The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I think it's now 10:40. We'll just give an extra minute for people to get to their chairs.
Anriette, our chair, has said that she thinks that everything is fine now. So we'll let her reconvene the meeting.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Chengetai.
Anriette Esterhuysen is back.
I hope everyone had a good cup of coffee or tea or whatever you had during your break.
My electricity is back, my Internet is back, and I hope it stays that way.
We are now moving on to the substance of today's Open Consultation. That is to work with you to identify what issues and themes we need to prioritize in IGF 2021. Keep all of these background issues in mind, the need for a more focused IGF, the need for inclusion and participation, the hybrid meeting and integration with the NRI's and other intersessional activities.
Chengetai, before we -- I'll run through the guidelines. We'll have a bit of an introduction but just for the breakout groups and our brave Secretariat/technician Luis Bobo -- welcome, Luis. Just hang on a second.
Sorry. I just had to attend to some noise.
You will be randomly assigned to groups. The themes, the topics of these groups, every group will discuss the themes that Chengetai will present, when he presents the synthesis of the feedback from communities.
As you will see from his presentation, there were 10 broad thematic clusters. When we break out into groups, each group will be asked to consider all 10 of those thematic clusters, and then we'll ask you to prioritize. We'll also ask you to appoint a chair and a facilitator. I will revisit this once we get to the breakout session, but just so you have it in mind.
And we have worked with group efforts in Zoom before, and it usually works very well. So it might take a little time to make sure you're in the room you're supposed to be, but we ask you to all bear with us.
Luis, scroll down.
And we'll be asked to reflect, first, on the overall themes and to prioritize them. Remember, we want a more narrow and focused IGF. But you can also look at the IGF over time, the idea of a multi-year thematic program. So perhaps we can decide that in 2021, we want to focus on this but then build on to, in 2022, focus on this theme.
And then we'll also ask you to look at the spreadsheet -- and Chengetai will show you where the spreadsheet can be found -- which contains the more detailed and specific issues that you submitted to us during the Open Consultation.
So, to get back to item number three, you have the agenda in front of you.
Luis, you can move down to three.
So the idea of a more focused IGF, I have mentioned this already, and I think that exactly how we interpret this idea is still in process. I think what we do know is that it has to link to -- it is linked to outcomes, and I think broadly I would say that what we're hearing from stakeholders -- and it's impossible to discuss very many issues in greater depth.
But there was also feedback that this more focused and narrower, thematic approach should not be at the expense of, let's say, people in small and in developing states having particular issues that are very important to them that they want to discuss at the IGF every year, or maybe there's a new and emerging issue around platform regulation, for example, that we also need to provide space for. So there's a need for a more focused IGF but not at the expense of being responsive to what is important to people.
So let's move now on to the Secretariat's summary of the issues I have received, and then we will break out into group discussions.
So, Sorina, I think you are presenting this to us. So let me hand the floor to you.
And I want to thank everyone for your input. We wouldn't be able to have this type of discussion if we didn't have more than 200 submissions from the community.
>>SORINA TELEANU: Thank you, Anriette.
And hello, everyone.
Before I go to the slide, I just shared in chat again the link to the documents so everyone can see them as well. I'm not sure how well they can be seen on screen.
Okay. And I see the slides are already there. So I'm going to kindly ask Luis to move to the first one, About the Call.
Thank you, Luis.
So this is basically an overview of what we received in response to the call for issues, which was open from the end of December to the end of January. And, as you know, the committee was invited to suggest issues for the IGF to prioritize this year.
We received a total of 231 submissions, and all individual submissions are on the IGF website. I believe this link has been shared many times before.
Luis, go on.
Just a quick overview of the statistics for the individual submissions as they were received.
As expected, I guess, the most submissions came from civil society and then more or less the percentages from the government technical community and the private sector and then some submissions from intergovernmental organizations. And in terms of regional groups, more submissions came from Western Europe and others. Then Asian-Pacific, Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and, again, IGOs.
Moving on, as I said, we had 231 submissions, but then looking at the submissions individually, there were more than one issue in almost every submission. So that took us to a total of 507 proposed issues, which is quite a lot.
And then we looked at this individual 507 issues to try to bring them around into clusters that would basically bring together more or less similar issues and then further trying to bring the clusters together into the 10 themes. And we've more or less used the same themes that have been used in previous IGFs when clustering proposals. Of course, this doesn't mean that we have to keep them as such as the discussions continue throughout the day.
And I will go through designation as I go through the class and teams.
So, Luis, we can go ahead.
A few key numbers, as I already said, we had 507 individual issues, and we put them into 52 clusters and then 10 project themes. And if you look quickly at these 10 themes, most of those were related to inclusion. And then, in order, we had more proposals for security and trust and digital rights and freedoms, sustainability and environment, economic issues, data, IG ecosystems, new and emerging technologies, and then not so many proposals on digital cooperation and technical issues.
What we did was to try to present the issues both by theme and cluster. So I will go quickly through both in these slides, but, again, there are more details also in the spreadsheet that I've shared in chat.
So, as the groups go on with discussing this, I kindly recommend that you also look at the sheet where you have more details.
So, as I've said, inclusion was the theme with most submissions, 160 out of the 507. And what you see on the screen are some clusters and subclusters. Again, we've just tried to bring together issues that are more or less easier to have a general overview of what has been submitted.
Most proposals here were related to expanding Internet infrastructure. Then we had proposals on including disadvantaged communities, everything from rural areas to persons with disabilities, senior citizens, and other marginalized groups.
Then we had quite many proposals on online education both in terms of ensuring access online education but also digitalizing educational practices.
Then 15 proposals around universal access, ensuring affordability of access and Internet access for all.
Some proposals on capacity development with a focus on broad, general digital (indiscernible) but also developing digital skills more in-depth.
Also, related to the future of work was, it was related in the economic team.
Then 10 proposals on access to and development of online content and resources. And here we had proposals related to multilingualism and local content, equitable access to open content and resources as well.
Gender inclusion was also clustered with quite a few proposals, and these were related to gender equality and also with the existing gender gap in access and skills.
Around meaningful Internet access, we had submissions related to ensuring quality Internet access and also stable and reliable access.
And then we had very, very many proposals around digital inclusion. That was basically what was written in the proposal and on youth inclusion. That's why in the slides we don't have more details because the submissions themselves were very general.
And this was a broad overview of the inclusion team.
Again, in the spreadsheet, you have more details on the individual proposals and also one indication of where you can find every single proposal in the full list of submissions.
Luis, moving on. Thank you.
The next most-popular theme, if I can call it like that, was security and trust. And here the clusters were Internet safety with 17 proposals related to child safety, Internet safety. Again, very general. And then addressing online gender-based violence.
The second cluster with 16 proposals, online trust and content policy, these are mostly related to attacking misinformation and this information online and addressing violent content, again with the roles and responsibilities mostly of Internet platform and then also a bit of regulation from the government of site.
A broad cluster on cybersecurity issues. The proposals were very general. Cybersecurity itself as a topic and then cybersecurity strategies, policies, and framework.
Awareness around cybersecurity issues and standards and best practices.
Then we had six, again, general proposals on encryption, looking at encryption in general.
On network and infrastructure security, we had five proposals looking at addressing vulnerabilities and threats and also one proposal on security of critical national infrastructures.
A few proposals on responsible state behavior in cyberspace, looking at issues like malicious nation state cyber actions, the development of cyber norms and the use and development of confidence-building measures.
On cybercrime, we had four proposals looking at cybercrime acts and also frameworks for international and public-private cooperation.
We had a few general proposals on cyber resilience and Internet digital trust and then one standalone issue which was about election security, so how we secured election processes.
Moving on to digital rights and freedom, 69 proposals in total with seven clusters.
The first cluster with 21 proposals, freedoms in the digital space, and most of the proposals were related to freedom of expression and how to balance the protection of freedom of expression between platforms, content, policies, and government regulation. All the debates happening these days.
Transparency and accountability and content moderation and content moderation both as human and algorithmic, general proposals around protection of freedom of expression, and then something around the connections between intellectual property and freedom of expression.
The next cluster with 18 proposals protecting human rights generally in the digital space. Six general proposals on digital rights. Then five looking at human rights-based approaches to technology, design, and processes, so how to integrate these approaches when designing technologies and when developing policies for digital tech.
The roles and responsibilities of the private sector with regard to protecting digital rights. The evolution of legal frameworks for digital rights at the national and international level and then capacity development for digital rights advocates.
Then proposals were related to children rights, both in general and also specifically looking at national and international instruments for protecting children rights.
The next cluster around digital rights and equality, looking at digital tech and racial justice, gender rights online and equal digital rights for all.
The next cluster, digital authoritarian and digital surveillance by government but also digital surveillance by tech companies.
On Internet restrictions, four proposals about Internet shutdowns and censorship and three standalone issues on mental health, protection of journalists, self-sovereign identity.
Moving on.
The next, general theme, sustainability and environment, we had quite a lot of proposals about digitalization, development, and sustainability. 26 in total. Some of them related to digitalization, digital transformation for development across industry, public services, and society overall. And then some proposals around the role of Internet and digital technologies in promoting and achieving sustainability developmental goals and the development of enabling policy environments for digitalization.
The next cluster was related to Internet, digital tech, and the environment, also building on the theme from last year's IGF.
And here we have individual proposals on digital tech and environment protections, benefits and risks, bringing the Internet and digital tech and some general proposals on environment in general.
The following cluster on Internet digital tech and climate, six proposals on Internet IG and climate action and two on digital tech for weather forecasts, very specific proposals.
And two more clusters with general proposals, one on Internet and digital technologies in the context of the COVID-19 crisis and post-crisis recovery and also for proposals on digital health.
Moving on, the next team around economic issues, 45 proposals in total. Quite a few proposals on the regulation of big tech, 20, addressing market concentrations, validation, and fostering competition with 15 proposals in total, the general regulation of social media platforms and then one proposal looking at digital platforms as potential public infrastructures.
On the future of work, we had eight proposals. On jobs in the digital age, social protection for workers, and frameworks for online work.
And then for general clusters on consumer protection, digital economy, innovation and digital currencies and digital tax.
And, again, the reason for not having more details here is that the proposals themselves were very general, as you will also see in the spreadsheet.
Moving on to data where we had 40 proposals, here, we only have three clusters, one of them around data privacy with 22 -- 23 proposals on data protection and general issues. Then national and international privacy legislation, present and future, and indications of such legislation.
Platforms and data privacy, so the role of Internet platforms in protecting or jeopardizing privacy.
The balancing between national and international security and privacy and the identification and authentication of privacy implications.
The next cluster around data governance, we had a few general proposals on data governance, then something looking at cross-border data flows, government approaches, how to enable these kind of flows. Government frameworks for data sharing and one proposal on data portability and data availability and use as the third class for a general proposal.
The next theme, Internet government ecosystem with 36 proposals and four clusters. There were quite a few proposals looking at the IGF and national and regional IGF initiatives, basically on how to strengthen the IGF and how to strengthen and expand the network of national and regional IGF initiatives.
Then 12 proposals on the inclusion within IG and policy spaces and processes, how to make these spaces and processes more inclusive and open, how to foster more capacity developments to then attract more inclusion. And then two proposals which requested for the addressing of Internet governance issues of interest for developing countries.
A few proposals on the challenges to current Internet governance approaches, centralization versus decentralization of governance, the future of multistakeholderism and rebalancing the power dynamics between stakeholders.
And there are also three standalone issues, the intersection of (indiscernible) and Internet governance and the effect of Internet governance and regulation. Again, very general proposals.
The new theme -- next theme, new and emerging technologies with 33 proposals and six clusters, 13 proposals on artificial intelligence, some very general proposals on AI. Then some proposals looking at AI governance and how to integrate human rights and ethics into governance frameworks, AI readiness and adoption and AI applications for good.
Eight proposals from the Internet of Things, with IoT applications for good, IoT and innovation, and then some very specific proposals on technologies for connected and self-driving cars.
On the implications of emerging tech, we had five proposals, general ones again on disruptive technologies and emerging technologies. Three proposals on blockchain, rather general. Two general proposals again on new communications technology, 5G and 6G, and two proposals on quantum computing.
Moving on to the last two things: Digital cooperation with 27 proposals and four clusters. 12 proposals on what we may call digital dependence or digital interdependence. Five of them looking at the implications of digital sovereignty approaches on the Internet itself, the global nature of the Internet, the regulations, and everything else. Five proposals on Internet fragmentation, causes and consequences, and two specific proposals on the tech relations between China and the USA.
Nine proposals more or less related to the general topic of digital cooperation. Five of them about cooperation in governing the digital future and four very general on global digital cooperation. Five proposals on digital public goods. And one standalone issue on cyberdiplomacy.
And the final theme on technical issues, we had three clusters. The first of them we called standardization with five proposals around existing and emerging Internet or I.T. standards, the interplay between standardization and policy goals and multistakeholderism, and the inclusion of multiple stakeholders in Internet standards development processes.
On critical Internet resources, we had four proposals, two around top-level domains, rather general; one on the responsible management of critical Internet resources and one on the governance of the DNS root. And one standalone and, again, a general proposal on ICT building blocks.
And these were basically all 507 proposals brought together by clusters and then by theme, again, using the themes from previous year.
But there were quite strong overlaps in issues. One issue could be brought under more than one theme. So that's why we offered this overview by clusters, in case you would want to look at it from a different angle as well.
Here you would see that we still have most of the individual clusters, more or less, related to inclusion. But then we also have some proposals which are not so much related to what ranked as the main themes. And that's sustainability, freedoms, and digital rights and a bit on economic issues.
So it would be good when the groups go into their work to also look at this clustering by clusters, if I can call it like that, because it might prompt you to rethink the themes and maybe bring things together that were not brought together under the general themes we have used so far.
And let's see if we can quickly scroll through the rest of the presentation just to see what's there. This is the general overview by clusters. Then going a bit forward, we have the same overview with the details but without presenting the themes, in case that's going to be useful later on in the discussion.
And details on all this is also in the spreadsheet that has been linked before.
And I will stop here and take questions, if there are. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Sorina, thank you very much. That was a difficult task and you did brilliantly. And I hope all our participants don't feel completely overwhelmed by this. It feels very overwhelming; but if you look at the actual document, you'll see there are essentially ten main thematic clusters. And within those, there are subclusters and there are more specific issues. And it's color coded, so it's not quite as hard to navigate as you might think.
And, Sorina, before you go away, there was a question -- I'm just going to the chat. I don't see anyone having taken the floor -- or asked for the floor. But there was a question about whether there was an indication of the distribution of support for these ten themes by regional groups, for example, or stakeholder groups.
Is that a question you can answer at this point?
>>SORINA TELEANU: Unfortunately, we didn't look to that kind of details. It was already extremely complicated to bring together these 500 issues into clusters and themes. So we didn't go as far as to look at how these clusters and themes were proposed by various stakeholder groups or regions.
I guess we can give it a try, but it's going to take quite a bit of time to provide that overview.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Sorina. I thought it might not be possible, but I think it's worth thinking about that for the future.
There are a few more comments on the chat which is an illustration that people are beginning to engage with this document.
But now we are going to give you the opportunity to break out into groups. And we're going to give you an hour to discuss this in more depth.
So, secretariat, could you please put up the guidelines for the groups on screen. And I'll just revisit that, and then we'll break into groups.
So, everyone, we are at the moment just under 100 people in the call. So it will give us quite a good size of groups.
We are going to randomly assign you to the ten main themes. But you don't then have to discuss -- well, you'll discuss all those themes. We know some of you might be interested in more; but at this point, we want everyone to do a big-picture look at the themes and come up with guidance around that. So for each group, once you've been assigned to your breakout group, your first task is to appoint a chair and a facilitator and a rapporteur, so two people that will be role players. And the rapporteur has to make notes because we do need them to present a report to plenary but also to send a written report to the secretariat.
Do brief introductions. Keep them very short. But this is also a way for you to network and get to know one another.
Then to refer to this -- to have deeper discussion, referring to Sorina's presentation, we really have the following task. Task one is prioritizing thematic clusters. So the first thing we want you to do is to reflect on those ten broad thematic clusters. Do you feel they are legitimate? Can they be merged? Do they make sense to you? Do you want to rename them? You are also very welcome to do that.
And then considering that our goal is to have a more focused IGF, discussing fewer issues in greater depth, which themes would you like to see IGF prioritize in 2021? Select no more than three. That's what we are asking you to do at this point.
And, again, you can use the existing headings that Sorina put in the report or you can reframe them. You could also decide that you want to use one of the subclusters as a main theme. You don't have to select one of the ten. You could select a subtheme, which is under one of those ten main themes.
And this is really the primary task that we want you to undertake today, to give the MAG guidance on which themes to build the program around.
Then the second task is to prioritize more specific issues. And we really would like to you do this. But if you don't have time, that's fine. But this is where you would put those three thematic clusters or themes. They could, as I said, taken from the subclusters that you think the IGF should prioritize. Are there any of the detailed questions or issues that were submitted which you can find in the spreadsheet that you think the IGF should focus on?
And this also gives you the freedom to give the MAG guidance on building a program based on more specific issues, not just on an abstract general category or theme.
And that is it. And we'll give you an hour. Are there any questions? Is this clear? I will move from breakout room to breakout room to check if the task is clear. But I don't see any hands. So I think that is clear. So it is now ten minutes past 11:00 UTC. And we will give you an hour. So after an hour, you'll be invited back to the plenary and we'll start taking reports from group 1 -- your groups will be numbered. So you'll know which groups you are in and which group will start reporting.
So thanks very much, everyone. Thanks again, Sorina. And, Luis, you can start allocating participants to breakouts.
>>LUIS BOBO: Hello, everyone. Just to clarify from the technical side, as Anriette said, you will be randomly assigned to any of these ten groups. We are not going to put any timer. So we will coordinate and after one hour, you will put back to this main room.
I think that's all, Anriette. That's correct?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: That is all, Luis. That's perfect.
>>LUIS BOBO: Okay. Please give two, three minutes -- two minutes to be put in the groups. Please be patient and you will be automatically transferred. Otherwise, you can use the chat with me.
Thank you.
[Breakout groups]
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Welcome back, everyone. I'm just checking. I think -- excellent. Everyone is back. So welcome back, everyone, from the breakout groups. My apologies if it felt a little bit confused. Some groups discussed the theme, the cluster of the name of their group, and others discussed -- I'll put my video on. Others discussed a much -- took a broader look at the synthesis document. It really doesn't matter. The value of the session is for small groups of people to talk about issues in a more specific and focused way.
So I really want to thank everyone for bearing with this process. These online meetings are challenging, as we know. And so thanks to everyone who participated.
Let's get into group discussions. Really, it doesn't matter what format your report takes. What matters is that you share what you discussed, that you keep to three minutes, and you can submit more detailed comments in writing to the secretariat.
And, Group 5, you asked to report first. So, Adam Peake, I believe you are the rapporteur. Can I ask you to start us off?
>>ADAM PEAKE: Thanks, Anriette. I hate to think of myself as rapporteur. We didn't really get to the point of formal allocation of roles. But I did say I would begin. And my colleague Vinicius will follow up.
So we began -- we were talking -- about what were we talking about? We were talking about economic issues. That was the cluster we were given. We began by looking at that and then expanded out into other issues.
We started looking at box number 1, which is regulating big tech. It was the one with the most responses. We quickly got into a discussion -- sorry, it was, yes, regulating big tech. We quite quickly decided that regulating big tech wasn't in and of itself a big problem. We were really talking about governance.
And we also didn't really like the terminology. "Big tech" has a suggestion that we are talking about these big four or five North American companies when we are really talking about a much bigger set of changes.
Two sort of phrases came out. One was extraterritoriality, the fact that we are seeing in regulation, legislation popping up all over the world. And some of it is extremely -- is expected to be very influential. We've just seen a draft of new legislation from the European Commission for the European Union which will affect the member states and also the surrounding economic area very substantially in the digital economy and also network and information security.
What we are seeing is that new regulation, there's a very strong first-mover advantage here. "Advantage" may not be the correct term. There's a very strong first-mover influence. As we saw with GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation, will these regulations from Europe have a global influence? Are we seeing extraterritoriality through the influence of these regulations? We started to look at other topic areas.
So issues of taxation, issues that in some countries the revenue streams were changing, that people might be working from a particular region in the notion that they're employed by a company in a particular region but they're working elsewhere. And so the nature of work starts to be affected, which is another cluster.
So, really, it was these two main themes. One is the influence of regulations and extraterritoriality, but the future of work perhaps belongs and is influenced by many other factors that are covered by other clusters, such as connectivity as many of us have moved online and there's an expectation that many of those jobs will stay at least partially working online because we found it's possible to do so, which brings up issues of inclusion because people don't have equitable access, which changes different aspects of the economy and how one can participate in it.
And then the need for -- is there a need for a broad discussion around harmonization and what harmonization may mean both in terms of regulation and their impact but also harmonization of how different issues are affecting all of us globally.
Vinicius, would you like to carry on with a more specific comment there?
>>VINICIUS SANTOS: Thanks, Adam.
Actually, I think Adam has already made a very comprehensive report of the discussion. I don't think it lacks very much to say on everything.
But specifically on harmonization, the idea came when we were discussing the different topics around the extraterritoriality effects of the differences between countries, differences and norms in regulations and also in digital services or on infrastructure and the access to everything. So when we were talking about all those things, that came the idea of discussing the issue of harmonization because we are always talking about different levels of harmonization in different areas of interest. So we can have many specific challenges of harmonization in terms of access to infrastructure. So we have asymmetries inside local realities, inside national realities actually.
And we can also frame that in a global context when we are just comparing between the North and the Global South, for example. So we have different asymmetries, and the challenges of harmonization there put on a lot of challenges for people in the development of countries -- the overall development of countries.
And, also, we can see the same issues when we are looking to the interoperability of laws and norms, access to data, specific frameworks. So the asymmetries of power between the economic -- the digital economy market, for example, and also the asymmetries between countries in terms of the big tech companies, as mentioned by Adam.
So this is the overall, let's say, cross-cutting idea behind all the discussions of themes in our group, this idea of tackling the challenges of harmonization in the different spheres around Internet governance issues and discussions. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much to Vinicius and Adam and everybody else in that group. You can put a little bit more detail, if you want, in your written report.
Can we now move on to Group 1 for your report? Group 1, I think that's Amrita? Just introduce yourself for the record, please.
Everyone, please do that.
>>AMRITA CHOUDHURY: Amrita Choudhury for the record. We were a group of six people. Joyce Chen was the chair. The other members were Gunela Astbrink, Angeline Seiuli, (saying name), and Everton Rodrigues.
So first we tried to look at the ten thematic clusters and see if there is a possibility of grouping any of the clusters. As a group, we felt that we need to be careful in merging clusters as the main issues related to the particular themes should not be lost.
We would suggest nine standalone thematic clusters, and we propose merging Internet governance ecosystem and digital cooperation. Perhaps digital cooperation could be a subissue. And we would also propose changing the name of "economic issue" to "digital economy" because it may be difficult for people to actually visualize the term "economic issue."
In terms of prioritizing top three thematic clusters, we had -- we deliberated and each of us shared our views.
Based upon the inputs we received, all of us agreed on security and trust being one of the top priorities or thematic cluster.
Inclusion was also felt to be important.
The third was sustainability and environment.
Digital rights -- cybertrust received five votes; inclusion, three; and sustainability and environment, three.
Digital rights was felt to be important, and there were two people speaking for it.
Digital economy also was important.
There was also a discussion that could digital rights and freedom be a broad theme across inclusion, security, and trust because they are interrelated.
There was also a discussion on how emerging technologies impact inclusion or even have security issues, concerns, et cetera. There was also a deliberation that since IGF+ is being much discussed, perhaps Internet governance and digital cooperation may be a topic is of interest amongst people and should it be looked at as a separate theme.
That's all from me. Joyce, if you want to add anything.
>>JOYCE CHEN: Thanks very much, Amrita. I don't have anything to add because you did a great job. Thanks a lot.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much to Group 1. That's very useful. It's all bringing us closer to having a more synthesized approach to the themes.
Next, Group 2, can you please share your report.
>>ROXANA RADU: Hello, everyone. Thank you. I was the facilitator of the second group. I will be reporting briefly on our discussion --
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Remember to introduce yourself, please.
>>ROXANA RADU: Sure. My name is Roxana Radu. The members of our group included Jose Amado, Berry, Arthur, and Raymond. And we were kindly helped with Anja with the notetaking.
So the discussion started from understanding what the goal of the thematic focus should be. Our question is: What will the IGF inform us about in 2021?
The current clustering we felt was missing the open link on where we are in terms of the Internet evolution during the pandemic, with increased attention to be paid to health, education, and the nature of work.
However, we don't necessarily want to focus only on what has happened but also to look at the things ahead of us. So definitely COVID is not a standalone theme but a theme that touches all of the others. So we are sure in the specific proposals, the pandemic will feature a quite prominent theme.
But it's important to keep it in mind also in the allocation of the different themes.
Digital cooperation and inclusion, we felt, could be merged under the same framework because they are interdependent. And cooperation could be nested in there.
Security and trust are a major priority area from our point of view because they serve all of the needs for the different themes that we have in place. New and emerging technology could be treated as a separate theme, despite the fact that it received a lower number of proposals.
And this is particularly because there are a number of new technologies that do not have a separate forum to be discussed in an open way like at the IGF. So if we think about artificial intelligence or IoT, Internet of Things, we can think about a number of devices we have around us that do not necessarily get a specific discussion elsewhere.
And then for the technical issues themselves, we felt they could be addressed under other themes. So if we are to eliminate some of the thematic clusters we have at the moment, this could be definitely submerged to a different one, to a bigger theme.
But, for example, the TLDs, the top-level domain names, are still worth some priority on the agenda.
Finally, digital rights remain a priority and main theme for this group.
Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much for that really good report, Roxana.
And next we have Group 3. And I think, Carlos Afonso, you did tell us who that was going to be. So the rapporteur will be Fedhi.
Fedhi, you have the floor. Just remember to introduce yourself, please.
>>FEDHI CHANNAN: Hello.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: That's good. We can hear you.
>>FEDHI CHANNAN: Good afternoon from Nairobi, Kenya. My name is Fedhi Channan. I work with Love Matters Africa as an online moderator. Our specific focus is sexual reproductive health where we provide a safe digital space for people to talk about love, sex, relationships.
I was nominated to be the group's rapporteur, and it's a wonderful privilege to talk about what our group discussed.
So, Group 3, please forgive me. It's my first time being a rapporteur. I hope the role is filled well.
Mr. Carlos Alberto Afonso brought to the table the discussion of new and emerging technologies. He touched upon the following and considered how the IGF can better integrate them into existing global organizations. And these covered migration, protection of rights, inclusion and access, and regulation, among others.
Mr. Roberto, the chair, reflected on the above points and discussed on the importance of prioritizing the IGF thematic pillars, whilst integrating them with the above and thanked the team for the ongoing discussion.
Madam Sonja provided an update on the theme names.
And Mr. Ananda then proposed developing refining structures that can address performance of existing systems and come up with new principles that cannot only address the IGF thematic issues at hand but also streamline them into a more effective and executable system.
Furthermore, Mr. Ananda then reiterated by asking how many years would it take to address each thematic pillar. Would it take three years? How long would it take for the agenda to transition from local to regional to international?
Mr. Carlos then reiterated that we should take into consideration how the pandemic has changed the way we work in 2021. What can the IGF do towards reflecting how we work and restructure our priorities as we integrate new and emerging technologies?
And then I had the opportunity to speak about how through Love Matters Kenya some of the online crises that we face with regards to the pandemic include one of our counties, if you are familiar with Kenya, Machakos County, for four months last year experienced 4,000 teenage pregnancies due to lockdown.
Now, four months and 4,000 teenage pregnancies is a really high number. Considering this is a serious issue with the pandemic, a platform like ours cannot sustainably accommodate all ongoing issues.
Roberto then touched on the way to achieve these issues is raised and can only be addressed through implementation. Mr. Ananda then responded by remaining that the panel -- to the panel that the IGF at the moment is only a sensitization body and not an implementation one and that the member states need to transition and become an implementation body.
This -- he recommended that the function of the IGF at the moment should sensitize its members and finalize its policy documents with intergovernmental bodies so that they can be implemented in policy.
Carlos then proceeded to remind the group that there are organizations that have survived the IGF in reflection of its thematic pillars and that we need to revise how organizations use this to help refine (indiscernible) systems.
The IGF --
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Fedhi, Fedhi, sorry. Fedhi, sorry, to interrupt you.
Just a reminder, if you can send the detailed report in writing. But for the purpose of this plenary, just home in on the overarching conclusions that the group came up with.
Very sorry to interrupt you. We will include all of it in the written report.
>>FEDHI CHANNAN: OF course. Basically the idea was that the IGF is a fantastic working body. But in order to achieve the thematic pillars within it, we need to reflect on existing systems and use those reflections to develop workshops within the IGF so that moving forward and looking at the future, we can actively show that as IGF members, we have social impact assessment to prove our org. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much for that, Fedhi. Sorry to have interrupted you.
And next we have group 4.
>>RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you, Anriette. My name is Raquel Gatto. I was the rapporteur for group 4, which was named Security and Trust and was chaired Poncelet Ileleji.
And we were about seven people attending with a very diverse background in terms of geographical reach, stakeholder groups, and gender.
Also, this rapporteurship was done (indiscernible). Nikitas (saying name) was also reporting in the first part of the breakout. So I want to acknowledge her work here, too. She had some connectivity issues and dropped.
So about the key take-aways from the group, the fact that the group was named Security and Trust prompt us into this path for almost 2/3 of the meeting.
Our first take-away has to do with cross-pollination. So the group recognized the importance of security and trust as incremental for IGF discussions. But that can also be overlapping with other themes and clusters, particular technical issues that need to be more talked about at the IGF. And there can be some integration between both clusters.
Also, the discussions around security and trust can benefit from keeping the nuances clear between what is the Internet governance, the content, and the technical aspects. For example, it is important for end users to understand their own digital rights as well as for governance needing to regulate on those topics, to understand what are the technical matters and what are the implications with the overall environment.
In a very practical suggestion, also, it could be highlighted in terms of clusters (indiscernible).
And third -- on the third take-away on cross-pollination, there is a stronger link with digital cooperation that is also, of course, part of the broader U.N. agenda. But cross-border collaboration is very important as well cooperation amongst stakeholders itself is also very important. There is a suggestion to have more transparency into to some of those related processes and discussions because that's what can make our trust viable.
Another suggestion is also to look for the connections and retrofit with other international fora of the U.N, UNOWG, UNIDIR, et cetera.
For the second take-away, it's about streamlining the work to not repeat what has been discussed in the past IGFs, to build on the previous outcomes, and to bring new discussions and aspects.
Also, the importance to integrate in this topic intersessional work of the BPF from cybersecurity that has been going on for a few years in terms of the (indiscernible) impact which has a horizontal team -- is a horizontal team that is discussed (indiscernible). And there might be a place here for online safety.
The third and last take-away after going through the key clusters, after a short discussion, the three are access and inclusion, digital cooperation, and security and trust.
I invite any other members from the breakout group to please elaborate further, especially if I done a terrible job here and missed something in the transition between the roles.
But thank you very much. It was a very useful discussion. And looking forward to today and the next two days of discussions. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, Raquel, for that report.
Does anybody from Raquel's group want to add? I don't see anyone.
So let's move on to the next group. That's Group 6. And Jutta, you are the rapporteur. Please, go ahead.
>>JUTTA CROLL: Yes, thank you, Anriette, for giving me the floor. Our group was a group of six people. We had Gabriela Nardy from Brazil, Flavio Wagner also from Brazil, then Brett van Niekerk.
If I understood right, Brett, you are from South Africa.
We had Alfredo Calderon from Latin America. And from the Polish government, our dear colleague Przemyslaw. I hope I pronounced that well.
First, we discussed a more not-so-much structured way what we would emphasize -- would like to see emphasized in the program of the Internet Governance Forum. Where also Alfredo mentioned that he sees a huge importance for more structured work of schools of Internet governance and for a repository of their resources. But that was not so much related to the clustering of the issues that came out of the call for issues.
And then we turned to that clustering and tried to identify these subthemes or subissues, whether they are overlapping. We identified some overlaps, where issues were suggested under a certain cluster but also fit into another.
And then we saw that some others were more complementary to each other. And that we took as a basis to define a structure. We came out with -- in the end with five tracks. Still thinking that five might be too much but this needs to be looked into deeper. And I can explain that a little bit more in detail.
So, first, we saw that sustainability and environment and economic issues have certain overlaps and that they fit also good together. So we suggest to have a track that is environmental and economic sustainability.
And that we based that also on the assumption that we have a development over the last years where economy could not be considered without environmental issues and impact. And that's why we came up with "environmental and economic sustainability."
Then, second, we see that digital inclusion and digital rights and freedoms have some overlaps. And we also identified in the cluster of data some issues, especially those related to privacy, that fit into rights and freedoms. So we suggest to have a second track that is digital inclusion, rights, and freedoms.
Then security and trust and also part of the data track -- or the data cluster, I must say, and also part of technical issues, for example, like DNS abuse, fit together. So the suggestion would be to have a third track, which would then be security, safety, and trust fitting in these parts from technical issues and data as well.
Then we found that in new and emerging technologies, it was a bit astonishing that we still think artificial intelligence and Internet of Things are new and emerging technologies. These are around nearly 20 years or more. So they could fit very well into a track that is called "technology."
And we would also take part of these technical issues cluster and parts of the data cluster, for example, data portability, into that merged cluster which is called "technology."
That leaves us with digital governance ecosystem to be left into the fifth track, which would then be governance and cooperation. And we also see that part of technical issues that were mentioned in the section of standardization could fit in very well into governance and cooperation and, also, apart from the data cluster, governance frameworks for data sharing and data governance would fit into that track of governance and cooperation.
Final remark, we discussed that there was mentioned in one cluster plus COVID-19 recovery. And we do think, from our group, that this should be addressed in the check on digital inclusion, rights, and freedoms, since we assume that, after the pandemic, many countries will face a deeper digital divide than before, so that would fit in very well into the digital inclusion track.
I invite my co-participants from group six to add some comments if I missed something. Thank you for listening.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much, Jutta.
And it's good to begin to also see how some of the groups are coming up with similar proposals. So there's some consensus also emerging.
Does anyone want to add to your test report?
If not, if you're not jumping in right now, can we please move on to group seven?
>>JUNE PARRIS: Hello. I'm June Parris. I took the task of taking notes. Maria Paz Canales, she's a MAG member, and she led the discussion.
Our goal was to discuss data, and Maria was trying to get us focused on big tech. However, we tended to go into human rights and safety connected with data, which was mainly the focus that we discussed.
What issues are missing from the discussion?
The human rights focus, some topics, roles, and responsibilities of the private sector. Advocates were mentioned, general legal rights. The COVID has also created a void in access to the Internet for people in developing countries and people with language difficulties especially.
Countries are taking advantage in developing countries with increased cost of Internet and data and access to the Internet is also a problem with the onset of COVID.
Human rights, we need to take note of these human rights issues and include in the IGF. The IGF needs to focus a bit more on culture and human rights.
There is also -- we discussed, also, a concentration of power, issues such as health in some countries and being -- some countries have taken priorities on health.
We also a need to manage the data, as I said before, where there is no data or limited data for developing countries, inclusion is the issue. Culture is also an issue. We touched on culture because if we don't look at culture, we can't solve some of the problems that we've got.
We went on to talk a bit about private sector and storage of Internet, which massive storage is needed in some countries and is not possible to have this storage due to lack of resources. We tried to capture in a bucket under -- it all should be captured within a bucket on the data, digitalization, sustainability, inclusion. Education is also very important, especially in developing countries and the global cells where we have -- we all seem to have the same problems in the global cell and developing countries, with language, culture, and inclusion.
One example was New Zealand where the Indigenous people have problems accessing data and the Internet.
We went on to talk about intellectual property and massive data needs to be preserved. I mentioned culture before, so I'm not going to mention that again.
I'm hoping culture can be included in the IGF. We need to look at that to see if we can get that included. There are some potential solutions similar to local content as well as the IGF probe in inclusion and thinking about culture to be inclusive.
We then went on to talk about including the environmentarians, but we noticed that there is a problem with governments, as governments don't always want to discuss certain issues at IGF level. They're working on things sometimes privately, and they're keeping things close to their chests. So it's not always open and transparent when you include governments at the discussion table. They actually tell you what they want you to hear.
We talked a bit about cybersecurity and hospitals being attacked, as if it's not bad enough being attacked in other spheres -- other platforms were being attacked, but health care is the lowest.
So we ended the discussion there because our time was up, but I will fill in more on the report.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much to June.
And thanks to all the past MAG members who are here today. It's really good to have you with us.
And next we have Horst Kremers who's reporting for group eight.
>>HORST KREMERS: Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to report on group eight, Internet governance ecosystem. The chair was Giacomo Mazzone, and participants are Meelis Tiigimae, (saying name), Richard Delmas, Rudolf Gridl, and Lucien.
We especially discussed the overlap of our topics with other clusters, and that was especially the freedom in a digital space -- the Internet freedom, inclusion, and synergies between these overlaps.
The inclusion also deals with technical issues and security and trust. This is quite a general naming of these overlaps, but I think we can go into a little bit more detail in the final report.
What we addressed also is participative governance, and this is inclusion of stakeholders in general, especially it was a discussion in our group on the technical and -- technical people and in relations to the government, people doing the joint governance in a participative way.
There is also the private sector particularly involved and civil society stakeholders. This is the principle from the United Nations' instruments wording and the United Nations, voting for everyone. Everything has to be done in a participative way.
The clustering also depends on voters' context, we feel, when we do clustering as said group of seven people, we have our own concerns that probably is in the other groups the same.
Voters have maybe an economic interest. We said that there should be such principle like having disclosure of interests of formal declarations of interests as useful in other discussions of that type.
There could be a context of voters in past, current, and future projects. So that is a kind of the context of voters' interests of different priorities. That is a personal priority of voters. We are not -- we are not prepared of doing voting by stakeholder groups and so on so that we find the whole voting possibilities here quite difficult.
The question, also, is: Is it the right time? Are we sufficiently prepared for this? Maybe the voting for clusters would be more easy for doing it for next year, but we would have to start it maybe this year already.
The stakeholder groups in some special issues remotely interest of librarians, I refer to the Berlin IGF where librarians had quite a lot of sessions and discussions and also the interest of the media and journalism groups.
Cross-society and cross-border issues were mentioned explicitly in the aspects of multilingualism that is indeed in content, in systems, and in discussions of governance.
The difficulties I mentioned in the United Nations' programs are very general. The priorities related to what is happening in the real world is what makes the voting more complicated because in the real world, it's a lot of technical issues of post-COVID information society governance that is a very special, although very broad field. And we already heard in the discussion here on the questions of sustainable development goals. We combine that with disaster risk reduction issues of UNDRR, and that is a common reach-out into these programs that have their own governance stream of interests. And I don't know, at the moment, how to do that on a national way across these discussing groups.
Critical resources are currently not able to cope with the current demands, so that should be a priority of this year, at least, to have contact and discuss critical resources of Internet facilities and information management in general.
Thank you very much, and we have the possibility of going into a little bit more detail in our written report.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks a lot, Horst. I'm sorry. I was about to ask you to end, and then you did. Thanks a lot.
And can we now have group nine?
>>ROMAN CHUKOV: I believe digital cooperation, right?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Yes. Roman, I think that's you, is that not?
>>ROMAN CHUKOV: Yeah. And my friends who participated in the discussion, I was elected as a veteran, they said. So let me kindly introduce --
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Just introduce yourself for the record, please.
>>ROMAN CHUKOV: Yes. My name is Roman Chukov. I'm representing the governmental stakeholder group in (indiscernible), third term.
Our priorities for the IGF this year would be data and digital rights because we didn't have enough time to finish the conversation, whether we keep data or digital rights. That's why for now I take the decision to merge it, and potentially we'll follow up with an email.
The next one is trust and security. And the third one is new and emerging technologies. As the main theme, maybe the cross-border one, or red-line one, is digital cooperation for us. So that we end all the discussions with some strict recommendations, some specific recommendations on the Internet governance, how it can be governed, which mechanisms, legislation, other actions that are required.
So these are kind of four priorities: Data and digital rights, trust and security, new and emerging technologies, and digital cooperation.
My colleagues, can you kindly add if I missed something?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks for that, Roman.
Does anyone from group nine want to add?
That's good. You get praise from your colleagues, Roman.
And, please, do send these reports to the Secretariat.
>>ROMAN CHUKOV: Surely. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks a lot for that, Roman and everyone in group nine.
So our final report is group 10, and I think Timea Suto, you are presenting?
>>TIMEA SUTO: Yes. Thank you very much, Anriette. Can I just confirm you're hearing me all right?
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Yes, very clearly.
>>TIMEA SUTO: Thank you very much. I've been having issues just now.
So thank you, everyone, for the opportunity to report from group 10. My name is Timea Suto. I'm a former MAG member and working for the private sector with the International Chamber of Commerce-BASIS initiative.
So our group, as you see in group 10, was supposed to discuss technical issues, and we really quickly agreed that all the 10 issue clusters can probably be argued to be very important. So what we tried to do is, instead of discussing the individual issues, to try and find synergies and have a general focus for the IGF.
And from our conversation just prior, what we would like the IGF to do or how the IGF should look like is to provide input and discussions on how we can move from values of Internet governance and digital issues into their implementation. So that general focus guided, I think, most part of our conversations.
So what we came up with is really a way to consider the issues that the IGF faces, not from a thematic perspective -- and by "themes," we mean nouns, but, from a concept perspective, sort of like thinking about, in general -- general objectives and concepts we all relate to.
So what we came up with is three general baskets of concepts under which we feel we can cluster basically all of the issues that were raised in the 10 themes. And those three groups that we came up with are: The first, implementing values and rights; the second, digital cooperation and trust; and the third was access and inclusion.
The group actually had a lengthy conversation about digital cooperation and trust, whether those two should be different topics or if we can group them, but we ended up saying that that might be a good opportunity to see how the two would work together as they attack the same issues.
So those three are the ones that we came up with. I don't want to give a more lengthy report. There was a discussion about where to include data, for example, but I refer to my colleagues in the group, Courtney, Nicola, Peti, Sumair, and Nebojsa, if there's anything else I might have missed, please feel free add.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks very much for that report, Timea.
Does anyone else want to add?
>>COURTNEY RADSCH: I could add just one thing for the group is --
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Just introduce yourself, please, for the group, Courtney.
>>COURTNEY RADSCH: Sorry. My name is Courtney Radsch. I'm the Advocacy Director at the Community to Protect Journalist and a MAG member. And I would just add that one of the things we thought about the thematic clustering was that might get us toward the outcome in the U.N. digital cooperation strategy towards, you know, more implementation and how we can actually put this forward, you know, more than just talking about leading toward policy outcomes. So that was one of the rationales for that.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks a lot for that, Courtney.
Well, thank you, everyone. The discussion, I think, was really useful. And I know it's always a little bit difficult to get into these groups, and they're quite small groups, but I think we've got some really rich feedback.
And I think if we look at the reports we heard from the group; you can see how useful this is for the MAG. Much easier for the MAG to look at that quite complex synthesis of input from the community and through the lens of the insights from the small-group discussion because you've already helped the MAG think of how to prioritize and how to merge.
We're making excellent time. In fact, you will have a longer break than we thought you would. But can I please ask people to not take the floor for general reflections.
Remember the purpose of this session is for us to get towards a more focused and more outcome-oriented IGF.
And Joyce Chen, I see you've joined the speaking queue. You have the floor.
And, others, please start raising your hands or joining the speaking queue.
Joyce, over to you.
>>JOYCE CHEN: Thank you, Anriette.
I'm Joyce Chen, MAG member, based in Singapore. I'll just repeat some of the comments I made in the chat and also some thoughts about what the groups have presented.
So one would be I heard a bit of interest in the Internet governance ecosystem, and I think some groups also touched on the issue of transparency. And Group 1, we did discuss if we might miss out on Internet governance ecosystem and digital cooperation if we didn't select this as a priority.
But we felt that this could also be included in the broader theme of trust. And so I think we could also think of trust as a broader umbrella for some of these issues to do with governance.
And then I also made the comment about -- I heard from several groups also talking about the COVID-19 pandemic. And I just wanted to reiterate that I see the pandemic is really more of a backdrop or context rather than a theme, per se. So it could be that we would receive lots of proposals with the pandemic as a context for different cross-cutting themes that were covered under different themes.
So I would not see it as a theme by itself. I just wanted to highlight that.
And I think one of the groups mentioned also their proposal for renaming, I think it was, environmental and economic sustainability. I just felt that the term "sustainability" is much broader in the concept and really shouldn't just be talking about economic sustainability. It could also be social sustainability, environmental sustainability, developmental. So I think we would lose a little bit of that idea of what "sustainability" is trying to bring if we tied it down to economic sustainability.
And then the last thing I wanted to say was a +1 to one of the group's suggestions to use "technology" as just a one-word sort of broader umbrella for all the things under that. It could be new and emerging technologies. It could be -- maybe AI is no longer a new, emerging technology. It could be something that's already been done, but it could still be discussed under the umbrella of technology. And I really like that.
And I wonder if we could not also move towards something like this, which is more of a more concise way of looking at the themes.
That's it. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks a lot for that, Joyce.
And others, please feel free to respond to Joyce's remarks.
Next we have Ananda.
Everyone remember to introduce yourself.
Ananda, you have the floor.
>>ANANDA RAJ KHANAL: Thank you. This is Ananda Raj Khanal. I'm a government stakeholder, MAG member from Nepal.
All 507 issues, ten themes, 53 clusters are relevant and a priority for the respective proposers.
I want to introduce one issue that needs to be decided in principle. You know, all the issues that are relevant cannot be discussed as themes in IGF forums.
Those already established in global, regional, and national scale need not be further discussed because they're already established.
My proposal is let us identify the issues which are not yet established. Let us discuss them for three years, maximum. Once it is globally, regionally, and nationally accepted as an issue, reflected in the respective policy or strategic documents in national government policy documents, then I think we are successful in establishing those issues.
Once they are established and going into the implementation phase, we don't further need to discuss and sensitize it again because it is already accepted by the governments.
I would argue to sensitize this and then inspire the governments around the world to accept those ideas and reflect them in their policy interventions.
So let us agree on certain years. If three years, maybe I propose, we discuss certain issues and then once it is established, then we move into next issues.
So, for example, to illustrate an example, access and inclusion are very critical issues. Very, very relevant issues. They are always important. But these have been already accepted in all global, regional, and national governments. You can see the policies brought out after 2,000 I.T policies or ICT policies or broadband policies or telecom policies all talking about access and inclusion.
So we don't -- we don't need to sensitize it again and again in IGF. So this is not an issue to be sensitized because it has already been accepted.
For example, AI has been there for a long time. But this has not been sufficiently sensitized. We don't see most of the countries having a policy, legal or regulatory, framework on the use of AI, misuse of AI, how the data is governed in AI, all those things. That could be further accentuated through IGF platforms.
That is what my request is, if you consider this to be a matter to be discussed further. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks for that, Ananda.
Thank you for bringing us, again to the idea of a multiyear program and of linking with NRIs.
I just think that sometimes a discussion seems to have been had, but implementation doesn't happen. You know, so I think that's also a challenge for the IGF. The IGF has had many discussions on access, but access is still not inclusive. So I think that also makes it challenging for the IGF.
So it doesn't mean -- but I think your point is that even if we do discuss an issue again, we have to discuss it in a different way. And I think that's also feedback we have from the community.
So next we have Amali Da Silva-Mitchell. After Amali, we have Jutta.
I am hoping other people will put up their hands.
Amali, you have the floor.
>>AMALI DA SILVA-MITCHELL: Hello, thank you. My name is Amali Da Silva-Mitchell, and I'm the coordinator for the dynamic coalition on data-driven health technologies.
We are, of course, very, very interested in issues for mitigating the digital divide and access to all. Especially we can see that with the pandemic right now. We are also very concerned for very fast technology development, drug development, and so forth. We see things like quantum technology and the real need for very early collaboration in this technology, very expensive technology, probably restricted to the richer countries, and the need for enabling developing countries to participate in this technology is also very important.
Recognizing also things like indigenous medicines and how they can be supported in their drug development and so forth is also very important, especially in terms of sharing of data, research, protection of intellectual property, and so forth.
And, obviously, also, we want to highlight the fact of things like intergenerational dependencies and technology and how this could be something that should be looked at when looking at sort of access to all because mobile health and other forms of eHealth are very, very important really right now. And we think people will embrace it long-term into the future as well.
So just want -- just to please highlight the fact the importance of looking at the health data. We know it's pandemic-oriented. Quite honestly, it's very, very long-term and the need to meet SDG Number 3, please. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Amali.
I think your comments and reminder of the remark that we've also heard from the community, which is that the IGF needs to be relevant to people that are not just Internet governance specialists. It needs to be relevant to people that are working with the Internet in addressing other day-to-day human and social and health, et cetera, issues. So that was a good reminder.
Jutta, you have the floor.
>>JUTTA CROLL: Yes. Thank you, Anriette, for giving me the floor again.
I do think I could go right ahead from what you have said before. The Internet needs to be relevant to people. And when we try to have a more concise program for the IGF, that needs also to be understood by the people who come to the IGF, who are not always familiar with all the issues that we are dealing with in the context of Internet governance. But what they need is to understand what they could expect.
And, therefore, what I take from all the discussions and the presentations we had from the different groups today is that the more it's possible to understand what I can expect in a certain track, the better people will respond to the program.
So when we look for tracks, it should be the way that you could distinguish one track from the other, that you don't consider whether -- like issues of privacy belong to data or do they belong to safety.
And there are more and more issues that we see in these clusters that need to be distinguished one from another to be in a certain track.
And I really appreciated what Joyce said about sustainability is, of course, not only economic sustainability. We had put it in our group as environmental and economic sustainability.
I really do think it's good idea to say environmental, social, and economic sustainability. But then everything that we belongs to that track should be in that track, and there should not be considerations like "I really don't know whether something belongs to that track or that track."
And trying to find four, maybe three, maybe five tracks, the best way would be to make them distinguishable from each other. And I do think the flesh lies in the subthemes or subissues that are in these ten clusters.
Look into the subissues and then try to distinguish one from another and sort them into the four or five buckets we will end up with.
Thank you for listening.
>>CHAIR ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much for those remarks, Jutta.
I don't see anyone else asking for the floor. Is there anyone else who want to contribute? I will bring the session to a close. We operate with such a wide area of concerns and actors in the IGF, and that's why -- it's kind of the paradox of the IGF because we are very inclusive, on the one hand and we cover a wide range of issues, on the other hand.
But even in our inclusivity, we are also still quite exclusive because we tend to address those -- the narrow insider community involved in Internet governance. But that has changed as well.
In fact, if you look at the participation statistics of the IGF, particularly since Berlin, that there's a large number of people who come to the IGF every year who are first-time visitors or participants. And that indicates the relevance of the IGF.
And I think Jutta's remarks and other people's remarks about starting with the more specific issues is a useful way of thinking about it. If we try to create a rationale taxonomy or an abstract logic of thematic clusters, we could, in fact, end up disguising the granularity, the specific policy issues that people are struggling with.
But I'd like to really thank everyone for their input, for their participation. I want to thank again everyone who submitted those inputs to the call for thematic issues focus for IGF 2021.
Thank you to the secretariat for synthesizing and presenting it to us in such an accessible form. And good luck to all the MAG members who now have to work with this to design the program structure for this year.
So our next agenda item has, in fact, already been covered. That's the IGF 2021 process and time line, as well as intersessional work.
So at this point, I want to thank everyone again. And I will close this part of the meeting and hand over to Chengetai Masango who will pick up on the chairing after the break. We have quite a long break.
So, Chengetai, over to you.
Thanks from me, everyone.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much. Let me just try and move my window. Yes. I've managed.
Thank you very much, Anriette, our chair. So as Anriette has said, we are having a break until 2:30 UTC. And then we will just take a pause from -- it's still Open Consultation but IGF 2021-specific Open Consultation and discuss digital cooperation, where we're going to meet with USG Ms. Maria Francesca Spatolisano, who is the Assistant Secretary-General for policy coordination and inter-agency affairs. And she's also the officer in charge of the Secretary-General's envoy on technology. That's the tech envoy for short that everybody has been calling.
So she'll be here at 2:30 UTC, just to introduce herself and also answer any broad, overarching questions that you may have and that she can.
And then we'll have an Open Consultation on proposed multistakeholder high-level body. That's not on the whole of paragraph 93 but just specifically on 93(a). So that will be at 3:00 UTC time.
So please have a break, have lunch, breakfast, or dinner. And then we'll see you back here at 2:30 UTC.
Thank you.