IGF 2019 Third Open Consultations and MAG Meeting Day 1

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2019 Third Open Consultations and MAG Meeting in Berlin, Germany, from 5 to 7 June 2019. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

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 Third IGF Open Consultations and MAG Meeting

 

 Day 1:  Open Consultations

 5 June 2019

 

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  Welcome to the IGF 2019 Open Consultations day.  It's going to be followed by the MAG meeting for tomorrow and the next day.

 Just a reminder before we start that this meeting is being recorded and webcast and there's a transcript.  The transcript is going to be published on the IGF website after the meeting tonight and also for the next couple of days.

 We will be using the speaking queue, and the link to the speaking queue is available on the IGF website on the front page.

 With that, I'll hand it over to Lynn St. Amour, our chair, to start the meeting.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, and good morning, good afternoon, and evening, because I know we have some participants participating online.

 The first order of business is approval of the agenda.  The agenda was published sometime ago on the website.  I will have some opening remarks in a moment, but let me see if there are any specific requests for any other business, AOB.

 Not seeing any requests, we will call the agenda approved.

 And as Chengetai said, this is the Open Consultation day.  So when we came into the room, there were MAG member signs on the table here, and somebody who was more caffeinated than I pointed out that really they shouldn't be there to encourage those participants that are here that are not MAG members to actually take a seat at the table.

 This is the day when we ask the MAG members to listen to the community.  We ask them to refrain from taking the mic unless they are actually representing their organization or wearing, very clearly, another hat.  And specifically that's to ensure that there's enough time to hear from community members.

 The -- So we're all facing, I think, challenging times on many fronts, both policy and development areas.  50% of the world is still not connected.  There are increasing calls for regulation and concerns that any actions that are taken are rights respecting at the same time, platform misuse by various parties and still too little representation from the developing world in Internet governance processes everywhere.  And while I believe that the IGF and the IGF community processes are better than most, I think we all here agree that there is still room for improvement.

 There are clear concerns and requests for help and engagement from many quarters:  Governments; U.N. notably; certainly from private sector; calls for civil society, greater engagement on their behalf.  And of course we all want the Internet and all these types of open, inclusive, multistakeholder process to be a central part of making the world a better place.

 So with that in mind, we're really interested in hearing from the community on what we can do to improve all aspects of the IGF processes, whether it's annual meeting preparations, it's intersessional works, it's the working of the MAGs or in fact the working of the MAG chair as well.  This really is our opportunity to open up and discuss the things that we think are important to the advancement of the Internet governance and certainly to the improvements of the IGF at the same time.

 So we'll have some other introductory remarks as we go through the various parts of the agenda, but what I'd I like to do right now is welcome Dr. Daniela Bronstrup, who is the honorary host country co-chair, and she's going to make a few remarks and then, unfortunately, needs to leave for a short period of time to go across town to the Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network running in parallel, but then will be back shortly thereafter.

 So, Daniela, you have the floor.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:   Thank you very much, Lynn.  And welcome to everybody here or somewhere else.  I would like to welcome you to the face-to-face meeting, but of course also to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and energy.  And I'm doing this also on behalf of our minister who, unfortunately, can't be here today but he's sending his regards.

 You certainly have recognized that the ministry is situated right at the center of Berlin.  We have very nearby the famous hospital, the Charite, which is the tower right next to us.  And at the other side of the channel, there is the Hamburger Bahnhof, the station going to Hamburg.  At former times you had a lot of different stations in Berlin like you have today still in Paris, for example, and the trains from right here were going to the north.  And today this is a museum of contemporary art, and in case you have some time, maybe some of you are staying over the weekend, I can recommend that very heartily to you, so maybe you take advantage to visit it.

 The Wall was going right across the bridge you might have crossed when you came from the station because the border between the eastern and western part of Berlin was quite at the channel that is the neighbor of our ministry.  So you are sitting now in the former eastern part of Berlin, but the west was right across the channel.

 The oldest part of the ministry is not this building but there are two other buildings that are in parallel to the one building you can see over there if you are in the room that is -- that were added.  So the oldest buildings were a former invalid's hospital that was were founded by the Prussian King Frederick II in the 18th century already.  So this building is more recent, from the beginning of the last century, and it was founded as a military medical academy originally by Wilhelm II, and then it served also as the Ministry for Labor in the 1920s and later as a court in Eastern Germany and finally as a hospital again.

 Today we are meeting in the so-called org room because you see a lot of org here, and this was usually the dinner hall for the younger cadets.  They learned here the virtue of offices, such as, for example, dancing, and that's why we have the opportunity to meet in such a nice meeting room.

 Today here at this site, 1,400 people work for the ministry.  Maybe you know we have also another site still at Bonn, the former Western German capital that have 300 other people there.

 Dear colleagues, concerning the preparations of the IGF, I think we are making very good progress.  The cooperation of everyone involved is going extremely well, I think, and my deepest thanks to all of you, to the secretariat, to UN DESA and of course to our chair, Lynn, for all the work that has been undertaken in the last weeks.

 I also want to thank all of you as the MAG members who devoted your time and commitment concerning the (indiscernible) process.  This has been a bunch of work for all of you, and I think that it has created very good results.

 The IGF enjoys a great deal of attention and support from the German government and the German IGF stakeholders as well.  You already know that Chancellor Merkel will officially open the IGF on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m.  Maybe that's new to you.  The opening with the chancellor will be at 2:00 p.m.  In the run-up to November, there are some important steps outside our MAG structure that I want to mention.  We had very successful outreach meeting in New York in mid-May.  My Director General Stefan Schnorr had (indiscernible) (saying name) had welcomed representatives from all stakeholder groups to site event on the IGF in the margins of the science, technology and innovation multistakeholder room of the U.N.

 It became quite clear that the IGF and its well-established multistakeholder structures can serve as a model to other U.N. fora.

 We had also a very successful meeting of the third annual conference Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network here in Berlin that is still going on, as Lynn already mentioned.  We have also a shuttle, so people who are there can come to the Open Consultation in the afternoon, and I hope they will do that.

 And our host country website, that will be updated right now, will then show our key visual.  And now this is the time for Rudolf to show the key visual.

 [ Applause ]

 Of course, you will also find on the website another key visual, our motto, "One World, One Net, One Vision."

 Practical information on the registration procedures, et cetera, will be added end of July to the website.  

 And, finally, we'll have two major intersessional activities coming up.  That are the EuroDIG in The Hague at 19th and 20th of June and the German IGF on the 11th of September.

 Unfortunately, the minister will not be able to come today but we will have -- we will see Thomas Jarzombek at 2:00.  He will join us.  Thomas Jarzombek is a member of the German parliament.  And he is one of, you can say, the fathers of the idea to host the IGF in Germany.  He was pushing very hard to finance the IGF and to host it, and he has been also the speaker for the CDU on digital policy issues for several years.  So he's really an expert on the field.  He's also now the coordinator for aerospace policies of the federal government of Germany.  

 I'm looking forward to that, and he's looking forward to discussing with you.  He will even be able to stay to answer some of your questions.

 Unfortunately, I will have to leave right now.  But I will be back then after lunch and I'm looking forward to the discussions.  

 Have a very good morning.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Daniela.  

 Next on the agenda we have a welcome from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Mr. Deniz Susar, who was also with us at the second MAG meeting and open consultation.  

 So, Deniz, you have the floor.

 >>DENIZ SUSAR:  Good morning, everyone.  

 My name is Deniz Susar, and I'm delivering these opening remarks on behalf of our director, Mr. Juwang Zhu.  He's the director of the division for public institutions and digital government.  

 As you all know, UN DESA is designated by the Secretary-General to manage the IGF since 2007 and has been managing the secretariat and supporting the Secretary-General in that regard.  

 First of all, we thank our host, the Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy for hosting us here.  This is the first time a host country financially supports the organization of a MAG meeting and open consultation at the host venue.

 And Germany has committed itself to strengthening the IGF's multistakeholder approach by reaching out to niche stakeholder groups by nondigital businesses, citizens, and parliamentarians, and also strengthening the IGF's entire sessional activities.

 And, also, thanks to the MAG members who are here.  We know that we are almost complete in the workshop selection.  

 And, also, some of the MAG members could not join us because of the end of Ramadan.  So, also, we say Eid Mubarak to them to celebrate their festival.

 So some updates from UN DESA.  First, about the next host country, I'm happy to inform you that our Undersecretary-General signed the acceptance letter for hosting the next IGF in 2020 in Poland.  

 So just for the background, there was a lot of active discussion with other U.N. agencies, especially with Economic Commission of Africa to host an IGF in Africa.  But given that we are already in June and also appreciating Poland's early commitment and also the time they need to prepare properly for the next IGF, we expediated the process.  And the letter is now with the Polish mission to the U.N. in New York.  We are looking forward to working with our Polish colleagues in the next few months to start preparation.  So that's about next host country as promised from the last MAG meeting.

 And, also, as you know, the MAG renewal process is in place, also including the MAG chair.  We are very -- we are working on that.  And also we are very sad that this is Lynn's last year, and we appreciate a lot her efforts.  But I'm also sure that she will be working with the next MAG chair.  And the IGF community will continue to benefit from her experience.

 So the deadline for that is 30 June for the MAG renewal and we can explain further if there are any questions.

 Daniela briefly mentioned about the side event that UN DESA German mission and the UAE mission organized during the SDI Forum.  The event was well-participated by the delegates in New York.  It was more like a briefing to them.  And I know that we promised to share meeting notes, and that will come to your site very soon.

 But if I can just highlight that conclusion, IGF was seen as a valuable platform and that it was noted that the Paris IGF gave clear messages for improving the IGF and the IGF should continue to evolve.  

 And in that regard, the initiative of Germany involving parliamentarians was noted and appreciated by the delegates in New York.  And there was also a call for more underrepresented stakeholders should be involved in the entire sessional activities and annual meeting of the IGF, which I think we are going to that direction with the support of Germany.

 Another update from UN DESA is we are inviting all the U.N. heads to the annual meeting.  There will be a letter coming from the Undersecretary-General to all U.N. heads and we are hoping there will be some more active participation and high-level participation from U.N. agencies in November here.  

 High-level political forum, this is the forum that UN DESA organizes to track the progress in SDGs.  It will take place during ECOSOC, Economic and Social Commission, in July and also during the General Assembly in September.  It is expected that digitalization and new technologies will be future discussion.

 As you know also, HLPDC, High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, will officially launch its report on 10th of June, which is this Monday.  There will be a live Webcast conversation with the Secretary-General and the co-chairs at 10:45 online.  There will also be a briefing to member states in the afternoon on the same day.  So as UN DESA, we supported IGF can provide a space to discuss the recommendations of this report.  And we are also ready to support the community in that regard.

 And I think the outcomes of the HLPDC report can only be good for IGF.  And I think it's perfect time to be a MAG member and also to host the next IGF as Germany at this juncture.  And I think there will only be positive things coming out of the HLPDC report for IGF as we also heard from the briefing at the last MAG meeting.

 So to conclude, let me thank again Germany, not just hosting but also being a new donor in supporting the Global South Fund and also let us appreciate other donors.  Special thanks to multiyear donors, especially the Netherlands.  And hope more donors can commit to multiyear pledge to ensure continued support of the IGF secretariat.  And, of course, we also invite new institutions, governments, and private sector to contribute to the IGF Trust Fund.

 Again, as DESA, we are ready to support the MAG and do anything we can to make your work easier.  We wish you a successful MAG meeting and open consultation.  

 And, also, for the nonMAG members who are in the room, thank you for being here today in the open consultation.  And have a nice meeting. 

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Deniz.  And thank you to the continued support from DESA as well.  As we said earlier, I think these are both challenging times and exciting times, and that usually means there's lots of opportunities as well.

 The next item on the agenda is a briefing on the state of preparations from the IGF secretariat.  This would be the time -- and I had one or two requests and said would this be an appropriate time to bring up a question or proposal on newcomers and that sort of thing.  At the end of this next agenda item would be a great time to bring up any kind of general questions or comments on anything having to do on the annual meeting itself and/or overall IGF processes.  Can appreciate that perhaps that wasn't really clear in the process.

 And, again, we're trying to make the briefings that come from the MAG or the secretariat both brief so that we facilitate and allow time for community interaction.  And we're also trying to manage the communications across the upcoming MAG meeting for the next two days and this one and hopefully not have a lot of redundancy between the updates.  The secretariat is trying to very thoughtfully manage their updates to the meeting here and will key off of that for any subsequent updates in the next two days for the MAG meetings.  Another way to say that would be all MAG members should also pay attention because this is not likely to be repeated on day 2 and day 3.

 So with that, Chengetai, you have the floor.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you very much, Lynn.  I will just start off, first of all, with the deadlines that are coming soon.  

 The first deadline is for travel support applications.  And this is -- as you've heard, is thanks very much to the generous support of the German government.  We are in a position this year to offer travel support.  And the IGF secretariat and UN DESA has identified 31 underrepresented countries.  And 67 of those -- and also 67 underrepresented countries which have been historically at the IGF.  

 So what we did is that we went through the participation statistics and we identified these countries.  And we are waiting for applications from those countries.  And once these applications have come in, we will make a determination on whom to give travel support.

 It's not just for underrepresented countries.  It's also for people who are coming to do something at the IGF that is, you know, for workshops, et cetera.

 And the deadline is the 30th of June because next week we should be able to know which workshops have been approved for the agenda, and we hope to publish a draft schedule.  And then people can also apply if they have a role in the workshop process or any other sessions within the IGF.

 Registration for the IGF 2019 meeting will open up in July.  We want to open it up early this time so that if you have any issues with visas, et cetera, you can come to us and seek for advice and we can also help with letters to the mission.

 The German government has already informed all their embassies worldwide that there's the IGF coming, so that is taken care of.

 There is the MAG renewal.  And the deadline for nominations is also the 30th of June.  This year is the smallest rotation.  We only have seven available seats.  And information on that is available on the IGF website.  

 And we currently have 52 members of the MAG.  Next year we want to reduce it to 50 so that everything is equal, all stakeholder groups have their 10-10-10 with governments 20 so there's no ambiguity on how many seats each stakeholder groups has.

 The disproportion has just happened because historically MAG members have dropped out because they've changed jobs or they couldn't continue.  So we had to add a MAG member here and there.  So this year we just want to reset it and make it more -- to rationalize it.

 There's also proposals for the MAG chair.  And as I understand it, there's a little bit of uncertainty about this.  So what the IGF secretariat has done is written to the various groups within the MAG, so the government community, the private sector, civil society, and the technical community and asked those members within the MAG to coordinate the names and to select three names and forward them to the IGF secretariat who will, in turn, forward them to DESA who will, in turn, forward them to the Secretary-General's office for his consideration.

 These three names do not have to come from the specific stakeholder groups because the MAG chair is the chair of the whole MAG.  So the private sector group can nominate somebody from civil society, if they think that person is the best person to lead the MAG for next year.  They'll have very big shoes to fill in, but we can try.

 I also want to underline that it is not a given that these names will -- that the name will be chosen by the Secretary-General's office.  This is just a community effort.  And we don't really know what the effect as well of the HLPDC report will have on the IGF and this process.  The actual HLPDC report might recommend something that has an effect on the IGF and also has an effect on how the Secretary-General sees the IGF and how he might want to restructure it or whatever.  I mean, this is all up in the air.  So I just want to manage expectations, so to speak.

 If you have any other questions on this process, please just feel free to ask after this.

 As also indicated in the donors meeting and just now, we do have our capacity development program that we have initiated this year.  And it is aimed to -- it is focused on strengthening the local communities by supporting the national and regional IGF meetings.  And this is mainly for the Global South and particularly least developed countries and small island developing states.

 We've done a first round.  And Anja has been in communication with those ones that have been selected for this round.  And hopefully we can continue this next year as well.  But this is all depending on the funds.

 For the schedule, on the IGF website under "documentation," we do have a draft template for the schedule.  This year we've tried to listen to the input that we received at the end of last year and also during the first open consultations and MAG meeting, trying to streamline the IGF 2019 meeting.  

 So we're going to have three streams, as most of you know.  And we're going to concentrate these three streams, two workshop rooms per stream.  And we're going to have an introductory section and also a concluding session for each of the three streams.  And that will also help us collect usable input from the discussions that have been held during the IGF.

 And at the end of the IGF, just before the closing ceremony, we're going to have a bringing-it-all-together session where we will have a report from these three streams as well as from the open forums, dynamic coalitions, and any other session that has happened during the IGF.  We didn't do it last year.  And we used to do it at the beginning, but I think it's a good idea to reintroduce this.

 So that will be six streams for the workshops, and we're going to have two workshop rooms dedicated to everything else.  That's the open forums, dynamic coalitions, best practice forums, et cetera.  

 So it will be easier for people to navigate.  You don't have to run from one workshop room to another one across the venue.  It's all going to happen in one or two workshop rooms that are close together.

 We've also lengthened the time between the sessions so there's ample time for people to get off the stage and the next workshop panelist to get on the stage.  Last year there was a suggestion that we do this because some workshops were bleeding into the other workshops.  So hopefully this will help.

 We did have our third and final planning meeting yesterday.  That's the IGF secretariat, and the host country organizing committee.  We had the final planning meeting at the Estrel Hotel.  And I'm pleased to report that everything is either on schedule or ahead of schedule.

 And I think this place is the biggest place that we've ever held an IGF, and it is -- it is very well-equipped.  So I don't think there's going to be any issues that we've had previously, like noise bleeding from one room to the other room.

 Also, with the -- with the venue, there is going to be food and refreshments offered in a -- in a food court, and there's going to be a subsidized ticket that you can buy for the food.  And I think that is thanks to the host country.  And thank you very much for that, especially for people coming from the Global South.  It will make it easier for them.

 And they are going to give a bus pass or a local transport for the bus, the train, and the trams for participants.

 The IGF village is also there.  There's going to be TV screens, lockable desks, chairs for the meeting.  And there's a list of people who have been allocated booths.  It's on the IGF website, so you can take a look at that as well.

 One thing that I was asked to stress is that we are trying to be as paperless as possible.  So there's no real need to bring in, you know, a lot of material.  We can give you QR codes so people can scan it and download the material.  And it's also very difficult for people who are traveling from long distances to carry this material back home.

 That being said, there's still going to be that function that if people want to bring in certain items for the IGF village, that they can do it duty-free.

 For bilateral rooms, we have a very large number of bilateral rooms.  In total we have about 21 bilateral rooms.  So that's also an issue that's been looked at from the reports we had from last year's meetings.

 The workshop rooms, as we said, we do have workshop rooms with large capacity, between 80 and 300 participants.  We have not configured them yet.  We're waiting for the final selection of the sessions, and then we will give the venue organizers the list and tell them how many rooms of what configuration and we can configure them -- and these rooms are quite large, and we can configure them any way we want to.

 There is going to be some special evening events.  The first one is the music night, which we would like to encourage participants to come in, and if you know how to play instruments or sing or do something musical, please contact the IGF secretariat and we will try and build an interesting program for participants.

 And for those people who are from the USA, we are going to have a Thanksgiving special on Thursday night so it will not be that bad being away from home, and that's thanks very much to the host country as well.

 We don't -- again, I mean there's always -- visas are always an issue.  We don't foresee that many problems with visa issues, and we do encourage people to please apply for visas as early as possible, and the IGF secretariat stands ready to help with any visa issues, and if there are any real visa issues that we can't help with, of course we'll also refer to -- our German host will help.

 I'll stop there.  I don't know if -- Rudolf, do you have anything to say?  And if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Chengetai.  And as someone who has cooked far too many Thanksgiving dinners for 20 people and up, I'm looking forward to being on the other end and not doing the cooking and cleaning.

 We've had two substantive updates both from Deniz on a number of topics and from Chengetai, so I'd like to open it up specifically to the floor to see if there are any comments or questions.  And while people are navigating the queue system, also take the opportunity to really thank Poland for their offer to host the IGF in 2020.  As (saying name) has said, they did come in quite early.  Krzysztof Szubert, who is a MAG member, was previously with the Polish government, was instrumental in kicking off that discussion some years ago.  Probably close to three years ago or so.

 So we're very, very appreciative, and Poland has been very excited about hosting in 2020.  At the WSIS Summit in Geneva in April, there were a number of delegation meetings with various ministers from the Polish government as well as from a number of other entities that are really interested in building on the really strong example from Germany with respect to broadening participation and reaching out to other communities.  So I think that's excellent, excellent news.

 In the speaking queue we have Jim Prendergast.  We do really encourage people to use it because it levels the playing field between the people that are in the room and those that are online.  As we usually do, we'll take exceptions but if you can use the speaking queue, that will be excellent.

 So, Jim, you have the floor.

 >>JIM PRENDERGAST:  Yes, Lynn, thanks.  Good morning.  Jim Prendergast with the Galway Strategy Group.

 Chengetai, you had mentioned we have a very small turnover with the number of MAG members this year, which, if I do the math correctly, means that we'll have 43 members of the MAG turning over over the next two years, which is a pretty big number.  And you lose a lot of institutional knowledge, history, et cetera, when you have that kind of turnover.  Is there any effort under way to look at maybe smoothing that transition and that turnover so it's a little more equal over the course of the three-year terms?

 Thanks.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Yes, that's true.  And as I said, that this has happened because, first of all, we instituted the three-year limit.  And then of course there had to be large turnover then, and also because of dropouts.  People drop out for various reasons.  They've changed jobs, they've moved, et cetera.

 It's very difficult to, unless we either, for one year, people have four-year terms or one year people have only two-year terms.  It's something we have been thinking about, how we can actually do it without having a, you know, total reset, and then people aren't going to be very happy about that.

 But I'm open to ideas as well, because, yes, it is rather strange that we have seven this years and then next year we have 20 and the next year we have 25 or whatever.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Chengetai.

 Next in the queue is Veni.  Veni Markovski, you have the floor.

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   Thanks, Lynn.  I just wanted to preemptively answer some of the comments that were made here about having another -- yet another European country hosting the IGF.  Under the U.N. division, Poland is actually in the East European group, as far as I remember.  So technically, we're in another U.N. region.  And from me, coming from Eastern Europe that's actually a big achievement that we're going to have the IGF there and that the Polish government is so willing to host us.  And I hope that they will also follow the example of the German government, the French, the Swiss, to have it at, you know, at the appropriate high level and also maybe find some resources to support the participation from underserved regions.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I think that's a very important point to emphasize.  And while it may be close geographically, it is, as you say, a very separate region within the U.N. system.  And, frankly, I think a lot of the issues and the context there is different as well from the more western part of Europe.

 Next we have Jorge.  And I just have one quick question.  Carlos, I'm not sure if you were signaling to be in the queue or not.  No?

 So, Jorge, you have the floor.

 >>JORGE CANCIO:   Thank you so much.  Jorge Cancio, Swiss government, former host of the IGF, 2017.

 So my first words would go to the next host, to the Polish government, congratulate you.  Thank you so much because this is one of the biggest ways of showing compromise, engagement with this multistakeholder forum.  And we can only offer our advice, our help, whatever you may need.  And I guess all the other countries, our French friends, German friends, we will be very happy to continue this evolution into making important improvements during these last years.

 I also wanted to react to something that our colleague from UN DESA mentioned I think -- and this is also important for both Germany, of course, and Poland as hosts, that these are very exciting times, and there is very good opportunity as a follow-up to the report that is coming from the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, and we'll see how the U.N. Secretary-General reacts to it.  But I think it's a good opportunity to put all this good work at value and to react in a very positive fashion and showing all of what the IGF and this community can deliver.

 So I would very much welcome that also following the steps of the European IGF, the EuroDIG which will be devoting a specific track of discussions to the high-level panel recommendations, that we include this somehow into the program.  And this is not only something that we will need to discuss this year but of course next year.  And it will be great to have those discussions and to put our multistakeholder cooperation at the next level.

 And finally, as to capacity development, I very much welcome this effort and of course the funding that makes this possible.  We are happen to collaborate to the extent possible, be it directly or be it through the Geneva Internet platform which we support.

 And this leads me to the very last remark.  This is about money.  This is about funding.  We have to put the money where we put our words.  And thanks to the German government and to the Finnish government, we have now a more or less break-even situation.  But we need that the funding of this arrangement, of this forum, of this process is really supported by all the stakeholder groups.  So I really call upon every one of us, of all stakeholder groups, to put the money where we want to have our multistakeholder model.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Jorge.

 If I could just kind of build on your last point as well.  I like really simple messages when it comes to fund-raising.  So roughly the funds that we're bringing in, if you take aside the one-off contributions from Germany for capacity development basically cover about half of what the budgeted request was when the ten-year project document was put into place.  That was looking $2.8 million a year for secretariat expenses and some developing country travel support.  The interim budget was half that at 1.4 million, and we're roughly bringing in a million.  That is limiting our ability to fully staff the secretariat according to what the resource plan was.  And while everybody is really keen to do more, we need additional resources within the secretariat in order to do that.  As so many people have said, we're just in awe of how much work the secretariat is able to get done with a relatively small number of resources.  But at some point I think we do, as a community, need to step up and properly resource the IGF so it can be all we all want it to be.

 And one other comment to that as well with respect to host countries.  You know, the IGF is a -- is a U.N. event, held U.N. rules and protocols.  For the IGF to go to a country, we need to be invited by the government of that country.  This isn't "go find a conference venue and get some sponsorships," like so many of the other conference.  It is a formal commitment on the part of the government to host the United Nations event, and there is a whole series of protocols.

 So we can only go where we're invited and where there is support.  And again, that's why we are so thankful to the number of European countries and certainly to Poland for 2020, that they have stepped up and supported that.  But if anybody wants any more information on what that process looks like or how you can trigger some interest in your own countries, I, Chengetai or Deniz will be very happy to spend some time with anyone.

 So that, the next person in the queue is Marilyn Cade who is an online participant.

 I think we should be able to hear you in the room, Marilyn, but if not, people will need to put their headphones on.

 So, Marilyn, you have the floor.  Or you can read the transcript as Veni is pointing out.

 Marilyn, you have the floor.

 >>MARILYN CADE:   Thank you, Lynn.  I really appreciate the opportunity to speak at the Open Consultation, and I want to make a very strong appeal for further improvements in -- I'm going to use the word "marketing" the benefit and opportunity to provide comments from the broader non-MAG community during Open Consultation.

 A lot has already been done but I do think there are some challenges in encouraging people to find the time to be online, to contribute during the Open Consultation.

 So not to focus on this too much today, but to say that one improvement I hope we can consider for the future is perhaps looking at different approaches so stakeholder groups take more time to prioritize providing comments and feedback during the Open Consultation.  So just to reinforce how important I think this day really is to support the bottom-up, consensus-based, informed participation, and then decision-making by the MAG.

 Of course joining with others with special appreciation for Germany's very considerable financial support, but also the bully pulpit support that the German government is providing in engaging with other governments and with their business community and others within Germany to create very strong awareness about the importance of this event and about participating.  Following the excellent participation, engagement of the French government, I see even more focus on this area from Germany, and particular thanks to the funding and the fact that there's now funding available to help to do capacity building for, in particular, strengthening the NRIs from some of the very challenged countries where multistakeholder is not a term that is well understood or even appreciated.

 I was thrilled to see the announcement of Poland.  I'm very familiar, since I've spent so much of my business life in engaging in the U.N. system, that in fact, yes, Eastern Europe is a unique region, a separate region, and I think that the participation and the continuity and the fact we are we already know who the host country is will help us to have 2020 as a launching pad, hopefully, to then also engaging host invitations for 2021, 2022, and beyond.

 Now, I want to make a comment about the question that was asked about how to deal with smoothing the transition and strengthening the ability for a large number of MAG members to get on board and sort of jump start their participation.  I think it's very possible to plan an effective on-boarding process.  We do that at ICANN -- and by "we," I mean the community -- with some support from the ICANN staff.  But an effective on-boarding program could -- once the MAG is named very early, part of the assumption and commitment of those MAG members who are new and incoming should be to engage in effective on-boarding activities.  So they're not just coming into a briefing on -- on the day of the MAG, but there are specific activities, webinars, and perhaps even mentoring by previous MAG members to help to get new MAG members who are totally unfamiliar.  Many will be very familiar.  But that might be a way to deal with the large number of the changeover.

 Finally, I have a comment about the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation.  I see a lot of interest from some of the national level NRIs in understanding this report and even being able to consider how to comment on what its recommendations are.  Even though their programs are already fixed, there are many NRIs that are still planning their programs, and I hope that the high-level panel will not stop at EuroDIG, as fortunate as that invitation is, but will also take very seriously the opportunity to engage, even if it's remotely, with NRIs that are still being scheduled throughout the year, and take on board the comments from a very wide and distributed number of participants that may not even be able to attend the IGF but they're very active in their own national level initiative.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Marilyn.  Very good and comprehensive set of comments.

 And just quick points.  Agree completely, as I know the secretariat does, with respect to the Open Consultation process.  And in fact, we looked at ways to get early feedback from the community on what would make a good consultation -- community process, a good consultation, we actually thought about perhaps doing a survey and getting some suggested topics.  But by the time we actually got around to thinking about that, it was actually too close to the time of the meeting to do well or do effectively.  But I think there's some good suggestions there.  We're looking for more as well.  I mean, this is a day we want to hear from the community, so to the extent we can actually make it as robust as possible would be in everybody's interest.

 Also totally agree on the on-boarding process and we have taken some steps in the past few years to do that.  It's certainly greatly facilitated by early appointment of the MAG members.  And in fact if there's an overlap between incoming and outgoing members, that's facilitated as well.  But we are taking a careful look at that, and I know DESA is doing everything they can to work within the U.N. system for the, again, very timely appointment of the MAG.

 And with respect to the HLPDC, a number of people feel it's too early to comment on it because we haven't seen the report yet but the secretariat is prepared to post the report on Monday using the commenting platform that was used for the DESA retreat a few years ago.  And in fact, it's a pretty common platform that many use.  So we're working to a schedule to actually get the report up and available on the Monday so that we can facilitate both a discussion amongst the community members, and we have some more work to do in terms of thinking what that process might look like downstream.  But, you know, as a first level, as I said the secretariat is making the facility available to use that online commenting platform to begin kind of understanding the report, and hopefully moving any good ideas forward.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you. 

 Krzysztof, you have the floor.

 >>KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT:  Thank you, Lynn.  Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, first of all, I would like to thank you on behalf of Poland from the positive decision from the United Nations' perspective.  We are really very happy to host the IGF in 2020.  

 As Lynn mentioned, I started the process almost two years ago with my team from the ministry of digital affairs.  At that time, I've been acting as the secretary of state in the ministry and the government plenipotentiary for digital single market.  So the multistakeholder approach was very much in my vision, perspective, and idea I had on the Internet development.

 Then I decided to go back to my previous life a year ago in business.  But I am now representing the business and tech community.  I decided to still support Poland and my colleague, the minister of digital affairs, to continue with the process and to finalize and get the positive decision.

 Having said that, thank you again for that decision.  I hope I see you all in 2020 in Poland.  Very soon we will decide on the city.  Hopefully it will be nice event with a lot of positive technical information as well as discussions where we will discuss the future of digital technologies as one direction maybe for the changing of our economies and the direction for the future.  Thank you again.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Krzysztof.  

 In the early days, the MAG meetings used to be in the September, October time frame.  So there's nothing that says it needs to be in November, December.  Certainly autumn in many parts of the world is a lot nicer than early winter.  So there's quite a range of possible dates there.

 Sandra, Sandra, you have the floor.

 >>SANDRA HOFERICHTER:  Hi, Lynn, everyone.  I just raised my hand substitutionally for my colleague Ilishebo who could not charge the computer and log into the queue.

 >>MICHAEL ILISHEBO:  This is Michael from Zambia government.  I have two issues.  The first one, though it's brief, but it will be something that is worth noting for the future IGF meetings.  It's in regards to the hosts for 2020.  

 So basically this is my third year on the MAG in other ways of being a European MAG member because almost every activity has been happening in Europe.  So I'm looking at my other colleagues also who joined probably two years ago, they are European MAG members.

 What I'm trying to say is in the way the U.N. selects the hosts, I think there should be a rationale.  It should be a deliberate policy.  Of course, the U.N. does not determine who hosts but the would-be hosts normally approach the agency as the chair has just described in one of the statements she issued just a few minutes ago.

 So I'm looking at it this way.  Why don't we encourage other nations to host the event like other events?  Like, last year we had issues on who is hosting the 2018 IGF.  And two plans came on board in the last minute.  As far as June, we didn't actually know where the IGF was going to take place.

 We came to Geneva for our second MAG meeting not knowing who was going to host the IGF until it was clarified it was going to be France.  

 Germany had shown interest.  They had given their two intentions, like, two years before.  Of course, they were able to prepare for this year's hosting IGF of from the reports we are getting from Chengetai and IGF secretariat is they are way ahead of schedule, which is in a way a good thing.  

 But my plea is beyond 2020, let's at least for another nations beyond Europe.  When I say "Europe," I'm not distinguishing between western Europe and eastern Europe.  To me it's all Europe.  

 Next time we should try Asia.  We can try North America.  We can try Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and other nations that are not in any way -- and we even see people from Australia and New Zealand in these IGF meetings.

 My second point is on the nomination of upcoming new MAG members for the call.  This year's call is likely to be a little bit different in the sense that for me to nominate someone, the system only allows me to nominate someone from within my actual stakeholder, which is government.  In the past, myself was from government.  I was able to nominate somebody from the private sector or the civil society.  This year the system is giving us a very large war that only allows me or whoever is the nominee within the MAG -- I don't know about those outside the MAG.  But it's within your stakeholder group.  I thought maybe the secretariat could address this issue.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Chengetai or Deniz, do you want to address the two points?

 >>DENIZ SUSAR:  Sure, about the host country, I can only tell you that we did our best to work with, as I mentioned in the statement, UNECA, the U.N. Economic Commission of Africa and also UNESCAP, Economic Commission for Asia-Pacific.  Thailand and Ethiopia were one of the countries that we were trying to bring the IGF to.  But unfortunately, we haven't seen the commitment that Lynn mentioned from the government.  And that includes the financial commitment and also the political commitment.

 And we are working hard to take the IGF to other regions.  So I can only assure you that work is continuing.  But, unfortunately, we haven't reached to any actual outcome.

 And I think -- as I mentioned, Poland making the commitment early and they also deserved the right amount of time to prepare for the 2020.  So we very much appreciate that we have a host for 2020, and we are hoping that other countries for 2021 and onwards will make their interest early.  

 And we hear that -- actually this morning we had a meeting with one of the potential countries for 2021.  So that work is happening.  So that's about the MAG.

 And there are a few other countries other than the grand regional commissions I mentioned but, unfortunately, it didn't happen.  We haven't seen.  So we will continue to bring IGF to other regions.

 And then I also -- it's the same region.  We should all accept it.  But I think that as ICANN mentioned, eastern Europe is a different region within the U.N. system.  But there will be some richer involvement from that region, including maybe from the MENA regions.  

 So we acknowledge it's the same region.  This was not our first choice.  But we need to move forward.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you.  Yes.  I just want to concur with my colleague, Deniz.

 We do try and we do follow multiple threads, many host countries -- well, many people who are interested in hosting.  And it usually starts with one person from the government who comes to a MAG meeting or to an IGF meeting, and then they have to convince their governments -- their government to host.  So we go through this long line.  And sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't.

 So we do try multiple regions.  And hopefully next year we're going to be out of Europe.  And as Deniz has said, Africa or Asia are the most likely prospects now.

 And we -- also we usually don't say that we are investigating, you know, these number of countries because some countries say, "Don't say anything until we are ready to commit."  So that's why you may not have heard about these multiple countries that we do go after.

 As for your question about the MAG and nominating a person from outside your stakeholder group, after consultations with the community, it's also very important -- we got the feedback that it's very important that people from one community should nominate their own representatives.  They shouldn't have representatives nominated by another community, be it giving yourself as a government representative.  A government representative should not nominate somebody for the technical community or for the civil society community because those communities are -- should nominate whom they want to represent them in the MAG.  I hope that makes it clear.  

 You said last year you were able to.  I think last year was a mistake.

 [ Laughter ]

 If I had known.  Maybe it was a programming mistake.  But, no, we do try and keep it that only people from that stakeholder group can nominate their representatives.  

 For the MAG chair, it's different, because MAG chair, it's supposed to be universal.  But for MAG groups, no, that's that.  So let me keep quiet.  I think we've exhausted our responses here.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Chengetai.

 Carsten, you have the floor.

 >>CARSTEN SCHIEFNER:  Thank you.

 Right now I guess most of what I would have to say has become obsolete.  So, in essence, it's only a thank you to the secretariat, to Chengetai, as well as to Deniz, for the outreach effort because that was exactly the point I was about to take up as well, that two years ago I had to travel to the neighboring country to the south, to Geneva, Switzerland.  A year ago I had to travel to the neighboring country to the west, to Paris, France.  This year it's going to be in Berlin, my own town.  And next year it's going to be most likely Warsaw, in the east.  So within a parameter of less than 1,000 kilometers around Berlin four IGF annual meetings took or will be taking place.

 So my main point is adding another area, another region of this planet to the map of IGF locations possibly would greatly add to the credibility of the IGF as a process itself.  

 So thank you to you, Deniz, as well as to Chengetai to -- for all your outreach efforts and for the activity to bring new countries on board to future IGF locations.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Carsten.  

 I can only echo your comments to say that certainly myself, DESA, the secretariat, and other MAG members would like nothing more than to be in a different region.  Again, given that seems to be a strong desire on the part of many, we really need offers from governments to host the IGF.  So anything we can do to create that kind of increased desire in countries around the world would be much appreciated.

 Arsene, you have the floor.

 >>ARSENE TUNGALI:  Can you hear me?  Sure.  Thank you very much for the floor.

 So I would like to come back to the issue that has just been mentioned by Michael with regards to the host country because I do think that most countries are maybe now reluctant of coming forward because of the financial commitment, which is bad in my sense because I think we'll keep on losing the very good opportunity for rotation just because some countries are not able, you know, to bear the financial burden that is required to them.  And I see so many countries from the developing regions who won't be able to come forward due to that financial burden somehow.  

 And so I was wondering if there was any way or anything the U.N. can do to solve the issue of financial commitments that is required from some countries.

 I don't know if the U.N. is able to raise more funds and say -- well, actually, I don't know which -- what is the level of financial commitment that is required from host countries.  Like, what's percentage?  Do we say, like, 80%?  20%?  70%?  I don't know.

 Yeah, I mean, I'm just wondering.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Arsene.

 Chengetai.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you, Chair.

 I'll answer your questions from the last one.  As far as the financial commitment is concerned, generally speaking, we say the host country is responsible for all costs of the meeting.  And, yes, the IGF is a particular type of meeting because, you know, we do have a lot of technical specifications, especially with the Webcasting, the transcription, et cetera.

 When we've held the IGF in some developing countries, there has been community support for things such as, I know, ISOC -- when we had it in Kenya, ISOC donated the transcription and also ICANN stepped in and donated some things as well and Cisco Systems donated the network equipment.  So it does take a community effort.  

 And we have talked to, you know, donor organizations like the European Commission, I mean, last year and also when we go to Brussels for meetings.  And they have been kicking around the idea of whether or not they could raise some funds amongst themselves to give financial support for a meeting in the Global South, so to speak.

 Financial support from the U.N., as you've heard, we ourselves are struggling.  So there will be very, very little financial support that -- basically I will just say none.  We can give services in kind as well, and that's about it.

 As Deniz was saying, if the country does have a regional headquarters or some offices there, like in Kenya, we had UNON, and those costs went, you know, down completely.  I mean, there were very, very little costs because we were using the U.N. premises there.  In Addis Ababa, we also have the ECA as well so we have premises there that we can use that will not be of a cost to the host country.  The host country just needs to find money for the services basically.

 So that's why we've been concentrating on those countries.  Also, in Thailand there's a major center, U.N. center in Thailand, as well.  

 We have been trying, thinking, strategizing to see how we can bring the IGF to developing countries.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Chengetai.

 Christine, you have the floor.

 >>CHRISTINA ARIDA:  Thank you.  Thank you very much, Chair.  This is Christina Arida talking on behalf of the Egyptian government, former host of the IGF.

 I would like to start by congratulating Poland and thanking them for stepping forward to host the IGF in 2020.  And I think that shows support that the IGF is receiving and I hope this can continue as such in further years.

 I also want to thank Germany for the great preparations for the IGF this year.  Very much appreciated the efforts that -- and the resources they are putting into bringing more participants from the Global South.  I think this is something well-needed.

 And I wanted to intervene on the issue of the diversity of the host countries.  I think we need to acknowledge that this is a buildup process.  It's not just something that happens between a day or two where we speak to a government and then they are interested to host.  I think this is a process that takes years.  

 And what we're seeing those years in Europe, I would claim, is a result of good work that's being done on a regional level.  I would also claim that EuroDIG have done a lot of effort and that's to bring this buildup within Europe.  

 So this brings me to the idea that if we really want to see further diversity, geographical diversity, we should be trying to support regional and national IGFs more.  They are already doing a great job.  Anja has done a great job.  

 I think we also need some more institutional support, maybe more resources into that.  I appreciate and acknowledge the -- what Chengetai mentioned about capacity-building for local regions.  

 Maybe we should dig further into how can we put resources to build up momentum within -- within regions for governments to step up.  So it's -- this is what I wanted to say.  It's something that it's a process that will take time, but we should focus on that in a more strategic way.

 I also think we should -- and again, I keep saying that but I'm glad to repeat it again, we should see the interest of governments somehow within the agenda of the IGF in a more focused way and more strategic way.  I understand this year Germany is also doing some effort as a pre-activity for government.  I still think we should encourage high level and senior representative of governments to be within the native agenda of the IGF, not just the side in a pre-conference activities but have them within the main program of the IGF.

 Last point I want to make is I want to concur with Jorge from Switzerland.  We should maybe also look at the high-level panel and have a track within the IGF this year and next year.  I would say this is also something that would do not only good to the overall process but also to the marketing of the IGF and gain interest in that respect.

 Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Christine.  Very good -- very good comments.

 With respect to sort of further collaborating with the NRIs and further support, I think the NRIs are very, very important, and we want to continue increasing the collaboration with them.  If there's some way we can do that, whether that's through some Joint Working Group or an ad hoc effort, could be as formal or informal as the NRIs like, very happy personally to engage in that discussion.  And I know there are a number of MAG members that would as well.  And of course the secretariat is deeply engaged as well.  So maybe we can think about that a little bit more and figure out how we actually take the discussion forward in more depth.

 And agree as well respect to the interest of governments.  You know, for years we've said we want more senior-level policymakers, which obviously includes governments, and also more participation from the private sector.  And I think to do that, we need to understand what their interests are and what would facilitate their participation, and do that, of course, still staying within the Tunis mandate.  But I think we also need to recognize we need to make some extra efforts, I think, to engage them.  And there's no sense in having deep discussions amongst two out of the four stakeholders groups.  So I think we need to kind of lean into that and perhaps some process changes ourselves.  And certainly some different types of outreach I think would be helpful.  And I know there's strong support from the MAG in terms of the desire to have more participation from governments and senior policymakers.

 Veni, you have the floor.

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   Thank you, Lynn.

 I actually wanted to -- it's okay.  I actually wanted to share the observation that came back when France was the host, and it came really in the last minute or else we may have ended up having to have the IGF meeting at the U.N. premises, maybe.

 But when I talked to a government that I have good relations with and asked them about it, and they said, well, our ballot is already past.  So it's very difficult to host an IGF when your budget for the year is already accepted by the national legis- -- like parliament in this case.

 So having said that, that means now the governments are really in a good position and the community members, MAG members, anybody who can reach out to their government, and UN DESA through the commissions, et cetera, to talk about 2021, because the negotiations for the 2021 budget most probably will start in the beginning of next year.  And that mean, in many of the countries that could host -- and by the way, not every country can host an IGF meeting due to logistics and stuff, as we know.

 And the second observation is based on the preparations for the IGF in Germany and last year and the years before.  It's a huge work.  The IGF secretariat, as we were just told earlier today during the donor's meeting, is understaffed because there is not enough budget to hire someone at that level, which means we have to also ask community members, governments, all stakeholders to think about funding the IGF secretariat because that will make also the IGF preparations easier.  When you have more staff on the secretariat, they can interact with the host country in a better way, they can prepare and organize.  Because we have to give credits to the current people at the secretariat for actually making the IGF possible with the small amount of -- small number of people that they have.

 So it's a complicated and complex situation that now that we know the 2020, now that we see that the MAG -- you know, the renewal seems to be on time -- in a timely manner, you already mentioned maybe we can -- maybe the secretariat, UN DESA and Poland can work on pulling a little bit the IGF from the end of November.  That would be -- as it used to be.  You're right, I remember the IGF like in Tokyo was in September.  And we can -- we can go back to the initial planning, which makes it -- makes more sense from a number of different points of view.

 So anyway, my -- again, I'm urging everyone to reach out to their community, stakeholders, and governments, because at the end of the day, without a governmental agreement, a host country agreement, we cannot have an IGF even if the other stakeholders are ready to host it.  And that's my appeal for everyone.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Veni.  Good points.  And of course there's always the transitions that happen in governments and the elections, and we're finding that there's a fine window when you can actually get in, have a discussion, get a commitment and be assured that the government will actually still be there when the year comes around.

 But I think we've had enough discussion on that for the moment.

 Ananda, you have the floor.

 >>ANANDA RAJ KHANAL:   Thank you, ma'am.

 I was hearing colleague from Berlin saying that IGFs are being held in the periphery of Berlin.  I left home 40 hours ago and just now checked into the hotel and just coming directly from the airport.  Flight was canceled and delayed and missed all these flights.  So it's very common that everybody, every country, stakeholders want to host this IGF event, but there are three important issues to hold these events.  First thing is the financial issue, because in most of the developing countries the government is not on board, so only the civil society is active and they're trying to bring the government and other stakeholders on board.  This same happens in Nepal also.

 The second thing is logistic issues is also very critical and important, the technical as well as the space, there's multiple parallel sessions, managing those things are also issues.

 And third thing is the capacity, human resource, mobilization, because the preparation takes a very, very long time.  And since activities are very voluntary, finding people committed to the whole year is really difficult.

 Despite all these things, I'm very happy to let you know that Nepal is hosting the Asia-Pacific Regional IGF for 2020 next year.  So we really think that we can manage all those issues:  the financial, logistics, and also the commitment from the stakeholders.

 So thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Ananda, and that's excellent news for the APR IGF.

 Jim, you have the floor.

 >>JIM PRENDERGAST:   Maybe to assist with Arsene's question from earlier, is there any way the secretariat could give a range of the costs associated with hosting an IGF?  I realize they vary widely due to locations and all that, and, Chengetai, you talked about assistance.  But over the last four to five IGFs, what was generally the host country budget and what should people be thinking about if they do want to host?

 Thanks.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Usually the host country doesn't share the actual cost with us, but those who have, they have ranged it in the 2 million, $3 million mark.

 I know if there's a U.N. facility or headquarters there, it's much, much cheaper.  Then it's in the 1 million mark.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   The difference in hosting something in a U.N. facility, of course, is there is little incremental cost for security and interpretation because that is provided on-site already.

 Carlos, you have the floor.

 >>CARLOS ALBERTO AFONSO:   Were yes, in Brazil the two events were in the neighborhood of $2 million.  I remember that.

 And, no, I have a question.  How is it -- who does the prospective work to find the country willing to host the IGF?  Does the U.N. secretariat help in this or leave the work to you?  To us, I mean.  To the IGF secretariat and the MAG.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I think it's been largely a shared responsibility between the chair and DESA.  We'll let Deniz.

 >>DENIZ SUSAR:   I mean, I can only repeat that I think it's a shared responsibility for all of us to find the next host.  We just received a letter of intention when the discussions are materialized at community level.  So, for example, for Poland, Mr. (saying name) were having the discussions, and then the ministry responsible for hosting the IGF writes to our Undersecretary-General.  So that's the formal process.  But for finding the next host, for example, we start discussing about 2021 at the routine level now.  So we try to find some ways, and then that goes up to ministry and then finds our head of department.  But it all starts in the corridors, I think, just one person interested and mobilizing the community and the government there.  So it's all our responsibility.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   So basically, there isn't a letter going out, "Will you host an IGF meeting?"  We really do have to wait for interested parties to kind of approach us.  I mean, in the course of conversation we can say, you know, informally, "Would you consider?"  But we can't formally say that, you know.  The offer has to come from the host country.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   So I have felt less restricted in asking, but then again, I don't wear a U.N. badge.

 You know, I have encouraged lots of people when I come across them to host the IGF.  And in past years, Deniz, Chengetai and I have sort of worked virtually to look at who are interesting countries in parts of the world, either because they had a strong, active community or they participated deeply in IGF in the past or they've held other similar meetings, and particularly across some of the other I-Star communities and things.  And we put together a list and made some kind of gentle queries.  Again, the U.N. doesn't ask, but gentle queries in terms of interest and those kinds of things.

 And there is some difficulty in making those lists public because a lot of governments in particular want to manage their own communications in country with respect to what they're doing, they want to manage their own communications across ministry in terms of how it's actually moved through and the timing.  So they're quite -- there are actually quite sensitive discussions within country.

 You know, I'm hopeful that we have kind of a small but fairly substantive batch of countries that have expressed interest in going forward.  I do think that a lot of the recent discussions on Internet governance and HLPDC and things has sort of energized some of the interest around the IGF.  I think some of the Paris calls, some of the Secretary-General's comments at last year's IGF has also brought more recognition of the importance.  And to me it feels like those conversations are being kind of accepted more positively, if you will, or more enthusiastically than they were in the past.

 So hopefully we'll get to the point, which is where we always wanted to be, where we had commitments sort of roughly three years out.  Again, that can be a little bit difficult because governments do change, so the ability to future commit too far out is somewhat difficult.

 Of but if we can keep the comments -- if there are substantive new comments on this, we should keep going.  And of course if this is what the community wants to talk about, we should continue doing that as well.  When we feel like we've sort of exhausted this set of discussions, we will actually move into covering some of the preparations for the upcoming annual meeting in terms of the thematic workshops.  And I know there's a proposal for perhaps doing some things to support more kind of on-boarding and some additional support to newcomers, I hope both that participate in IGF activities virtually as well as those that come physically to the meeting.

 So, Jim.  I think, Jim -- is that an old hand?

 >>JIM PRENDERGAST:   Yeah, I tried to lower it but it doesn't seem to be going down.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   And Carlos, I think you're an old hand as well; right?  You just spoke.

 So Krzysztof, you have the floor.

 >>KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT:   Yes, thank you, Chair.  A few comments from maybe our perspective to answer a couple of questions, how we decided to apply formally for having the IGF in 2020.  So maybe that might be interesting.

 So actually we started with organizing few local IGFs in the past.  Actually, the last two, that has been more like a regional, focused on the countries from three Cs and Central Eastern Europe.  So we had the people from seven, eight, nine countries on, I will say, local IGF speaking about the topics which are covered by IGF.  We have been speaking quite about -- quite broad range of different, let's say, topics or areas from the digital transformation space, mostly about different portions of the digital single-market strategy from the European perspective.  So we decided to have this discussion as wide as possible to see where the interest is from perspective of different countries.

 Then we took the decision to apply for the, let's say, big IGF, to host the big IGF in 2020.  We started that process, like, two years ago, before the time.  Like November 2020.  So we decided to have, like, two years' time to be able to prepare everything, and at least one and half year from that decision to prepare the IGF.  So also having in mind the very good comment from Mr.  Markovski on the budget.  So it's good to start the discussion on the budget as soon as possible with longer perspective and have it formally approved.  So we've done that.

 We've been able to proceed with that decision on the cabinet level, so we had a short, let's say, okay from the members of the cabinet to host the IGF in 2020 as the official, let's say, paper, having in mind the comments that maybe some changes and stuff like this.  So we had it formally on paper.  And we -- Actually, the cabinet decided to point out the Minister of Digital Affairs, which is the ministry focused on digitalization in Poland, is to be the one responsible for IGF it will succeed.  So it was that type of decision.

 Just very shortly.  So if you would be having more questions during the breaks or tomorrow, we would be more than happy to support you with the different stages and what we've been preparing from the, let's say, paper perspective to be sure that we'll be all under control.  Yeah.  Having in mind different changes which may appear on the way from the starting point to having the IGF.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Krzysztof.

 We have one more speaker in the queue here from the floor, and then, you know, with the room's support, we'll move to the next agenda item.  But Indonesia, Donny, you have the floor.

 >>DONNY UTOYO:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  I'm representing the Indonesian governments for supporting here to Germany that will be hosting this year's IGF, also the Poland for the next IGF.

 I just want to give a brief comment regarding to the (indiscernible) of different country to host the IGF, especially when we talk about the technical matters as well as the cost that will be handled by the host country.

 So I encourage the MAG members to -- maybe you have sometimes to read the full report of the Indonesian report about the IGF 2013 in Bali.  There is a full report.  You can read it on website, igf.id.

 So there is (indiscernible) report about the cost, about the money, about the sponsors.  Also the cost that will be have to paid during the event.  This is the framing.  Open report is already submitted to the U.N., also the IGF secretariat.

 So if you want to see about what -- Maybe the components have already changed because it's 2012, 2013 Bali, but maybe some components still remain the same.  So we can help figure out the cost to run the IGF.  

 So it's (indiscernible) report, and I encourage you to go to igf.id and try to find the menu and above about give 2013 and you can download the report.  It's in English.

 Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Donny.  I think everybody would agree that Bali was a lovely place to have an IGF.

 The speaking queue is empty now.  So I think we will move to the next agenda item which is the workshop review and evaluation process.  

 I would just like to cover quickly what the MAG's intent was as we rolled out this process.  And then we're going to ask the leaders of the three thematic tracks to present sort of the current stratus of where they are.  These are not final conclusions because that is, in fact, the work the MAG will do over the next two days but I think trying to build upon some key policy questions and really looking for interaction with the community here.

 So in response to, frankly, years worth of various suggestions for how we might improve the IGF, I think the MAG has tried every year to react to those suggestions and improve the process.  I always say all these processes are continually evolving in any case because so much of what we're doing is still quite -- quite new.

 But the MAG actually focused on building a more cohesive and a more focused process, wanted to eliminate any redundancy in topics where possible and, also, had an objective of really doing everything we could to further increase the collaboration and in some cases the integration of some of the intersessional activities so the best practice works and the dynamic coalitions, for instance, and, again, increase collaboration with all of those efforts and with the NRIs as well.

 We put out a call for issues earlier this year.  Based on that call for issues and the predominance of a couple of major themes, the MAG decided to support three major themes:  Digital inclusion, data governance, and one which initially was nicknamed cybersecurity.  But because "cybersecurity" is so vast and covers everything from cyber warfare to spam, we actually broke it out and it's called "safety, security, stability, and resilience track."

 The MAG -- some working groups within the MAG actually prepared sort of a set of shared narrative but meant to be sort of a shared reference for these particular topics and provided some sample policy questions, literally to sort of get people thinking about what some of the possible areas might be, not to restrict the input at that point in time.

 When the workshops came in, the MAG was randomly divided into three groups of ensuring diversity in terms of region and stakeholder in each one of the three groups.

 And then those groups reviewed all of the proposals that had come in in the individual tracks.  And those groups have stayed with those proposals.  What it allowed them to do was build a track that was cohesive, ensure that there was little to no redundancy but that it also addressed the kind of more consequential policy questions that were coming in through the workshop submissions.

 And what we're really interested in, you know, as we work our way through this process, so at every step and certainly at the end of the IGF itself, is really understanding how well we did and how well this works for the community.  And we're always interested in ways we might further improve the submission process and the evaluation process as well as, of course, the MAG meeting itself.

 So I can wait a moment and see if there are any kind of general comments or questions on the overall process or any reflections.  We're always particularly interested in hearing from people with respect to how it felt to go through the process.  So I'll wait just a moment to see if anybody wants to take the floor.

 And then what I would propose we do is we walk through the three tracks individually and, again, open the floor up for questions on those individual tracks or any questions as well on the overall process.

 And at some point I really do want to get to the discussion about what we might do to support newcomers and onboarding processes and that sort of thing.  So we'll make sure we cover that.

 Not seeing any requests from the floor.  I wanted to see, Chengetai, if there's anything you want to add or anything I neglected to mention in terms of the process or this year.

 So with that then, we would look for a report from the digital inclusion evaluation group in the MAG.  

 is Jim is waving his hand?  He's looking to get in.  Jim, you have the floor and then we'll go to the digital inclusion.

 >>JIM PRENDERGAST:  Thanks.  I'm just scrambling to find the screen with so many tabs open.  

 From the process, I anecdotally sort of went through some of the proposals that I saw and did some spot checking.  And I know that a big emphasis for the MAG over the last few years is to ensure that speakers who are listed in workshop proposals are, in fact, contacted and confirmed and are aware of their participation.

 I know of at least a handful of instances, unfortunately, where that is not the case with workshops that were proposed for this go-round.  So I know by requiring speakers to register within the IGF platform was a solution a couple of years ago.  It looks as though that's not a fool-proof solution.  I think once you're registered anybody can add you as a speaker.  If you said yes to being a speaker two years ago, you're still in the system as saying yes in perpetuity -- ongoing basis.  That's something from a technical standpoint you may want to look for.  Because as I mentioned, I saw a few folks listed and I reached out to them and I said:  Did you know you were part of this workshop proposal?  And they had no clue.  I think that's something we need to continue to work on and try and refine going forward because, you know, the impacts of having somebody on a panel that isn't participating could skew the workshop evaluation results as well.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think that's a good point to bring forward to the evaluation group, because I also heard that a different sort of issue which is a fairly senior person had agreed to be on the workshop.  And the proposer was actually trying to indicate that but wasn't in the database, to kind of convince him to be in the database was -- to have them actually go through that step.  Apparently they did but they did it with a different email address and the email address that was matched -- so there's some problems we need to put there -- I think to put back in the evaluation group and figure out how we did that a little better.

 Chenai Chair, you have the floor.

 >>Chenai Chair:  Good morning, everyone.  I just want to reflect on evaluating the sessions as a first-time MAG member.  I think for me what was really interesting was around the diversity section, which really scored high.  And obviously I think from our working group what we found is there's a lot of -- I think it's more western European organizers for the sessions.  And I think it's because they actually really knew how to write the proposals; that when it came to the section of diversity, they were able to respond to say and then we will include this and that and that and that.  But they had scored in other sections on gender, on other sections of diversity, on the policy question.

 And then just reflecting on some of the comments in terms of participation within the IGF in terms of representation from diverse groups, what I've found was that you -- from the moment that the evaluation process is set up -- and this, of course, has been an experiential learning curve for me -- is that you will find that you are likely to have more sessions with -- either organized by the western European group or likely to have more western European speakers.  And that's because they're able to actually properly craft a session proposal that will go through.

 And then I think one of the comments I had would have been how do we follow up on, say, for example, diversity when a session has been noted to actually say -- I mean, they do provide us a strategy of saying we're going to engage someone once we do know if they're coming to session which addresses the question that you can't just put a person for the sake of diversity.  

 But what other follow-up mechanisms for the session -- and I do know we do suggest once a session is approved that you need -- if you could improve on this point.  But do we physically check to make sure that they actually do have a representative from that group that was saying you need to be there?  Or is it based on a track system if the MAG accepts your session and then proposes you have more speakers from either a diverse group or another stakeholder representative, that this is done?

 So for me, that was one of the things that I found concerning or interesting to see, how MAG addresses the issue around diversity in terms of the actual participants in the room.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Chenai.  Those were some very good comments.  And I would like at this point to try and restrict the comments to nonMAG members in terms of how they saw the process from their side of the process.  And some of these other comments I think we probably need to bring into the working group on workshop evaluation and make sure we address those in the future year.  Or perhaps it's just some documentation that needs to be upgraded.

 Marilyn, Marilyn Cade, you have the floor.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  Thank you, Lynn.

 Marilyn Cade speaking.

 I have a couple of quick comments.  One is more futuristic which I acknowledge, but I would really like the MAG to understand that those who submit workshop proposals who are not approved are probably actually the richest resource in terms of understanding the effectiveness of the guidance and the materials that are provided about how to organize a workshop and submit it.

 And we learn more sometimes from our failures than our successes.  So I hope that there might be consideration of a short survey, not to take up time now but consider an open survey to learn from what's the feedback from those who were not approved as well as those that were approved.

 My second comment is that I reviewed maybe 40 or more of the workshops, just reading randomly.  In many cases, I saw that the organizers were primarily from one region or from one stakeholder group.  Even if they proposed speakers from different groups, there wasn't real diversity geographically or a stakeholder group in the submission.  

 I just think it's something we should think about in terms of our guidance and consider what we're calling on people to do and take into account what's feasible.

 I saw a lot of new rigor from the MAG, requests to do this, tick this box, verify this, et cetera.  Unless there's a committed workshop slot, it is very, very hard to get business executives from developing countries, in particular -- I'm not talking about a policy manager but a business executive from a developing country -- to commit to spend the time.  And I won't try to speak for anyone else other than that.  

 We're going to go into the report now.  But my comments are more about how do we evaluate and take input from those who have been submitters so we don't lose their interest, we don't drive them away because they've submitted two or three years in a row and never been approved.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Marilyn.  Those are excellent points.  And I'm sure the working group on workshop evaluation will take that up.  And I believe there was actually a discussion about doing a post-survey, post-submission plus a survey as well.  Thank you.

 See the queue is empty.  So let's go to a report from the MAG, the digital inclusion evaluation group.  I'm not sure who's going to speak, but I could guess.

 >>PAUL ROWNEY:  Paul Rowney here.  I'll start the discussion and other working group members can chip in.

 Firstly, we had 106 proposals in the digital inclusion stream.  Out of that, we need to try to get down to about 20.  It's no mean feat.  There's a lot of good proposals.  

 As some people mentioned, the process of evaluating the workshops was quite time consuming and some information needed might not have been there.  But that's for a different discussion.

 The drive of the evaluation group really was to look at the type of workshops from the -- who's participating, like youth participation, the gender discussions, looking at the themes, skills, education, jobs, access, affordability, infrastructure, local content, multilingualism, governance and policy and try and ensure we've got representation that is across those areas to try and remove some of the duplication, possible duplication.

 We -- at a point where we're working to finalize the final selection of 20, there's been a lot of work just evaluating the top workshops and looking at the gaps, looking at proposed mergers where we have similar workshops.

 The balancing around the geographical diversity is an important aspect that we are looking into, as well as the balancing the stakeholder diversity.

 Our group is meeting later today in preparation for tomorrow to try and finalize the proposed top 20.  When we're looking at these 20, we are looking at the flow to try and try to bring some logical order to the workshops, possibly starting around the actual building the last mile, the challenges around there, access, affordability, community network and infrastructure, and then flowing towards the governance and policy to try and bring some discussion, thought, and debate from the problems that are being faced as to why we're not getting everybody connected and trying to bring that into the discussion towards how this can influence the governance and the policy.

 So there's not much more I can add.  I don't know if there's anything else from any of our working group members.  But it is work in progress.  We haven't finalized.  As I mentioned, we're meeting later to try and compromise down to 20 from the 106 and try to make sure we get a balanced thematic stream.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Paul.

 I'll ask if there's anybody else from the working group who wants to come in or if there are any slides you would like to show.  I think Chengetai was trying to pull up the kind of flow slides, if you wanted to have that as a graphic representation of your comments.  But the moment may have gone past now.

 But the slides are all there under the working document.  So as the rest of you go through your presentations, if there's anything you want to put up should feel free.

 We also in the working groups asked people to really concentrate on the policy questions that were submitted.  And the policy questions were basically, you know, what is it we want to understand or what is it we want to advance or progress by having this discussion.  You know, I say a lot that if there are a couple hundred people in a room for an hour, that's a really rich, valuable resource and we should use that as much as possible to try and progress some of these issues.  So that's what the policy question was trying to get out.

 We're also looking at those policy questions in a horizontal approach to see if there's some sort of cross-issue topics that we really should bring forward, either in a main session or if there's some commonality in some of these issues.  So we'll be doing that -- that review as well in the MAG over the next couple of days.

 Timea, you have the floor.

 >>TIMEA SUTO:   Thank you, Chair.  Good morning, everyone.  It's great to be here in this lovely room.  

 I was part of this working group, and as a MAG member I'm going to try not to speak too much today, but since I was a member of this group, I asked for the floor just to complement what Paul was saying.  First of all, thank you to Paul for the leadership in the group, and thank you to group members who worked on it, and thank you to the secretariat who provided us with very useful statistics to get us started in this work.

 As Paul said, we were looking at narrowing it down into 20 workshops.  We started it from, obviously, the top-ranked ones, looking to eliminate -- to see if there was any duplication that we could eliminate and if there's any gaps to fill, for which the statistics from the secretariat were really, really helpful.

 While we are not showing slides today yet because we are in, still, a work in progress, and our slides do include the numbers and titles of some of the sessions and we don't want to create false hope just now with some of you who might have workshops in the evaluation process, what I wanted to underline, though, is we're actually looking at creating a flow for the workshops that would look at the various challenges around inclusion and connectivity and trying to do that from an ecosystem point of view, and making sure that that connectivity, in our perspective for this track, means meaningful connectivity.  So we're looking at access and affordability and infrastructure, but also at local content and content creation, content align, multilingual content.  Also at the skills and education that is necessary and making sure that everybody around the world has access to skilling and development.  And then, as Paul said, a couple of considerations around different social groups and their inclusion as well, such as gender, youth, persons with disabilities, and any other groups who might be in any way experiencing different issues with connectivity.  And we're trying to wrap this in towards the end, if it's possible, into broader governance and policy considerations.

 So this is our thinking around the workshops that we're looking at, trying to make sure that we pull up those sessions that could speak to these issues so that those 100-and-something workshops, even though they're not all selected, find their issues in the program.  And we are going to encourage, as much as possible, outreach to similar workshops, mergers where possible.  We know it's very challenging once somebody proposes a workshop to pull it together with another workshop even though the topics are very similar because you have your speakers, you have your agenda set, but what we are really encouraging people to do is to reach out to other organizers, invite them to be part of the session, speak from the floor, and create these communities around similar issues so that people's voices can be heard, if not on a panel, at least contributing to a meaningful discussion.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Timea.  I think it's a really impressive set of work that all the working groups have done, but I think put an awful lot of effort into really trying to see what we can do to advance some of the more kind of consequential issues over the course of the -- over the IGF and I think that was just described really well by both Paul and Timea.

 Any comments or kind of reflections or questions?

 And if not -- and again, if -- people can always come back in at any point in time if a question occurs to someone later.

 Next we'll go to a report from the working group on safety, security, stability, and resilience.  I'm not sure who is going to --

 >>JUTTA CROLL:  It's me, Jutta.  Jutta speaking for the group security, safety, stability and resilience.  And we had a little bit less than the digital inclusion group with about 90 workshop proposals to evaluate, but we were struggling with the broadness of this theme, with security, safety, stability, and resilience.  And as it was phrased in the narrative for this theme, we were talking about security, stability, and resilience of the systems infrastructure and the devices on the one hand but also about the safety and resilience of the users, and this is mirrored in the broadness of the 90 proposals but also in the 20 that we preliminarily selected for being suggested for the program.

 We were very thankful for the digital inclusion group to provide the model for this flowchart for the proposals because I do think it helped to sharpen the focus on how these diverse under- or subthemes could be grouped together to have a flow within the program and to provide for something like a wrap file that participants in the IGF could follow.

 And also, this exercise helped somehow to understand where probably some cross-cutting issues were in this track of the theme security and safety that probably might also be cross-cutting with the other two themes, and that could then also maybe considered to have an additional main session.  For example, when we see that four or five workshops cluster around one theme that is also related to the other two groups.

 So we are still in the process.  We assess also whether we only had 90-minute sessions or also shorter sessions.  So probably with -- now under the pre-selection, we have five workshop proposals that had only asked for 60 minutes.  So this could provide for space to accommodate one or two more session proposals that were now listed in the preliminary list.  This is a very difficult word for me to speak.  And so this should also be discussed further whether we have some space in main sessions to address some of the issues that came out of these selection of workshop proposals so far.

 I do invite the other members from the group to add anything that they have in mind that has not been said yet at this point.

 Looking around.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   It seems it was a very comprehensive summary, then, Jutta.  I saw lots of heads nodding from your other working group members.

 We can move on -- oh, Timea, you -- that's an old hand I think.

 So, Sandra, you have the floor.

 >>SANDRA HOFERICHTER:   Thank you very much.  I think this topic that this working group was looking at -- safety, security, stability, resilience -- as Jutta has already said, covers a lot of broad issues.  And maybe it might be an idea to identify some workshop proposals within the submissions that have the potential to be more of an educational nature.  I'm saying this because at EuroDIG we made the experience that sometimes there is no clear distinction between what is safety and what is security on or off the Internet.  And not only that it's a language issue.  In German, for instance, we have one word, sicherheit, but safety and security is a distinction in English language, and I'm not so sure how that works in other languages.  But I really would emphasize that this working group is looking into opportunities how to be very clear in the definition of the terms safety, which goes into the safety of the user and maybe in particular also the child protection and all these issues, but then in the infrastructure security of the Internet.  And these are two issues that at least at EuroDIG are discussed separated from each other.  And I would encourage the MAG to maybe not separate the issues but really to make a distinction between what is safety and what is security.  And here, a definition of terms with some educational sessions either on day zero or at the early beginning of the IGF might help IGF participants to have a better understanding throughout the IGF in the discussion.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Sandra.  I think those were good points.  And one of the things the MAG has expressed interest in doing is having what we were calling a topping and a tailing session.  And I think the tailing session at the end is quite clear.  We would hope to gather all the messages that came from the individual sessions, pull those together, and also use that to see if there's anything that we would want to recommend would go forward to the next MAG with respect to kind of this was a topic that was of interest, it would be helpful to explore this one in more depth.

 For the introductory sessions, the MAG hasn't yet had the discussion on whether or not this is sort of an introduction to the track, an introduction to the theme or something which might actually be even more strategic and more visionary and be something that really kind of looks forward and maybe kind of outlines some of the challenges or something.  So we haven't had that discussion yet.  But I don't think we're limited, either.  If we should decide to go with a more visionary or strategic approach, if we thought it was useful to have something which was more like an educational session to talk about these different categories, then I think we have room for that as well.  And particularly, again, if some of the sessions were only 60 minutes rather than 90, there's some space within that program already to do that.  So I think if the working group and the MAG thought that would be a helpful set of activities, that we have room in the program and room in the track and the process to accommodate it. I think it was a good suggestion.

 Jutta.

 >>JUTTA CROLL:   Yes, thank you, Lynn, for giving me the floor again.

 I do understand Sandra's comment and it was an issue I brought up that safety and security are different in different languages but one word only in Germany.  But when we had a look at the proposals, and especially at the policy questions, it turned out that most of proposals did understand the difference.  So they were aware of this situation, and they addressed their proposals either to safety or to security, with stability and resilience a bit in between, I would say.

 So from the workshop proposals, it's quite clear.  And I do think that with the policy questions, we can also -- it's a starting point to work with the proposals.  And also to try to find -- given the broadness of the issue, to try to find them some answers and also probably some messages for security and for safety as well at the end of the IGF this year.

 So I do think that can be a structure.  And as said before with this exercise of the flowchart, it somehow sorted itself a bit from the security issues of the infrastructure and other devices which built the basis, of course, for having safety, then, for the users as well.  So it can give a flow of thought as well, and probably this will also help to have some useful outcomes at the end of the IGF.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Jutta.  Very, very helpful.

 Not seeing any other requests for the floor on this topic, let's go to the third theme, which was the data governance evaluation group.  And I guess Ben, Ben, you have the floor.

 >>BEN WALLIS:   Thank you, Lynn.  Ben Wallis from Microsoft for the record.

 Yes, I coordinated the working group on the data governance thematic stream, so I can talk a little bit about the approach we took.  And we've already -- I've already circulated the recommendations of our group on the MAG list as well in writing.

 So we took the following approach.  We had 97 proposals, and we were looking to get down to the 20 that the secretariat had allotted us.

 First, I want to just emphasize that the secretariat provided a very helpful and detailed statistical analysis.  I emphasize that for the non-MAG members that weren't involved in the process.  So we had a spreadsheet that gave us information about the top 16 proposals that we received and about all of the proposals, and that looked at stakeholder representation, geographic representation, what the breakdown of issues was.  It included the policy questions.  It included comments that each of the MAG members had provided when they -- on specific proposals.  So it was great to have that all in one place and to give us a way of comparing what had ended up in the top 16 with the broader collection of proposals.

 So as our starting point, we approved the top 16 -- those that ranked as the top 16 out of the 97 on the basis that they represented the collective view of the MAG members in our working group as to the best proposals.

 And then we drew on the statistical analysis to try and identify gaps within those top 16 that we could then fill when we looked to place the final four slots.

 So we identified the following gaps.  In terms of topics, subthemes, we compared those issues that were represented within the top 16 with all 97, and we found that we were a little bit underrepresented on human rights and Internet ethics in particular, and to a lesser extent on accountability and data fairness.  So we were looking particularly for workshops in those areas.

 In terms of stakeholder groups, we found that 53% of the speakers were from one stakeholder group, from civil society, so we were looking for proposals which had speakers from the other stakeholder groups:  private sector, government, or technical community.  And in terms of geographic regions, as Chenai pointed out who is also on the data governance group, we had 44% of speakers were from "Western European and others" group.

 So we were -- The particularly underrepresented geographic regions for us were GRULAC, Latin America and Caribbean, and the Eastern European group.  So those were the gaps that we were looking to fill with our final four slots in order to kind of balance our final 20.  And we've recommended 20 workshops which would take those 10 to 20 slots.  I circulated the final version of that on Friday, on 31st of May.

 We also included recommendations which should be provided to the proposers of those workshops on how they might improve their workshops.  This also included an extra step following our MAG meeting last week to review any comments provided during the evaluation process regarding potential mergers.  So where people had suggested that there might be other workshops of a similar topic that could work well.  We suggested that the workshop organizer looked at whether they could incorporate any concepts, any ideas or, indeed, any speakers into their workshops to improve it.

 We did make a few other recommendations.  Firstly, as Jutta just mentioned in relation to the security theme, we noted that the secretariat had provisionally allotted 20 slots of 90 minutes and that of our 20 workshops, not all of them were 90-minutes long so there could be some spare time freed up for additional slots.  And, therefore, we propose three additional workshops that could be considered if extra session slots became available.

 We recommended how the 20 workshops could be viewed thematically, so we organized those workshops into buckets of subthemes.  We did that partly to facilitate our own analysis about what kind of balance we were seeking to strike but also partly to provide the MAG and the secretariat with a subthematic picture of the data governance workshop stream to potentially inform the scheduling of the program.

 And we did recommend that when the secretariat put together the schedule, they avoid scheduling two sessions from the same subtheme at the same time.  So we understand as Chengetai explained earlier that there will be two rooms allocated to each theme.  And, for example, there are two sessions on cross-border data out of the 20.  And we recommend they wouldn't be scheduled next to each other because if a participant is particularly interested in a topic of cross-border data, they would not be able to attend both sessions.

 Finally, during our MAG call last Wednesday, the security, safety, stability, and resilience working group asked our working group to consider whether a particular proposal, children's privacy and data protection, could be taken forward under the data governance theme.

 So it was proposed under the security theme, but that working group felt that it focused at least as much on data issues.  So we reflected on that.  It appeared to cover both safety and data governance.  It did score fairly well, but it wouldn't have scored enough to make our top 16.

 Its score was relatively high, and it does look at an issue which isn't explicitly covered within our final 20.

 So our recommendation was to take this forward as a cross-cutting proposal which looks at both online safety and data governance and that it be allocated a slot created for minutes not used by the 40 sessions already put forward by our two working groups.

 Yes, so thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Ben.

 That was another good, comprehensive review.  

 Any comments or questions?  

 Any other working group members that want to supplement what Bill said -- what Ben said? 

 Not seeing any, what was indicated through all three of the groups, that's one of the significant pieces of work that the MAG will be doing over the next couple of days, which is finalizing those individual tracks, looking for any cross-cutting issues, and deciding what we want to do in terms of topping and tailing those themes and main sessions.

 We actually have a pretty, I think, opportunity this time with the main sessions in that historically when we've had six or eight or ten tracks, we've typically dedicated a main session to each one of those tracks.

 With this new focus on the three tracks, we could certainly do main sessions, focus on that.  We could do main sessions to really invite some inspirational speakers, use it specifically to perhaps craft some sessions that actually allow us to outreach to different communities which, of course, is something the Secretary-General exhorted us to do in his comments in Paris.  I think we have some really interesting real estate, if you will, in terms of bringing that forward.

 Carsten is in the queue.  Carsten wanted to talk about, I think, some onboarding and maybe some of the things we could do with the newcomers.  If your comments were related to something else, that's fine as well.  But then if you could actually bring that other idea forward.

 We have traditionally had a newcomers working group.  It's sort of been a little bit of an ad hoc working group between the secretariat and a couple of MAG members.  And that also is another open question in front of the MAG as well, which is what do we want to do to support newcomers certainly as they attend the annual meeting.  But I also think it's important to think how we want to support newcomers coming to the IGF, all of our intersessional activities, and in a virtual capacity as well.  So I think that's some new work we'll be taking on.  

 Carsten.

 >>CARSTEN SCHIEFNER:  Thank you, Lynn.  

 This is exactly what I was about to, well, mention to speak about.

 There's a small group of people.  And in the course of the upcoming IGF, the annual meeting, we thought about exactly that, a newcomers' initiative, an onboarding initiative just to bring all of those that are really pretty new to the IGF up to speed about ways going on.  

 So, in essence, the idea is twofold in the way that it's, like, across all the three main tracks that we just spoke and heard about.

 And, as I said, it's twofold.  The first one is to create a more or less comprehensive repository of information and knowledge for all those who have plans to attend the upcoming meeting here in Berlin as well as any other forthcoming meeting later on in Warsaw and to add 2021, wherever that is going to be, as well as an onsite/offsite in that regard, offline activity, with a slot that we've requested for day zero because we thought it just doesn't make any real sense to have an onboarding workshop or whatever the final name, title, will eventually be during the IGF because if it's going to be slotted in just -- during the second day, for example, then half of the meeting is already gone, and then onboarding workshop just doesn't make any real sense any longer, at least as much as I am concerned.

 So the idea, as I said, is to prepare training material, knowledge material in the course of getting to the IGF in November and then having essentially -- at least that is what I foresee right now, sort of like Q&A, that would be the day zero workshop, a Q&A function where people that have read the material, the onboarding material, can then ask specific questions of items that haven't really been understood yet or are still open as questions for them.

 And the onboarding online material that we envisage is -- it's not meant to be a copycat but rather a -- or just copy material or duplicate material but rather take what's online available already, to review this material, and also to edit this material together with the editors that are -- that would feel responsible for the online material anyways already.  And then essentially just -- maybe just link these materials from a central IGF repository to where they are originally hosted.  That is the plan right now.

 And, of course, I would like to ask everybody in the room here as well as being available online for their support.  And we already have a little bit of support, but obviously can -- would like to get more support ideally but also, of course, financially.  

 So that is essentially what I would have to say about the onboarding activity.  Please see me, send me emails, see me around here today as well as tomorrow or on Friday for any further details how we can get this ball rolling of enabling people with comprehensive knowledge to bring them up to speed for the upcoming IGF.  Thank you.

 Further questions -- any further questions?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  While everybody is looking for the queue or waiting, and before I turn to Chengetai, were you considering a specific platform?  Or was it more maybe just a different structuring or organizational materials that would be posted on the IGF website?

 >>CARSTEN SCHIEFNER:  As I said, we have a couple of supporting organizations already.  One is Wikimedia.  So most likely this is going to be the repository we envisage right now.  It's going to be something in the Wikipedia, Wikimedia style.  And the support of Wikimedia goes so far as they would like to bring us into contact with editors of articles in Wikipedia that are on subject, on track already so that these articles can be linked and/or reviewed and/or edited to well, be as precise as possible for the upcoming IGF meeting as well as for any further IGF annual meeting.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Carsten.  

 Chengetai.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  I will come and see you later with Anja to see more information.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Is there -- we used to have Miguel who was really very active in kind of newcomers and really encouraging us to kind of look broadly and somewhat creatively about what we could do to actually make the IGF more accessible and understandable.  A piece of that was some newcomer activities.  It was also other activities.  I don't know if it's worthwhile seeing if there are any MAG members that would like to participate in an ad hoc working group with the secretariat and with Carsten to flesh that out a little bit.  On the surface, think about doing something with Wikipedia and Wikimedia is interesting in terms of potentially reaching out to some different audiences.  I'm sure there are some considerations with the U.N. system for doing that properly, though.

 Do you have something written up?  Is there something you could post to the MAG list so we could specifically see if there were some MAG members who wanted to join in that discussion?

 >>CARSTEN SCHIEFNER:  Yes and no.  Obviously we submitted a proposal for day zero.  The response -- let me put it this way.  Because we had to put an organization into the form, the sponsor of that initiative is the ISOC Chapter D.C.  So if you like to look for the sponsor of that, it's the D.C. chapter of ISOC.

 And in terms of, like, material, that was meant to be ready by today, by this week.  Unfortunately, it's not yet finalized.  Hence, we are still in the process of finalizing that.  So that should be done with a couple of days.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  Lynn, it's Marilyn.  I can't seem to raise my hand.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Marilyn.  You have the floor.  It's like you are God speaking from up above.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  I like that characterization.  Although, I think it's called goddess, not God.  I do have a suggestion.  I posted something in the chat.

 My experience with these sessions is mixed.  Sometimes they're very effective for brand-newcomers because the newcomers meet and then are able to continue to engage with people that they meet who speak and can become almost their spirit guide to the IGF.

 One particular approach that was taken, I had very senior government officials just get up and walk out because it was a "here's how the Internet works."  It was -- they came to learn about how the IGF works.

 And so my question to Carsten is:  Is your focus on trying to provide an overview of the process of being individually affected at the IGF?  Or are you trying to focus on providing a -- kind of a guidebook to who said what and what the existing resources are where different topics have been addressed.

 And I say that because a factual portrayal of here's how the IGF works, here's how to be most effective, I think that's kind of a coaching and mentoring.

 Getting into choosing different policy perspectives and what to advance over -- one perspective over another puts the IGF in a -- kind of a difficult situation.  Because what you omit might be what's viewed by some groups as being more important than what is included.  So I'm just trying to understand, is it process or is it content?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Marilyn.

 Carsten?

 >>CARSTEN SCHIEFNER:  That's a good question.  Thank you, Marilyn.  I guess at the end of the day, it might be a bit of both because for sure it's going to be content because at the end of the day, content is knowledge.  Knowledge is content.  So helping people to get prepared for the IGF without any kind of content, just pure process, possibly wouldn't really -- wouldn't really do the show.

 In this regard, I would say it's content but also it's process to some extent.  Just to -- I'm repeating myself here.  Just to help people understand.  And particularly I would like the real newbies to help them understanding what the IGF is about.

 And so at the end of the day, I will take your views or your recommendations into account and bring it to my group to see whether we should focus on content which I understand you wouldn't really recommend, not strongly -- wouldn't really strongly recommend.  But also to think about process.

 And the third part is when it comes to the idea -- questions like how would the Internet work, at the end of the day, I feel it every day when I speak to people about Internet policy issues, that there are times at least there's sort of a lack of knowledge about the very fundamental issues of the Internet as in there's no central network control where the Internet can be controlled by because it's a network of network operators or a network of networks that's being operated by autonomous individual network operators.  

 So, I guess, to some extent to be involved in the discussion and have a meaningful understanding of what's going on at the IGF, a certain fundamental basic knowledge about what the Internet itself is might be helpful as well.  So most likely it's going to be included will be involved in our activity as well?  Thank you.  Did that answer your question or your comment?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  She's putting a comment in the chatroom which is:  Not to suggest you don't address content but to note that if you are a newcomer, it's very important to understand what will be addressed, which I think is a very good point obviously.  And certainly truth in advertising in all the sessions at the IGF.

 Maybe I could ask the secretariat to work with you to look at the day zero event because I'm not familiar with that.  Could understand what the proposal is.  Maybe take another spin at it, if you will, and then ensure it's in front of the MAG so we can get some additional support or view.  But thank you for bringing it forward.  

 Certainly newcomers are important.  Facilitating anybody's participation in the IGF, whether that's online or during the physical annual meeting itself is all critically important.  I think making use of a lot of creative ways of doing that is also important.

 >>CARSTEN SCHIEFNER:  Happy to do so.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Particularly if we really want to focus on youth because, of course, Wikipedia and Wikimedia are such critical resources for them.

 We are actually at the lunch break now.  The schedule today is a little bit unusual in that normally we go from 10:00 to 1:00 and then pick it up again from 3:00 to 6:00.  We're stopping here at 12:30.  I believe there's actually lunch provided by the German government one floor down where the coffee was this morning as you came in.

 We will start back up at 2:00 sharp local time because we have a short address from German government representative here.  And then we will continue through the rest of the afternoon with the program.  As that is a rather unusually long time, four hours for those who are doing the math, there is actually a coffee break scheduled in the middle of the afternoon.  

 Lunch break 12:30 to 2:00.  Back here sharply at 20:00.  We will see you this arch.  Thank you very much.  I certainly open that everyone participating online is able to come back this afternoon.  So thank you.

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:  I was asking if we can leave our bags here and they said yes.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  He said yes but no guarantee.

 [ Laughter ]

 To be clear.

 [ Lunch break ]

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  Let's start the meeting, the afternoon session.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Give everybody just a moment to take their chairs.

 And welcome back those participants that are online as well, particularly because it's not necessarily during normal business hours for many of you, so we really appreciate your coming in.

 We today have with us Mr. Thomas Jarzombeck from the German government, and we'll ask Dr. Bronstrup to do a fuller introduction.  But we're very happy to have you here because of course the entire Internet governance community is very pleased about Germany's support and hosting of the IGF.  And it's just a fantastic partnership, and I think it's going to be a super, super event.  So thank you very much.  Daniela, if you would like to do a fuller introduction.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:   Thank you, Lynn.  Indeed.  Welcome Thomas Jarzombeck.  Thomas Jarzombeck is a member of our German Bundestag, our parliament, since 2009 and he has been CDU spokesman for many years on digital policies, so he really is an expert.  In fact, he is one of the fathers of the idea to bring the IGF to Germany, to become the host country.  So it's thanks to him that we are here today.

 He's also now the Federal Government's coordinator on aerospace policy.  And without further ado, thanks for coming.  The floor is yours.

 >>THOMAS JARZOMBECK:   So, ladies and gentlemen, participants here, a very warm welcome to Germany and a very warm welcome to Berlin.  And we took all the efforts we could arrange to present you this extremely good weather here for the last of the three MAG meetings.  So it's a huge honor to have you here today.  Also, over the whole process for this year.  And as Germany and Dr.  Bronstrup said, it is correct, we had an Internet on CAT Commission.  It's a very special project for the German parliament where we come together half with members of the parliament and half with experts from the outside.  And it was structured in 12 groups, and one of these groups was called the group for Internet governance.  And when we debated, it was around the year 2011 and 2012 when we debated about the question how Germany could participate more in Internet governance processes.

 There was one idea to say, okay, we need to have the IGF taking place in Germany.  Also to have an accent for the German government to realize that it's important to engage here more than we engaged in the past.

 The outcome of this was an initiative for the parliament, and it entered into a resolution of the parliament to be an applicant for the IGF and finally we did it after France.  And as I heard, next year Poland will follow.  And we are very glad of that.  And it's also ages since the last major U.N. event as held here in Berlin, so it's in a double way very special.  Very special.

 And the IGF and our team at the Federal Ministry here for Economic Affairs and Energy to have, as I mentioned, the full support of the German Bundestag, the government, and also form the chancellor herself who was excited by the idea when we presented it to her, and also from Peter Altmaier, our Secretary here in the house.  And Peter Altmaier in the last period was what we call in Germany the chef de car (phonetic) -- the minister, the secretary and the chancellery -- and so he was the gatekeeper for this initiative.  And when he gave green light it happened, and so now I will present you also a warm welcome and the best wishes from him.

 Peter Altmaier as the federal minister invited digital ministers from all over the world and high-ranking representatives from business and civil society to join the high-level multistakeholder conference on the 25th of November, so the IGF.  And this year's conference will help to determine the future of the Internet.  And as you see, when we look back maybe 20 years ago when the Internet was still young, there were a lot of people that believed that some kind of -- that the Internet would be very helpful for democracies, for the freedom of speech and systems regimes, autocratic regimes could not happen again as there is now the Internet with all the freedom of speech.

 But finally we found out in the last years with social media and everything around that in some ways, maybe the Internet is a better tool for autocratic regimes than the propaganda on linear TV was in former times, and some regimes developed, as technology, to use the Internet for their aims.  It's a very dangerous development.  And, therefore, I think it's very important to have this multistakeholder approach, to have also a guarantee that the Internet is not, in the end, splitted.  This is something we fear, that it is splitted as more Internets that are close to the other Internets and are protected by some regimes that are not so open for democracy and the freedom of speech.  And, therefore, we absolutely and firmly support the idea of this multistakeholder approach that we have here.

 And so the question for us is will the Internet continue to be free, secure?  Maybe I'm not absolutely sure if it is still absolutely free, secure and open, but can it gain back being free, secure, open and inclusive, and based on human rights.  For us, this is very important.

 Which model of the Internet we will prevail?  The business-driven U.S. model, the government-driven Chinese model or the rules-based European model are all the thinkings that are in between of these cornerstones.

 How will it be handled?  Who owns the data we share on the Internet each second?  How can we make sure that the whole world benefits from the progress and the opportunities created by the Internet?  That is -- that everyone is included.  Because inclusion is a key issue not only when it comes to Internet; for all the policies we are making here in Germany and the debates we have around it.

 And what are the technical standards?  And what is the regulatory framework that's needed to ensure that we feel safe, to ensure that both our professional secrets and our private data are protected, as many of our citizens are concerned about.

 How can we ensure that the Internet is not a place of hatred, crime and slander, as I mentioned already before?

 Germany believes that the IGF is the most important platform for discussing these issues with international leaders and in a multistakeholder format.  Without the MAG, the MAG, none of this would be possible.  The MAG is the heart of the IGF.  We want to make sure that the Global South is represented at the IGF, and we have provided funds so that representatives from developing countries can make the trip to Berlin also here today.

 As a representative of the Economic Affairs Ministry, I also want to make sure that SMEs are involved and that the IGF will bring together both Internet firms and businesses from all traditional industries.  And as you maybe know, the special -- the special strength of the German economy are, indeed, the small and medium-sized enterprises, which we call in some ways hidden champions as we have small companies that have really technology -- benchmark in technology.  And so strengthening the SMEs is very important as they also have a different kind of ruling a company than the global and large entities do.

 As a member of the Bundestag, I also attach great importance to involving our members of the parliament.  And for the first time in history at the IGF, a main session for parliamentarians will be held this year.  It will be hosted by the Committee for the Digital Agenda of the German Bundestag.  I sincerely hope that the results obtained at this year's IGF will be fed into the legislative debate and lead to concrete action.

 What you, the MAG, are doing is a tour de force.  Three face-to-face meetings in less than six months plus an endless number of online meetings with participants from all around the world.  To take part, some of you will need to get up very early in the morning and stay up till late at night.  You will draw up the agenda for the IGF and ensure that the high quality of the interventions and the inclusion of different regions, genders, and stakeholder groups.

 You are also taking part in national IGF meetings and other forums on the Internet governance.  This is something you do on a voluntary basis on top of your regular jobs.  And this year, you're also supporting the host of this year's IGF, the Federal Republic of Germany.  Thank you very much for all these efforts.

 I can only encourage you to keep up the good work.  Germany and Berlin are looking forward to welcoming you in November.  And I'm looking forward to seeing all of you again soon at the Estrel Convention Center in Berlin and in the end, it's a thing that's very important for me to say, a thank you to the team here in the ministry, especially Daniela Bronstrup as head of our activities here for the huge engagement and the good job you did.  And I hope that we leave a good visit card here for Germany.

 Thank you for being here today.

 [ Applause ]

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:   Thank you very much.  The thanks goes to the whole team, of course.

 Thomas Jarzombeck has a little bit of time for your questions in case there are some.

 Go ahead.

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   Thank you.  I'm Veni Markovski.  I'm a member of the MAG and from the ICANN, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.  And, Lynn, as you can see, I put my name in the queue.

 I actually wanted to thank you and to thank through you to the German government and the German parliament because we were very happy to hear, especially about your funding that you delivered for people from underserved, regions and least developed countries that will be able to come to the IGF in November.  That's a huge and big difference from other IGFs where we didn't have that funding.  And this is extremely helpful because we keep on talking about digital divide and what we do, but we never -- or not never but rarely have the opportunity to hear from the people who actually have the problems of not even being connected or having to pay for connectivity at much higher prices.  So thank you.

 And also thank you guys because you have been extremely helpful in channeling the whole energy that the MAG has in working with us in terms of organizing the -- you know, going through the workshops, coming to tell us what's happening in Berlin.  So we really thank you, the two of you.  And I'm using it because you're here so that you can hear the good words about the people that you work with.

 And I, on a personal note, because some of the things you said really touched me, I'm from Bulgaria so I'm actually very thankful to Germany because 20 years ago, when you were asking about freedom of the Internet, et cetera, it was partly due to the German chancellor who was visiting Bulgaria back then, and we planted a student in one of the meetings that he had to ask him what does he think about the licensing of the Internet service providers.  And he responded that there is no political nor economic reason for doing that.  And this was very helpful, because at that time as head of the Internet Society of Bulgaria, we were suing the Bulgarian government, and his argument was used by us, and we won the case.  Partly because the government was willing to get Bulgaria to the European Union and they would listen to the German chancellor.  So thank you again.

 Anyway, really happy to be in Germany, and really the organization here is amazing.  And I think it will be a very successful IGF considering how well the -- we started working with you.

 Thank you.

 >>THOMAS JARZOMBECK:   Thank you for your words.  And I can say we want to continue on that legacy.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I know we're supposed to be using the queue, but as a number of people have just come in from the Internet Jurisdiction Conference which was across town, if there's a question or a comment you would like to make, we will entertain other methods of signaling.  So we try to be quite rigorous about using the online queue because it levels the playing field between those that are participating remotely and those that are in the room.

 Is there anybody else that would like to make a comment or has a question?

 Chenai Chair.  Chenai.

 >>CHENAI CHAIR:   Firstly, thank you to the German government for the investment in actually getting the Global South to participate in these meetings and actually providing the funding that's necessary for people to attend.

 I think especially what I've drawn attention to is the participation of parliamentarians to be hosted by the Bundestag which will get some of our parliamentarians excited to actually be attending these meetings as I think also Veni was talking about.

 So my big question in runup to the actual meeting is we will get information on which parliamentarians will actually be attending from the different countries that have been invited?  I only ask this information in advance because some of us will be having national IGFs, and it would be crucial to actually be able to engage with these parliamentarians before they come to the meeting.  Some of them have never attended national IGFs or they are uncertain what exactly is the structure within the national IGFs of their own countries.  So I think it would be a good opportunity as MAG members to be able to link back with our communities at a regional, subregional and national level and actually point out that we have these parliamentarians who will be attending and will be hosted by the government of Germany.  And before they go there, they actually will have to sit and engage with us -- well, not will "have to" but it is an opportunity to be able to leverage the conversation to actually say as you're preparing to go to this global meeting, this is what we have done and this is what we've understood.  And particularly in context, the Internet is still not free and very difficult to access either based on regulation or just a misunderstanding of why it's important to have a multistakeholder conversation.

 Thank you.

 >>THOMAS JARZOMBECK:   So to answer the question about parliamentarian meeting.  So this is organized by the German Bundestag, not by our ministry.  So far, I cannot tell you how details are going, but I think the idea is good to make a list of participants in advance, if they agree to.  I would say so in this way.  Maybe there are some countries, people, that might become problems or something like this.  We will like to ask them if they like to be on the list in advance.

 But, yes, we will make them the suggestion to present a list of participants in advance.

 >> Okay.  Sorry.  I'm sorry.  I was in the Internet and Jurisdiction meeting earlier this morning and we just came in, so I caught only the end of your speech.  My name is Kassena Wime (phonetic), based in Geneva in the Canadian mission to the United Nations there, and I cover digital policy issues.  And it was interesting because, in fact, this morning at the Internet and Jurisdiction, we lamented the fact that despite a very broad variety of stakeholders in the room, we didn't actually have any lawmakers.  So it was a proposal that the Internet and Jurisdiction network reach out to parliamentarians for future meetings.

 And so maybe you've already mentioned this before I arrived, but certainly in Geneva we have the international parliamentary union that has its headquarters there.  They have an annual meeting in the fall, usually in October.  So perhaps using that channel to propagate the good news about having a parliamentarian session at the IGF would be an avenue to explore in terms of making as many parliamentarians aware as possible.

 Thank you.

 >>THOMAS JARZOMBECK:   That's a good idea.  We take that.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Just giving it another moment to see if there's another question or comment.

 Any final remarks or from yourself or from Dr. Bronstrup?

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:   Thank you very much for coming.  That was very helpful.  And thanks also for your encouraging words through the whole team.  And of course thanks for the support by the Bundestag because otherwise we couldn't have become the host country for the IGF.

 Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I would echo that as well on behalf of the MAG and the entire Internet governance community.  I don't think we can thank Germany enough for having put together such a tremendous program, and certainly with the additional support to developing south.  But the early notice of their intent to host has also given us a nice runway in terms of preparation and allowed us to take on some new activities and new engagement and outreach which is really essential.  So again, I don't think thanks really do it justice, but I think you've heard a number of people around the room express their appreciation for all the efforts and support, both of the German government and certainly of Daniela and Rudolf who have been tremendous.

 Thank you.

 >>THOMAS JARZOMBECK:   It's a pleasure.

 [ Applause ]

 So I wish you a successful finish of work, and I believe lately we will meet in November here, and I'm looking forward to this.

 All the best.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   While we just sort of rearrange a little bit at the table, let me just welcome those people who have come over from the Internet Jurisdiction Conference and remind everybody again that this is the Open Consultation day.  So the request is from for MAG members to not take the floor.  A number of us -- or you do by exception in your other role, but we really request that that be kept to really kind of core, central points because this is an opportunity to engage with the community.

 We do have an online speaking queue.  We really do encourage people to use that because, as I've said so many times, it levels the playing field between those people that are participating online and those that are here in the room.  If, in fact -- you know, we do have some leeway if, in fact, people are having difficulty finding the right buttons amongst all the screens and things, we have allowed other interventions as well.  But, again, it's important to try to use the speaking queue.

 And the link, Chengetai is saying, is on the front page.  If you go to the IGF website, there's a whole series of agenda documentation, online participation, request-the-floor button, right from that link.

 So we had quite a good session this morning.  We actually walked through -- we received some introductory remarks and welcome remarks from myself, from Dr. Bronstrup and from Deniz Susar from UN DESA.  We then had a briefing on the state of preparations from the secretariat and high-level overviews of the process we ran this year for the workshop submissions.  And then we had a high-level review of the current state of those discussions by those three main thematic tracks.  Finalizing those tracks is the work of the MAG the next two days.  So it was more of an introduction of what we were trying to do with the process.  And maybe just sort of to try to say succinctly, a lot of the efforts were focused on really building a cohesive, focused program in response to all the suggestions for improvements we have had over the years.  The MAG had run -- so we'll go through a quick summary again.

 The MAG had run a quick call for issues earlier in the year.  That call for issues informed the ultimate call for workshop submissions and through that process there were three sort of dominant themes that arose.  One of them was digital inclusion, another on was data governance, and the third one was cybersecurity initially, but cybersecurity just covers such a vast range.  You know, how we say, it's everything from warfare to spam.  

 So we split that track out and title out.  And it's security stability, safety, and resilience.  But we would cover all of those.  The workshops that were submitted by the community, the thematic working groups which would put together randomly but with diversity from all stakeholder groups and regions and gender, evaluated those work groups.  And they are in the process of preparing a track that actually does have focus and builds on those major themes.  It also facilitated, of course, reducing any redundancy in the proposals and that sort of thing.  So it's a slightly different process than what we have used the last few years.

 As we all said this morning, we are really interested in understanding what the process felt like from the side of submitters and participants and people in the community.  So we're always interested in hearing from that perspective.  And, of course, the proof of how well this really worked will be in the stock-taking exercises and, in fact, in the IGF program itself.  

 So we really hope to continue hearing from the community throughout the next few months as the program is finalized and rolled out and, of course, as we all live and breathe it in November here in Berlin.  And I know that, you know, next year's MAG will take all those inputs into account as we actually continually evolve the process.

 One of the other things we tried to accomplish through that process was really to very thoughtfully try and increase the collaboration between this annual meeting program and all of the other intersessional activities.  So the best practice forums, for instance, the dynamic coalitions.  We want to increase collaboration with the NRIs.  Part of the work we want to do in the multiyear program is actually to facilitate kind of an ongoing collaboration where we can get feedback and use that to continue to evolve the program and a lot of the content that we all deal with.

 So the next part of the agenda is actually going to focus on getting updates from some of those IGF intersessional activities.  And it's not so much to cover the specific status of the work, although in some instances that would be particularly interesting, best practice forums, for instance, but also to really understand what you think we might be able to do to strengthen and further improve the collaboration and kind of participation across all of these activities.

 So we'll go through the dynamic coalitions.  We have updates on the MAG working groups and an update on the multiyear strategic work program.  And then we go into best practice forums, NRIs, and we'll close out the afternoon session with the session we typically have where we ask for contributions from other related Internet governance organizations and fora.

 So I hope that wasn't too repetitive for those of you who were here this morning, and I hope it was helpful for those of you that came in at lunch to understand where we are in the process.

 So, again, the next item is updates from IGF intersessional activities, specifically the IGF dynamic coalitions.  I'm not sure, is that Jutta or is it Markus who is going to come in or someone else?

 Poor, Jutta, everybody looks to Jutta.

 >>JUTTA CROLL:  Sorry.  I was a little bit distracted and not prepared to speak about the dynamic coalitions.  But I can do so, if you want me.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Did you say you are not ready to or were expecting someone else to?  I missed the beginning of what you...

 >>JUTTA CROLL:  Would you mind giving me some more time and start with another group?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Sure.  That's fine.  We can go to the next item, and we'll just come back after, which is the update on the MAG working groups of which we have three that the MAG actually chartered this year.  One on IGF improvements, one on outreach and engagement, and one on fund-raising.

 I am chairing the one on fund-raising so I can break the ice and go first while the other working groups debate amongst yourselves who is going to take the floor.

 So this is the second year we've had a formally kind of chartered group on fund-raising.  Last year we spent an awful lot of time with a very active working group and support from the secretariat and from DESA in terms of clarifying the roles and responsibilities for fund-raising.  

 Again, this is fund-raising specifically for the IGF Trust Fund which supports the secretariat and it supports travel for individuals from developing countries.

 We did an awful lot of what I was going to say was administrative work.  We put up some frequently asked questions.  We improved the website.  We made some information more visible and more clear.  We put together a kind of template that would help us as we begin reaching out more actively to members.

 We put a lot of efforts into going back to all past donors to see if they were interested in either participating again or in some cases increasing their contributions and another simply to make sure they were still on board and on track to donate.

 We -- this year, the working group was chartered with one major initiative and that was to identify a small number of organizations that a working group member would be willing to engage with to bring them in as a donor to the IGF Trust Fund.

 And anybody who's done the fund-raising work understands it's actually quite a bit of work and really requires some thoughtful approaches.  So we're not looking for a list of 100 or 200.  We're looking more for sort of 20 or 30.  That work is just about to kick off in earnest now that we're through this big workload here of the last few months with respect to the workshop submission process.

 As we do that, we will reach out to the MAG.  One of the line items in the MAG terms of reference is the request that the MAG actually support fund-raising efforts and bringing in donors to the Trust Fund.  So we're reaching out to the MAG with a specific request for -- to identify an organization you think should be participating in.  This isn't just about getting the financial funding, but it is about engaging and engaging deeply and broadly in the work of the IGF.

 So we will put a process together that does that.  And we'll look, of course, for information not only in terms of contacts but which particular aspects of the IGF do you think they're most interested in and that we should -- we should entertain as we actually work towards an approach.

 Let me see if there are any comments or questions on the working group on fund-raising.  Suggestions?

 June, June Parris, you have the floor.

 >>JUNE PARRIS:  Hello, everyone.  Welcome to Berlin.  I'm happy to be here.  I would like to reiterate what Lynn just said and suggest that other people join the effort to raise funds.  I mean, we are spending lots of money on airline tickets, sometimes unnecessary money.  And we do need some more support from the MAG members.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, June.  

 Should also mention June was a co-chair of this working group last year.  

 Sylvia, Sylvia Cadena, you have the floor.

 >>SYLVIA CADENA: Thank you, Lynn.  Sylvia Cadena, technical community, speaking on my personal capacity, not as a MAG member.

 Just on the fund-raising efforts, I would like to maybe suggest to the secretariat if we could review the project document that has the line items that are required and the desirable budget and things to try to figure out if although I understand that is not the preference of the secretariat to work based on projects, if it is -- if there are sections of that budget that can be divided or split or addressed, trying to figure out projects that address those -- you know, the need for those funding, for that funding, to see how that can be negotiated with other potential donors to contribute.

 I understand the secretariat prefer unmarked general contributions, that the secretariat has the ability to manage.  But, I guess, that it's reality that a lot of the governments and aide agencies have less discretionary budget every year and that all their budget is earmarked against specific objectives, specific targets according to their own agendas.  So it's very difficult for many government officials, for example, to commit funding that is not really earmarked for a specific or particular use, let's say.  There are plenty of experiences and options to explore on that regard.  So that could help, for example, to assign portions of the salary of a person to support that specific project and so and so and to try to build it to that security and stability in terms of the funding that was mentioned at the beginning of today.

 You know, I think there are quite a few members of the MAG and other members of the community that can assist with that review process to try to see if there are possible projects to structure to help the IGF -- you know, fund-raising a different way, I guess.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Deniz, do you want to take the response to that or maybe an introduction to what the project document is for people that aren't familiar?

 >>DENIZ SUSAR:  Sure.  Thank you, Lynn.

 So in our side about the fund-raising and also with our involvement last year in the working group, we made some progress.  And we attempted -- we reached out and we see some progress there.  And at the same time, we're also trying to reach out to those with the help of MAG members that we haven't reached out in the past.

 This is a joint effort with the secretariat, UN DESA, IGF secretariat, and also with the guidance of Lynn.

 We are -- and, of course, the working group.  We are making efforts about the project document.  I mean, that's a good suggestion.  I take note of that, and we can definitely revisit and then see what we can do in the meantime.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.

 Maybe just one additional comment.  If you go to the bottom of the IGF page, you'll see funding resources and you click on that.  Within that, you can find the IGF phase 3 project document.  It's U.N. terminology.  But basically it's sort of the equivalent of a strategic plan and a budget for the next ten years.  And it has some level of detail in it.  That's the document that Sylvia was referring to.

 Let's see.  Jorge, Jorge, you have the floor.

 >>JORGE CANCIO:  Thank you so much.  Jorge Cancio, Swiss government, for the record.  

 As not everybody was here this morning when we had the donors meeting, perhaps I would suggest that secretariat or UN DESA would very briefly -- perhaps even put the relevant information on what is the budgetary situation this year because I think that information is really very -- very helpful.

 And when I saw the slides this morning, I was really struck when I saw that 93% of the contributions in 2019 is coming from governments.

 So I think this is really a situation that everybody in this room should think about, take it to their decision makers, if they are not the decision makers themselves, and really spread the gospel that we need money for this effort, for this IGF to really flourish and to survive.

 And I think that the work of this working group is absolutely essential, but there's also a question of will.  And I think that many in this room can make a difference in this respect.  So I leave it by that.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jorge.  That's a good comment.  I do think we need to redo the slides, though, to split out the kind of one-off and very significant contribution from Germany this year to support the participation of developing South -- developing countries in the Global South because it does sort exaggerate, if you will, some of those percentage.

 The rough figures I always quote -- and I haven't gotten to the bottom of the figures that I saw this morning either -- is that the project document requested $2.8 million a year to support the secretariat and, again, travel expenses for those from developing countries.

 There was an interim two-year budget of 50%, 1.4 million.  But we've failed.  And, again, I'm not counting the extraordinary contribution from Germany this year which really was program-specific to bring in additional participants.

 But if you look at that roughly, the operating -- current running rate is about $1 million in the secretariat and travel expenses.  And we're bringing in anywhere from just about 900,000 to $1 million a year against that.  So we're coming in just under what the current running cost is, and that's only about 40% of what the requested budget was.  And the direct impact there is on the staff, both full-time staff that the secretariat can engage and kind of additional consulting support and then, of course, additional travel support to MAG meetings and/or the IGF.

 But typically the two largest by far have been governments and technical community.  The technical community has been a very, very significant contributor as well through ISOC, ICANN, and the RIRs.  And that set a financial level.  That's also a lot of in-kind contributions through various ambassador programs and transcription services and that sort of thing that are given.  So those are some of the things that we are trying to clarify, document, and pull apart so that we actually have kind of a full view of what it takes to support an IGF, whether it's an in-kind contribution or a financial contribution, be clear on where they're coming from and separate out the kind of operating costs from these kind of special kind of bluebird program contributions.

 So I hope that helps.  And the slides, I think -- the slides that were shown this morning are posted under the meeting materials on the page.  But, again, I think this morning I actually think they raise sort of more questions than they answered in terms of kind of the situation.

 Let me go to the speaking queue.  Thank you for your patience.  We have Carlos and then we have Anriette.  

 Carlos, you have the floor.

 >>CARLOS AFONSO:  Just a note.  One issue that I think Sylvia mentioned was about the possibility of contribution earmarked to specific items of the budget.  Is this possible?  Should be.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  No.  We don't encourage earmarking of contributions to specific items.  I mean, that's been a longstanding question.  And, also, the longstanding answer is, no, we don't encourage that at all unfortunately.

 >>CARLOS AFONSO:  Even if you are desperate for funds?

 [ Laughter ]

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: It's a U.N. rule.  If we establish a precedent then, you know, it goes across the whole U.N. system.  So we have to keep the rules for the Trust Fund throughout.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Anriette, you have the floor.

 >>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  Thank you, Michael.  

 Anriette Esterhuysen, Association for Progressive Communications and an exMAG member.  In fact, while I was on the MAG, which I think was 2012 to '14, we also made a request that the in-kind contributions of those institutions that support participants gets recognition.  And I know this involves more work.  But I think it will begin to give an image of the total cost of the event and, in fact, of how many actors are contributing to this.

 Germany's contribution is very significant this year.  But as Lynn pointed out, there are many other institutions here who fund people to come to the IGF.

 I would also suggest that you calculate a cost per participant for the IGF.  And you can then ask institutions that support participants to -- you can give them an indication of what the overhead would be to cover stuff and related costs and then request them to put a percentage, let's say 5%, of what they're spending on travel and accommodation into the trust fund.  So this is one -- I think one creative way because there are many institutions that do support participants and getting the message across to them that that's not sufficient and even a small contribution to the trust fund would be helpful.

 And then when it comes to the earmarked support, I know that  there's reluctance there.  But I would just urge UN DESA and the secretariat to consider addressing that.  It could really make it so much easier for funders who have more constraints in what they can fund to make a contribution.  But I really recommend the recognition of the in kind support of the hundreds of institutions who support participants.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Anriette, for those questions and those statement.  For the in kind contributions, yes, we do have some of them on the website but they're not all recognized, that is correct.  The dollar amount is very difficult to quantify because we have asked companies about what is the dollar amount and they just don't want to give us that dollar amount.  I won't mention the companies' names, but I did go out and ask them and most of them said no.  Even that was with the host countries, you know.  We asked the host countries how much did it cost because it's useful for other host countries.  Very, very few host countries want to give us that figure.

 As far as the small in kind -- the small contributions are, the U.N. system is quite complicated, and it's complicated for a reason.  We do have to make sure where the money's coming from and if it can be traced back for a whole host of reasons.  But we do have the IGFSA which has been established which you can -- people can donate, you know, $20 amounts even.  And they bring them all together and then give us a portion of it to the IGF trust fund.  And there's also the Tides Foundation and that link has also been set up by Google as well.  Google is the only one that's using it at the moment, but that doesn't mean that nobody else can.  You can if you want.  With Tides Foundation they do take an overhead cost.  With the IGFSA they don't.  So that's something to consider as well.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai.  Very good points Anriette.  Thank you.  Carsten, you have the floor.

 >>CARSTEN SCHIEFNER: Thank you, Lynn.  Just to come back to what you have just said, Chengetai, have you heard any like remarks or what are the reasons that countries as well as other donors are sort of reluctant to -- I mean, donors in kind to put a price tag on what they would be able to contribute, is that -- I mean, possibly maybe these obstacles could be addressed by some means or the other then?  What are the difficulties for them to announce their amount of money?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I can only guess at it because they don't want to give us the real reason.  I mean, sometimes it's just the difficulty of collating all their data because it's spread across several ministries.  Sometimes they don't want that figure there because, of course, in any political process they are going to get criticisms and if they have a dollar amount, well, something else has -- does not have money then, of course, these questions arise.  And sometimes it's just this service.  Yes, I mean, I could calculate -- with some of the companies I could calculated the commercial cost of getting that, but if they don't want to dollar sign attached to it, then I cannot put the dollar sign there, even if it is quite easy to calculate, if we wanted to.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I don't see any more requests for the floor on this particular topic.  I did neglect to mention at the beginning that all of the MAG working groups are actually open.  The only requirement is that at least one of the co-chairs be a MAG member, so they are fully open.  All the meetings are posted online.  There are meeting summaries and participation is open to the community as well.  So if there are individuals who would like to join this working group or any of the other working groups, you are very, very welcome. If you're just interested in being an observer or following progress or looking at the history, all the meeting summaries and meetings themselves, which are recorded, are online.  Having said that, I think we decided not to record one or two of the meeting we were discussing specific companies and potential donors, but otherwise in general, the recordings are made available as well.  

 So with that, let me go to the next working group.  I'll go back up to the beginning and go to the working group on IGF improvements.  And I'm not sure, I was looking in the WebEx room a moment ago to see if there was somebody there that could speak to that or if there's somebody here in the room.  If not, I will ask the secretariat to go ahead and figure out who was -- excellent.  Thank you, Chenai.  Chenai, you have the floor.

 >>CHENAI CHAIR: Thank you very much, Lynn.  So with the working group on improvements I think the biggest thing is that so far the MAG members who would be working on it are myself, June, and Raquel has also volunteered to be part of the working group.  We're actually meant to have our first initial meeting to actually focus to continue the work that has been done before.  And I think the biggest thing is that we would like more MAG members to also join the working group to actually put the work together, and that had been one of the requests that had been put forward.  And I think so far in terms of actually getting the work done, it's also been an experiential process in trying to leverage off the experience of the previous co-chairs of the working group and then trying to make sure that we continue the work going forward.  So I think in this meeting that we have, we are actually going to have a face-to-face meeting and plan going forward.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chenai.  The work of this working group is extremely important.  This will be the third year, I think, of the working group.  And they started pulling all of the recommendations from the 2012 CSTD working group on IGF improvements from all of the taking stock sessions at all of the IGFs, from the DESA retreat, from the WSIS+10 process, and they categorized them all according to the type of suggestion.  And then they have also identified which ones they think are complete and those that are open, they've identified a potential home for them.  So, I mean, it's really important work.  People that take the time to run processes or submit comments through a stock-taking exercise I think deserve to know that their suggestions are being taken seriously and what the ultimate response was to them.  So it's a very important and very substantive piece of work.  So I really would encourage people to take a look at the work and certainly to sign up and help the working group as well.  

 Not seeing anybody else in the speaking queue, having used up more than this ten seconds on that, I guess we'll go to the next working group.  Again, the charters of these working groups are online on the site so you can see the charter, the progress, and how to sign up for them if you're interested.

 We have one more working group, that's the working group on outreach and engagement.  And Arsene, are you going to speak to that?  Thank you.

 >>ARSENE TUNGLAI: Thank you.  And so on behalf of this working group, I would like to thank MAG members who have had the time, you know, to read our charter that was posted on the list, again, sometimes this morning.  And so I think in mostly for this year is to support the IGF secretariat in the outreach and information dissemination in a more digestible way which end goal is to increase participation and engagement from the IGF community as well as from the MAG itself.  And so we're glad to hear from CSTD like the open consultation.  We'd like to here from other MAG members today if they have had like some time to read the charter, and we hopefully will be able to hear more on the MAG side during tomorrow's meeting because we would love by the end of this -- the meetings in Berlin to be able to adopt this charter so we can have some more time to focus on the actual work which is still pending because our charter hasn't been approved yet.  And I would like to call to all MAG members or non-MAG members who think they have ideas on how they can help us be able to communicate better on the IGF to please join the mailing list or to let us know if they don't know how to do so.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Arsene.  Thank you for your leadership of this working group as well.  Any comments or questions?  The working group has been fairly active the last few years and they've done some really good work, particularly last year with respect to translating some key documents and things on a volunteer effort which I think is also obviously useful for outreach, useful for engagement in different communities, and parallel alongside that we're also working with the secretariat to look at a lot of our own communication processes and what we can do to improve the reporting coming out of the IGF and a number of the other activities as well.  I think there's still a lot more work we can do there in terms of properly resourcing and supporting it.  It just takes -- it just takes resources.  

 So not seeing any requests from the floor, are there any general -- before we go back to dynamic coalitions, are there any kind of general comments on the working groups or -- I just want to make sure we're giving enough time for the community to come in but again, given these are working groups which are meant to be sort of led by the MAG, but open to the community, I wanted to make sure there was enough kind of visibility to facilitate their work.  Jutta?

 >>JUTTA CROLL: I was wondering whether I should give a short update now on the working group on the workshop process?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That would be excellent.  Okay.

 >>JUTTA CROLL: There has been a lot of work been going on but now for the meeting of the working group because everybody was occupied with the assessment process obviously.  But still there were some -- was some feedback from MAG members who were doing the assessment that were well noted, taken into account for the further development of the workshop evaluation process for next year.  One thing that was mentioned very often were the requirement to have two different types of comments when assessing the workshop proposals which actually helped to have a good assessment process but which was a lot of additional work for all the members and we will consider that with the working group when we start thinking about the process for 2020, I do think.  So there were some lessons learned.  I do think we could also summarize that when we have finalized the process of workshop selection afterwards and then the work for the working group starts for next year.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jutta.  And apologies, that was left off the agenda and obviously should have been.  The work continues and now, you know, the very important work, which is how did the process feel, how did it work, what are the areas for improvement next year going forward, so we need to stay with that.  Any comments or questions for Jutta or the working group on workshop prep and eval?  Maria, you have the floor.

 >>MARIA LOEBEL:  Thank you, Chair.  My comments go to the work of the process working group.  I think that they have been doing an amazing work in implementing and helping the process of do the evaluation.  As a new MAG member this year for us really something very useful to understand how this process had been conducted in the past, but also as a new member I can realize that we can do a better job in like keeping this history of how we are doing our decision-making process of selection of workshop and maybe improve the way in which we communicate that at the community at large because I think that there were like recurrent questions among the different groups that evaluate the proposals according to different teams and all that will be very useful to have documented, also like some practical maybe recommendation in terms of how to specifically assess some of the items of the proposal, for example, how to behave regarding the self-regulation diversity of the workshop in which some of the reviewers realized that sometimes the self-regulation of the program did not match with the reality of the representation in terms of geography or stakeholder groups.  So those kind of practical recommendation that will like improve the assessment and also provide like more clear message to the community about how did they -- it's the review that the MAG is doing about the different proposal in that way encourage to have better proposals in the future edition of the IGF.  Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Maria.  If there are no further comments or questions on that working group, we'll revert back to agenda item 7, specifically looking for an update on the IGF dynamic coalitions.  And I'm not sure if that's Jutta or Markus or --

 >>JUTTA CROLL: I can take the floor.  I'm don't know whether Markus is taking part online then I would be happy to leave it to him.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Maybe just give him a moment, if you want.  He is online.  He's addicted.  He was here this morning as well.  

 Well, Jutta, why don't you get started then, and then Markus, if you want to come in later -- I see his camera lighting up.  So let's give him another minute.

 >>MARKUS KUMMER: Sorry.  Can you hear me?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes.  Yes, we can, Markus.

 >>MARKUS KUMMER: I have problems unmuting me.  So, we had our calls, regular calls, and we will have another regular call after this MAG meeting of the dynamic coalitions.  We have, I think, a fairly good understanding what we want and I think made the point before that it's -- for the dynamic coalitions, it's important to have their annual session and where they can actually further their work and work in substance and that, as far as I understand, will be decided in an overall context, but I would just like to make the claim again for the dynamic coalitions, it's essential that they have an opportunity to meet once a year.  Obviously it's understood that they need to fulfill all of the conditions that are part -- for them to qualify.

 Apart from that, we have been discussing on whether or not to ask for a common slot.  There is great appetite to have a common slot and there was also, we had at the last meeting, some discussion on that and what a common theme should be.  But various members of the dynamic coalitions felt that it was important to also present some of their substance they had been doing as they have been doing in the Geneva meeting, in Paris it was more a common theme but there were so many speakers it was rather difficult to manage.  It was a co-production with the business community.  It was a good session, but the dynamic coalitions found it rather challenging.  So this is an open question, and obviously the dynamic coalitions will take into account also the outcome of this MAG meeting.  But over to Jutta.  I'm sure she has plenty to add.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Markus.  I will turn to Jutta and then come back to you and to the room broadly because the question is as we stated this morning at the very beginning is what else can we do to actually strengthen and further support all of these activities.  So if we could come back and see if you have any thoughts on that and obviously the same question to Jutta as well.

 So, Jutta, you have the floor.

 >>JUTTA CROLL:  Thank you, Lynn, for giving me the floor again.  So with regard to the theme of a main session, a common main session of dynamic coalitions, there were two things that we have discussed with dynamic coalitions.  And one was the idea that was suggested by the MAG chair that we could have a session on the idea of network of networks because dynamic coalitions are a kind of network of networks as well as the national and regional initiatives are.  But some of the dynamic coalition representatives thought this could be too broad a topic to cover in one main session.  And this was also due to the fact that there was still the notion that the concept of dynamic coalitions was not well- -- is not well-known in the community.  So there might seem to be many people who don't know that dynamic coalitions are doing intersessional work, that they work continuously throughout the year, and then they have their one-year occasion -- once in a year their occasion to meet face-to-face and personally and present their work and that dynamic coalitions are open throughout the year for new members, for people who want to work with dynamic coalitions.  That seemed to be not well-known.

 So the other idea was that maybe it was time to have a session with a concept of dynamic coalitions was explained a little bit broader.  But it could also be done like it was mentioned before, the term "educational session."  Probably we could have at the beginning of the IGF, like an educational session where the concept of dynamic coalitions would be explained and then see what more topical session could be done throughout the course of the IGF.  Those were the two ideas that the dynamic coalitions discussed.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jutta.

 Maria, is that an old hand in the queue or were you looking for the floor?  That's the old hand.

 So I am interested, Markus, Jutta, and everyone else in the room, any kind of general observations of the dynamic coalitions, what we can do to make them stronger, better support them?  Really just looking for more strategic sense of the role they play and how we can kind of maximize their contributions.

 Markus, just give you a moment to unmute.  Do you have any thoughts?  And then come back to the room here.

 >>JUTTA CROLL:  I could tell from my experience in Germany how this year, of course, in advance of having the global IGF in November here in Berlin, many people had asked me about the Internet Governance Forum.  So in many cases, I explained the concept of dynamic coalitions and that this is -- besides putting in your workshop proposal, this is an opportunity where you can directly start to work with the IGF community.  Bring in your organization, your ideas, into a dynamic coalition.  

 And I do think the variety of themes and issues that are addressed by dynamic coalitions is broad enough that everybody could somehow find a way to collaborate with.

 And that brings me to the role that the national and regional initiatives could also play because I do think what we faced here in advance of the global IGF, the interest that we had in the community, that could also be addressed by the national and regional initiatives.  Strengthening the cooperation between the national and regional initiatives and the dynamic coalitions could help to make more people in more regions and more countries made aware of the work the dynamic coalitions do throughout the year.  So that would be my suggestion.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jutta.  And I think we should take that up when we look at the full program.

 >>MARKUS KUMMER:  If I may come in at this stage.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Please, Markus, you have the floor.

 >>MARKUS KUMMER:  Very much along the same line as Jutta.  I really don't have that much to add.  

 But I think they made great progress in linking up all the various elements.  And the NRIs Jutta mentioned is an important part of the ongoing intersessional work as are the DCs.  But we have not been able really to strengthen these linkages.  And obviously the IGF is an essential part of the architecture.  And it could also be a two-way dialogue, not just the constituent parts of the broader IGF community, such as DCs or the NRIs reporting back to the MAG but the MAG could also make suggestions to the DCs and to the NRIs based on the substantive discussion they have.

 Do you have any input into this discussion?  

 And there are strong substantive linkages between the main themes the MAG is discussing and the work the dynamic coalitions are doing.  And then, again, it would be good to have a regional, national perspective coming from the NRIs on these issues.

 We have tried -- I was also involved in the BPF on cybersecurity last year to have a joint call with the NRIs.  But that was not, shall we say, 100% successful insofar as we have not been able to engage them deeply in the substantive work.

 So more can be done in this regard just to really create the substantive linkages between all the various constituent parts.  How that is to be done is yet another story.  But I think we have come a long way.  We're on the right track.  But I think more can be done to enhance the synergies.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Markus.  Those are very good comments as well.  You know, we've been talking for some time about further collaboration, increasing the bandwidth between the efforts and the MAG and the community.  And I think we need to keep -- keep pushing on that.

 I don't know sometimes if it's just the tools that we have or it's a matter of hours in the day or -- but it always seems like it's -- just a little too little.

 Trying to see if there's any comments.  I don't want to put anybody on the spot.  But there was a new dynamic coalition that was started up this year.  I don't know if there's any reflections on, you know, what that felt like, how it could have gone better, additional support one might require.

 And, of course, we're happy to hear from those dynamic coalitions that have been established for some time as well.  I think they were a really important, useful tool for the community as Jutta just said.

 Thank you.  Melissa.  I'm sorry, Melinda.

 >>MELINDA CLEM:  Thank you.  Melinda Clem.  I'm with Afilias.  I'm also on the secretariat of the new dynamic coalition on DNS issues.  I also wear the hat of co-chair of IGF USA.  So I guess that is a unique perspective.

 We've had the privilege of speaking to the MAG before about our dynamic coalition.  So just as a quick reminder, this year we're focusing on universal acceptance.  Coincidentally, the secretariat are all from USA.  And we find that while we're all interested and we have interested parties, the regions and areas that universal acceptance is the most important, it's outside of the United States.  

 So we would be very interested in having more collaboration with other NRIs.  We had some success this year on a limited basis.  And it was more driven by, I would say, individual passion and interest in the topics of multilingual Internet.  We had a wonderful Internet with SEEDIG, for example, and we're participating at EuroDIG.

 So a lot of those were really less of the infrastructure that was available and more on networks and individual interest.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Melinda.  

 Anriette, you have the floor.

 >>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Michael.

 Just to report, my organization is an active participant in the dynamic coalition on community connectivity.  And it's a very dynamic dynamic coalition.  

 I think they would like their workshop proposals to be accepted.  You know, that could be one thing that the MAG could consider.

 But aside from that, the work is continuing.  And they are -- this is one dynamic coalition that does have a presence in regional IGFs.  I'm not sure at national level.  But certainly at the Latin America IGF and last year at the African IGF, they held workshops.  So there is a connection -- already a connection with regional IGFs.

 I think -- yes, I think it's a challenge but I certainly think promoting the work of the dynamic coalitions and finding creative ways of displaying that can make a difference because it's really one of the most under -- in fact, I think all the intersessional work is one of the most undervalued aspects of the entire IGF process.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Anriette.  Those are very good points as well.

 I'm just kind of wondering whether or not -- there was a brief discussion this morning on kind of a burgeoning idea of maybe doing something with Wikimedia and Wikipedia to try and kind of build an awareness around various activities within the IGF and how to participate in the IGF.  And it was kind of -- the discussion was a little bit of a combination of kind of newcomers and orientation and awareness and maybe capturing some of the content that might be coming out of some of those streams.

 You know, it might be interesting to think about starting with one area rather than even trying to do the full breadth of IGF activities to see how that -- to see how that works.  I mean, doing something like that could potentially open up a new set of participants in terms of the people that it would reach.

 But just want to encourage everybody to think creatively about how we reach out and engage other individuals and organizations in the work we're all doing.  

 And then, secondly, it would be helpful if we sent dynamic coalitions -- there was a good resource they could go to that actually answered all their questions and made it really exciting and wanting them to come in and participate.

 So if there's a way to extend some of our efforts, I think we should be open to new ideas and what we might do there.

 Again, the whole proposal is still very much, I guess, a thought, not a proposal, and needs some more time to think about what that might look like.  And I think it's a couple of tangents.  One is sort of newcomers and orientation, and I don't mean just to the annual meeting.  I mean, newcomers to the world of IGF and all of its activities, intersessional and otherwise, as well as kind of capturing kind of the importance and impact.

 I don't see any other requests for the floor.  

 Again, really want to encourage everyone, particularly nonMAG members, to comment here.  Again, you all know people in the MAG and you all know our email addresses.  So if it's more comfortable or something occurs to you in the middle of the night you want to get the comment in, then don't hesitate to reach out to any of us.

 Markus or Jutta, any final comments on dynamic coalitions?  Jutta says no.  Markus, I'll give you a moment to type or unmute.

 I think this has actually been, as Markus and Jutta both said, tremendous progress over the last couple of years in terms of really pulling the DCs together themselves.  I think there's much more leverage and they're more of a force together and also with respect to pulling them in to a deeper engagement, deeper collaboration with the IGF work as a whole.

 Markus had unmuted.  Give him one more minute.

 >>MARKUS KUMMER:  I said in the chat I have no further comments.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Right.  I do see that.  Thank you, Markus.

 Well, then we'll go to the next item which stands between us as a coffee break, again, exceptionally.

 [ Laughter ]

 We have a coffee break because normally our session runs from 3:00 to 6:00, and today we started at 2:00 which is a long break.  So there will be a coffee break at 3:45, although I'm very pleased there is actually coffee right in front of us.

 The next item was a multiyear strategic work program sort of view and discussion.  This multiyear work program had been a working group that was chartered for the last couple of years.  But the working group did not recommend rechartering as a working group for this year, stating that they thought it was more appropriate that there was discussions that were still open come to the full MAG.

 Starting last fall there were a number of kind of status reports that were given to the MAG, both the outgoing MAG and the incoming MAG.  There was a discussion document which was sent to the MAG in March which tried to kind of capture the key places of work from the working group.  And I'll cover those three pieces at a high level.  

 And maybe the secretariat could mute whoever was not muted.  May have been the secretariat.

 Okay.  So, again, initially when this was -- when the multiyear strategic work program work kicked off, frankly it was to help facilitate work from year to the other because we had a series of years where there was quite a gap between the outgoing MAG being stood down and the incoming MAG being announced or appointed.  So there was literally sort of a three-month stop in the work.  We lost some momentum, lost any learnings or impetus we might have taken from the previous MAG and IGF and bringing that forward.

 So initially there was a thought which said if we could actually identify some multiyear streams of work, that work could continue on an intersessional basis between MAG appointments.

 And at that point, they -- the working group thought that it was sort of appropriate to plan for a time span of two to three years.  

 Just a very small number of issues.  But it basically arose out of some of the learnings from the best practice forums as well where we had best practice forums that were stood up that took on a topic that was so big and so consequential that it was clear it wasn't just a one-year effort, that it was a multiyear effort.  And, again, the fact that we stopped each year and went through a brand new recharting process meant they lost momentum and lost time in their own processes.  

 So we were looking to fix some kind of process gaps, if you will, as well as give a little more notice to people who are interested in participating in the IGF that this was a small number of substantive topics that were going to be addressed in the following way for multiple years, which has actually thought to allow us to reach out to potential new donors as well.  It will certainly support any new host countries and their own startup and outreach efforts.

 What the working group actually tackled last year specifically -- and should be stated right up front, and I think it's in the charter as well -- that the working group recognized the importance of engaging broadly across the full MAG, the IGF community, across the best practice forums, dynamic coalitions, the NRIs.  And at that point in time, we had a pretty robust intersessional policy program called the connecting and enabling the next billion.  So it was important that we engage them as well in the development of any multiyear strategic work program.

 We had three main areas.  One was an IGF program framework which tended to outline the planning cycle for the annual IGF.  It was meant to serve as a reference document for the work of the wider community, not just the annual meeting set of activities and specifically meant to do that by sort of illustrating the agenda and the program-setting process from what the team called the bird's eye point of view.  It was meant to capture the main points and temperatures of the current process.  It also aimed to asses how the IGF outputs were reached, collected, and shared so they were input to subsequent IGF cycles.

 There was a chart that was done.  It was built on the basis of some documents from the secretariat.  That was expanded using a tool whose name I'm forgetting at the moment.  And so the working grouping, they did put out a call for survey and comments.  Found that useful as well.

 Some months after it was out, there was a comment that said maybe some of the language wasn't particularly clear with respect to describing the MAG role as it related to dynamic coalitions and NRIs, I think, specifically.

 And that comment remains in front of the working group to find some different language.  I hope we've clarified convincingly, frankly, that that was not the MAG's intent.  It was not the working group's intent and that, you know, the language obviously given some people did interpret it that way could be clarified.  So we're in the process of clarifying that.  

 And from my perspective, that work, after that clarification, is pretty much finished and I think ought to serve as a tool for people who want to go on or as the process will evolve over time to ensure that tool sort of reflects any subsequent changes in process or output.

 But I would call that piece of work virtually done, and it should just move to part of our standard operating documents.

 There was another part -- I'm actually going to go to the third part -- which was improve current outputs.  And a number of efforts were undertaken over the last couple of years and a significant number of them last year to improve the outputs that currently exist, making them more useful and more visible.  Many of those efforts were based on suggestions made by the MAG and the community.  They were operationalized largely through efforts of the secretariat and we continue to evolve those this year.  They included things such as -- and there's still more work to be done this year.  I think that's probably an ad hoc working group that will be set up after this meeting where we, of course, have put much more weight on the policy questions that have come in through the workshop submission process so that people would take away this is what I really hope to achieve or get input on or have as a key discussion point in the workshop session that I'm organizing.  And then we put in a successive set of reporting steps.  As we get closer to the IGF, the workshop organizers were asked to provide a little more detail on what they expected to achieve.  Some of that information was used to support some press packets.  Some of it was used to put some additional information up on the website.  It was all used to begin fulfilling the full report that the workshop organizers are meant to provide at the end of each workshop session.

 I think we can do some more work on that again in terms of being really clear on the structure and the format and the expectations, including making sure that the sessions all leave enough time for engagement with the community.  We have that as a guideline but all too often it's a little bit of time at the end as opposed to the 50% goal I think that was established for each one of the workshops.  So I think there's some more we can do to improve the support to the workshop organizers as they process their way through the workshop itself but also through all the reporting characteristics.  And there's a whole series of documents that the secretariat has developed on that that I think we need to pick up again, look at again in the light of last year and certainly in light of kind of the MAG's direction this year with respect to focused and cohesive program.

 So that was the third piece of work that was undertaken, and I'll go through the remaining piece and then we'll have discussion as the -- as the room wants in terms of which ones they'd like to come back and revisit.

 The other piece was a piece of work that focused on, it was called moving from reports to outputs or recommendations.  And two pilots were actually proposed to facilitate what was meant to be some intersessional or multi-year work that would focus on more concrete outputs and possible modalities for different types of recommendations.  Some of the working group members stressed that that is, in fact, specifically called for in the Tunis Agenda, and I should underline again very strongly that everybody is supporting the Tunis Agenda.  Nobody wants to break the Tunis Agenda.  Because there was another set of concerns that when we would start this conversation there was a lot of concern that it was going too far or it was pushing us towards negotiated text that, you know, how could we arrive at conclusions or recommendations, with a little R, out of these sessions because of all sorts of questions.  You know, who is the IGF community, how do we represent them fairly, et cetera.  So the notion had been that we would actually work through a couple of pilots so we get some familiarity with that.

 One of those pilots has actually found support from within the community and is actually advancing some work, and they've held sessions at the last two IGFs.  And that pilot is called Strength in Cooperation, and there will be a session -- the MAG agreed two meetings ago, I think, maybe the last meeting, no, the January meeting -- that there would be a session at a minimum at a lunchtime slot if, in fact, it wasn't coming into the normal workshop process, to review that activity again in the nature of a pilot.

 There was another proposal which is captured in methodologies to the development of written IGF outputs -- again, all this information is up under the meeting materials.  It's also up under the working group on multi-year strategic work program with links to all of the supporting documents and proposals as well.  

 That actually remains an open discussion, although I should just say it's lost some momentum in the last six months or so here.  But I think it's still important that we continue to look at, are we doing everything we can to respond to I know frankly many and varied requests for more concrete outputs.  So what do people mean by more concrete outputs?  Is there something more we could do?  Is it simply a matter of making our current outputs more useful?  Or is it, in fact, something substantively different.  

 So I will stop there for a moment.  I think that last question is the most open and actually, I think, one of the most significant questions in front of the MAG and in front of the community today.  And I would love to hear thoughts on that and then also thoughts on how we could take this discussion forward within the community as well.  So I will stop talking there.  If there are any of the working group members from the MWP who want to add to what I said or add context, correct, please jump in.  Anriette, is that a new hand?

 >>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: (Off microphone).

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No?  Well, that's a shame.  Timea?

 >>TIMEA SUTO: Thank you, Chair.  Even I'm a MAG member, I'm going to just quickly jump in here because I was also one of the members who worked on the multi-year work plan working group.  I did put my hand up in the system, but I don't think our devices are communicating with each other.  

 So I want to speak to the point on the bird's-eye view on the IGF process for the multi-year work plan which was a sub stream of the working group that me and my colleague Susan have co-facilitated.  And I wanted to speak to that point of the confusion about some language on the process and how we are including -- or the perceived, I think, misunderstanding on how the MAG is looking at dynamic coalitions in their eyes and other intersessional or satellite streams to the IGF.

 So that overview, the first draft that I think caused the confusion was a working draft which was not intended, as you said, to presuppose any oversight from the MAG on dynamic coalitions or national regional IGFs but try to actually underline that the work program, the agenda and the IGFs program has to take into consideration these streams and the issues that they have and provide a framework for these streams to bring in their ideas to the MAG meetings so that the MAG is aware of what they are doing and finds a way for them to be on the agenda.

 The language was updated in the final version that was done through Prezi and sent out to the community for feedback.  We did receive some feedback ahead of last year's IGF online, including from national regional IGFs.  I'm not sure from any dynamic coalitions.  There was no confusion at that point.  I'm hoping that if we look at the final version of the Prezi that is online that is still clear.

 Looking forward to the future of this process overview, the aim was to clarify what is the process that the MAG and the IGF is following when we talk about setting the agenda for annual meetings and trying to provide a channel that we connect past IGF meeting and next IGF meeting, issues that arise in between so that we provide a flow and we actually can build from one building to -- from one meeting to another and not reinvent the wheel every year.

 Now, we did change the process this year, so what is online was based on last year's process.  It's not entirely accurate for this year because we have three meetings, we're having the thematic tracks.  So I think it will be useful to update this chart if we think that this is the same process we are going to follow going forward next year.  I don't think it's very useful for this year because we already are past our three meetings.  The process is mainly ending.  All that is left now is the May meeting, so the inputs -- time for inputs is slowly passing.  So I propose we convene on this item after the annual meeting, think about if the process that we followed this year is really the one that we are recommending to move forward with, and then really update that chart and make sure that when we start working on next year's process and plan we use that as a benchmark, as a base for everybody, the MAG but also the external communities, the newcomers have that in their front to follow and have that information there and know what are the main points of engagement and how this machine is working.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Timea.  I mean, it would be interesting to know, I think, from the MAG members, maybe specifically not now, at another point, how useful that was in our own MAG activities and then from the community, how useful it was from the community's perspective as well.  It was an awful lot of work that went into doing that and that was based on the fact that the process wasn't particularly clear before and there were a lot of questions on roles and responsibilities and when people got engaged and so that document which initially the secretariat put together which not only said here's the process, it said here are all the component pieces of the IGF ecosystem and here's the guiding documents, here who -- here is the group or the entity that actually has oversight over that particular set of activities.  So it really was helping to kind of structure and place all of our work and ensure that we all had the same view of what the kind of responsibilities were towards those various pieces.

 From my perspective the conversations were much more straightforward this year.  So I think there was a lot less confusion, and I think that document and those previous conversations helped.  I do think we should assess whether or not it's worthwhile and we should keep it up to date going forward.  And maybe that's something the secretariat can try and drive and walk us through in terms of, you know, is it something that's useful and we should keep up.

 So there were three topics that we put on the floor through the  MWP, multi-year strategic work program.  You know, the one that I think, as I said, the most open and honestly the most contentious, if I can use that word, although I think that's maybe an overstatement, is the strengthening moving from reports to outputs or recommendations.  And, you know, maybe are there things that the community thinks we could be doing that we aren't doing that would actually make all of the value and all of the goodness that comes out of the IGF accessible, more accessible, stronger, better known?  Are there any things that are really -- people are really dying to say about what we could do to actually have all the knowledge that comes through the IGF and the IGF processes have even more impact?  And I think it's important that we also listen to all the suggestions for improvements that we've had over the years as well.  I'll wait just a moment.  Sometimes if there's a long enough awkward silence somebody jumps in.  Is there -- Anriette, are you trying to get in the queue?  Excellent.  You have the floor, Anriette.

 >>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I'm doing this in solidarity with you because I've just come from another meeting, so -- no.  Lynn, just actually, a question on two unrelated question.  The first one is in response to what you just said about outputs.  Do you feel there is now consensus in the community on what that really means?  Is that the modality that we are looking at as the -- as the IGF is the space for dialogue and debate and then the intersessional work, dynamic coalitions, and best practice forums as the platform for generating suggestions and recommendations?  So are you asking it within that kind of framework, or is there a discussion about changing the nature of the IGF discussion itself?

 And then my second completely unrelated or not entirely unrelated question but -- and maybe this was covered in the first Open Consultation which I did attend, but the fact that there was this association with the Paris school last year and this kind of close relationship with the French government who had invited many other the governments including heads of state, did that make -- do you feel that made a difference in the 2018 IGF at the level of government engagement?  I've seen the stats, so this is not really about the stats.  This is more about substantive participation from governments in the discussions.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Excellent questions.  Starting from the top, it's -- it's not about the nature of changing the IGF.  Having said that, I think we need to note that there's an HLPDC report that comes out on the 10th which is probably going to point to some possibly significant improvements to the IGF.  But no, my comment was not to that.  It really was to the outputs.  And if we -- you know, when I go through these conversations I try and go through all the stakeholder groups and say what would their position be, what's their concern, what do they feel, what are they thinking, and if we go through those four stakeholder groups, it's clear there are some stakeholders who feel we need to do more.  That we need to be more concrete, more precise.  When I've had discussions with them, I point out the best practice forums which I think, you know, are a good example of good recommendations.  For quite a number of them, that's not enough.  For quite a number of them, it's great.  You know, so I think -- and we kind of got to this the last time in the meeting.  I think if we're really going to pull this apart, we probably need to slow down and look at each one of those stakeholder groups and have a really thoughtful discussion or set of discussions with them that really understands why it's not enough.  What are they looking for.  And you know, make a determination as to whether or not that's appropriate and fits within the IGF or not.  And I think probably, you know, at some point having those discussions every few months when we have a MAG meeting is not particularly helpful because it's -- there's not the time and it's not really conducive to really pulling apart these kind of complex discussions.  So I think we need to possibly structure an effort that looks at that and really tries to pull together what are the different views.  And people say we need more concrete outputs, what do you mean, what does it look like?  Where would they go?  Where would you see them coming from within the IGF ecosystem, and really trying to nail that down.  So maybe that's, you know, a substantive piece of work that maybe a working group or ad hoc working group goes forward with.

 With respect to the comment on the Paris call, because I don't -- I don't know yet what difference it will make to the work we have ongoing or what difference it will make to the German IGF.  I think we need to wait and see who comes in and whether or not they've come in because of all the hard work Germany is doing in terms of bringing them in or whether or not President Macron's comments and Secretary General's comments and, you know -- have kind of stirred interest.  The EuroDIG, I think, will be taking quite a careful look, if I understand correctly, and maybe Sandra can comment on it if she's still here, and, you know, as to whether or not -- what we should do with the Paris call.  And I think the -- what I -- my paraphrase of that would be a lot of people said the document was pretty good, most of it.  There was very little people would argue with.  A lot of people didn't like the process in terms of the way it came about, and I think there was also a kind of tone with, if you all don't do something, we will.  So those are the things I heard.  But when you looked at kind of what was in the document, I think there was a willingness to engage on the document and what does that mean?  What can we all do better?  And there's some effort happening through the Christ Church activities as well, which could, you know, potentially build on that.  And we can look at how do we tackle some of these really difficult -- difficult issues, social, technical, and policy, and how do we do that in the framework of kind of this evolving governance system.  But I don't know whether or not -- you know, maybe that's a question for the governments here in the room, whether or not they're feeling that there's great engagement, greater interest in their home governments, in their capitals given that -- the Paris IGF.  I will go to Ben Wallis and see if there's anybody else who wants to come in on this.  Ben, you have the floor.

 >>BEN WALLIS:  Thank you, Lynn.  I don't know -- this is more an opportunity for nonMAG members, but the floor seemed empty and you are encouraging comments and you asked a few specific questions that I thought I would respond to.

 On the Paris call, as we're talking about the Paris call, I think this is owned by the French government and the French government has been thinking about how to take it forward and consulting with signatories and looking at whether there are certain organizations which might be able to drive forward certain parts.  And, of course, from the IGF's perspective, the best practice forum on cybersecurity, which I co-facilitate, is looking at the Paris call along with other agreements and initiatives this year.  So I was going to add that on the Paris call.

 With regards to the various discussions in the working group on multiyear -- MWP, multiyear working program, and one of the discussions that you talked about was the extent to which more or different types of outputs are needed and, as you said just now, for some -- the existing outputs are enough and for others they aren't.

 I wanted to recall a suggestion that I think was made by Sylvia and possibly has been made by others in the past, but there was mention by a few people back at our April meeting that it could be quite helpful to -- whether it's through a survey or some research, to kind of collect stories and examples of different kinds of consequences and outputs that have resulted from bringing people together at the IGF.

 A lot of us have come from the Internet and Jurisdiction Network meeting this week.  And I understand that had some roots in the IGF, and you could see that as an output of the IGF.  And that's been incredibly successful, provided some really stimulating discussions on complicated Internet governance issues.

 So this was -- just to bring up this idea, is it possible to gather the experiences, whether through a survey or research and put them together as an example of what else in addition to those written outputs that you talked about by the BPFs and the DCs and the chair's messages, what else has accrued thanks to the existence of the IGF.

 And I appreciate resources need to be found to do that, and I and others have talked about whether it was possible to find some money in the budget for someone who could look at marketing and communications and kind of gathering and sorting the various outputs of the IGF.  I know that's a challenge.  And I also talked this morning at the donors meeting and asked about the possibility of whether it's possible to second people to the secretariat to do that kind of task, to do a specific project.  Armin Plum said he'd look into that and there's no obstacles in terms of U.N. rules.  It just has to be transparently done and open to anyone; and it would have to be for a clear, defined project rather than a general secondment.

 I thought I would just resurface some of those discussions that we had back at the April MAG meeting given that you were seeking comments and the queue is a little empty.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think those are very good comments, Ben.  

 And I think just working backwards -- in fact, we did have a secondment process up a couple of years ago for consultants for the BPF.  So I think that's -- as was stated again this morning -- completely possible, and we should do that.

 The other comment you made about collecting kind of stories or facts or contributions that we think we could say is an output, I actually don't think that needs to be resource intensive in terms of the collecting bit.  I think if we put up a Web form and we encourage people -- and we ask the NRIs whenever they meet or any of us, BPFs or working groups, as we are capturing ideas, maybe start every meeting with that question, close every meeting with that question and capture them.  And then those that are really substantive or worth fleshing out a little bit, we should then require some additional resource we can build on.  But I think that's -- almost just a little campaign we can run in the background in everything we're doing and start collecting.  

 I leaned over to Chengetai and said, We need to do this.  Maybe we will get a Web form up and some kind of little campaign going or something that will really get people to document that.  I know I have my own little list of things I've heard where they made -- and Markus has his.  But putting that one place where we could all learn from it and access it would be great.

 Wolfgang.  Wolfgang, you have the floor.

 >>WOLFGANG KLEINWÄCHTER:  Thank you very much.  My name is Wolfgang Kleinwachter.  I'm also a former MAG member.  And it's more a general observation.  

 I think, Lynn, a little bit earlier you said nobody wants to be against the Tunis Agenda.  And the Tunis Agenda has a fixed mandate in a certain time in 2005 which was very justified that the IGF is a forum for discussion, not for decision.

 And this was a very wise decision to give the IGF not a mandate for negotiations.  But meanwhile the world has changed, and we have negotiations in this field, not inside the IGF but in different places.  For cybersecurity, we have two negotiation tracks for the norms now under the First Committee of the General Assembly of United Nations.  We have the negotiations on the lethal autonomous weapons systems.  In the economy field, we have negotiations on the World Trade Organizations.  In the human rights field, we have negotiations in the human rights councils and rapporteurs.  That means we have a web decision-making bodies.

 What I see over the last years is there's no real linkage between the discussion in the IGF and the decision-making processes in organizations which have a mandate.  

 Though, if we speak about output and what people ask of the question, what is the output, what do people expect, the output they expect is the output of the IGF will influence decision-making, which is taking place in other bodies.  So that means if you want to move forward, you have to look for a certain linkage, a liaison between the discussion space and decision space.

 And I think we've discussed this already several times by saying we need message distribution systems, so messages from the IGF go directly to the negotiation bodies.  And then we invite the negotiation bodies to report back to the IGF.  This could enhance the debate and could bring additional relevance to the discussions of the IGF.

 But I know it's difficult to do it.  Probably the UNGA's -- the United Nations Group of The Information Society could be also helpful because you have all U.N. bodies where negotiations take place in this UNGA.  But this needs a little bit further investigation, how this can be translated into practical actions.  

 And probably the discussion of the High-Level annual report which will come out next week will help us to move concrete -- concrete mechanisms where we can close this gap.  

 Though, I do not recommend to change the mandate of the IGF into a negotiation body.  This is important to keep the IGF as it is, but you have to do something on top of the IGF.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Wolfgang.  And I like a lot of what you said in terms of liaisons and linkages.  Just to clarify my comment earlier about not breaking the Tunis Agenda, that was in reference to a specific set of discussions we were having in the MWP last year.

 I think there is obviously an HLPDC report coming out.  The Secretary-General felt more needed to be done in this area of Internet and digitalization.  You know, one would hope that having vested in that effort that there's some things which are helpful that we can learn from and that will improve all of our processes.  And we ought to think about how and when we take them on board.

 So I do think the discussion is different now, and I think the world is different now.  And I think these conversations are problematic if you try to have them too quickly because I think the language gets in the way a little bit.  

 And I think if we could figure out exactly what we mean when we say "useful output coming out of the IGF discussions," that would go feed decision-making elsewhere.  I mean, I can tell you I know a lot of people the first thing they'll say is "Who is the IGF community?  How do you put any kind of IGF stamp on it?"  

 And I don't think those questions are unanswerable.  I think we just need to spend time really figuring out what some of those processes look like.  And I think we need to make sure we always very carefully and accurately represent the providence of anything we say has a certain stamp.  

 We know what the best practice forum is.  Do you want to know who participated in it, what they said, what they did, what document they looked at, that's there as a chain.  It doesn't purport to be anything more than this group of people that were a chartered best practice forum in the IGF, did some work.  And their position is X.  These things are useful.  I'm talking too much now.

 So I think there's -- probably some interesting conversations coming up over the next couple of months.  And, you know, maybe the right way to focus them is really on outputs, what are the sort of outputs that would be useful and to whom.

 And then I would also encourage all of us to try to find one or two test cases or pilot examples or something to -- because that's the only way you learn and you actually understand if you are close or you are far apart in terms of what's possible in a lot of these discussions.

 So I now have Lori in the queue, sylvia, and then Anriette.

 Lori, you have the floor.

 >>LORI SCHULMAN:  Thank you.  My name is Lori Schulman.  I'm from the International Trademark Association.  And I want to thank the secretariat and the government of Germany for having this open session today and for being smart to have the overlap with the Internet and Jurisdiction conference.  I think it made easy for a lot of us to travel here and to participate in both fora.  So danka schoen.  Feeling dank.

 I have some thoughts to lead off what Wolfgang then said about practicalities and outputs because I do believe that word," output," can be extremely confusing.  Is it a piece of proposed legislation?  Is it a piece of proposed public-private partnership?  What is it?  

 And I don't necessarily think that this is even the job of the IGF to necessarily say what it is.  But I think what may be helpful in terms of output would be some sort of filtering done after the IGF report because what -- just from -- I would call myself involved in the sense that my organization does participate as an attendee and we have drafted proposals and done lightning sessions in the past.  

 We have not delved into a lot of the intersessional policy work.  Part of that is a resource issue.  And quite frankly, part of that has been some difficulty on my end translating work of the IGF into something that would be relevant for my members, which are mostly corporate members.  We have a diversity of members within the corporate sector, but they're generally corporate.

 That being said, the thought -- it might make it easier at the end when the reports are issued -- there's a lot of data, a lot of documentation, a lot of conversation.  Perhaps by having sort of a second step where results are filtered in particular ways, ones that may say, Oh, here are three proposed frameworks that came out.  Here's where you can find them or here's three proposed potential legislative responses to an issue.  Here's where they are.

 So, in other words, creating some sort of indexing or directory or something so that we're more than an engaged MAG member.  When a casual or when a less engaged MAG member wants to find the data, the data can be found, either by subject, by country, if there's something country specific or tech specific, or if it's a category.  I think you could split up the work and catalog the work in many different ways.

 And what I've found particularly helpful is there is a perception, I would say, in my sector, in the private sector, that IGF is really civil society.  And I would argue we're all civil society, whether you're corporate or nonprofit or academic.  We're all part of civil society.

 And perhaps thinking about either workshops or intersessional work -- and I would at this point volunteer to be part of any of that work -- just think about how do we translate what we've done in the last X, ten years to something that is a little more pragmatic from a private sector perspective as well.

 I think that academics and NGOs probably understand the work of the MAG and the IGF a little bit better than perhaps the corporate sector.

 I think doing some of that translation and cataloging and sorting could be very helpful because I will add that I think, yes, I think the role of the MAG is to have ideas bubble up, to have a safe space to have discussions.  By having that safe space, then we can take that work and those that care to influence governmental action, perhaps that's used one way.  Or perhaps someone is very interested in creating a public-private partnership.  Or in the case of I.P. and jurisdiction -- I learned that today, too, that apparently this project got off the ground by some casual conversations five years, six years ago.

 Gathering in that information, cataloging it and allowing people to find it and relate to it at a higher level, rather than a granular level, I think would be extremely helpful.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  Those are very interesting comments and really rich in information.

 I'm going to go to Sylvia and Anriette, and then we'll go to a break.  So it's not to -- not to respond more fully to your comments, Lori, just to make sure we get the other comments in.  

 Sylvia, you have the floor.

 >>SYLVIA CADENA:  Thank you, Lynn.  Sylvia Cadena, technical community.

 I -- just ideas that was just presented by my colleague across the table that -- I'm sorry, I missed your name.  But your ideas is pretty much what I just mentioned before about a project, right?  Is that with a secondment, like Ben mentioned, and some additional efforts to actually be able to build a tool or something that actually helps to monitor all of that.  Have a blog where all of this information can be incorporated and curated.

 Those are really concrete efforts to document the influence of all of these processes to allow people to have a voice to tell their story about how much the IGF has helped them or not in their advancement of a regulatory process in each one of these countries, change things internally in the organizations.  

 Things that are as simple as, you know, starting with research about how many times the word "multistakeholder" is mentioned in scholar papers and try to figure out how many of those actually cite sessions at the IGF.  

 Things like that are actually tools that can help you track influence that are not necessarily that someone will come forward and say, Here, dear IGF, thank you very much for everything you have done to me.  Here's the piece of legislation that we have produced thanks to -- right?  It would be great that people will come forward this way.  But as a lot of these processes are designed through different inputs from different spaces and different communities, it's kind of hard to say that it was only because of the IGF that that specific process happened, right?

 But there are tools and there are options where we can use machine learning, artificial intelligence to try to figure out what it is all that body of knowledge for all this decade and more of work can actually tell us.

 But that is a project, right?  That is something that could have a beginning and an end, that has a concrete outcome to develop, a concrete budget to allocate.  And it's something very difficult to justify just as an intersessional work with a little bit of support here and there.  It's a massive exercise.

 And I don't want to say let's don't do it.  I want to encourage us to say, "Yes, please, let's do it."  If that's the type of outcomes that people are in need of, if that is what -- if that is the difference that will allow this space to be strong and help us to continue on this journey, we need to consider alternative ways of doing this because probably the way we are looking for funding to do this is not really working.  So maybe -- maybe that is something that we need to consider.

 One thing that we have been doing in the work that they the APNIC Foundation is doing around Internet governance and capacity-building, around that, is that as part of the proposals that we are negotiating at the moment with several donors, we have included contributions to the IGF Trust Fund.  We have no idea if those contributions will actually come, if the donors will accept that, if that will actually happen.  But it's an opportunity for the organizations that are incorporated into this process to find creative mechanisms to actually be able to contribute to the IGF.

 We do that on the fellowship process we run, on several different activities that we try to build around the IGF.  And I know that many of the organizations that are around this table and attend the IGF do the same.  They structure projects and proposals that are linked to the IGF and maybe the secretariat.  

 The IGF as a whole is not aware of all that richness and all of that flow of people and information that is out there.

 I feel at times it's like a cat chasing its tail.  But we don't have the money to do it, so let's not do it.  And again, I just don't know how to say this.  What do we need to do to try to consider different ways of doing things so that this -- this really valuable space in a moment in history where dialogue and open -- openness is disappearing from the arena, right?  Where democracy is shrinking so that we keep that space and we value it and we nurture it the way it should be.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sylvia.  Very good comments as well.  We have Anriette in the queue and then Nigel, and then we will draw a line under this section and go to a brief coffee break.  Anriette, you have the floor.

 >>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you.  Sorry, Michael.  Fortunately Michael and I are friends, so he doesn't mind, I hope.  Just a bold -- it's again, Anriette Esterhuysen, Association for Progressive Communications.  On Lori and Sylvia's comment and Wolfgang's, this is actually -- I think this role of the IGF is very much in the Tunis Agenda.  I don't think we need to break the Tunis Agenda.  I think we can use the Tunis Agenda and this is the interinstitutional and dialogue.  And I think as Wolfgang has said, there are so many things happening at the moment.  There's this explosion of self-regulation from private sector companies, co-regulation, initiative between government and companies.  As Ben said many of us have been at Internet and jurisdiction.  There's also national jurisdiction, and there's the German content law, the Australian one.  And we're now at a stage where countries and other actors, governments, can share experience of this way of dealing with Internet-related challenges.  And I think if that -- in the MAG I know you are probably already planning to do this so I'm actually just hoping to encourage you, to make sure that in your programming and the design of the program this year that you really create a platform for people who were not part of the Christ Church call but who heard about it and who care about that issue and care about how extremist content is dealt with.  Similarly, the human rights council resolutions, which most people don't know about.  The themes, we have the themes, data governance, inclusion and resilience.  Maybe it can be structured along those.  But I really think, just remember that for most people who care about Internet policy, there is no other place other than the IGF which is the one-stop shop.  It's the one place where you can come to.  And I think as Lori said, in essence I think we are kind of -- you know, I wouldn't say we are all civil society, but yes, I think we all are concerned and interested.  And so really use that opportunity to generate demand for what the IGF can deliver which is being informed, learning, and then debating the pros and cons of all these initiatives and give a platform to those -- to those institutions, those governments, and those negotiation fora that Wolfgang was talking about.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  Thank you, Anriette.  Just very good comments.  Really appreciate this discussion.  Wish we had more time for it as well.  Nigel Hickson, you have the floor.

 >>NIGEL HICKSON: Yes, yes.  And I do hope (indiscernible).  Good afternoon, everyone.  I'm sorry I can't be with you in Berlin.  I've been listening to the discussion this afternoon, and the last -- last call for now I think has been absolutely excellent.  And I think excellent in two ways.  One, because we should absolutely be discussing this because the work of the MAG working group has done, and I think -- I think there was an excellent explanation by (indiscernible) on what took place there, but secondly because of the environment that we're in, that Wolfgang and Anriette and others have spoken -- and Lori, much more eloquently -- and Sylvia, much more eloquently than I can speak about.  But we are really in a -- a critical phase.  And I think we look -- we're in a critical phase, but we also have a critical opportunity, and that opportunity might be put in front of us in terms of the U.N. high-level report and the ability to respond to that and perhaps say something positive about the governance arrangements we would like for the future for this multistakeholder future.

 And here, I think, it's absolutely clear, from what Anriette and others have said, that the IGF is the only multistakeholder bottom-up global body we have to discuss these things.  And this comes back to us time and time again.  You get -- bodies come together, stakeholders come together and sign up the declarations, whether it's the Paris call, whether it's the Christ Church call, whether it's G7 or G20, and there's -- and this is excellent that this work goes on and the thought process of dealing with these complex problems is eloquently sort of reiterated.  But there is no global consensus on this.  Around the table we do not have global stakeholders, which we do at the IGF.  And that puts us in a unique position.  And I don't need to go over the methodology that would work or not work.  But clearly what Wolfgang has outlined now for a number of years must be a way forward on this to have some sort of way that things can be debated through intersessional and through sessional activities to come to a -- to come to some sort of output focus.  So, I mean, that's all I'll say and apologies for waffling a lot.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you very much, Nigel.  I really appreciate everybody's comments here and feels like we've sort of just opened up the conversations.  I think one of the things we need to think about is how do we actually continue this.  I'll just leave that as an open question.  I would like to ask us to take a very short 15-minute break and come back at 4:30 local time.  Really ask people to do that because we are behind schedule by a half hour.  So I think what we'll do when we come back in, if people are okay, is I would move directly to the updates from the national and regional IGF initiatives and then move to briefings from other related or relevant initiatives or organizations.  And if we have time, we come to the BPFs today and if not, we come to those tomorrow.  So seeing heads nodding yes that that's okay, so let's go forward.  That is a proposal.  I think there's probably coffee outside and downstairs again where it was before.  I would suspect snacks as well.  So 15 minutes.

 [ Break ]

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Ladies and gentlemen, can we please take our seats?  We are about ready to start after our 15-minute coffee break.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  So I hope those of you that are just coming into the room enjoy the NRI presentation.  And we still don't have people's attention.

 If we could come to order now.  We have two more really important sessions left on today's agenda.  One is the national and regional and youth  IGF initiatives discussion which Anja Gengo is going to lead us through.  And then after that, we will have updates from related intergovernmental organizations.  

 Anja, you have the floor.

 >>ANJA GENGO:  Thank you very much for the floor.  

 I would like just to start briefly with some records on the NRIs' network in terms of how many national and regional and subregional and youth IGFs are recognized.  I will refer to their joint work of the network.  And then luckily a number of NRIs are present here, the coordinators, members of the organizing committees.  So perhaps it would be the most effective if they could take the floor and speak concretely about their work.

 So very briefly for those that maybe are not aware of the nature of the NRIs, just to say that there wasn't a specific call for the NRIs in the Tunis Agenda that gave the mandate to the IGF.  However, I think the roots of the NRIs are actually stipulated in the paragraph 80 of the Tunis Agenda where it encouraged development of multistakeholder processes on a national and regional and international levels.

 Some of the NRIs started their work in 2006 and so on.  For example, the Caribbean IGF even predates the IGF itself.  We're very fortunate to have very a firm network today of more than 100 NRIs to what I will come a bit later.

 Just very briefly to say as well that the NRIs are completely independent in their work.  They entrusted the IGF secretariat to run the recognition process.  First of all, looking at whether the NRIs adhere to the core IGF principles which means the IGF secretariat together with the NRIs look at whether the NRIs are multistakeholder in their organization, whether they are bottom-up, open, transparent, inclusive, and noncommercial in their work.

 All these core principles are also reflected in the toolkit of all NRIs that was produced in 2016, '17.

 So you can see on this graph that the NRIs number has -- is continuing to grow.  And in 2019 actually at this present moment we are speaking about 114 officially recognized NRIs with having 82 countries that established their processes, 17 regions, and 15 youth IGFs.  

 Looking just from a very global geographic review, you can see there is a solid balance of the NRIs spread across the world.

 And now maybe going just briefly into the NRIs' integration at the annual IGF processes, focusing primarily on the 2019 meeting.  So since 2016, the NRIs were requesting a main session from the MAG.  And so far that session was approved, and it was organized collaboratively with all NRIs.

 This year through a bottom-up, open, consultative process of all NRIs, the network has identified the topic for this year's session and that, I guess, tomorrow and the day after we will be discussing whether this session will be approved and whether we will go into implementation.  But so far we know that the focus should be on the emerging technologies and their interfaces with inclusion, security, and human rights.

 Aside of the main session, for the past two IGFs, the NRIs were organizing the collaborative sessions.  These are interactive sessions that are organized by NRIs from different regions, geographically speaking, on a topic of mutual interest.  All these topics are identified through a bottom-up, open, consultative process of the NRIs.  And we started that process for this year in February, closed it in late April.

 So these six topics that you can see on the presentation are actually the results of that process.  So you can see that the focus for the sessions this year will be on cybersecurity, on access, data protection, human rights, surveillance, and harmful content on the Internet.

 It is already a tradition that aside of these sessions I have mentioned now, the NRIs are organizing the so-called coordination session.  That is an open work meeting between all NRIs, between our representatives from the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the chair of the MAG, the secretariat representatives and, of course, the wider IGF community of whoever has interest to learn more about the NRIs and also primarily brainstorm on how can we all work together and advance the entire IGF ecosystem.

 This year the NRIs have applied to have a booth.  So for this year, what we're trying to do is preparing materials for that booth.  So we are producing some publications, flyers on the nature of the NRIs' network, how to connect to it, individual NRIs, and a very unique presentation that will outline more than 70 NRI meetings that we expect to happen in this year with photos, with some concrete outcomes of those meetings, which I think would be very informative for the community.

 And aside of just focusing primarily on the annual meeting, the NRIs are, of course -- despite the fact they are independent -- are very much part of the IGF's process that goes throughout the year and with that the intersessional activities.  They are contributors to our best practice forums.  Part of them are also part of the dynamic coalitions.

 And, of course, depending on the year, we identify joint objectives.  So, for instance, in past years, we worked on developing publications together.  This year is very specific because of the -- what you heard at the beginning of this day.  We're focusing on developing capacity in -- (feedback)

 Just a second.

 We're focusing on developing capacity in developing countries that have their own IGF processes.  Of course, consulting with the NRIs and following the bottom-up request from the multistakeholder organizing committee of the NRIs in order to meet their request and what's needed to strengthen the processes on national and regional levels.

 And, yes, very shortly, if you would like to learn more about the NRIs, I think the best starting point is to contact the IGF secretariat that will put you in touch with other NRI colleagues or you can quite directly to the NRIs' mailing list.  You can see the subscription here.

 Before maybe you will give floor to individual NRIs that are present in this room, what I will tell just for the record, that the latest national IGF that we recognized was Vanuatu IGF and they already had their meeting, which was very successful.

 Tomorrow, for example, the Finnish IGF will be celebrating its tenth birthday.  They will be streaming also in English, aside of the national language.  So we do try to invite you to balance and maybe follow back and forth that important anniversary.

 So that would be it for me from now.  If you have any questions, I would be happy to respond.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you very much, Anja.  As always, a very informative and very efficient update.

 Now, what we wanted to do with these sessions was not only get a status update in terms of current activities and that sort of thing but really hope to a discussion -- I know this isn't the best process for doing that in.  It's a very big room -- with respect to what we can do to better support the NRIs, what we can do to increase the collaboration.  

 It's really important that the MAG actually hear from the NRIs.  But then also if there are any other comments from community members with respect to how they see that engagement and any thoughts or suggestions they have for improving it.  

 Again, since this is the open consultation day, we ask MAG members to be in a listening mode versus a lot of discussion.  Are there any NRIs who want to come in and sort of supplement what Anja said?  Or any comments from any community members?  

 We have quite a number of MAG members who are active in their NRIs.  So if you want to speak in your NRI role, then please feel free to do so.

 Desiree, sorry.  Desiree, you have the floor.

 >>DESIREE ZACHARIAH:  Thank you, Lynn, and good afternoon.  

 I would just like to follow up with this report to just take this opportunity to remind ourselves because we're talking about strengthening of the IGF.  And we earlier also talked about, you know, what are the concrete outputs that the IGF can produce.  And we somehow keep forgetting that the national IGFs are the real output of this global IGF and that we -- that we started back in 2006.  

 We were thinking the real success would be if there wasn't a global one but we had 191 plus active NRIs.  So I'm very pleased to here this is going really well, over 100 NRIs, and also that regional are taking off -- regional IGFs are also being strengthened as well as this new youth IGF which is something that we should keep promoting.

 So it's a -- the less formal they are and easier they are to meet, maybe they could experiment and would be good to do an analysis if some of them are organized just through Meetup groups to have some kind of adjunct IGF prep calls.  It has to be a little bit less formal, but it would hopefully contribute to the overall success of NRIs.

 And whilst I have the opportunity to comment on the previous discussion -- or I'll stop here and come back if people want to comment on NRIs.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Desiree.  Good points.  And, indeed, the NRIs are one of the, you know, most -- most important, more central component I think to all the IGF activities.

 We have Sylvia in the queue.  Sylvia, you have the floor.

 >>SYLVIA CADENA:  Thank you, Lynn.  Sylvia Cadena, technical community.

 I just wanted to build a little bit on the comments that Desiree just made and also mention something that Anja highlighted about the Vanuatu IGF.  I'm the co-chair for the APR IGF.  And it was fantastic to see that after hosting the APR IGF in Vanuatu last year, on the last day of the event, they went on and decided it was probably a good idea to have a similar space for those conversations.  And how much they are engaged now with the actual global IGF to try to bring content from the global sessions and discussions that are happening there to the -- their local one in Bislama, the local language in Vanuatu, in making use of all the skills they learned about remote participation that was part of the process of setting out the APR IGF in Vanuatu.

 So I think that is really important that those spaces are -- find a way so that the documents that they produce, the analysis that they produce on their own local laws and their own local frameworks are captured somehow into how the IGF actually influenced policy all the way down and up.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  That is a great example as well.  Thank you, Sylvia.

 Carlos, you have the floor.

 >>CARLOS AFONSO:  Quickly, I can speak about the Internet -- the IGF -- the pre-IGF forum in Brazil, which is the ninth forum we are promoting in October in Manaus, Amazonas.  It would be quite interesting to hear about the regional IGF which will be in has been in La Paz, Bolivia.  And we are lucky to have here Maria Paz Canales as one of the co-organizers.  So it would be great.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I'm sure it will be great.  Thank you, Carlos.  Thank you, Maria.

 Lianna, you have the floor.

 >>LIANNA GALSTYAN:  Thank you very much.  I'd like to thank Anja for this great presentation and the overall work that she's doing is a focal point of NRIs.  It's not that easy to coordinate the work with so many initiatives.  But it's doing very well a fantastic job.  

 And thanks, Anja, for that.

 I'd like also to thank the German government for giving an opportunity -- the funding opportunity for all those people who haven't been involved previously to the IGF and so that they can apply for it this year and attend the IGF in Berlin.

 This is a real challenging issue, the funding to find money to come for the IGF.  So thanks to the German government for this opportunity.

 And the other thing as an NRI we're doing is the collaborative session.  And I'd like to highlight that I hope all these bottom-up activities that we're doing and coming together over some topics would be an added value to the overall program of IGF.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Lianna.  

 Maria, you have the floor.

 >>MARIA PAZ CANALES:  Thank you, Lynn.  Maria Paz Canales representing civil society.  As Carlos mentioned, I am also part of the organizing committee of Latin American IGF which will take place in 6 to 8 August this year in La Paz, Bolivia.  We are very happy with the result of the Latin American IGF in sparking this interest across the region to have national initiatives talking about Internet governance.  

 It was the case that many countries like Brazil were really ahead of time, like hosting a national IGF.  But in other places of Latin America, the hosting of Latin American IGF has sparked the interest at local level.  And many of the national meetings are starting -- have started as a consequence of hosting the Latin American IGF.

 In the case of this year, we are now in the process of setting the agenda.  We just opened our call for the community, can input through a survey about the different topics that they want to include in the agenda for our upcoming Latin American IGF.

 Part of the agenda will be taken from this consultation, and another percentage of the agenda will be structured according to the different proposals that we can gather in the organizing committee from the different stakeholders.  So this is a new modality that we started last year.  And it was a very good way in which we could analyze a little bit the selection of the topics and include some innovative ones and also starting to explore, like, more flexible formats.  

 So we had a very good result last year in Argentina, the last version.  And we will be repeating this model.  But, of course, for setting those topics that will be proposed for each one of the stakeholder groups, it's really important like to continually hear the community as I say not only to the consultation but also other kind of inputs that we can informally receive toward channels about some of the things that could be good to be incorporated as part of these proposals of the different stakeholders.  

 So it's what I can update for now.  We think that we want more collaboration with the global IGF.  We sometimes feel that the timing in which we hold our session, it's a little bit against that collaboration because it came too late for, like, being able to include some of the topics that we have as conclusion in our regional meeting.  But for sure we will find between those topics that were mentioned before that are already accepted for different session for the national and regional initiative, an opportunity for us to provide what we heard and what we collect from the community at the regional Latin American IGF.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you very much, Maria.

 Mary, you have the floor.

 >>MARY UDUMA:  Thank you, Chair.  My name is Mary.  I'm from Nigeria, Nigerian Internet Governance Forum.  

 I want to first thank Anja for a great presentation, summarized all that has been happening in the NRIs' network.

 For me we're going to hold the eighth national IGF in July in Nigeria.  And for the first time, we're going to have Nigeria School of Internet Governance.  

 We open the call in early May.  And by the time we close by the 20th of May, we had about 600 applications.  And we couldn't manage all the applications, but we are designing -- in the first instance, we are co-hosting with Nigeria Chapter of ISOC.  So members of ISOC, especially the young ones, they applied.

 We counted more than certain number for the school.

 Then we also have the Nigeria youth IGF which will be coming up back-to-back with the national IGF.  That will happen in July, July 10 and July 11.  And the eighth national IGF, we also made a call -- we did a consultation in terms of getting the theme and the subtheme.  And we just made a call for speakers.  And the number of interests that we have seen is just very, very interesting.  So many people want to be associated with an IGF.  So I think that is very important to host.

 And our government institutions are also interested.  And they have been giving us a lot of support we are not just from the civil society or academia, rather from government and all other stakeholders.  

 And when we finish our IGF, we do have a recommendation.  What we normally do is we send these recommendations to the stakeholders.  What they do with that recommendation is what we don't know from them.

 And then we also are planning the -- Nigeria is a big country.  So normally when we do the national, we do subnational.  And this year we're going to do subnational.  We're looking at September to do the subnational IGF.  And we may be going to the eastern part of the country to hold that subnational IGF so that those that are not taking part at the national level, since we're holding it in ideally the capital -- or the economic capital, Lagos.  So that's what we're planning for this year.

 And we're looking at digital commonwealth for development.  The digital commonwealth for development is our overarching theme, and we have our subthemes already published on our website.

 Then I want to speak about the West African IGF, which is also coming up in July.  And the country hosting is -- The Gambia is hosting the West African IGF.  And that will be our 11th.  It should have been 12th but for the Ebola so we couldn't hold it one year in between.  So we have that.

 And as of today, the focal point of the countries in West Africa have given us their focal point and we are planning seriously for The Gambia hosting the West Africa IGF from July 25 and 26.  But it will be preceded by the School of Internet Governance as well as the youth IGF.  

 The West African Youth IGF has just been accredited and endorsed by the secretariat.  Thank you, Anja, for that.  And they are working so hard.  

 I think Adama is here and Ashlea (phonetic).  They are part of the youth -- West African Youth IGF, and they may be able to say more about it.

 But the enthusiasm we have seen with the youth trying to be part of the IGF is very good for the process so that some of us that are aging will have other people that will take over from us.

 And at the African level, we are hoping between July and September we will hold our Africa IGF.  Three countries are already bidding, and we are consulting with topics and subtopics.  

 And last week we were at African Union Commission, and we have been trained to train others on School of Internet Governance.  It's a project between Africa Union and European Union.  So African Union got funding for that.  And over 70 Africans as part of these stakeholder groups were there to be trained.

 And I think Michael, despite the certificate that we were given.   And Aretha (phonetic) was there.  She was our coach.  And the DiploFoundation as well.  So the momentum is catching up because Africa wants -- African Union wants to see all countries in Africa run their process, establish their own NRIs.  And those that have not started, they are gearing up to start.  And we have three countries already bidding to host, and we are hoping that one of them will give us a good proposal and host.

 If there are any questions for the African side of the -- African continent, including my country, I'm available to answer.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mary.  That was a very comprehensive update.  We need to stop this discussion after the current queue.  We have a number of people that are calling in for the other related organizations.  And that session should have started at the top of this hour.  So if we could ask everybody to be as concise as possible with the comments, and if we need to come back and revisit some of this, we can try to find some other time in the agenda.  Again, I think we lost a little too much time with the coffee break, and we're going to revisit those for tomorrow.

 Jennifer.  Jennifer, you have the floor.

 >>JENNIFER CHUNG:   Thank you, Lynn, for giving me the floor.  Jennifer Chung, private sector, MAG member.  So I'm not speaking in my MAG member capacity but with my APR IGF secretariat hat on.  I'll be very brief.  Just supplementing what Sylvia mentioned earlier about APR IGF< we're also celebrating our tenth birthday this year.  This year the forum will be in Vladivostok, Russia, July the 16th through the 19th.  We've already actually had the program issued earlier this week.  And there will be 32 sessions in total, including plenary sessions and workshop sessions and capacity-building sessions.

 The core conference has pre-events which is capacity building and of course we also have the youth IGF which we put a lot of emphasis on, especially in the Asia Pacific region.

 The theme this year is Enabling a Safe, Secure, and Universal Internet for All in Asia Pacific.  We're very excited to have that, and it will be online.  It will be transcribed.  And hopefully people who can't join us in person in Vladivostok can join us online and participate remotely.

 Ananda also mentioned earlier that the APR IGF 2020 will be held in Nepal.  So we're very happy to have Nepal's support, and hopefully we'll be able to get that all organized very soon since we have this knowledge very early.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Jennifer.  And I think all these NRI activities are so important, and I'm really so happy when we hear about countries like Nepal actually holding them for the first time as well.  It's really exciting.

 Melinda, you have the floor.

 >>MELINDA CLEM:   Melinda Clem.  I'll speak in my capacity as co-chair of IGF USA.

 I wanted to share a couple of highlights about both our process and what our annual event on July 25th will entail.

 We follow a similar process in terms of being very open and inclusive, and when we're putting -- from the beginning, where we have an open call for topics.  This year we had over 75.  We culled those into 15 themes and then conducted an open survey, open to all participants in the United States.

 We were able to, given the timing, highlight the primary themes for the IGF meeting in November, to give those a little more visibility.  And each of those themes will be a part of our annual event, which will have -- cover eight different topics.  In addition to the three themes here, we're looking specifically at content regulation, antitrust in big tech, 5G and the technology that that's enable, artificial intelligence, and is the tech lash justified, which is a somewhat unique American concept.

 Our event will also be live streamed.  Again, it's on the 25th of July, for anyone who would like to participate.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Melinda.  There's so much I would like to build on with every one of these conversations, and I'm just feeling time -- time pressure, because one of the reasons we actually did the narratives and the reference was that we were hoping that that would actually allow the NRIs to flesh out their own set of discussions and topics, build their NRIs around things that were of interest to them and then could report back on that, and that would feed next year's process as well, so that there was an informative loop.  But again, I'm just trying to stay really close to the schedule here.

 Concettina.

 >>CONCETTINA CASSA:   Thanks, Lynn, for giving me the floor.  This is Titi Cassa, government stakeholder group.  I want to give just a few update about the activities of Italy IGF.  

 We have just assigned the location, so the next Italy IGF 2019 will be held in (saying name) the 29, the 30, the 31st of October.

 We have also launched two public call, one a call for issues to address thematic session of the plenary, and the other one is the call for workshop proposal.  We are going to evaluate all these proposal in July, try to reach for an agenda at the end of July or the beginning of August.

 And I want also to share some thought about how to improve maybe IGF.  I think it's important, I mean, to have a more involvement of the stakeholders in all the activity that are related to the IGF, all intersessional activity like the BPF and also the dynamic coalition.  And it's important we should try to reach also outside the IGF cycle, also the community.  And to do this maybe NRIs could give a big support to the IGF.

 So and another point I want to point out is about Best Practice Forum.  Usually Best Practice Forum will last for one year.  They end and they restart.  Maybe having a longer period, two years, for instance, which could help, I mean, to have the attention of people that after the IGF, when the IGF closes, maybe they won't work -- still work on the BPF, but we need to activate the process in order to understand if the BPF will be rechartered for the next year, and so forth.  So thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you.  Those are good observations, and particularly the last one with respect to the BPF, too.  Thank you.

 Arsene, you have the floor.

 >>ARSENE TUNGALI:   Thank you.  So I was thinking it's really great to see the number of NRIs which is increasing every year, and thanks to the work of the secretariats and Anja who are doing this.  And I think it's a very good move and a very good way to ensure the discussion is kind of bottom-up, because those discussions that are happening at national or regional levels are fitting into the global IGF.  And so this is kind of an indication that the IGF process should not end; that the global forum needs to be strengthened enough so that it can continue to be stronger and stronger.

 But, however, this comes with one or two challenges.  And maybe I should call them opportunities, because many of these participants to these NRIs are now eager to attend or be part of the global process.  As well, of course, is the subsequent sub or regional events.  And many of these, people cannot fund their participation, and so there is a need to have someone to gather for the expenses of making sure those are also able to attend the global events.

 So I see one of the ways to solve this is to encourage many more supporters or funders, and many of those organizations that are bringing people to the IGF.  And I don't know how this can happen but they can work with the NRI network in order to be able to conduct outreach and to be able to reach out to those NRIs.

 About the African IGF, I have just two more updates to add.  A lot has been said by Mary already, but I wanted to add the African School in Governance is scheduled to happen right before the African IGF, which will be first week of September this year.  And this is a tradition that I think is coming back, something to encourage, because it allows participants from the school to also be able to attend their first African IGF, which in my sense, I believe it's something very good.

 Lastly, the DRC IGF is scheduled for July, and it will be happening in Goma.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Arsene.  That's very interesting.  Very encouraging as well.  

 Raquel, you have the floor.

 >>RAQUEL GATTO:   Thank you very much, Lynn.  I will be very short.  

 I'm Raquel Gatto, but I am speaking in my capacity as part of the LAC IGF committee.  Just to complement the excellent update that Maria Paz already did.  But there is one major activity that the LAC IGF committee decided to take this year, which is an assessment to evaluate the LAC IGF itself and look ahead in the future what it can improve and how it can be improved and what can be done.  And in order to do this assessment, we are looking into several layers, if you will, if you may say.  The governance structure, the processes like the agenda shaping, the outcomes, the stakeholder participation, as well as the interactions between the national, regional, and the global IGF.  

 Right now it's entered the stage of collecting, gathering with interviews with experts within the region, including some of the four members, MAG members, and also benchmarking with some of the successful experiences that we hear here in the room.

 So just to say, Anja, thanks for your excellent work.  If you have not been contacted yet, you will be, and several others.  And if anyone else wants to share any of those experiences, please just let us know.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Raquel.

 And Annette, you have the floor.

 >>ANNETTE MUEHLBERG:  Thank you very much.  Annette Muehlberg.  I'm a member of the Steering Committee of the German IGF.  I would like to say hello to everybody and just to inform you that the German IGF will take place in September, and that we are very happy to work together with Anja in linking up with these NRIs, and also try to work out messages that interact.  And I think this could be helpful so that we really have focus on all these different topics and have for each of these topics a special message.  And we try to coordinate with Anja.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Annette.

 Just quickly before we move to the next section, I really want to thank all the NRIs and Anja, of course, as well for all the effort you put in all year long for all of your activities.

 And I would also like us to think about how we can actually make this session a little richer.  I mean, the things I've learned from the NRIs I've learned from 101 discussions because I happen to be in an NRI and I see that there's a different process they use to kind of get outputs together.  A lot of those have come into the IGF processes.  Some of them actually came into our workshop evaluation process discussions a couple years ago, specifically from the Latin American IGF community and EuroDIG as well.

 So if we could find a way to start to share a lot of those learnings or understand what sort of things you've piloted and what worked and what didn't work and which things might bring up to the -- it would be really helpful.  And I don't want to take away from these updates because they're extremely informative.  But maybe I would just ask Anja to think if there's some way to capture some of these updates, even in just a table or a Word document that just gives us a snapshot maybe for each one of the IGFs of kind of current activities or plans as they're moving forward.  Because it's extremely interesting and really informational.  But I think we're missing an opportunity to actually learn from each other and the processes.  And I've said I've seen so many good things come up from the NRIs, but to some extent because I happened to experience them or have a conversation over coffee with somebody.

 So I don't know if we start to trigger a discussion which said what are the things that are happening in the NRIs from a sort of pilot or increase outputs or that we want to have a discussion on, but if we can find a way to really kind of get a lot of that richness, I think that would be (indiscernible).

 So happy to have a different brainstorming discussion in whatever kind of format or cycle works as well.  So we just make sure we're really learning kind of deeply from all the practices at the local and regional levels.

 But a sincere thank you to everybody, and apologies as well for having to sort of push this through a little bit.

 Chengetai informs we actually have ten organizations that would like to make some comments here before the end of the meeting.  So I would like us all to go through those.  If we need to run over a little bit, I'm hoping that we can get some support from the transcribers to do that.  Maybe we can he can which in the background, and I guess from the AV support as well.

 Chengetai said he thinks that's possible.

 So this section of the agenda is really to invite some related organizations to come in and talk to some of their Internet governance efforts as it either impacts or is of interest to or we can feed into their efforts specific to the IGF.  So I'm not sure, am I meant to go by the order that's actually here first?

 So Chengetai has a list, and I don't know if it's public anywhere, but I'll list out the next sort of three so we don't have people kind of confused as to what's happening in the queue.  But the first one is the W3C World Economic Forum, second is UNICEF, third is ISOC, and then there's another six or seven beyond them as well.

 So for the World Economic Forum, we have Manju George and Derek O'Halloran.  Manju or Derek, or both, you have the floor.  Thank you.  and very sorry for the late start here, too.

 >>MANJU GEORGE:  Hello? 

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Hi, Manju.

 >>MANJU GEORGE:  Hi Lynn.  Thank you.  Hello to everybody in Berlin as well to the IGF community online.  My name is Manju George, and I'm responsible for some of our digital-economy related portfolios here at the World Economic Forum.  Apologies for not being there in person, and thank you to the IGF and all of you for the opportunity to contribute.

 At the forum on the topic of digital economy, in partnership with all of (indiscernible).  We've outlined a mission to help shape an inclusive, sustainable, and trustworthy digital future.  And within that, identified at least six shared outcomes that the world, as collectively, need to achieve and where deeper public/private cooperation is key to making progress.

 The first one there is that we leave no person behind, especially getting the remaining 50% of the world's population online and sort of ensuring a safe and valuable Internet, and some of the re-thinking of investment models or collaboration models that need to happen to get us there.

 A second area that we are focused on is in advancing digital identities that empower individuals and offering them a range of opportunities online while also protecting their rights and personal freedoms.

 A third area of focus is the digital transformation strategies that are adopted either by businesses or governments or civil society organizations, especially in introducing new technologies or new business models, the platform business model, 5G, the fourth industrial revolution technologies.  How do we make sure those are sustainable and responsible?

 A fourth area is particularly around the disruptions that are caused by the fourth industrial revolution technologies, be it AI or IoT or blockchain.  We recognize that those are unprecedented, and in that new context, you need new roles and agile ways of making those roles.  So the governance question is one that we are particularly interested in.

 A fifth area is how do you keep our people, processes, and infrastructure secure and resilient to manage existing as well as new threats.

 And finally, how are we able to share data in ways that maximize public good while having clarity on how the rights and permissions are shared across the various stakeholders.

 And in each of these six areas -- and recognize that there are additional areas and different framings possible.  This is just one frame that we arrived at in consultations with all of our members and partners.

 And in each one of these six area, our approach to impact is to be a platform that supports mission-aligned actions and coalitions and collaborations from our partners and constituents, to amplify those, to support those, to help scale those, and to accelerate those.

 And in -- a generic theory of change, there seems to be, to build awareness about an issue, to evolve shared understanding, and catalyze action.

 So concretely, progress is being made through our events around the year, connections that are made across the various organizations in our network, our public engagement channels, et cetera.

 We have great admiration for the IGF community and have had opportunities in the past to participate in some IGFs on specific issues within those six area that I outlined.  So are very keen to hear more about the activities and ideas represented in the community and where there may be opportunities for the forum to help as a platform.  And so we look -- really look forward to collaborating through the year as well as in November.  And for those of you who are in Berlin, one of my colleagues, Julius Schulte is in the room.

 And thank you again for the opportunity, Lynn.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you very much, Manju.  And maybe, Julius, if you can just put your hand a little higher than everybody, we'll know who you are.  I'm also very conscious that there was a proposal from (indiscernible) with respect to some possible areas of collaboration that we put on the table in January but didn't advance at that meeting (indiscernible) not appropriate representation.  So I think we should dust them off and take them into account the same time we look at some of these opportunities of Manju.  So thank you.  

 Next on the list I have UNICEF, Jasmina, I think.  Jasmina.

 JASMINA BYRNE: Hello?  Hello?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes, we can hear you.

 >>JASMINA BYRNE: Okay, all right.  Thank you very much and good afternoon to all the participants and a very big thanks for inviting me to present some of our work.  

 My name is Jasmina Byrne, and I'm the chief of policy in UNICEF's division of data research and policy.  And I just wanted to mention that the key themes of IGF 2019 resonate very strongly with the priorities of UNICEF and the areas where we work.  As an organization that is concerned with child rights, we are interested in seeing a greater focus in children as children constitute about one third of all Internet users globally and in the developing countries that percentage is even higher, up to 50% of all users are those who are below the age of 18.

 So our priorities for the organization are really to ensure that all children have affordable access to high quality online resources and with a particular focus on girls and children who live in remote and underserved communities, we are working to ensure and establish connectivity to schools through the partnerships like Generation Unlimited through our collaboration with the ITU.  But through Bringing Connectivity we also are hoping that we can strengthen our engagement on development of skills and literacies needed for young people and children to thrive and -- in the 21st century economy.

 So in addition to development of skills and literacies are priorities to ensure that children remain safe online from abuse, exploitation, harassment, and bullying and that their data and privacy are protected.

 In order to achieve this, we work with the private sector, with governments and civil society, with a range of partners including platforms such as World Economic Forum and we do that through various different initiatives through doing research with children and particularly our flagship initiative is Global Kids Online which is a national household survey with children and their parents and carers about opportunities and risks they face online.  We work closely through the We Protect Global Alliance on prevention and protection from sexual abuse and exploitation online.  We work on innovation in using digital technology to help us achieve the goals in health and education sector, but we also develop policy guidelines and recommendations for the Global Community on Children's Issues.  

 So I just wanted to mention one of these initiatives now, in the interest of time.  We have started working with IEEE, Berkman Klein Center, government in Finland, World Economic Forum, and some other partners to develop policy guidelines on artificial intelligence in child rights.  The idea really behind these guidelines is to support the governments and the private sector as they're developing their policies and strategies in artificial intelligence to understand the benefits and the risks for children.  As we are witnessing now, that many countries are actually starting to either adopt or develop these policies.  We're also noticing an absence of focus on children and their rights and unique position children have.

 On the 26th of June we are going to have a kick-off workshop in New York with some 50 experts from -- and representatives from the government and the private sector, and following that workshop we are then going to start really drafting these guidelines that are going to be open for consultation.  We're hoping also to work with a number of countries to try to pilot them and to turn them into practice and also to develop appropriate standards that would accompany these guidelines.

 So in -- we hope that at the IGF in Berlin we will use this as an opportunity to share the progress and solicit input.  But also to engage more actively with the whole IGF community and to have a broader dialogue with you all about how to ensure that children's rights are respected in the digital environment.  Thank you so much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jasmina.  UNICEF is one of the connections we made through the side event in New York alongside the STI forum, so really pleased to hear your update and really look forward to engagement on some critical issues and some I think we probably haven't spent quite enough time on, but I know a couple of MAG members are very interested in.

 So next we have ISOC.  We have Rinalia, and then just so people can get prepared, we have UNESCO and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers are the next two speakers after.  But Rinalia, you have the floor.

 >>RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Thank you, Lynn.  Hello, everyone.  Good afternoon.  I'm Rinalia Abdul Rahim.  I'm the Senior Vice President for strategy and implementation at Internet Society.  It is a pleasure to be here in Guttentag.  And I'd like to just take a moment to express my appreciation because I'm here in person and I'd like to express it in person to the people in the room.  

 So first, I'd like to congratulation the German hosts, Ms. Daniela Bronstrup and her team, for the excellent work in organizing this meeting and other related meetings.  I personally am looking forward to the IGF at the end of this year because I think it will be held to a high German standard of efficiency and productivity.  

 Next I'd like to express my appreciation for the outreach efforts to raise more awareness and participation at the IGF.  At the side event, at the fourth multistakeholder forum on science, technology and innovation, one that was held last month, was particularly useful for us at the Internet Society.  And I'd also like to thank the IGF secretariat, Chengetai and his team, UN DESA, the MAG members around this room, and its marvelous chair who's done, I think, a tremendous job.  Thank you so much for the hard work.  It's well appreciated.

 As you know, the Internet Society champions an open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy Internet.  I'm not sure if everybody knows that but I thought I would just mention it.  And I'd like to take the opportunity to highlight a few key initiatives that I think may intersect with the work of the IGF itself.  

 The first is an initiative in connecting the world where we focus on building capacity and creating an enabling environment for community networks to grow around the world in every region.  This is something that we're doing now, and it is something that we will continue to do into the future to address the needs of the last billion.

 The second initiative that I'd like to flag is something called MANERS, which stands for Mutually Agreed Norms in Routing Security.  This is an initiative to help ensure that our global Internet traffic routing is secure and it is oriented towards reducing Internet leakages and hijacking.  

 And a third initiative that I'd like to flag is essentially an initiative on IoT, Internet of Things.  We collaborate with Consumers International to raise awareness amongst consumers so that they know that they need to demand privacy and security in their IoT devices.  We also work on developing a privacy and security framework targeted at manufacturers because we think that they need to come up with or either comply with standards.  And we work with Mozilla to establish minimum standard as well as we have our own higher level standards for those high achievers.  And also, we have produced policy tool kits for policymakers to make them aware so that if they have manufacturers of IoT in their countries, that they need to engage them to make sure that manufacturers comply with these standards.

 And finally I'd like to touch on our initiatives on the IGF itself.  We have been supporting and participating at the IGF at all levels, globally, regionally, nationally, and locally at the organization, ISOC organization, as well as through our regional bureaus and our chapters, and we expect to continue to do that.  We believe that -- we believe in strengthening the IGF, essentially.  And we hope that the high-level panel on digital cooperation report that will be delivered to the U.N. Secretary-General very soon will support needed reforms of the IGF while maintaining its open and multistakeholder nature.  And we believe that the world is better off with an IGF that is capable of ensuring its relevance, effectiveness, and inclusivity.  Other forums that do not do this is not necessary.  We need something that works.  We need to have a forum where all the stakeholders can come together and talk about issues that affect the Internet and users around the world.  Right now we've just come from -- Raquel and I have just come from the Internet and Jurisdiction Conference, and we have observed this trend, also at the Internet Society, this increasing appetite for Internet regulation.  And Internet regulation, other than climate change, is likely the most pressing policy discussion of our time.  And we need fora that are effective for us to come together and discuss, because regulation of the Internet is not something that can be approaching easily or hastily.  It requires a careful approach because of complexity and interdependencies.  

 So that's my message for today.  Thank you for hearing me.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Rinalia.  And thank you for all the many years of strong ISOC support and all of the levels as well.  I don't say that because of my past position.  I do think it's important.  

 Next we have Sasha from UNESCO.  Sasha, you have the floor.

 >>SASHA RUBEL:  Thank you very much, Lynn.  And thank you to everybody in the room.  And it looks must sunnier in Berlin than it is in Paris so I wish that I was there with you all.  My name is Sasha Rubel, and I coordinate the work of the IGF on behalf of UNESCO.  First and foremost, I would like to echo the thanks expressed in the room to the excellent work of the IGF secretariat.  It was a great pleasure working with you this past year organizing the IGF at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, and we look forward to working closely with you leading up to the IGF in Berlin.

 I would just like to take this opportunity very briefly to talk -- express to the room some of the work that we have been doing in the framework of our Internet universality indicators and artificial intelligence and specifically highlight areas of possible cooperation going forward, both in the framework of the upcoming forum but also beyond.

 As many of you are familiar with, at our last general conference or second to last general conference in 2015 UNESCO member states adopted our Internet universality framework which argues that the Internet should be right spaced, open, accessible, and multistakeholder.  And following the adoption of this framework, UNESCO undertook a two-year global multistakeholder consultation process to define the Internet universality indicators based on what we call the Rome Principles.  And this framework was approved last November by UNESCO's intergovernmental program which is the international program for the development of communication.  

 These indicators, based on the Rome Principles, look at four key dimensions of national Internet environments.  Specifically, it's respect for human rights, it's openness, the extent to which it is accessible to all, and the extent to which it is nurtured by multistakeholder participation.  

 The work of the national assessments aims to measure six categories of indicators.  The full indicators are 303 indicators and the core indicators, there are 110 in countries at a national level.  And this national assessment process is really targeting looking at how to present a clear and substantive understanding of the national Internet environment and national policies as it concerns Internet governance, assess the environment and policies, and look at how they are in line with the Rome Principles.  And then finally, develop policy recommendations and practical initiatives that will enable countries to meet their goals and align their national policies with UNESCO principles while the Internet governance ecosystem continues to evolve.

 So since November 2018 we have been implementing these indicators at the national level in several countries, notably in Kenya, Senegal, Benin, Tunisia, Germany, Austria, Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Mexico, and Uruguay, and we have proposed, in fact, a day zero event looking at how to improve evidence-based Internet policies using the Rome indicators.  And this has been proposed and co-organized with the German National Commission of UNESCO, the Council of Europe, the OECD, the Association of Progressive Communications, the Internet Society, ICANN, CETIC.BR, Missions Publiques, GNI, and the GFMD.  We hope in the framework of this day zero event, should it be approved, that we can bring together key actors and research institutions and individuals interested in supporting the national assessment process but also offer on-site training to interested actors and research teams on the implementation process and research methodology based on the best practices that will be presented by the countries who have implemented these indicators.  So we look forward to, if approved, welcoming you all to this day zero event and also invite those that may be interested in partnering with UNESCO to implement this assessment tool which in no way is a tool to be used to rank one country against another.  It is really a tool used to help align Internet governance and Internet governance policies at the national level with human rights.  We look forward to working with you in this field.

 Secondly, I would like very briefly touch on some of the work that we've been doing around artificial intelligence.  To start off with, really thank ISOC for their continued support because we kicked off our work on looking at the development of ethical frameworks and human-centered AI on the margins of this past year's IGF by holding open discussions on AI and knowledge societies with ISOC and the Mozilla Foundation.  

 Since then and being very active both in the outstanding work that the IEEE has undertaken as it concerns developing standards on AI but also the E.U. Commission's work as well as the Council of Europe and the recently adopted OECD principles on AI, we have now decided at our most recent executive board to build on the excellent work of these international and regional organizations and considered developing the first international standard-setting instrument in this field.  This decision will be made at our upcoming general conference in November following a preliminary study published by COMEST on the ethics of artificial intelligence in the field of UNESCO's mandate.  And I would like to invite colleagues interested to consult this study that is online that will guide the work that UNESCO will be undertaking with our partners and we hope many of you around the table in undertaking -- as part of this process of standard setting -- of developing the standard-setting instrument, a multistakeholder dialogue and civic debate that will occur both offline and online building on the existing standards and principles that exist to move towards international consensus on human-centered and ethical AI.

 In this regard, we have also been looking at developing our work on AI in line with our Internet Universality Framework and ROAM principles.  

 We have recent published a study called "Steering AI and Advanced ICTs for Knowledge Societies" which look specifically at how principles of Internet governance can be applied to the development of AI governance, particularly ethical AI governance.  And we have proposed and UNESCO open forum at the upcoming IGF on this subject.  

 Lastly, I would just like to close and underline that in the framework of our global priority gender equality, we have recently released a publication -- I would blush if I could -- closing gender divides and digital skills through education, which looks specifically at for us the need to address one of the most urgent issues in the development and use of AI, which is gender bias embedded in algorithms.  

 And this was developed and undertaken as part of our coalition called the Equals Coalition in partnership and with support of the German government.  

 I would like to thank the German government for their continued partnership in this field and on this crucial subject.  And we hope we'll have the opportunity to share more of this work with you all at the upcoming IGF in Berlin where we look forward to being present en force.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Sasha.  That's very fulsome update on some very important topics.  I appreciate your staying with us.

 Next we have the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers.  And Elena is going to address us.  

 And then we have the ITU and GIP/Diplo are the next two in queue.

 >>ELENA PEROTTI:  So, hello, everybody.  And thank you for having me here.  

 I started being able to participate in the ecosystem of the IGF a couple of years ago when for the first time, I came to Europe and, therefore, within reach of my very limited news media budget and have been really loving the process that I saw of inclusion of the news media into this environment.

 First of all, I should say it is not easy to get the news media interested in the stakeholder process, I know.  I suspect some of the reasons we found is a bit of arrogance in the guys in my business.

 At the same time, a portion of the IGF community has a tendency to consider legacy media outdated in a way superfluous to the conversation.

 The truth is that what the Internet is all about is essentially free expression in the respect of human rights.  Or at least that is what we, the good guys, want it to be.  And this result means a team effort in which news media needs to be active participants and contributors.  

 This 2019 is shaping up to the year where the news media really starts an active collaboration within the IGF ecosystem.  And there are many examples of this evolution.  

 In the chair summary of IGF 2018, news media and journalism are featured when relating the words of Emmanuel Macron who said supporting the content creator ensures the quality and sustainability of our news media.  

 And I would like to personally thank the Chair, Lynn, and the secretariat and Eleonora and Chengetai for the inclusion of these specific words.

 Indeed, the sustainability of news media is at the center of our force at the IGF level.  WAN-IFRA has been working for the last two years with colleague organizations in the media development community, such as Global Forum for Media Development and the Center for International Media Assistance, organizing a symposium on the development of Internet governance, which took place around the IGF for two -- for two years.  

 And together we recently established a dynamic coalition on sustainability of journalism and news media, which we invite you all, of course, to be part of if you would like so, to join our mailing list.

 We have submitted sessions, proposals, at the IGF and look forward to participating.  We're excited to host our first official meeting in Berlin in November.

 In particular, we would like to explore in one of these sessions the impact on sustainability of the new laws and policies regulating the tech sector because these have been analyzed under the point of view of freedom of expression.  But the implications towards news media and sustainability remain largely unexplored.

 A second submission concerns a workshop that would explore ways of journalism and civil society to bring AI algorithms and their creators to account and how governance could be adjusted to ensure that the balance is found between the need for openness and the need for privacy and confidentiality.

 WAN-IFRA would also like to be involved with WIPO and other friends from the creative sector such as the broadcasters, the AABU, in a session on local content.  

 And in addition, this year we are proud to be an active part of EuroDIG programs.  So thanks, Sandra, for that.  

 We submitted a workshop proposal around the difference between media literacy and new literacy.  And EuroDIG was kind enough to not only accept our proposal but even asked me to be focal point of the organization of the session, which will feed into Plenary 7 which is dedicated to online arts.

 All in all, I'm confident that steps have been taken to ensure that the news media begin be represented in some way in this environment and that they can, thus, better contribute to the Internet of the future.

 On our side, the World Association of Newspapers is keen to contribute as much as possible.  And I'm wide open to any suggestions that may come from the IGF and from the stakeholders at this meeting.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Elena, thank you.  Thank you for your personal support and actions with respect to building the linkages between these communities.  I think it's a very important and interesting area.  Thank you.

 Next we have ITU.  We have --

 >>SYLVIA CADENA:  Sorry, Lynn, there was no name on the transcript for the intervention.  It was really good.  It would be really good if you can put her name and organization for the transcript, if that's okay.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  We can make sure the secretariat -- I know it's Elena.  What's your last name?  I don't have it in front of me.

 >>ELENA PEROTTI:  It's Elena Perotti.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I should have actually remembered that.  Okay.  I have been looking over Chengetai's shoulder because I didn't have the list in front of me.  By the time my head gets back here, I forgot what I looked at.

 Next in the queue is ITU, Sadhvi is going to be addressing us.  Sadhvi, you have the floor.

 >>SADHVI SARAN:  Thank you, Chair.  And a very good evening to you all from Geneva.  

 On behalf of ITU, I would like to begin by thanking IGF and MAG for giving us the opportunity to contribute today.  As in previous years, ITU looks forward to actively participating in the 14th annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Berlin this year.

 We have already requested to be involved with organizing and collaborating on a number of events during this session.  For instance, we've requested to organize an open forum session for the WSIS open consultation process 2020.  We're planning for this to be a physical meeting and invite all stakeholders to contribute towards building the agenda and program for the WSIS Forum 2020 through the online form available on the website.

 In addition, we have also requested to organize the sixth annual Equals in Tech Awards 2019 and an Equals in Tech panel at IGF.  

 The Equals in Tech Awards will celebrate initiatives that are bridging the gender digital divide while the Equals in Tech panel will give the winners of the awards an opportunity to share their experiences and commitments in this regard.  

 Now, just to give you a brief -- a quick brief on some of the initiatives that have taken place this year and that might be of interest to you all, I'll briefly touch upon a couple of items.  

 As you may know, the WSIS Forum 2019 took place in Geneva in April this year.  As a global multistakeholder platform dedicated to using ICTs to advance the SDGs, this year's WSIS Forum focused on fostering partnerships, showcasing innovation, exchanging best practices, and launching new tools and initiatives for this purpose.  Standing 300 sessions with participants from over 150 countries and more than 500 high-level representatives of the wider WSIS stakeholder community.  

 The Forum saw more than 3,000 ICT experts and implementation actors come together to make a significant contribution to this discussion.

 And, finally, as of last week, ITU organized the AI for Good Summit, which is a unique forum focused on leveraging artificial intelligence to accelerate progress on the SDGs.

 This year the Summit brought together over 2,000 people and 250 speakers from more than 90 countries to discuss the role that all stakeholders can play in ensuring that AI solutions and businesses can be scaled for impact in a sustainable and meaningful way.

 Looking ahead we will now have our governing bodies council meeting next week, where among other things, the topics for the open consultation of the council working group on Internet will be discussed.  

 We invite all stakeholders to contribute to the open consultations as soon as they are launched.

 Thank you again for your time and consideration at ITU.  We look forward to working closely with all of you to make this IGF a huge success.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Sadhvi.  Always appreciate the opportunity to work closely with the ITU on those issues.

 Next in the queue we have GIP and Diplo.  Marco, you have the floor.

 >>MARCO LOTTI:  Yes, can you hear me?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  We can, yes.

 >>MARCO LOTTI:  Perfect.  Thank you.  I would like to thank the chair for giving the Geneva Internet Platform the possibility to speak about our contributions to the Internet governance policy discussions and more broadly to the IGF.

 I will try to keep my intervention short.  And I will start with mentioning among all the initiatives I'm going to tell you about the reporting initiative, which is probably the most important activity that we carry out.  

 We report from the main digital policy-related events happening in Geneva and around the world when possible, of course.  In fact, in May we reported from the Conference on Science and Technology at the United Nations here in Geneva, the CSTD, and we Also Followed the AI for Good global summit discussions at the ITU.

 We usually call this initiative just-in-time reporting initiatives as we write the reports and we publish them online within two hours after the sessions took place.

 This is basically what we did last year in Paris where we covered about 90% of the sessions and published the reports on our website, the Digital Watch Observatory, that you can visit at dig.watch.

 Aside from the session reports, we also issued daily summaries of the discussions, what some of you may know as IGF dailies.

 At the end of the Forum, we also compiled all these resources into a final comprehensive report that was covering the IGF as a whole.  So it was basically a three-step process:  Session reports, daily summaries, and the end-of-the-conference analysis document that our team worked on during the last IGF.

 I'm also happy to underline that for the first time last year our final report including an in-depth data analysis on the content, the topics, and awards were most relevant, be it cyber, data, misinformation, and so on and so forth.

 This year we're looking forward to run this just-in-time reporting initiative again together with the daily summaries and the end-of-the-conference final report during the IGF in Berlin in November.

 In the meantime in preparation for Berlin, we will continue our analysis throughout the year on the Digital Watch website and report from the main digital policy-related events as well as organized discussions on Geneva, Brussels, and Washington.

 In Geneva, for example, we are planning to continue our thematic discussions on specific digital policy issues.  For example, we will continue with our data talks, meetings specifically focusing on data applications and data projects for international organizations in Geneva.

 Finally, I think it's also interesting to mention our monthly online briefings which take place the last Tuesday of each month.  Those briefings compile the main Internet governance developments of the 30 days.  And their content is also published at the beginning of each month in the form of our newsletter.

 Coincidentally, the issue of the month of May will be available by the end of this week in English, French and German.  And you can freely download it from our Digital Watch Observatory website.

 Moreover, as many of you know, the launch of the final report of the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation is scheduled for next Monday in New York and for Monday 17th in Geneva.  In order to unpack the content and best take stock of the recommendations included in the document, we are planning a follow-up event here in Geneva at the Geneva Internet platform on June 18th.  

 To close, for locations other than Geneva, we will organize thematic dialogues regularly.  For instance, early this year we had a discussion on AI in diplomacy in Brussels where we launched a related publication.  AI developments and the interplay between AI and policy are among the most important developments that we are monitoring closely this year.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Marco.  Very, again, comprehensive set of activities.  We always say there's a lot happening in the world of Internet governance, and it's always amazing just how much is happening.

 Next in the order we have the Organization of American States, Kerry-Ann Barrett.  Kerry-Ann, you have the floor.

 >>KERRY-ANN BARRETT:  Hello, I'm muted.  Can you hear me?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Yes, we can hear you, Kerry-Ann.

 >>KERRY-ANN BARRETT:  Okay.  It still said I was muted on my end.  My apologies.  

 Hello.  Hello, everyone.  My name is Kerry-Ann Barrett.  I'm they cybersecurity policy specialist at the Organization of American States.  I work within the cybersecurity program.  We wanted to just provide a really quick snapshot and overview of what we have been doing to the IGF community, and we wanted to ensure that as we prepare and lead up to IGF 2019 in Berlin in November that our work will be at least known and people will be able to ask us even more questions during the sessions that we'll be able to hold during that meeting.

 First and foremost, I wanted to have just outlined for those who may not know that the OAS works on cybersecurity, more specifically from a three-pronged perspective.  We try to ensure that our member states and the world at large benefit from policy development, so we work on national cybersecurity strategies.  We work on confidence-building measures in cyberspace and national assessment.  We also do capacity building with law enforcement, incident response team, cyber exercises, and we have a platform that's called C-Certs Americas that helps to support our incidence response teams within the 34 member states of the OAS. 

 Finally we do research and outreach, technical documents such as white papers.  We have youth programs that works on strengthening youths in developing a career in cybersecurity or digital security, and we do awareness raising through reports that we produce.  We're specifically in some of the things that have happened more recently that would be of interest to you.  We have published reports on financial sector, and we're actually developing a report right now on the state of cybersecurity with the Inter-American Development Bank which will be published later this year.

 We wanted to highlight for the community or work on confidence building measures.  Our member states in 2018 had established a working group on confidence-building measures in cyberspace.  And as a result, two confidence-building measures were agreed and adopted by our General Assembly in June of 2018.

 Coming out of that, the working group saw it necessary to continue its work, and the cybersecurity program has acted as a technical secretariat for this group.

 For the past year we have worked at our member states to establish national points of contact in relation to policies.  We have also worked with them to ensure that we have a repository of all policies, legislation and documents related to cybersecurity.

 More recently, this year we held our second working group meeting.  We're happy to let you guys know that coming out of that meeting we were able to agree to four new CBMs, which were proposed and have -- were approved by the 16-19th regular session meeting that was held last month.

 These four new CBMs actually focus on ministries of foreign affairs and their work to actually work in the digital space and be able to cooperate and have meaningful dialogue even in forums such as the IGF.  It also focused on inclusion of cybersecurity into subject matters related to training for diplomats and ministries of foreign affairs and on the cooperation exchange of best practices of working groups in this area.

 We wanted everyone to know as well that we have been working with an entity called City Foundation (phonetic) to strengthen the digital gap in digital security, and we have a project that is called Pathway to a Digital Security Career.  To date, over the past two years, we have actually trained in excess of 200 students who are now on the path to actually create or start a career in digital security.

 And I think just to close off on another highlight, as many of you may be aware, that the U.N. GGE renewed process kicked off this week.  The OAS has been identified as one of the regional organizations to be consulted as a part of the UN GGE and the open-ended working group for ICTs.  We will be holding our regional consultation on August 15th and 16th in Washington, D.C.  Anyone who may want more information on this, please feel free to contact us directly.

 And I think on that note, I think we could probably close.  We wanted to make it brief.  If there are any other questions, we're still on the line.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you very much, Kerry-Ann.  And very welcome.  I really appreciate you joining today for the update.

 We have several updates so everyone knows where we are in the queue.  We have ICANN, a Council of Europe station, a statement from Chrystiane Le Roy and Sandra Hoferichter.  I'm not sure I said either of those names right.  I have to say I'm a little tired at the moment.

 So we have Veni for ICANN.  Did Veni just step out of the room?

 He's on the phone or something?

 >> Good afternoon.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Then why don't we just go to -- Chengetai, are you prepared to read off the statement from the Council of Europe?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Yes.

 Apologies in advance for my pronunciation of the name.  So I'm reading a statement from Jan Kleijssen, Council of Europe Director of the Information Society, Action Against Crime.

 So it starts off with:  We congratulate the MAG on the excellent organization of last year's IGF meeting in Paris.  We reiterate our commitment to continue our longstanding cooperation with its over 20 years of experience in Internet governance.

 The Council of Europe continues to prepare standard-setting instruments that stem from multistakeholder expert discussions and are then adopted in the Committee of Ministers, maintains close cooperation with businesses, supports member states in implementing standards, and engages in regional/international IG forums.

 So 2019 the Council of Europe has submitted a number of proposals for open forums and workshops, and we look forward to close cooperation, including with respect to our modernized Convention 108.

 After many years of multistakeholder dialogue, interest and engagement of key stakeholders must be maintained.  We, therefore, welcome the important political messages that emanated from IGF 2018.

 We also welcome the work of the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation.  This is a general sentiment, however, that current challenges require more than dialogue and consultations.  Clear outcomes are required as impacts of digital technologies on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law are becoming more and more apparent in scale and severity.

 The Internet governance strategy of the Council of Europe covers the period until the end of 2019.  It will be succeeded by the digital government strategy 2020 to 2023 which promotes transversal action and multistakeholder engagement of all Council of Europe sectors towards three main goals:  a), empowerment of the individual user; b) rights protection and promotion; c) the principles of democratic governance and the rule of law.

 On the 26th to 27th of February, we organized jointly with the Finnish presidency of the Committee of Ministers a high-level meeting in Helsinki, AI:  Governing the Game Changer.  It allows for interdisciplinary expert discussions on priority concerns and necessary steps related to AI development.

 The conclusions of the conference were endorsed by the ministers of Council of Europe, member states at their recent meetings in May 2019, calling on the Council of Europe to critically assess existing gaps in the related regulatory framework with a view of preparing, in a multistakeholder approach, a possible legal framework instrument to ensure AI design, development, and application in line with Council of Europe standards on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.

 Thank you very much for your attention.

 That's the end of the statement.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Chengetai, and thank you to the Council of Europe.  We'll come back to ICANN.  Veni, you have the floor.

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   I'm not sure what am I supposed to say but I'm not part of the group that is dealing with this so I cannot really say anything.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   This is the updates from related intergovernmental organizations section, not specifically commenting on -- is it Nigel?

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   I think Nigel is on online and he should make it.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Excellent.  Nigel, are you online?

 >> No?

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   If he isn't, then I can say a few words.

 >>NIGEL HICKSON:  Yes.

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   He's online.

 >>NIGEL HICKSON:  I'm online, am I?  Can you hear me?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Good afternoon.  We can you hear me? 

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   We can hear you, yes.  Go ahead, Nigel.

 >>NIGEL HICKSON:  And I just see I've been in the chat as Nigel Roberts, and I've always wanted to be Nigel Roberts but I'm not him.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Nigel Hickson, for the record.  

 Nigel, go ahead.

 >>NIGEL HICKSON:  Good afternoon, and thank you for letting me say just a few words.  It was good to say a few words earlier.

 I'll be very brief.  Just to say that ICANN remains a supporter of the IGF, and that might be -- sound somewhat trite, but I want to say it not just in terms of sort of finance and resources, which is obviously very important at the moment as you have been discussing today, but also I think in sort of moral and spiritual ways.  And that might sound somewhat trite as well.

 But, I mean, in terms of the commitment that ICANN has to the IGF and to the multistakeholder process, and I don't think that should be underestimated as we live through these times.  It's just so important that we have this network of multistakeholder players to discuss these issues.

 As far as ICANN is concerned, there are a number of issues related to the Internet and Internet governance, of course, which we're -- we're currently discussing in our various working groups and will be coming up to be discussed at our next meeting which is in Marrakech towards the end of June.  

 One which concerns a lot of people is work on the implementation of the GDPR, the EU general data protection regulation and the arrangements that we're putting in place to ensure access to registrant information.  And apologies for the noise.  This is something which is very important in terms of adopting a system that allows uniform access to registrant information of domain names.  That is something that's ongoing.  

 At the meeting in Marrakech there will also be some important discussions on a subsequent process for gTLDs.  As you know, we expanded the gTLD space back in 2012, from 22 to over 1,000 generic top-level domains, and there's a process underway where there would be another process perhaps in a few years' time, but that's still being worked out.  And the important thing about that is that all stakeholders are engaged in this discussion -- in this discussion process.

 The last bit of -- the last bit of business that we're discussing -- I mean, there's lots of other bits and pieces we're discussing at ICANN meetings -- is the work on legislated tracking.  This is an initiative that ICANN undertakes to try and identify where legislation and policies could undermine the operation of the DNS and the Internet in general, and then discuss them with regional or national bodies, et cetera.  And that's something we -- we pay a lot of attention to.  

 And finally, I just want to say, in case it comes (indiscernible) ITU next week, ITU has its council meeting.  You heard from the ITU earlier.  At the ITU council next week an application from the ITU (sic) to be a sector member of the development sector.  As you know, the ITU has different sectors, and IT -- ICANN is applying to be a sector member of the development sector and that comes up next week in case anyone asks any questions.  And we can obviously provide further information about that.  

 Thank you, Lynn, for the opportunity, and all the best for the rest of the -- for the rest of the meeting.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you very much, Nigel.  Veni has asked if we can say a few words as well.  Veni.

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI: Just information for you guys, for the MAG members, which I think might be interesting.  I participated in May in a conference, one of the big New York-based conferences called Techonomy.  And you can find it online.  They were streaming it.  And they actually have put -- like they published a magazine, and the magazine was talking about the Internet governance.  And that, to me, was a big change because usually tech companies in New York are not that much interested in Internet governance.  But I spoke at one of the sessions and were kind of the -- they said at the time the only optimist on the panel because I was talking about what ICANN does in terms of keeping the Internet and the domain names system secure, stable, and resilient.  But I think it's important to see because this was a meeting where there were a lot of like the CEOs and former CEOs of big companies like fortune top 100 companies was speaking.  And if that is something that we can use in some ways, you know, to reach out to those companies so here I come to UNDESA.  You can take a look at the participants at this event and maybe reach out to them and try to bring them on board to supporting the IGF that would be good.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Veni.  Next we had Chrystiane.  Chrystiane, you have the floor.

 >>CHRYSTIANE LE ROY:  Thank you very much, Lynn, and thank you to all the presentations we've heard so far and thank you to the MAG for giving us this time to share our insights with you.  

 My intervention is going to be a little bit on what our colleague from the OES mentioned in her intervention but also I'm hoping to connect this with something that our colleague Wolfgang said a little bit earlier about keeping the IGF a place for discussion and there are many other foras where decisions are going to be taking place.  And in this respect, this is not a Canadian initiative.  This is a decision of the General Assembly.  Last fall in the first committee, so security -- International Security Committee, they created not only a group of governmental experts which is something small, succinct, it's been going on for a few years.  Only 25 government experts get to sit on this and try to work out a state behavior in cyberspace.  But there was another resolution which created something called an open-ended working group.  Now this process, though it is still adopted in the context of the General Assembly first committee which is focusing on international security, well, the resolution has a lot of language on human rights online, on terrorist use of cyberspace, and a number of things that are related not directly to Internet governance perhaps but part of that ecosystem.  And one of the things to be mindful of is that the open-ended working group, it's going to be a meeting of states, but I thought it would be important for you to know that organizations that are accredited to the U.N., to ECOSOC, will be allowed in the room as observers.  So you might not be able to interact from the floor there, but certainly you will be able to talk and try to influence member states on the margins, to explain why some decisions might be better than others or explain why we shouldn't go down a certain route.  

 This process will also have a consultative activity.  I don't have dates for those yet, although my colleague Veni from ICANN who is based in New York probably has some insights on that, but there will be another consultative process beyond the one that's going to happen for the GG.  There's going to be one for the open-ended working group.  

 So the open-ended working group held its first meeting yesterday, the 3rd and 4th, well Monday, in fact, and they sort of talked only of the modalities.  The first substantive discussion is taking place in New York from the 9th to 13th, and the second meeting will be from the 10th to the 14th of February.  So I know a number of organizations in this room are ECOSOC accredited.  ICC is accredited to the U.N. as well.  So these are all organizations that would be able to join these meetings.  So when we were talking about going to places where decisions were being made, and not bringing decision-making process to the IGF, I think we have here an opportunity which might be interesting for all of the stakeholders in our community.  So thank you for giving me the time, and happy to answer any questions I might have -- you might have.  But again, I'm not the owner of this process.  I'm just sharing the recent developments on that.  Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chrystiane.  It's a very important update.  And I know our best practice forum on cybersecurity was interested in engaging with both of those.  I'm actually trying to build some linkages between them as well.  Sandra.  Sandra, you have the floor.

 >>SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you, Lynn.  I also would like to give you an update on the process we are starting on the European level as EuroDIG.  It was mentioned already a couple of times the report that is going to be released from the U.N. panel on digital cooperation.  It is promised it will be released on 10th of June, and I guess EuroDIG is the first opportunity to discuss this report -- beside an online conversation that takes place -- to discuss this report face-to-face.  But we would like to go a step further and start an experiment in the European region and formulate a response, a European response, on this report.  I don't tell you anything new if I say that the IGF, EuroDIG, and other multistakeholder dialogue platforms have laid an important ground for the work of this panel and so they are playing a key role in digital governance.  Therefore, I think it's just natural that the NRIs -- not only EuroDIG -- that the NRIs on a national and regional level should take up this report and prove what the recommendations are and how they apply for the region, for the nation, and so on and so forth.

 We hope to have reached a certain level of maturity into the IGF where we would like to submit our results, and you would possibly understand that this is something that goes beyond having a European focus but that actually the global community has a chance to get a consolidated response from a region, from a stakeholder group, so to say.  

 It's an experiment.  You know, the EuroDIG was always open to experiment.  It can also go wrong so that we have too little participation or we cannot agree on something.  But I think IGF foras and, I mean, all of us, the local, the national, the global level, are the right place to try out such experiments.  And I'm very curious how that works out in Europe, and, of course, I invite everyone here in the room, European or not, to follow this process and to maybe participate in it.  What we will do, we will set up an online commenting platform where everyone can comment on it and there will be a chair and it will be a streamed working process, and we hope we can come up with some results, mature or not.  Even if the result is we could not agree, this is, I think, a result telling for itself, for the IGF in Berlin in November.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you very much, Sandra.  Anriette, you have the floor.

 >>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Lynn.  I actually want to give the mic to my fellow commissioner Wolfgang Kleinwachter, to update you on the work of the global commission on the stability of cyberspace.

 >>WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: A very brief update on the Global Commission on Stability in Cyberspace which was established two years ago during the Munich Security Conference and from the very first day the Global Commission supported the IGF when we had a panel discussion in the IGF in Paris which was well attended and we tried to contribute as much as possible to the best practice forum on cybersecurity and to other issues related to security.

 We are now in the final stage of our work, so we are planning to prepare the final report for the Paris forum which is in November.  We will deliver it also to the Berlin IGF and the final -- final, final version of the report will be presented to the Munich Security Conference in February 2020.

 You know, one of the key interim results are the so-called Singapore norm package where we have eight norms for the good behavior of state and non-state actors in cyberspace.  One key norm is the protection of the public core of the Internet.  As Nigel has mentioned in his presentation, this is really a very crucial thing and which is a new threat for the function of Internet as a whole because we see a growing number of attacks against the Domain Name System, the IP address system, routing systems, satellites, and cables.  And so far, you know, this is a big challenge, and I can only invite the IGF to follow this issue in a particular way because we need more other stronger commitments from all parts, government and non-state actors, not to attack the key elements of the functioning of the Internet.  It goes far beyond traditional cybercrime and should be labeled as a crime against humanity.

 We are also will be part of the new processes in the United Nations, the group of governmental experts and the open-ended working group.  We will have a presentation in the September consultations in New York as was just mentioned.  And my hope is that after the end of the work of the global commission of stability, the issues will be further discussed by the IGF on its road to 2025, though the 2020s will be years where cybersecurity will play a key role in Internet governance discussions.  Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Wolfgang and Anriette.  I mean, I think that work is really impressive, and I appreciate all the time and effort I'm sure you all took to actually get to succinct norms with a succinct set of statements behind them.  While I think it makes it a lot more accessible to a lot more people.  

 That brings us to the end of day one.  We did move the best practice forums discussion to the 10:30 slot tomorrow.  I think the agenda is being updated on the website as well.  We will be starting here at 10:00 sharp in the room.  The rest of the agenda I think pretty much stays as it was again with that one move of the BPF into tomorrow.

 I want to thank everybody.  I always feel -- I hear so much and I learn so much and I want to dig into each one of them.  And I want to look at the websites and look at the reports and figure out what the linkages are.

 And I think we need to find a way to take those next steps with a lot of these updates and a lot of these activities.  And I'm not really sure what that looks like.  Again, the secretariat is really so, so thin, so stretched.  I don't think we can ask anything more of them.

 And then I think we should think through the MAG itself, whether or not we should get a small group to go through and look at both some of the comments and updates from the NRIs, from the intersessional activities, and from these intergovernmental organizations to see if there are any additional linkages or liaisons or connections we want to make between them and the work of the IGF.

 We'll continue noodling that around with the secretariat.  But if there's interest or resources on the side of any MAG members to pick some of that up, we would be happy to hear that as well.

 We have an ongoing goal to increase outreach and increase engagement and to do that with new stakeholders.  And we did get some new updates here today.  I think three, by my count.  But it's important having made that initial step that we actually find some way to actually engage them and pull the pieces of work together.

 I'll ask Daniela if she has any final comments or anything for tomorrow.

 If I could thank the transcribers for staying on late, for the audiovisual crew behind as well.  And I really want to commend them.  I told them at lunchtime but also here, this has been a superb setup.  Everything works really, really well, not just the room layout and the screens but all the support for online participants and the ability to pull them in so easily and timely.  It really is just a really great setup and a great effort.  So thank you very much.

 And have a great evening and a great warm night in Berlin.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  Take advantage of the nightlife in Berlin.  See you tomorrow morning.  Bye-bye.

 

 

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