This is just the list of the national and regional initiatives that have been conducted that we know about from 2009/2010/201/2012. If you also conducted an initiative in 2013 just put a check box on ‑‑ in the blank space.
You will see an evolution of the number of initiatives which is a phenomenal, exciting movement. We're going in a round robins, we'll ask the coordinators or whoever is here representing your initiative, to answer three questions. We'll do them one complete round at a time and then discuss briefly and go to the second question and then to the third. Let me give you the questions. It was all had in my e‑mail, I'll do it again.
The first question is: Very, very quickly what, are the main challenges, main challenges, that you find of most impact in organizing and conducting an initiative and then tell us which it is, a national initiative, a regional initiative or sub regional or adding a new category, a continental initiative because of Africa's emergence as a continent‑wide initiative.
To give you an example of the Arab region, it is a regional initiative while Africa is actually developing a continent‑wide initiative. We're seeing real innovation emerging which is a fantastic thing for us to try to gather. The first one is, what are the main challenges, the second one is what are the issues that your initiative sees reflected into the IGF itself? What are the consistencies between the issues you're dealing with and the IGF?
The third, what's unique in issues about your initiative that you don't see going on anywhere else? You don't see it happening at the IGF, anywhere else, is there something unique about your initiative? I thought that this would be an interesting thing for us to talk about. I'll give you an example.
In 2010 the IGF U.S.A. pioneered the use of scenarios. We took those scenarios to Russia in a sister to sister exchange and a forum on the use of scenarios at the IGF. It is not something that's caught on widely in the IGF. I'm looking for anything that's really unique about the initiative you have managed and we're going to ‑‑ due to the microphone environment, I think we'll start question one and just hand the microphone out and we'll pass the microphone and go. Remember to identify your initiative, then answer the question, question one, the main challenges.
May I start with Anna, from Portugal? I can start over here. Yes. So, we'll start with main challenges.
Before you start, any questions or adaptations that anyone would propose?
Let's kickoff.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. I'm an Australian ambassador and I think I may be the only one from Australia here. We ran the second Australian IGF just last week. We had one last year and then one this year. Talking about the challenges, I suppose Australia's a large continent. It is a matter of ensuring that we have people from all over the country come, it is a matter of finding a right location for that. We have our capital city is quite small. We had the first one there last year n one, we had in Melbourne, the second largest city in Australia. The geographical issue is one. Maybe I'll stop there and I can answer the other questions later.
>> AUDIENCE: West Africa, Nigeria, from West Africa.
First, the challenge, we have a very large country. Ability to get all to participate and crowd control, in 2013, it was so ‑‑ we couldn't even control it. We have over 600 attending and some state of the federation were saying they would not conduct it. We have the challenge of breaking within that, to see whether we can have some dialogue with some of the sub regional level.
For the west African idea, the challenge is financing, being able to get people from the sub region to attend the program. Up with, two people come from the country, the rest will not be able to make it. That's a challenge.
>> AUDIENCE: Good morning, everyone. I come from Uganda. I represent Uganda IGF and west African IGF. Probably for those that are familiar with the west African IGF it was one of the first regional IGFs in the whole IGF I think process.
Some of our challenges so far we have faced, I think in the previous year is getting participation from government for the west African IGF. The processors, it is in Kenya, with the change of government, the current government is probably ‑‑ it is not on the agenda or a priority. We have had that challenge.
For the West African IGF is government involvement and probably on the processes on how to give the issues, the recommendations, but for the Uganda IGF, the main challenge we have had is getting involvement or participation from the private sector, the ISPs and people that are into SMEs or dealing with the entire ICT sector but from the private sector.
How we've probably ‑‑ hour we're trying to deal with it, this year, all of last year, we decided rather than focusing on so many issues of the IGF, there are quite many, we decided to have the Uganda IGF hosted by the Internet Society, the Uganda chapter and we decided to focus on a national forum just to focus on one issue rather than bringing many issues because that way you get one focused area, say if it is access, it is easier for you to get participation.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm from a European IGF, known as a continental IGF. We're existing since 2008. Since this year we're running an event per year in different countries of Europe.
One challenge is to deal with the different host every year, which is not even a different country but culture but a different stakeholder group, so we're dealing with governmental stakeholder groups as a host, dealing with ‑‑ currently we're dealing with a business association as a stakeholder group which is a challenge on one hand but also a good thing to do in the uniqueness on the other hand because this broadens the participation of the stakeholder groups. This is generally one of the challenges I think of the Internet Governance process, to include all stakeholder groups on equal ways. We know business community is still under represented in the whole IGF process and also participation of the Civil Societies sometimes is hard to realize.
These are challenges. Especially for Europe, it is also the participation of the eastern European country. West Europe is good represented, central as well, for southeast Europe, it is simply the awareness is not that big as in other parts of the world.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm mike, I'm representing an IGF, a national IGF, IGF Germany. Although we're the host for next year. There are a lot of challenges.
What we have found out, most it is about the organization as such is the set up of ‑‑ we have an annual event since 2008 mainly in the springtime. That works well. Setting up the event, that is talking to different institutions and setting up the program, trying to incorporate all of the stakeholders, that's what we found most challenging in getting representation all over Germany. The IGFD is normally in Berlin every year, which is the capital.
We have now set up an Internet Governance platform where we invite those people who are present in Berlin to get shorter input into the programs and they're also ‑‑ this platform will also take care of the German input into the EuroDIG so we avoid the duplicate efforts in that arena and have the same people on board to show a bit of the contingency over the time and not jumping back and forth over the years.
Again, the organization is what we have found the most challenging thing to get people on the one hand. We'll see.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.
We have in Portugal an Information Society Forum since 2005 and this was set up as a multistakeholder forum. When we set up the agency responsible for information society. It is or it was a forum where the other stakeholders were immediate. Things like digital economy, ICT N society, e‑commerce, the privacy, they were discussed.
In 2010 we realized at the time that it was ripe to organize a session dedicated to Internet Governance. We don't have a Portuguese IGF, we have a Portuguese initiative of IGF because there is no Portuguese IGF or Spanish IGF or ‑‑ what we have are initiatives of the IGF at national level, regional level.
We continue to have this forum and the governance. It is challenging, people don't understand what we mean. Internet Governance, what's it mean? The private sector, it doesn't understand at all. In 2010 it was very difficult to have people besides government and academia, technical communities because these, I think we're aware. On the other hand, there is a lack of information from the media. People, they're not aware, there is no awareness. There is a lot of outreach work to do.
We don't have so much political ‑‑ well, it is not a political priority either nowadays. But, once, I think media starts to have a role and starts to talk about this and to write about this, I think that the political sides will improve. We have a program on our broadcasting TV that is called information Civil Society. I was already invited there several times. I'm always talking about Internet Governance forums and what it is. It is a program that's not seen ‑‑ watched by many people, because it is very cultural.
Nevertheless, I do my part when I'm there.
There is another challenge, the geographic issue. Even if Portugal is not a large country, north and south is very difficult ‑‑ it is difficult.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I'm from the U.K. IGF.
In no particular order we struggle with participation particularly from business, the question around how long we actually make our forum last, that was one‑day forum, there is pressure to move it to multiple days then a question of the commitment of time for people to commit to, the longer the commitment. The longer it guess on, it is harder for people to commit time.
We struggle with getting new faces into the rim, so to make the discussion of dealings, you talked about Internet Governance, same as other people who don't really understand it, it doesn't sound particularly interesting and they don't see how relevant it is to their day‑to‑day work.
We have also had a slight struggle with our structure and how to organize that. We feel we're in a better place now. We have relaunched earlier this year to have better coordination with sort of a multistakeholder and committee to set the agenda and move sessions forward. We have always sort of funded the U.K. IGF but we don't want to be a gatekeeper, we have had an issue where we're perceived as a gatekeeper in the U.K. and we're trying to step back to make it more multistakeholder. The issue then is it needs to be coordinated in some way and in order for things to progress without being controlling and that's probably our headlines. Thank you.
>> I'm from the Arab IGF. The Arab IGF is pretty young. We had only our second annual meeting a couple of weeks ago. Likewise, we moved from one Arab country to another every year, and we deal with different hosts which are also from different stakeholder groups so our first host was a Civil Society, our second host this year was government of Nigeria. We have a similar challenge of having to deal with the different hosts, with different perceptions of the Internet Governance, different awareness levels. So, awareness is one issue. We have noticed for example this year an increased interest from governments because the host was a government, we have had ministers from the Arab Legion in the opening session which was not the case in the first one. Whereas in the first one we had more Civil Societies, especially from the region we were in, it actually depends on the host which is a challenge but a good thing actually to move to different hosts. That's one part. The second challenge, which is effecting actually the work, it is funding ‑‑ let me say the institutionalization of funds, we have the sponsors for the annual meetings, we have the limited funding mechanisms for the preparation process so we work probably like other regional initiatives on voluntary work from different persons to our body that we have created. People are not always ‑‑ they don't always have time to dedicate or have the funds to travel. We want to maybe look at other experience from other regions, how do they manage their funds? Is there a way that maybe we can copy and in order to support the international activities between us.
Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Many issues have been mentioned, getting new faces every year, it is not so easy. Nor the thing about geographic movement, yeah, it is not that easy to make the forum broader than Madrid. Madrid is a very big city.
We have some troubles regarding logistics like streaming, we organized a forum in the University, it is not that easy to have some broadcasting.
The last thing I wanted to mention, we have tried to get involved with young people. We're coordinated from the University, but I don't know why we don't succeed.
That's the main issues.
Thank you.
>> Hi. I'm from the Asia Pacific regional IGF. Actually I think our ‑‑ for the regional IGF our main challenge is very similar to the other regional IGFs because this is a huge region and so sometimes there is a big difference of region and it may be difficult really to converge the commonalties and the ‑‑ shall I continue?
Another problem is actually we also have is participation, it is hard for us to get the ‑‑ the Civil Society, it is not directly related to the Internet industry or the general public has the relevancy that some are ready to talk about. Outside of the industry, they don't feel the immediate, like, authorities, they don't see the relevance to participation in this kind of Internet Governance discussion. That's a challenge.
I also want to talk about youth activities that we also have because our Asia IGF was initiated in 2010 and that year we had a youth IGF and every year we do that together. So, some challenges actually is because our IGF is regional, but for the youth IGF, it is more like a local base because we only invite University students. That's part of the funding issue problem as well.
Also in how we can ‑‑ I mean, I think our IGF is successful, we have a group of young people which are ambassadors and it is a youth program from the Asia organizations and we actually trained them, they'll be the youth and peer delegates to train other University students as well. We actually ‑‑ the challenge for this, it is actually how we can provide a sustainable path. How we can provide a sustainable path for the young people to really be engaged in the global IGF.
The youth IGF, how they continue their involvement in the IGF. Right now, this year, I don't really see many young people here. Especially how we can get them on to the panel.
>> MODERATOR: We have a remote participant. Can you tell us who it is and then we'll ‑‑ I'm not responding other than nodding. I'm trying to speed us through this. I know we're running out of time. Try to focus right now on just challenges so we can make one round and then go back to issues.
>> I guess you've already covered the Asian Pacific one, I'm sorry, I'm from Asia. I guess I'll raise one additional one, we have been actively helping get start up a IGF and it is a new initiative, it is going to happen next month there. A big challenge there, even to get the idea because it is very important to get the government involved in the discussion, getting through, explaining to them what the IGF is and what it is there for. Also explaining to the industry and the businesses and Civil Society what it is. That was a big challenge. Because this is brand‑new, it is probably different situation.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. We'll here at the end of this wrap up, then we'll hear about another initiative that's emerging.
Let's go to Sheryl. Challenges only.
>> AUDIENCE: I can follow the rule.
Sheryl, as many have been described in an AUDA context here, the regulator of the space, we're the funder and primary host and organizer of the second IU IGF. I know you have heard now from one of our ambassadors but I want to pick up on a particular challenge that has been talked a bit around the table but it may have a greater impact to the regional IGFs shortly.
As we are developing and putting resources, human and otherwise, into our national initiative our choices, where we can then put additional support for example to the APR IGF, and having been involved from the very beginning with the 2010APR IGF I can assure you, you know, cold hard cash and humans are now getting more focused on our national initiative than we are back in to our regional one. We're still not ignoring the regional one, there is a shift of focus. It is simple resource management.
I think we need to be aware of that as a particular challenge.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: I'll comment. It is Marilyn. I hope to come back to that, if we can't take it up in the discussion, we'll come back to it, I'm ‑‑ myself, I have a premise that the most effective work is done at the national initiatives. I think that's a question to come back to. To kind of examine and perhaps there is, you know, they are very different and for different purposes. It is good to come back to.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm Willie. I'm not a coordinator of any IGF, thank God! It is not easy. I'm a member of the Arab IGF and I emphasize with Christina, she did a lot of hard work.
I stand in solidarity. I just organized a few workshops in the first and second and also moderated a panel.
I thought that the major challenge for ‑‑ during my organizing and moderating, it was the mind set of the participants on what multistakeholder means. The very basic premise of what is a multistakeholder approach. I was contemplating actually organizing the Yemen IGF where I come from, national IGF, but before I proceed with that, we really need to formulate an idea that is clear and concise and holds within it balance. If we say multistakeholders it could mean that you have ‑‑ you know, 70% of reputation of just one, 30% distributed among the other multistakeholder and even if equal, some have higher, greater weight. How do we actually verify that we practice what we preach when it comes to multistakeholders and in a region like Yemen, which is coming out of a revolution, change in transformation, we really want to start with a clean slate with very clear ideas.
>> MODERATOR: It is Marilyn again. I'm going to give you an observation and go to Stephan and start again.
I think you'll see, there's a study that Deena and I are working on in the national regional IGFs, some of you have been gracious enough to participate in them. I think one thing, I'll pose this as a question, we'll go to issues, but then I'll pose this as a question. I'm not actually sure that we can have more rigid criteria about what the definition or balance of multistakeholder is in a imposed top‑down manner. Each country, each region has unique characteristics. What has been propose sod far which is on the Web site, you have a ‑‑ you have this openness, transparency, et cetera, but we'll come back, talk about this. I think we also shouldn't treat, make the bar so high that a new initiative can't emerge.
Stephan, you wanted to share your role as a coordinator?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. Not as a coordinator but as part of an initiative to start an IGF in France. The challenges there have been huge. So far, to this day, we have not been able to organize a IGF locally in France which is quite surprising. An initiative was started by both someone from the french government and there has been discussion to start a IGF in France, it has gone with the support of the French government and key stakeholders in France, we have been able to secure a date of 9th of January, 2014 to hold the ‑‑ or at least what we hope will be a French version of a local IGF in Paris. Exciting news for us. I just wanted to share that with you.
Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: That's fantastic.
Let's go to Laura. I'll ask about the Persian emerge ANC. And then we'll do issues.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm also involved with the Pacific IGF, we had one, we haven't had it in while, I want to talk about New Zealand and challenges. I could echo the geographic spread issue, private sector youth, things I have heard, I wanted to reiterate from our experience, we have been very lucky, we have our third, we had 600 participants, 3,000 people online, really amazing community led sort of creation of the program and they hate the term multistakeholderism and they're doing it and helping us construct t that's awesome.
The big challenge, it takes a lot of work.
You're actually working with people and helping them to come up with the sessions and to work with each other, you know, around different perspectives on different topics, it takes patience and time and the skills, you know, necessary for them, you know, in terms of capacity building for facilitators, moderators, it is a huge amount of effort, you know, and from them and from us. So, the commitment, the challenge, it is hard to find everybody that can make the time.
Mortgages talking challenges for existing initiatives. I'll ask Roseanna to announce the initiative and then we'll go on with issues.
Where is the microphone?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much.
We have recently ‑‑ we're still in the process of initiation of the Persian IGF and we call it Persian IGF because of the language so it's a regional IGF, it will cover the Persian‑speaking people in different countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other regions, Kurdistan.
Our plan is to create interest in the community and different stakeholder groups to join us and to contribute to Internet Governance discussion on policy making and other processes international or regional. We are planning to have an annual meeting. It is not ‑‑ we don't know the location yet but hopefully it will happen and we look forward to seeing you all there.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: We're going to run out of time. I'll ask you to do this very, very quickly. Let's combine two and three. The issues you see reflected from your initiative, you see those issues or version of them, don't go into detail, but the issues that you see reflected in the IGF and identify the thing ‑‑ if there is anything ‑‑ that's so unique about your initiative that it is not reflected.
I'll say the reason I wanted her to helpings that emergence of that Persian IGF, they're organizing in a different way, not geographic in terms of a specific land mass, it is a language and cultural organization which is very unique to this innovation.
Let's come back over here with the microphone again.
What are the issues you see reflected in, that's quickly something like cybersecurity, Human Rights, child online protection, I'm saying fast, right, critical information resources, then what's unique if there is something that's so unique about yours that's not reflected.
>> AUDIENCE: Quickly, again, Australian IGF ambassador. I'm sure Sheryl will talk about other issues, but I'm going to mention mainstreaming of People with Disabilities. I'm one of six ambassadors for the Australian IGF and each had an opportunity to organize a workshop in their area of expertise.
When it comes to disability, it is often forgotten, that area. We see that on the global IGF, this one here, there's still various participation, remote participation by blind people, and there's always that issue on how to make mainstream technology accessible and we had a deaf blind person, I'm saying this is quite unique, a deaf blind person in the Australian IGF talking about how she uses technology to communicate.
You just imagine how that works. There's a presentation on Friday with work being done in India.
I think, it is just mainstreaming technology, how various organizations can do that, CTLDs could look at best practice and across the board in both national, regional and the IGF itself.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm not sure it is something unique. I think access, access is the key.
Access to technology. We had a physically challenged person during our IGF. He wanted inclusion, inclusion, access and inclusion, those are the two.
>> MODERATOR: Before you pass on, that's the unique thing you're seeing but what about the consistent issues that are being discussed in the Nigerian IGF that you're also seeing repeated in the themes or the workshops or the main sessions here?
>> AUDIENCE: Well, because we model the national IGF to what happens, the discussion areas, we don't have so many workshops. We have six major areas, that is openness, privacy access, diversity, you know, just those three major areas.
When it comes to uniqueness of issue, what I said is inclusion. Let's include the youth, include the children, include the physically challenged, let's include the women mainstream all of this.
>> MODERATOR: Right. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: From the west African experience.
We tend to look at all issues but however, this year, the uniqueness that I can share is we usually do have online discussions on different mailing lists, purely online where we identify different issues, access, cybersecurity, Human Rights, this year we just decided to focus on just two issues at the face‑to‑face meeting. We felt that it was successful because we were able to get all the stakeholders to participate, including the private sector, we focused on improving infrastructure, Human Rights, expression. Those are the two issues we focused on and I think for us this is something that we think will work for us. We tend to identify the main issues, attractive discussion on ‑‑ from the online discussions and then just pull together this stakeholders to address, talk about the two issues or it can be one issue and then adopt recommendations to use them to engage with government.
>> AUDIENCE: The uniqueness of the EuroDIG to my point of view goes directly to the consistency of what you're indicating, compared to the whole process.
The uniqueness is the dynamic of the process, recognized by many national and regional and by the global IGF, the dynamic process in terms of remote participation, we're one of the first to include the live captioning and remote participation and it became later on a matter of fact thing for the global IGF as well.
We have a dynamic process in terms of the flesh sessions, they're now being held here at the global IGF as well which gives smaller initiatives also the opportunity to introduce themselves and to get into the discussion.
Inclusion of young people is something that's an example in Europe and in particular, during the ‑‑ during the EuroDIG which will be improved from the real process. Another thing which I think is unique, I may be wrong, I'll be happy to learn more about this, we're producing the messages, because the IGF, the Governance is always saying they don't have an outcome, that's why the business sector won't participate, they want an outcome mortgages will you pass that around so people see it.
>> AUDIENCE: I may not have enough copies with me, we can get them at the EuroDIG, we have more. I have some of them as well. In is being taken over by many initiatives already and this may be helpful, the tool for other national, regional, sub regional initiatives to attract more stakeholder groups to get a business involved and so on and so forth. It is not binding, the document, it is a recommendation and a reflection of the discussion in a very open manner.
>> From the IGF, Germany.
Three things to mention: One, we have similar to the IGF here as well as to the EuroDIG, the youth participation. This works out well in Germany, set up the day before, on Sunday, to enable the youth even if there are no holidays to set up programs, meeting, we have the IGF, the juvenile IGF always on Mondays. That's one point.
Another point, what we have seen in the last couple of years, an increasing participation of the parliaments that are interested in the various topics.
Finally, we avoid parallel sessions, we don't have parallel sessions, we have single stream growth for the day in order to make it ‑‑ the participants, easier ‑‑
>> MODERATOR: I'm having trouble finding space for the IGF U.S.A., my explanation of why I'm only doing one session is that I'm going to be following the model of Germany.
>> AUDIENCE: Okay!
>> MODERATOR: Let's go on.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much.
Number one, we have the messages also from ‑‑ we have those messages as well but normally we have the national messages from Lisbon.
My second point is, it is to stress what my colleague already mentioned, I think that we have much more empowerment sessions, capacity building oriented sessions. All these parts of the inclusion policy, I think they're missing a lot here. We will ‑‑ we have a lot of these in the Portuguese initiative of IGF.
Another thing that we're always discussing and it is interesting because it is evolving each year as normal, the I amazing role of the social networks. The power of the social networks.
Finally, I would like to stress that we started to use the sign language exactly because of the awareness of accessibility policy that we have had for more than 15 years.
>> Thank you. Laura Hutchinson from the U.K. IGF.
In terms of issues that come directly from our agenda to here, we have identity and trust and workshops, we have had the IGF and used the model to run a workshop here. The same with global partners that are running sessions on Internet Governance principles and cybersecurity is on the agenda in the U.K. and also here.
There is also a youth IGF ran and they have a delegation here in Bali.
In terms of what's unique, we have ‑‑ we had a very interactive discussion on child protection in the U.K. There is very high profile media cases which you may be aware of which means it is a very hot topic in the U.K. Although it is on the agenda here it is not reflected in the same way as we discuss it in the U.K.
We're not particularly unique, but we have a really strong parliamentary government participation in the IGF where we're pleased to have an MP here in Bali and the minister was here yesterday and I think spoke at everyone of our events which is a good level of engagement.
>> MODERATOR: Another thing that's unique about the U.K. as a role model, not only do you bring a minister but you make him stay the entire time.
>> AUDIENCE: In terms of issues, I think the discussions were pretty much similar to the ones that happened ‑‑ that are happening in the global IGF. We have had a lot of discussions on youth in parliament, how to have the youth in the Arab region more than consumers of the Internet to innovators on the Internet.
For that, that was a lot of stress on openness and freedom coming from the youth that would resinate there. They discussed Internet Rights and Principles and we needed that, related that to Human Rights actually. It was actually repeated in both meetings. It is a persistent topic.
There was discussions about coordination of legal frameworks among the security and it was identified that a lot of capacity building has to be done in that specific area in terms of stakeholders not only those present within the Internet Governance discussions but across those that implement and do the legal systems. Issues that I think may have been a bit unique, they're issues related to the DNS industry and I think this is only normal because of the emerging of domain names, it is a discussion about the IDM, because of maturity there but about the industry itself. Another thing that may have been unique is the issue of relating access to content. There was a lot of discussion about how investment and access is negatively effected by the lack of content and by content being pushed out of the region. That was one issue. I'm interested ‑‑ very interesting to listen to Portugal talk about the messages, this is one thing that was identified but it was messages sent out to governments, so we were thinking to have flash messages come from the IGF sent to the Arab ICT ministers through the league of Arab states being policymakers so it is good to actually learn about the existence of messages coming out.
Thank you.
>> Thank you.
So, several things are particular about the Spanish IGF, one is that it was launched in 2008 and started with bimonthly meetings. What we did, we prepared each meeting, it was for one topic. We had a long‑time ‑‑ for two months we worked on the background information, to prepare the debate, to involve the stakeholders, it was very inclusive, the process. We could focus on one topic at the time. The audience would be great. The kind of people that would come to one topic they would then come to the next meeting maybe not because they were not interested in that kind of topic. In that sense it was less aloe occasional because everybody went to the topics they were interested in, not that there is a thing you could benefit from just because you were in the room and then you decide to stay and learn something new.
However, with time, we have evolved and we actually took a lot of example on the EuroDIG. It was a lot of effort organizing the bimonthly meetings and we ‑‑ I don't know, we decided there was a lot of advantages to moving to one event a year. We started to copy basically the EuroDIG. We implemented the messages and we also worked on remote participation mostly through twitter and we do create hashtags for each session so there are conversations going on parallel and things like that.
Something that is unique, I think, about the igf, about the Spanish IGF, we have that ‑‑ we have inherit that had previous work that would go into all of the sessions at the beginning. We really forced our stakeholders to work a lot before the event. We started by asking for proposals and when the proposals come we ask for participants that are interested not in being a panelist but being a part of the organization team and they don't have to be a panelist but they have to organize a bit of work and provide background documents and come up with policy questions and generate a pre‑debate that's sometimes the most intense debate.
Sometimes by the time it guess to the stage, the debate, they are ‑‑ many things have already been agreed on and they are published so we already know, this won't be tackled, these we hey agree on, we go directly to the issues that are complicated and the need that, you know, that have different perspectives and need to be spoken out.
That's something.
Another particular thing is that we have a very heavy participation from the private sector. It was actually we started with the telephonic foundation and over the time, a group from Spain, other organizations, they have gotten involved in the funding and we do have, I guess, sort of a feel good flavor, you know N our IGF which we really, really try to work on. That means to expand to other areas to make it more ‑‑ to cover more topics.
Yes, the sign language, we have also in 2012 we did a session on accessibility, accessibility, so they ‑‑ it kind of required ‑‑ which it was great, but I'm adjustor it was then that it mentioned how ironic it was that we're actually holding a session on web accessibility but yet our website was not accessible, the page was not accessible, so on, so forth, it forced us to work a lot on our issues. I think that's it.
>> MODERATOR: Quickly, about the IGF U.S.A. before we move on here, so, IGF U.S.A. actually started out in 2007/2008 with half day events. They were multiple events a year that were built around ‑‑ we did them before and after the planning sessions and they were largely to help people to prepare for participation in planning for the IGF and to try to raise awareness.
In 2009 we launched the fist IGF U.S.A. with a full‑ day event. Another thing that is unique about us, we have a relationship with imagining the Internet, besides Webcasting we have video reporters that cover each of the sessions and do a ‑‑ what really is, although they're students, they're working under Janna Anderson's cord nation and you can find on our site, you can find the video stories and it has been a really unique way to cover what is happening. Lots of people, particularly government policymakers won't watch an entire Webcast but there is a one to two‑page story and it has been ‑‑ although we use twitter we have found that our relationship with "imagining the Internet" is building a different approach to documentation.
We pioneered the use of scenarios in 2010 and in 2011 and we have had a focus on the use of ICTs, Internet Governance and disaster. That was actually initially driven not because of the natural disasters in the United States but because many of our participants were heavily involved in recovery in Haiti.
The initial interest came from the involvement of several companies and the U.S. government in working in Haiti after the hurricane and then we have begun to have so many natural disasters in the United States due to climate change, et cetera, that we're actually continuing to focus on that area. I don't see that ‑‑ I think Japan's been focused, interested in that, it is not an issue that's spread. It is something that is somewhat unique.
Let's move on quickly and we'll wrap it up.
>> AUDIENCE: I think ‑‑ actually, we cover many topics which pertains to the younger people, copyright and other issues that they have discussed is really about the parliament and engagement of which most of the IGFs mentioned about, the empowerment, really helping them to understand what IG is and I think they really need capacity computing before they can participate and discuss these issues which is complicated for them somehow.
Another thing, while the engagement, right now, I think both really don't think that they're heard, and they really want to see how they can participate in the sense that they can really be heard from the other panelists and not just within or among the youth. I think right now it would be really good if we could clap bright on how to see more youth participation in the global IGF level.
>> AUDIENCE: In terms of the Asia Pacific regional idea, the program so far over the last four years has been very much designed around the global idea of streams.
The issues are quite ‑‑ similar topics are being discussed. I think there has been some discussion about having more weight for local or regional themes however what's been mentioned, the challenge, the diversity of the region, I guess it is uncertain how different it will be in a sense. However, one particular theme that's coming up, it is that it is sort of a ground for preparation for the global IGF. This year, I think, there were at least 2, 3 sessions, workshops that were in the APR IGF but also here in the global IGF. It is almost like a preparation session allowing the Asian perspective although it is diverse, it allows the Asian participants to discuss the issue and then bring it to the global IGF. That's an interesting development.
What's unique, as mentioned, one of them, we have a youth idea that goes along with the APR IGF every time, I think another ‑‑ I was trying to figure out, you know, think up of what's unique, I don't know if this is unique.
We have what's called a multistakeholder sharing group which is pretty much open, fully opened to anyone that can volunteer to be a part of that organizing committee and, you know, that ‑‑ whose willing to, you know, to work based on the operating principles we have adopted. I don't know if that's ‑‑
>> MODERATOR: That's interesting. We have that in the IGF U.S.A. as well.
All you have to do is agree to adhere to the principles and show up and do what I tell you to do ‑‑ that's a joke.
We have been considering whether we're going to change that. It has been very interesting just a quick aside, when we first formed the organization structure we couldn't reach an agreement on Civil Society wanted to have an election, rigid allocation of seats, we couldn't reach an agreement on what the organizing structure would be and we couldn't reach an agreement on calling anyone a chair. My title is actually chief catalyst.
We have no hierarchy. You know, for good or bad, you know, I'm not proposing it for everyone, it is ‑‑ we have 87 people on this steering group list and about 22 of them do the work.
Which probably sounds, you know, pretty much ‑‑ I know we need to move on. I want to say something before we move on.
The other Thanksgiving I may want to mention, every year we have had a workshop on fraud and risk in the GTLBs that's been self generated by the community. Not the new program, but dealing with fraud and risk and abuse in generic top level domains. That's an interesting, uniqueness that I have seen there as well.
Sheryl?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. Sheryl from Australia.
In terms, very young, two years down, we're committed to the region and global initiatives more than our own for a number of years, we have deliberately designed to be more in keeping with the global IGF theme. Similar to what you'll see in our AP regional one but there are a couple of points of departure and one of the points of difference I think that we're pleased with, albeit not absolutely unique, it is our ambassador program, which, of course, takes them deliberately from planning workshops in Australia, running workshops and being funded. It is just a really good idea that we do these sorts of things. We have all of our six ambassadors that are in panel here, not in just one but in several workshops and panels.
There is I think one point of departure, that's the fact that one of the titles of our ambassador Mcgill woods' work in Australia, accelerating the work and I would suggest something not coming up in the global IGF, there are business interests that are not being met necessarily at global and perhaps there is a sub regional and regional opportunity there. In terms of other slide uniqueness, it is the commitment we have had from our high level government and particularly since we have had the shifting of the deck chairs and who was captaining the ship immediately before our Internet Governance forum, the fact we got the new secretary of the Department of Communications there when the ink was hardly dry on his business cards and he did, drew Clark, I would like to recognize, he spent two‑thirds of a day, a long time in a government leader's life, we get ‑‑ currently serving politicians and we still had the previous minister for communications drop in to see how we were going. He had an official capacity last year, although he didn't have to turn up this year, he did anyway.
That's good points perhaps of departure. I think that should be it for me.
>> AUDIENCE: Yes, it is Swali again. I compliment Christine's comments about the IGF which she mentioned eloquently.
Something I want to mention, it may be a blessing or a curse that was formed based on government's decision, the ministers because they have taken the initiative and once the government has been the initiator, then there could be a string attached. That's a problem later on in the process.
There may be a possible evolution to pulling it out of government control in one way or the other in the future. It could have this idea of bringing an organizational structural reform so we could have more Civil Society presence, business presence in the organization committee, not that they're doing a bad job. They're doing great. It helps expand the outreach. There is suspicion and you see ‑‑ governments, you hear the Arab governments, you know why, there is a history.
Another unique aspect, the Arab region is going under transformation, you have a huge divide on the same panel between different individuals. I was at the Algerian openness session and there were extremely diverse opinions on the same panel. That's unhealthy, that prospect. Then you reflect the real multistakeholders, the real diverse community and it can also spark, you know, some sort of backlash. What happens while I was moderating, an interesting comment came from the floor saying why do you allow a particular ‑‑ you know, critical comment on ‑‑ a particular comment on government. I was really surprised by that. This was supposed to be a forum. That's it, that's what it is meant for.
The mind set of Arab governments has not changed. It is also a challenge for us in particular because of the long history of dealing with, you know, oppressive regimes.
>> MODERATOR: I will ask a couple of general questions of the room here.
How many of you in addition to participating in a national, regional or global IGF also participate in ICAN or ICAN related activities in some way? Anna does too. Okay.
Looking for commonalties here.
How many of you also speak or participate in other meetings where you talk about Internet Governance issues?
You have to raise your hand. I follow you around the world. I know what you do!
I'll work with Deema to do a questionnaire, to come back, look for other places where we're seeing the spread of what I'm beginning to think of the new Internet Governance DNA, people are taking the concepts or the policy messages that are emerging and beginning to take them into other spaces.
I'll summarize, we were going to try to identify what a major challenges. One thing that I was actually kind of surprised about, I'm surprised I didn't hear a lot more clarity about the challenges of funding. I think you were pretty soft on the barriers that funding presents. We pulled out some ideas and I think that the resources, the other concept I want you to think about, if you have a chance to read the thought paper that Deema Epstein did, a preliminary overview of the high level research with four nationals and four regionals, you see he's introduced the cop September of the idea of entrepreneur. One of the things I'm really seeing in the national and regional IGFs is the significant importance of commitment and idea entrepreneurs catalyst that are sustaining and holding the whole set of activities together. Almost like start‑ups. What I'm kind of see something that same kind of passion and commitment that is going on.
I'm seeing a huge amount of flow of resource work between ‑‑ I think there will be a session tomorrow, one of the things that could be thought about, you know, what is the human linkages, not just the ideal linkages, if I could ask if that's something that would sound ‑‑ yeah. Yeah.
I think also I'm going to try to do some notes and ask you to look at them, particularly I'm going to try to capture the uniqueness, but also I do think ‑‑ let me ask for a show of hands, do most of you ‑‑ I heard some of you say it, do most of you feel that generally there is strong consistency on issue topics? Not saying on treatment, on issue topics with the IGF and your initiative? Okay. I would not put the IGF U.S.A.'s hand up. There's not for us.
We do no national issues, we focus really on Internet Governance of, Internet Governance. So, we're probably very unique in that. When we ‑‑ when we do the report, you'll see that.
I want to thank you for coming. I'm not going to keep you longer. I'm going to ask two things from you, you really ‑‑ if you are not receiving the IGF regionals list then we need it hear from you so we can make sure that that's corrected. If that's true for any of you. I now need to know who has the sign‑up sheet? Who has the little sheet that had the list of initiatives? Now I know something new and that is we need to ‑‑ I'm going to send a spread sheet back out and ask you to identify if you held events prior to 2009 so we can capture ‑‑ don't you think, Ellen ‑‑ we can capture and ‑‑ so, the IGF U.S.A., I'll be very example oriented here. We held an event post‑WIKIT, assessing the indications of that WIKIT on Internet Governance, it wasn't an IGF initiative, it wasn't called that, but it was sponsored by the IGF U.S.A. So, if you have held events like that that you're taking responsibility for, you can list those as well.
>> We have a comment, a question from a remote participant, a question. Do we need to get you a microphone, please? Yes.
>> AUDIENCE: This is for Marilyn, what ICAN involvement has there been in national IGF events?
>> MODERATOR: Not nearly enough. However, there is huge individual participation from board members, from elected members and the community and from participants and they do make financial contributions of a small amount to help fund some of the loam events. They provide speakers, I ‑‑ we have been at IGF U.S.A., we have always had a board member that's local to the United States and we have primarily focused on the SSR team for participation. The resilience team. I have seen board members heavily attending a number of the national and regional initiatives. I know there is board member participation in EuroDIG. Another thing I should say, board members don't actually represent ICAN, so, very much they're attending in the individual capacity. The organization has helped somewhat with funding from time to time.
You wanted to say something?
>> AUDIENCE: I must confess, we had a very good representation of the ICAN, we have had the pre‑event organized and funded for the Internet user association for Europe, to the EuroDIG and funded the precipitation of that. They organized a side‑event about new GTORDs and they also met the Portuguese community. The participation of ICAN in the last EuroDIG was astonishing.
>> MODERATOR: Can I just see if that was responsive, then we'll go to Christine and then back to Ellen.
>> AUDIENCE: We had also the Arab group, a great ‑‑ in terms of the sponsorships, they're always there to help us intermediate and in the annual meetings, the regional offices, they heavily participate in the agenda, in the meetings, and we have actually had an open consultation between two meetings that was partnered with ICAN and it was a remarkable meeting where we also had a board member and we have had ministers from the Arab region and CEOs from companies, it was remarkable in terms of participation. Yeah. We have had remarkable participation.
>> I think we're wrapping up. I want to make a side comment about contributions from the regional national initiatives into the main IGF and remind people, first of all, we have had a bit of trouble with the IGF regional list in terms of moderation. Apparently some messages have been stuck and not getting through. I wanted to say that if you're interested in speaking as a regional or national IGF in one of the focus sessions, on a session that may be relevant, that you feel is relevant to, you know, the content of your initiative to please contact me. We can set it up so that you're called on to speak, you know, as a regional national initiative. Mortgages to remind everybody, on one hand, the emerging issue session, it is focused on surveillance. There will be an opportunity for people to make comments about other issues that they want to raise.
We'll talk about whether, you know, after Ricardo, a thing to think about, is there particular messages that we can pull out from what we heard today, heard on Sunday, what we hear tomorrow that we would want to put forward and, you know, I think I have gathered some, we'll circulate them, and awareness, hoping to raise the visibility, stable funding, you know, a variety of things that I think after tomorrow we could try to circulate.
>> Thank you so much, everyone. For your participation. I invite those that are interested to continue this conversation talking about what are the impacts or main takeaways from the global IGF into your regional and local IGF to join me tomorrow at the end of the afternoon in the same room. Thank you so much again for your participation. I look forward to seeing you and exchanging more information. [Applause]