IGF 2019 First Open Consultations and MAG Meeting Day 2

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2019 First Open Consultations and MAG Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, from 28 to 30 January 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. 

***

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  Let's start the second day of open consultations and MAG meeting.  So this is the first day of the MAG meeting.  

 Just a reminder, we're using the speaking queue.  And when called upon, please say your name clearly and slowly for the scribes so that the scribes can catch it.

 A reminder as well that for the new MAG members, MAG members are here in the personal capacity.  So we don't -- we expect you to give your views on the subject matter.  Yes, you do -- you do, in part, report back to your community but you were chosen for your individual expertise and sometimes lack of expertise because we get good ideas from that as well.

 [ Laughter ]

 So without further ado, let me hand it over to the chair, Lynn.

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

 The first order of business here is the adoption of the agenda.  Again, the agenda was posted as part of the package a little over a month ago.  

 Today we're going to start with some opening statements, short, from the host country.  And then I'll have a couple of opening statements as well as we kick off the IGF planning.  

 And, again, remind everybody that the IGF is not just the annual meeting.  It is all of the intersessional activities and, of course, it is also our relationships with other Internet governance-related organizations, international organizations, and, of course, with the NRIs as well.

 We have an item which is called taking stock of IGF 2018, again, while setting expectations for 2019.  In talking to Chengetai and given the very thorough update he did yesterday and the fact that the report is actually posted online, he's proposed that we don't go through that again.  And my proposal would be that we open it up for a general discussion from the MAG with respect to kind of your reflections and what you've heard certainly over the day yesterday, through IGF 2018, through stocktaking, through Secretary-General's comments, through our own communities, et cetera.  So just allow some time for an open discussion focused on 2019.  And I'll make a few more introductory remarks on that at the time.

 That's the bulk of the day's activity.  Of course, we want to then turn to what does that mean for our program of activities, again annual meeting plus all the intersessional activities.  And we'll be asking everybody to be as specific as they can, whenever they can, about what work is being proposed and how it might be resourced and what the plan is for actually accomplishing it.

 And then tomorrow it's planned -- of course, we approve tomorrow's agenda tomorrow.  But tomorrow it's planned to start drilling down a little bit more detail on some of the administrative, operational, logistics requirements of actually kicking off the call to the community and those sorts of activities.

 So with that, I would like to see if there are any requests for edits, amendments.  Just doing a slow count to six and allow people to find buttons and things like that.  Failing that, we will call the agenda approved.

 And just a very brief welcome again to all of the MAG members and a very, very warm welcome to the new and incoming MAG members.  And I can -- I want to assure everybody that everybody's opinion is welcomed.  Nobody is too new to this effort.  I was talking this morning by saying newness is good, freshness is good.  When I was quite young in my career, I was told you only get the opportunity to be new in something once so take advantage of it.  Ask all your questions.  Get all your comments out.  Get all your thoughts out before they get, you know, kind of lost or some may say tainted by the current set of thinking and reflections.  So I really want to encourage all of the new MAG members to please come in.  Feel very, very free to come in.

 And to that point, I can also be available over lunchtime, too, if there are any specific questions from some of the incoming MAG members on what some of these things mean or participation or any other questions.  So, you know, we can set aside some time to do that.

 And one final point, if when you take the mic, you could just simply give your name, your organization, and your stakeholder group, nothing more than that.  We've got really fantastic introductions online, but I think it will help to put names to faces and some context to remarks as well.  So, again, when you take the mic, just quickly your name, your organization, and stakeholder group.

 So with that, you all know who's up here on the panel with me.  We have Wai-Min Kwok from DESA, and we're very pleased he's going to be here with us all day today.  Obviously Chengetai and Dr. Bronstrup.  

 And Dr. Bronstrup is going to now walk us through some thoughts and plans for Germany.  And we will take questions or comments specific to the German logistics, German plans as they stand, immediately after her presentation.

 So, Daniela, welcome again and you have the floor.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  Thank you very much, Lynn.  Good morning, everybody.  Maybe I introduce myself again for those who haven't been there yesterday.  My name is Daniela Bronstrup.  I'm heading the Department for Telecommunication, the Postal Sector, Media and International Digital Policy at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in Germany.  And I'm here now and I'm very happy and glad that I could accept the host country co-chair role for the MAG.  

 You know, the federal government is really proud of being host country this year for the IGF.  And let me for starting, once again, thank France as last year's host country who did a tremendous job, especially given the very short time frame they had.  We use that and also previous host country traditions and experiences as an example this year.

 And let me also thank again Lynn and Chengetai for -- on behalf of the whole MAG for organizing a very, very interesting program 2018.

 You know, the whole German Internet governance community is thinking about what can we do this year to further improve and strengthen the IGF.  So let me share a little bit of the ideas we have on that point.

 First and foremost, the IGF's multistakeholder approach continues to be key in our view because nowhere else do representatives of national governments, civil society, business community, technology, and others come all together to discuss at an international level and as equals the current challenges we are facing concerning the Internet and digital transformation.

 The meeting is guided by the vision of an open and secure, reliable, and truly global Internet acting as a driving force for innovation and social development that is free from censorship, discrimination, and propaganda.  That is the vision we share.

 So why is the IGF so important in our view?  It is because it's platform for open and intensive dialogue for exchanging best practices and identifying important challenges.  So as it is already important, what could we possibly improve to make it even more relevant?

 I think it's important that we identify the important issues to raise even more awareness also in the broad community.  And yesterday we heard a lot about we need to do more marketing and more communication in the broad community, and that is what we also identified as a key issue to improve and strengthen the IGF.  So what we would like to do is to even reach out further in public.

 So even though overall attendance in the IGF is high, there are still a number of groups that are underrepresented.  Some of them have already been mentioned yesterday.  That are, for example, representatives of the Global South, the business community, and also high-ranking government officials.  

 This is a challenge that we would like to address.  So maybe starting with the Global South, you will probably have heard already that we are providing financing for representatives from the Global South so that they can attend not only the IGF but also the MAG meetings.

 Secondly, business community.  We are reaching out also to the German business community.  But worldwide, we are using networks so that we can address even more especially small and medium-sized companies.

 And, third, high-ranking government officials.  After all when those are hosting the IGF attach a high-level importance to the forum, so would those attending.  And we have the example of France last year where President Macron attended the IGF.  I can tell you now that Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel has decided to come to the IGF this year and will open the forum this year as last year President Macron did.  Maybe you have already seen on our website that we have a video posted there of the Chancellor as already inviting all of you to the IGF in Berlin.

 Quite obviously, having high-ranking policymakers take part in the meeting will help to attract more media coverage also of the IGF.  And I think this is very important to reach out to the broader public and to reach new stakeholder groups.

 And it would also raise the overall awareness.  So if you have the high-ranking governmental officials, then you will have others also looking at the IGF and that's why we are planning to have a high-level meeting on the day zero.  So our minister, Peter Altmaier, will send out invitations to the ministers worldwide in a few weeks to attend a ministerial meeting.  

 But I made disclosure today already today that we are not only planning to have high-level government officials on the day zero but what we are planning at least to do is to have in parallel to those governmental officials' meeting high-level stakeholder groups meetings, so also meetings of the business community, of the civil society, because we think it is important that we have high-ranking people, senior people, from all stakeholder groups.  That is what "multistakeholder approach" means.  And what we are planning to do is not only that they meet separately but that they then join altogether to come to a big high-level meeting in Berlin on the day zero.

 And we will conduct a number of events running up to the IGF.  That is, for example, the third global conference on Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network that will take place at the beginning of June in Berlin.  And I think it's more or less in parallel with our third -- or overlapping with our third MAG meeting.  So maybe you can also meet other stakeholders there.

 In addition, the federal government is supporting the work of the free -- the Freedom Online Coalition, the Open Government Partnership, and the Global Citizens Dialogue on the Future of the Internet.

 Ladies and gentlemen, we have very, very good examples from other host countries, not only France but also Switzerland and other host countries before.  And we would like to take their experience on board and we would like to meet with those former host countries but also if we then know others -- future host countries, to work closely together with them.  

 And we will coordinate very, very closely with you, with the MAG.  We want, of course, to preserve the fundamental character of the IGF and that means that we will have to strengthen our actions among the multistakeholder groups.

 And I think I can speak now for the whole German IGF community and all German stakeholders, we are looking very much forward to the IGF in Berlin.  And I invite you all again, and I hope to see you all there.  Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Daniela.  We not only have the benefit of Germany's early notice, expression of intent and, therefore, a really good planning cycle for them, we, of course, have a really good planning cycle for ourselves this year as well.  Hopefully, we can make some significant progress.

 Are there any comments or questions just now for Daniela?  I mean, obviously if -- some of these topics, I think, we will be coming back to over the course of the day.  But is there anything, anything just now?

 Roman, you have the floor.  And then Veni.

 >>Roman Chukov:  Thank you so much.  Roman Chukov, government, Russian Federation.  

 To Daniela, I just wanted to tell your approach to have more -- four months for official ministerial meetings and so on, we really support it.  And we really think that many of the aspects should be discussed with government and include in the official state.  Thank you.

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

 We have Veni and then Michael.  Veni, you have the floor.

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:  Thank you and good morning.  Apparently happy new lunar year as of today, I guess.  That is what I saw in the (indiscernible).  I had the opportunity to talk to you yesterday, Daniela.  It's amazing what Germany is doing and yet another example why people around the world think you are very efficient in working.  And I would not go into details about the (indiscernible) that you produced because it will sound as an advertisement.

 But there was one thing which I think is particularly important.  And this is what you mentioned about reaching out to new companies, and you mentioned medium and small enterprises yesterday but also big German companies which are big in telecom.  I have witnessed Deutsche Telecom supporting the Munich Security Conference, cybersecurity conference, a couple of years ago in Israel and it was an amazingly well-organized event.  And given the fact that we -- we need to remind ourselves what the Tunis Agenda says about the mandate of the IGF.  I was just reading it actually before I took the floor because it is -- it is -- among the many points that it has in the Tunis Agenda about the IGF, some of those are really, really important with regards to what we've been discussing yesterday and the new developments and all the new commissions and working groups and open-ended working groups and governmental groups of experts that are at the U.N. but also the Global Commission on Stability and Cyberspace.  And there are so many discussions taking place right now that the IGF is really the natural place for those discussions to kind of come together, to meet the businesses, the civil sector, the civil society, the governments, et cetera.

 And probably we need to remind ourselves and we need to read every once in a while those Article 72 and 73 of the Tunis Agenda, just so that we know what exactly the IGF was designed for.  And instead of trying to reinvent somehow ourselves, maybe it's good to actually look what we have been doing successfully and then take -- follow the lead of all the countries that have contributed with something good to each of the IGFs.  Take the good things and continue that.

 And we -- I mean, I've been part of the MAG working group on finance in the last year, and I've seen that this is really one of the most important things as far as the program for, you know, what to do until 2025, but without solid funding for the secretariat and without ensuring that there are host countries willing to host the next IGFs, we will struggle as we did in the last couple of years, frankly, where, you know, either Switzerland who stepped in the at the last moment or France who will be generous to host us at UNESCO.  

 So thanks for your leadership, and really looking forward to see how more engaged you will be.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Veni.  I'll now call Ananda has the floor and then, Michael, we'll come back to you.  And would ask everybody to use the queue, if they can.  

 Ananda, you have the floor.  And welcome.  This is your first time speaking in the meeting as well.

 >>ANANDA KHANAL: Thank you very much.  I'm really excited by the host country co-chair, the generosities he has expressed to include people from the Global South and the plan that will have an opportunity for the high-level government official as well as business communities to interact.

 For the last 15 years I've been attending a lot of such events, and I'm always wondering how we can translate the kind of issues that we bring through a very extensive work like IGF produces a lot of output documents and brings a lot of recommendations.  But at the end, if they're not translated into actions, they're not -- they don't go into implementation and the entire -- the population gets the benefit, the whole exercise that we're doing will -- will really result in not so much worth.

 So my concern is how to translate these into actions and implementation, even though the IGF mandate is not into the implementation and decision making.

 That's where your intention to include the high-level government officials and also the business leaders who really have the potential to translate what we see into actions and implementation is a key.  And I did appreciate that intention.  And I'm wondering how people like me who work in the telecom regulators and have a very inferential capacity to translate what we learn from here into actions can be, you know, utilized for the betterment of all the people in the world.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Daniela.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thank you for all your support.  That's very kind.  Maybe to your question how can we transfer that to action and also funding because, I mean, whose -- in the end, putting things we are discussing into action and who has the resources for funding besides the companies, of course -- [ no audio ] -- funding, but if we are talking about government funding, for example, then it's Parliaments who in the end have to decide about both funding and also action.  And that's why we are now thinking about how could we involve more of the parliaments into our process.  And in Germany, the good thing is that parliament is very much supporting the IGF.  In fact, parliament was in Germany one of the key actors for pushing also the government to apply as host country.  So we think that maybe we have now, as we are host country, sort of a window of opportunity also to ask our parliamentarians to be much more involved in the -- in the process.  And yesterday we had the discussion about is it -- is it better to have the high-level meeting in the beginning or at the end.  Maybe in a way we can do both.  We have been now thinking about maybe having a sort of zero day meeting that would -- probably on the governmental side but possibly -- I mean, we're at least thinking about motivating also parliamentarians to maybe have an international meeting at the end.  Because I think that would be the right format, taking on board all the discussions we will have during the meeting to then feed that indirectly to those who are deciding in the end and are parliamentarians.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Daniela.  Michael Ilishebo, you have the floor.

 >>MICHAEL ILISHEBO:  Good morning.  For the record Michael Ilishebo, government stakeholder group.  Basically I want to -- I want to commend the German government to coming early to show interest in hosting the IGF.  I think they showed the interest way back in 2017 that they were ready to host the IGF in 2019.  Though we struggled to come up with the host for 2018, France showed up almost at the eleventh hour.  This time around last year we were struggling.  We were discussing issues not knowing who was going to host the IGF.  So I expect the German government to have learned lessons in the past two IGF, the 2017 one which was held in Switzerland at the U.N. venue, the 2018 one held in France at the U.N. venue.  Now the 2019 one will not be held at the U.N. venue, as far as I'm concerned.  It will be hosted by the German government.  

 So basically I am looking at it in this way, that, of course, the 2018 IGF had its own issues.  We had issues to do with instead of it being a traditional four-day event, it was a three-day event.  There was no day zero.  The rooms were small.  I hope that gives you enough time to work and collect some of these mistakes we might have encountered in the last two years.

 The second point being is that when a nation is hosting an IGF we had the French president speak in the opening of the IGF.  I think before we invite these high-level dignitaries to speak at this event we should at some point guide them on the mandate of the IGF.  It's not an event where it becomes a platform where people start bringing issues that are in conflict with the actual mandate of the IGF.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Michael.  Some very important points.  I'm sure, Daniela, do you want to respond, at least to the first series?

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Yeah.  I can't tell you today what Mrs. Merkel will say, but the point is well taken.  Concerning the venue, I mean, in fact, yes, we applied early for the IGF this year because we want to have the IGF hosted in Berlin because we think this is the right city in Germany to host the IGF but we do not have a U.N. conference in Berlin.  And we figured out that it was not that easy to find a venue hosting such a big event.  It's -- it's really a challenge.  Basically even though in a very big city like Berlin you find two venues where you can host the IGF, such a big international meeting.  And even two years in advance, one of those was already completely booked.  What we have is a really very, very good venue.  We have a lot of space.  Space is not a problem there.  Other logistical things are no problem.  That's why we have chosen that, and that's why we applied such in advance, because we knew if you do not apply two years in advance you will not find a place to organize such a meeting.  So it's not in the sense that we have learned.  I think the French couldn't have done it otherwise.  They had to take what they had because otherwise they wouldn't have been able to organize that at all.  But having the time we had, we think we did the best out of it.  And that was also in a way our ambition, to find a space where, for example, space is no problem.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Daniela.  Maybe I'll just add to that briefly too, of course, it's not only the sheer number of participants, it's the demand for large rooms, a number of small rooms for bilateral meetings and, of course, the very significant AV requirements that are required in every one of the rooms that makes some of the venues more challenging.  And, of course, many of the U.N. venues are older venues, older rooms that are slowly being upgraded.  But there are a lot of benefits of coming to the U.N. premise, and, you know, as we've seen, a few shortcomings in terms of some of the rooms.  But when we meet with perspective hosts, we do set, you know, a high standard in terms of what we're actually looking f for rooms and then do our -- do our best.

 Let's see, I have Makane who I think is participating remotely so you'll either need to watch the transcript or put your headphones on.  And then Adama and Livia.  And Makane and Livia are recognized to speak because they are either ex-host country representatives or they're representatives of the IGOs, since these are questions I always get, usually after the -- Makane, you have the floor.

 >>MAKANE FAYE:  Yes, good morning.  Good morning, everyone.  Good morning, Chair.  I wish to thank, on behalf of the African Union, the host Germany for coming forward as early as possible to host the next IGF.  And we believe that it would be inclusive because I have -- as I have heard, they're willing to bring all the stakeholders and to assist in bringing them up.

 As African Union we'd like to point out one issue we had last year in having the African continent which is presented by African Union which host and fund African IGF to have a speaking slot at the high-level meeting.  We believe that this should be done because the African Union -- as the EU is representing most of the European countries, African Union also represent all of the African countries.  And we would like, as usual, we used to have it before.  We know that the government have the prerogative to designate who will be speaking or not but would like this year to have at the earlier as possible to get the African Union president or commissioner to be -- to have a speaking slot.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Makane.  I think that negotiation actually takes place between DESA and the host country with some, I think, sort of slight kind of view into that from the MAG as well.  It's not a very straightforward process.  But thank you very much.  And, of course, the African Union is extremely important and certainly in line with the outreach, additional outreach we'd like to do to Africa in general.  Adama, you have the floor.

 >>ADAMA JALLOW:  Thank you for giving me the floor.  My name is Adama Jallow from the civil society stakeholder group.  First, I would like to also thank the German government for their generosity in hosting the next IGF and promising a high standard event.  

 Just to give a few suggestions with regards to prior setbacks that we have from the last IGF meeting, this has to do with the remote participation that we had from last -- last year.  There were a bit of setbacks in how to participate, like the systems were a bit down.  Most of the participants couldn't participate because the system was either down or there wasn't time or the reliable platform for them to participate.  So we had a lot of complaints.

 So I would like to say -- tell the German co-host chair to take note of that, and if they could really work on creating or having a more reliable platform where they can fully participate as it is very essential for them to also participate.  It's just not the people at the event but also to equally involve and include the community at large.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And thank you, Adama.  It's actually the secretariat that's responsible for the platform for the remote participation.  So obviously there's a dependency on the local infrastructure, but I'm sure those comments were well noted and I know we're continually trying to improve the online participation.  Thank you.  Livia, Livia Walpen, you have the floor.

 >>LIVIA WALPEN:  Thank you, Chair, and good morning, everyone.  Again, my name is Livia Walpen.  I work for the Swiss government.  And as you know, we hosted the IGF 2017 here in Geneva.  And I would actually just like to join others in really thanking the government of Germany for its commitment and great leadership in hosting this year's IGF in Berlin.  And I think we are really in a great position this year, also compared -- or particularly compared to the previous two years as we really have more time ahead for planning and it's not just stepping in as Switzerland and also France did.  And in this regard, I'm particularly glad also to hear that Minister Altmaier is actually already planning to send out invitations soon, so I think that's really amazing time ahead.  And yeah, as a former host country, I just wanted to assure you that Switzerland stands, of course, ready to closely collaborate with Germany as we also did with France last year and yeah, we are really looking forward to it, Chair, so thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Livia.  Ben, Ben Wallis.

 >>BEN WALLIS: Thank you, Lynn.  Ben Wallis with Microsoft, private sector.  So first I want to say how fortunate I think the IGF is this year for the planning, the thinking, and the resources that the German government is putting into this year's meeting.  I think it's great.  I think it's really commendable that you're looking at ways to bring more representatives in the Global South, and that you're also thinking about how to increase the engagement of representatives of governments and private sector.  

 I'd be interested to know a bit more about the plans you talked of for having day zero sessions with the stakeholders in parallel.  Personally, the biggest value I get from the IGF is coming and hearing perspectives from outside the business community that I'm not used to, different ways of thinking about ways.  And -- but I'm also aware that, you know, there's a human instinct to kind of resist different ways of doing things and that maybe there might be something interest in about getting together as just a stakeholder group and then -- so I'd be interested to hear a bit more of your thinking about that and how much of the day it might take up when we would be alone with our business colleagues and that kind of thing.  Thank you.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thank you all for such big support.  Concerning infrastructure, indeed this is our part, and every time I meet with our agency who is organizing that, I'm telling them, you know what?  Especially digital infrastructure needs to be really high end because what we cannot afford is that Germany will be in the media with not having right access to everybody.  So that's just very well taken.

 Concerning the day zero, honestly speaking, it's a little bit early because I can't tell you, let's say, a fixed plan already.  But I can tell you what we have a little bit in mind, and that is exactly what you asked for.  We have in mind to have separate meetings for the different groups.  I can't tell you timetable, but maybe that could be in the morning of day zero.  So that I think it could be of extra value for senior officials of each group to meet among their, let's say, counterparts, and then we have in mind to have a meeting for all of them together.  I can't tell you yet what kind of format exactly that will be but as Hugh (phonetic) mentioned, I think, it could be very helpful to get then insights from the other groups, from partners of the other groups.  So we will have separate meetings probably plus a meeting where all the stakeholders can come together.  And as soon as we know that in more detail, we will let you know.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Daniela.  Timea, Timea Suto, you have the floor.

 >>TIMEA SUTO:  Thank you, Chair.  Good morning, everyone.  And since this is my first time talking in this meeting, allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Timea Suto.  I'm a representative of the business stakeholder group here in the MAG in my second year.  And I work for the International Chamber of Commerce on our policy team for digital economy and Internet governance issues.

 I just want to commend the efforts first of the secretariat, the chair, and UN DESA for the timely appointment of the MAG this year and for getting us here promptly and getting us working.  We forget this took a lot of work, and I just want to say we are really grateful.  I think this is the first really good step towards another successful IGF.

 Secondly, I wanted to thank and commend the efforts of our German hosts, not just for the great achievement of having a date and a location set out for this year but also for having a well-organized plan of getting us there, having the meetings locked down the road and for having already put a lot of thought into what the IGF is going to look like this year.

 I would like to echo what others have said and just reiterate how good it is to hear that the multistakeholder view is on the front line of thinking, not only at the working levels of the IGF but also at the high level and just underline the added benefit of having these multistakeholder dialogues both in the workshops and in the trenches but also at the high levels.  I think that's very important.  

 So we are very much looking forward to working with you and wish you all yet another successful IGF.  Thank you.

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

 Christine.

 >>CHRISTINE ARIDA:  Thank you, Chair.  My name is Christine Arida.  I represent the Egyptian government.  Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the MAG as a former host of the IGF.  

 I think -- I think that we have a unique opportunity this year having high-level representation that is for the third year but also coupled with an early planning.  

 And I would like to with the spirit of multistakeholderism in mind, nevertheless, do some focus on the governmental stakeholder group which I think is underrepresented at the IGF, especially if we're talking about government representatives from the Global South.

 And in that respect, I think there is an opportunity -- and I thank Dr. Daniela for the transparency and the openness to share with us the planning at this stage.  There is an opportunity to actually try to integrate senior government officials within the program of the IGF.  

 Now, I do understand that they cannot stay for the four -- for three days or plus day zero.  But if there is an opportunity to actually extend some of them into the program, I think this will be very beneficial.  And this will require some early planning together with the MAG, I would say.

 Day zero ideas is a great idea.  We just need to be careful that it does not overshadow the three days of the IGF.  What I think will be very important is actually to get that stakeholder group interested because this will have positive reflections on further host rotation in different areas, which is much needed.  Thank you very much.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  I think this is a very good idea, in fact.  That's what -- we will try it.  You know, ministers have very busy schedules so it probably will be not easy to convince them to stay for several days, but, of course, that is our ambition as you readily say.  We do not want to have a day zero that is overshadowing.  We want to have a day zero that is raising awareness and flashlighting the IGF and not overshadowing.

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

 Maria Paz Canales, you have the floor.

 >>MARIA PAZ CANALES:  Thank you.  I would like to introduce myself.  I represent civil society stakeholder group.  I'm the executive director of the Derechos Digitales, an NGO based in Chile working across Latin America.  

 So my question is related also to what Ben raised a few minutes ago related to the format of these meetings in day zero.  I know that you already say that it's a little bit early, but I think maybe my question will help to make -- a question to kind of have a more clear idea how this meeting will look like, solve the issue of how they will be structured in terms of the groups for the meetings.  

 My next question is how will it be structured in terms of the topics that will be addressed, if the idea is to set a specific agenda, to give a little bit more room for their own constituency to define.  

 I'm disconnected also with a comment that someone made before related to the mandate of the IGF and the scope of the issues and how we want to be the ones that kind of delineate the agenda, insight of the priorities and the things we want to push because, of course, there is the expectation of the high-level meeting that everyone tends to push their own agenda.  So how to have a good balance between that to be attractive enough for people that would participate but also stay in the scope of the discussion that we want to have and we think that are the priority for this group?

 This is my first question, how we can work together and support you as a host in these definitions.

 My second question is related to how to settle this balance between -- to have more high-level participation in general with means that it will stress a little bit of participation of already incumbent persons in this world with the idea of how more participation of new groups, especially you stress the idea of having more participation from the Global South.  So I come back to the idea that someone -- a certain person raised yesterday about to have different type of tracks that are addressed to different audience and in that way to try to combine these two values and how we can work on that.

 And my question is also like to other MAG members because I haven't heard so far what others thinks about this idea of how in these separate tracks pointing out to different constituencies or a level of knowledge or engagement with the topics of the IGF.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Maria.  Just a couple of comments.

 I think Dr. Bronstrup put those ideas out as a way to try to drive in additional participation from some groups that have traditionally been underrepresented.  Of course, neither the secretariat, DESA, the chair, or the host country drives the agenda of any other stakeholder group.  So I think the notion that -- or the idea that Germany is actually thinking about ways to increase participation of high-level stakeholders across -- stakeholders should be, what our individual take-away is and figure out what we might support or recommend or how that might actually be something useful, it needs to be something that advances a substantive Internet governance issue, of course.  But -- so there is no notion of separate tracks or, I mean, that discussion was entirely in the context of -- and I think the suggestion was probably in day zero because it's outside of the IGF so it has some different constraints, if you will, in terms of how we can approach some of the forums.  

 But we're not thinking about separate tracks.  We're not thinking about a government track or a civil society track.  I want to make sure we expunge that language early but take into account what Germany and Dr. Bronstrup are trying to address with the comments there.

 We have quite a few more speakers.  I want to make sure at this point we're just looking for kind of clarification or engagement with Germany on their plans for hosting.  We then have some short comments from Wai-Min Kwok from DESA.  And then we'll actually open it up to a broader discussion with respect to the IGF activities coming over the year.  So if we can make sure that the comments from those individuals that are in the queue speak specifically to any questions for Germany as a host country, that would be best.

 Is there anything else you would like to add, Daniela?

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  Maybe very briefly.  Because, indeed, I mean, we do not want to have separate tracks or something like that.  But the idea is to have more inclusion in the sense that we address more people, high-ranking, nonhigh-ranking, groups that haven't been addressed by the IGF community so far.  So there shouldn't be any tracks.  So that's to your first point.

 Your second question concerning content, indeed, I can't tell you yet.  That will very much depend on what the MAG is deciding concerning the program because at least in my view, ministers should talk about the topics that are the high-ranking topics of the IGF meeting.  They shouldn't have sort of a separate track or separate agenda, but they should in a way feed also as one of the stakeholder groups into the IGF.  So we will not design the agenda now, but we will design the agenda for the ministers when we know much more how the program will look like.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Daniela.  And thank you, Maria, for triggering a very useful discussion.  Thank you.

 Mamadou Lo, you have the floor.

 >>MAMADOU LO:  Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor.  I'm Mamadou Lo from Senegal, the Agricole Bank of Senegal.

 Thank you also for Germany stepping up to host IGF 2019.  As communication and outreach working group representative, thank you also for making already the IGF 2019 website live.  But I think also it is only in English and German version.  On that, I would like to know in how many versions -- how many languages will have IGF 2019 website?  The website, it is also very important for communication.  Thank you very much.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  Unfortunately, I mean, I love France, I love French.  Unfortunately it will only be in English and German.  I'm sorry for that.

 >>MAMADOU LO:  We will help put translation in French.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  I mean, Rudolf --

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  He's saying we will help publish and promote in French.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  It would help.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  No, they will help.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  They will help.  The problem is -- I have to hand over to Rudolf because he knows better why we do not have it in French.  I do not know, but there is a reason why.

 >>RUDOLF GRIDL:  This one now?  Of course, we have been thinking about this language issue.  The thing is, I mean, English is the language of the MAG and the IGF and German is the language of the host country.  So if we now start with, say, French, there is no reason why we shouldn't continue with many, many, many other languages.  And this is something we cannot provide for because it takes a lot of resources that we would rather spend on, like, travel costs for the Global South, for example, than for a huge -- because the website, it will expand.  Now it's not so large but it will expand.  And then if we have to maintain, like, seven or more languages all the time, that's not -- that would eat up a lot of the resources that we would provide for, let's say, more for Global South participation, for involving the NGOs, for diversity issues and these things.  That's the reason why.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Rudolf.  I know what the volunteer spirit is and the community at-large.  And Mamadou knows that very well.  

 Maybe there's an opportunity to take a couple of paragraphs that talk about the IGF and do those in the other remaining U.N. languages and just post them even on the website just as, if you want more information, here's what it is in general.  We can make it clear that the working language of the IGF is in English.  So maybe there's a halfway house which I think is what Mamadou was saying, that they would look at ways to promote the IGF in these other languages, which is a lot of the activities that he and others did over the past year.  So I think that was all.  I don't know that we need to spend a lot more time.  I don't think anybody is asking you to do it in six U.N. languages, but there are some things we can do to promote the IGF in other languages that rely on the volunteer efforts of the organization.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  What specifically were you thinking of that has to be -- that would be good to be in the other languages?

 >>MAMADOU LO:  Just thinking for the six U.N. languages.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  For this kind of information, we do have an effort to do the translation into the six U.N. languages.  So from the IGF website, we have that effort.  

 I mean, as Rudolf was saying, there's going to be a lot of information the closer we get to the meeting.  So it's not going to be possible to translate all that.  But we'll do our best.

 And if you have any specific information that you think will be good to be in the other languages, like French, for instance, we'll try our best with French and then we'll go to the other languages.  Just come and approach us.  We'll just talk to Luis, and then we'll see what we can do.  I mean, it won't be perfect, but we'll try our best.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  Maybe just to take up your suggestion, of course, we will not be able to translate the website and, let's say, for example, we have videos there.  We will have much more that can't be translated in all the U.N. languages.  But take that with me and maybe we can find a sort of compromise in the way that if you tell us what would help especially -- and I personally think about where we address the different stakeholder groups and where we have the ambition to address new groups and then maybe there could be one page, I mean, that issue that we can translate and that then transfer, for example, to other languages, for example, to the site where you can apply for a workshop or something like that.  Maybe that could be a solution.  But unfortunately we won't be able to translate all the content.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Maybe this is a good time to just point out there are two efforts that have been under way with respect to translation.  One is the secretariat last year actually built a platform that allows for volunteer translations of critical pieces of the IGF website which has proven very useful and quite successful as well.  So that's one that we can, of course, continue to build on and utilize.

 And as I think I mentioned yesterday in discussion the other night with Chengetai and Wai-Min, we're looking at translating things such as the IGF Messages and maybe the chair summary into the six U.N. languages as well using some other U.N. processes where governments might step up to translate them in a way where the translations are proved to make sure that they are, in fact, truthful to the original version.  But that actually gets us an official-enough translation that we can post them on a U.N. website.  So that's another activity that's another way to look at some of the key -- key kind of components.

 And I think we can look at those two efforts and build on them and certainly continue working with Germany in terms of what else might be possible.

 Neb, Nebojsa, you have the floor.

 >>NEBOJSA REGOJE:  Hello, everybody.  My name is Nebojsa Regoje.  I'm with the government stakeholder group, and this is my second term in the MAG.  Obviously I want to thank France for hosting previous IGF and Germany for taking really well in advance activities to prepare IGF 2019.

 I kind of want to continue through the door that Daniela opened with remote participation.  My experience from France was that speaking queue was not used at all.  It was provided the option for.  That was provided for, but it was not -- none of the workshops that I was there was actually using the speaking queue.  Maybe that's a question for secretariat and the MAG, maybe for host country.  But, nevertheless, it's good to mention that and to have that remind in the future preparations.

 Closely connected to that is also very unfortunate denial of service attack that we experienced at the beginning of IGF which completely ruined at least mine interactive program and the time prepared for myself.  

 My suggestion maybe if there is a possibility, German host might consider together with our secretariat of making a mobile application that would kind of help us -- all participants in following through very rich -- obviously, I hope, very rich program that we will have at IGF 2019.

 And I would maybe underline one thing that was mentioned in the synthesis paper that was presented yesterday about Internet connection.  At least my experience was that Internet connections was not really very reliable, probably due to the large number of users at the same time and that maybe, as it's mentioned in the paper the fact that it hasn't been tested properly before and as there was no zero day in France.  Maybe this is stating the obvious but nonetheless, I wanted just to mention that so that all of us, IGF, secretariat, the MAG, and the host country, has that on mind.  Thank you, and we shall wish us all a success.  Thank you.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: All right.  Thank you very much for your comments.  Yes, we were very much aware of that.  And also UNESCO's infrastructure wasn't the most up to date but I've  visited the site for the Berlin and I think we are going to do much, much better this time around.  I mean, they've got the equipment.  It's a very new site.  And as far as the hand up is concerned, yes, it's a trial.  It's a way to level the playing field between the people in the room and the remote participants.  I think last year was the first time we tried to roll it out to all of the workshops, and it's also a matter of training, as well.  I mean, we'll see.  And Luis is there.  Please go talk to him, and he is also going to do some training and some awareness building for the hand up system and also to see what are the issues for it not being taken up.

 >>NEBOJSA REGOJE:  Allow me just to -- I think in preparation to IGF 2018, we haven't paid much attention to, in a way, advertising user speaking queue to the wider community, not to MAG members but to other participants.  And believe me somebody asked me, what's that speaking queue as it was displayed on the screen, you know.  Really there were participants that had no -- no idea that there was such possibility to go through electronic or Web page, whatever, to go into the speaking queue.  But I -- I understand.  And I think we all understand, Chengetai, and it was just, you know, a thing -- a thing to think about.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes.  Thank you.  I mean, some of the ideas is that we'll have this information tied to the registration, so when you get your registration confirmation, there's some things that you have to be aware of and part of it will be the speaking queue.  So people -- I mean, once you register, you have the opportunity to look at it. Though, of course, not everybody reads everything that's sent to them.  Yeah.

 >> [Off microphone].

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, exactly.  Exactly.  So Luis and Eleonora will work together, we'll all work together to make sure that it's done.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Nebojsa.  Miguel, you have the floor.

 >>MIGUEL CANDIA: Thank you.  Thank you very much, Chair, and good morning, everybody.  It's also my first time taking the floor, so Happy New Year and glad to be here with you guys.  Thank you very much to the government of Germany and all the stakeholders in Germany for having us this year, for hosting the IGF.  It's a -- I think it's going to be -- I only hear good vibes from where we are speaking here.  And so I expect it to be a very good IGF and a very good year for the IGF.

 Just a couple of things very briefly, taking into account what Nebojsa just said.  Maybe one or two things that we can do, it's alerting people or letting people know about the speaking queues or the ways to engage in participation online and on site by one of the short videos that's going to be posted in the site maybe.  It could be one of one-minute video on how you can participate on site and off site and take it -- the electronic speaking queue as a motive.

 And on the language issue, I don't want to get into because it's a really big fight in the U.N., but yeah, maybe we could -- some parts, non-dynamic parts of the page -- get translated into the different languages.  Maybe -- don't forget Spanish.  There's a few people that speak that language.  U.N. languages, particularly  U.N. language but working U.N. languages, those three.  But even again, non-dynamic parts.  I mean, the presentation part, the information part, and then when you have to go to the more dynamic parts such as registration and stuff, you can -- we can keep it in English to facilitate.  But if you're going to have one, you have to have all of them.  Otherwise, you're going to have a certain issue coming from a number of countries.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: This is the same reason why we don't have registration --

 >>MIGUEL CANDIA: That's why I don't want to get too much into it, but just to flag it.  And in far more practical issues, it would be nice -- sorry, I should have started with this.  I'm Miguel Candia of government, Paraguay.  Third year MAG member.  Taking in from that, invitation issues, it would be -- it would be good to take into account that governments are not, you know, one minister such as ICTs, and if you can --

 >> (Indiscernible).

 >>MIGUEL CANDIA: If you can make the effort as hosts to invite a couple of -- not to finance but to invite, to allow the different countries to have the possibility of forming the delegations with a lot of larger number of ministers such as, you know, economics, trade, health, that we could bring up as part of the delegations, that would be good.  

 And the other idea is that if we are going to go ahead with inviting Parliamentarians, taking into account that it is a different branch of government and that usually they -- we need to bring it from the executive branch to the legislative branch in order to have them invited.  Just be clear in what the roles are going to be in order -- if -- for example, if you're bringing ministers into the day zero and Parliamentarians at the end of it, at the end of the IGF, then the invitation should be clear on what we expect from them.  It's only to bring them closer to the issues, because I fully agree that parliamentarians should be there.  Legislative branches are very, very important in order to pass legislation.  If they understand correctly what they are dealing with, legislation pieces are very -- more useful for the people and for the governments.  

 So in supporting the idea, the invitation should be very clear on what we expect from them and what we can offer them as -- as a platform.  So that would be it for me.  Thank you.  Sorry for taking this long.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Miguel.  Paul.  Paul Charlton, you have the floor.

 >>PAUL CHARLTON: Thank you, Lynn.  Thank you, Lynn.  For those of you who don't know me, I'm -- my name is Paul Charlton.  I'm a new member of the MAG from the government of Canada, the department of innovation, science, and economic development.  So I just wanted to say hello to everyone.  It's a pleasure and a privilege to be a part of the group.  

 I don't want to repeat too much of what's been said before, but I just wanted to join those commending Germany for not just the efficiency with which they've approached their role as IGF host but also the -- the obvious high-level commitment.  And I think the ideas that you have mentioned regarding zero day and the various events, I think they're very interesting, and I look forward to them being developed.  I also would note the -- you mentioned that when we have our third MAG meeting in Berlin that it will be around the time of the Germany host, the Internet and jurisdiction meeting, and, of course, Canada, like Germany, has been a participant and hosted the second Internet and jurisdiction meeting last February in Ottawa.  

 I did want to pick up on what Miguel was asking about the Parliamentarians, and I guess the way in which I was looking at it was basically how you saw them participating.  And when you mentioned having possibly an event for Parliamentarians on the final day, did you mean the Parliamentarians sort of as a group on their own or did you mean interaction with other stakeholder groups?  It strikes me that Parliamentarians are sort of -- in the context of the IGF, they're sort of an interesting group because I guess we would consider them to be government stakeholders but, of course, their backgrounds could be private sector, academia, civil society, and other things.  So that was my question.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Daniela.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  Yeah, many thanks for all the comments and very good ideas and suggestions.  I've noted them.  Maybe just a few.  Concerning, yeah, let's say, capacity building in the sense of technical equipment, how to use the speaking queue, having an app.  Yes, we will have an app.  That's planned, and I take on board that maybe we use that app also and probably our home page to provide more information and to give guidance how to participate in the panels.  So that's well taken.  

 Concerning ministers, okay.  You know, in Germany we had a very intense debate about the question if we will need a digital minister in our cabinet before the last election.  I tell you that because in the end, we do not have a digital minister.  We have a coordinating state secretary at the chancellery, and all ministers, as this is a horizontal subject, all ministers deal with digital issues.  So I know very well the debate about who will be invited, and we had also that debate when we were G20 presidency in 2017.  So I'm very glad to hear that Spain is interested to bring even more ministers than just one to the meeting.  This is very welcome, but on the other hand, probably we will have some sort of -- even though we have that much space, but we're inviting, you know, U.N. ministers.  So this will be a big room that we will need, and then every government is coming with the whole cabinet.  So probably there will be some limitations, even though we have that much space.  But I'm very glad to hear that there's so much interest to come and on a high level.

 Concerning the question about Parliamentarians, that's a very good point.  Exactly.  I mean, Parliamentarians should come from all parts of the society and maybe now I -- yeah, I have to struggle with what I told you already because the plans are not that fixed yet.  We have no clear format, but I think your point is exactly the right one.  I mean, what we have in mind a little bit is a debate among Parliamentarians, and they should, in a way, represent all the stakeholder groups.  But that doesn't mean that they couldn't come into interconnection or a debate with other stakeholder groups.  So that's not fixed yet.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Daniela.  We have Kenta, Sylvia, and Giacomo on the floor, and then I'm going to ask Wai-Min to give us a couple of remarks as well and then we'll move to the next agenda item and continue to come back on these questions, I think, as we get more substantively into the program.  Kenta.  Kenta, you have the floor.

 >>KENTA MOCHIZUKI: Can you hear me?  It's all right?  Thank you very much, Chair.  Thank you very much.  My name is Kenta Mochizuki, sorry, Japanese MAG member and I'm working for (saying name) Incorporated, a Japanese company.  

 First of all, thank you very much, Daniela, for the wonderful presentation, and we are very much, you know, looking forward to, you know, participating, you know, IGF 2019 actively.  And as everyone knows, the Japan host ICANN meetings in this March and also, you know, host the G20 this year.  So no worry, Japanese government but also the private sector is very much, you know, willing and, you know, inclined to, you know, showcase, you know, the gist of those meetings in upcoming IGF.  So, you know, we'll try our best, you know, to support a successful IGF 2019.

 And regarding the concrete suggestions, yesterday I made a, you know, one- or two-page document.  So later, you know, I'm going to share via MAG (indiscernible) to also introduce my, you know, complex sessions.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Kenta.

 >>SYLVIA CADENA: Thank you, Lynn.  My name is Sylvia Cadena.  Here.  My name is Sylvia Cadena.  I am a representative of the technical community based in Australia, working for the APNIC Foundation.  

 I just wanted to make a couple of comments regarding some of the comments that my colleagues at the MAG have done.  This is my second year on the MAG.  

 First, on the remote participation, I think it is really important to always consider that remote participation is a double-edged  mechanism.  It's a sword that has double -- you know, it can hurt us and it can help us.  But I think there are guidelines on how to use -- act as the remote participation on site and for those that are accessing the system but it probably don't much clarity on what are the technical requirements on the other side, if people are running a hub or just accessing the remote participation, like a simple guideline.  Not only the webinars that have been done by the secretariat, and all the information sessions that have been done around remote participation are very useful for people that are speakers joining remotely but not necessarily for those that are trying to just follow the meeting.  So maybe a very simple guideline or how to connect and what is the minimum setup that they need to have on the other side to make sure that it is sufficient.  Because it's not -- the platform that can be absolutely fantastic on site and all the efforts it plays there, but if you are connecting from an unstable connection on the other side of the world, the connectivity will break on that side, not on the IGF in Berlin.  So it's important to keep that in mind.

 I think that one of the things that will be really useful and that has been a struggle for me personally, I was born without a GPS.  I get lost absolutely everywhere.  So having a very good signaling of during -- inside the building that is linked to the program will be really, really important.  If you have an app that supports that, but also that that is related to the door, let's say, of the meeting room to really know what's going on there.  That will help other poor souls like me to actually get on time to different meetings because I literally -- people who knows me know that I always get lost.

 The signaling could include, for example, QR codes that require -- have the speaking queue, for example.  So if you were at the entrance of a room, just a reminder get your app opened, the QR code, get the speaking queue on your device so you are ready to participate.  That will be really useful.  And, of course, if that signaling is done for people with disabilities, it will be also quite an addition to facilitate the process of navigating a big site and being able to go from one room to the other.

 I want to highlight the importance of the comments that Miguel made about the invitations for different ministers to manage the participation of larger delegations from different countries.  I think that there is like a tendency nowadays to try to review where the policy is attaching on different ministers, but there is no body that deals only with the Internet or in that one particular economy.  So it's quite interesting to have the views from different ministers in that space.  And that will be the same with the invitation to the Parliamentarians.  

 I would like to highlight that the .ASIA, my colleague, Jen, who is just here in front of me, they have run -- attempted with certain success to do a Parliamentarians round table as part of the APrIGF in Asia, and I think that Jen and the colleagues from my side of the world supporting the APrIGF will be very happy to share the lessons learned from how to -- the struggles to try to organize the rounds of Parliamentarians on the agenda to work with them and I encourage Jen -- [ no audio ] -- issues that are of concern for the German community so that we don't -- sorry.  There's no audio?  Sorry.  [ no audio ]

 -- looking forward to -- to Berlin.  Oh, and the last point was that it will be -- [ no audio ]

 -- precursors of the IGF so that people that have a chance to come to Europe can kind of track those three meetings that you mentioned, the jurisdiction, the open dialogue of citizens, and something else.  The -- you mentioned three.  But it will be really good.  We have all the stakeholders that might be interested to participate in some of those and then promote the IGF in the process.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Daniela, do you want to respond?

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  Yeah.  Thank you very much, Sylvia.  That was a lot of very good input, and thanks also for the offer to help.  Thank you also -- also to the Japanese colleague.  We are already in very close contact with also the G20 colleagues there and, for example, right now we have the meeting in parallel.  I'm here and Stefan Schnorr, our colleague, is in Tokyo for the G20 meeting.  So this year we'll have to organize also very well so we can take place and can participate in all the meetings.  

 Maybe just very briefly to Sylvia's suggestions, get into contact with the German community, I think that's a very good idea.  And I would -- sorry?  Okay.  Rudolf just told me that we already have the intention to have a meeting in June when we will have the meeting in Berlin.  

 But maybe in addition to that, we can bring you in contact because Rudolf Gridl is one of the steering committee members of the German IGF.  And, of course, he can get you into contact to other German community members so there's no problem.  So we will have that in mind for the June meeting.

 Concerning the other meetings, in fact, a real meeting in Berlin is the one of Internet jurisdiction.  In addition to that, we are supporting the other groups, that doesn't mean necessarily that there are special meetings.  But we can send you a list of the links to the groups.

 And technical guidance and all that, I mean, that's noted.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Just a quick note as well in terms of setting expectation, some of the meetings you mentioned are not driven by the German government and I think they may be by invitation only by those other organizations.  So people should just understand what the meetings are and then work appropriately if you're interested in participating.

 Giacomo.  You have the floor.

 >>GIACOMO MAZZONE:  Thank you.  Giacomo Mazzone for the record.

 I want to say a few words about the parliamentarians issue because this is not a new question.  And we have already some basis on which we can build.  

 For instance, the European parliament send all the time a delegation of members.  Of course, this year will be more tricky because we have elections.  But I hope that November could still fit into the agenda of the new MPs.

 There is a second fact that I have not heard still here is that the parliament that is the center of the Council of Europe last week in Strasbourg approved a resolution which invites all the European parliaments to be involved in the Internet governance debate.  There is a specific resolution that has been approved.  I have the text of it that I can share with you.  And I was there because I have been heard in a public hearing, and Thomas was also with me.  And we stressed the point that we need more attention by the parliament to the activity of the EuroDIG first, of course, because we are in Europe but also to the national -- to the global IGF because this year will be in Berlin.  And they expressed interest to be involved and to be more actively involved.  So I think that will be useful if there is a link.  I can provide the contact in case.

 Last point is about how to handle because at the moment the MPs, they come and they cherry pick what they want to look at around the program of the IGF.  And this is fine because it is dissemination and makes awareness, et cetera, et cetera.

 But in the discussion that we had yesterday in the improvement of what we want to achieve through the IGF, I think there's a valuable presence that can be better used.  And so for instance, in EuroDIG some years ago, we made something with MPs and Council of Europe parliament assembly members, a debate focusing on some issues that have been previously prepared by EuroDIG committee and discussed with them, to see -- first to make awareness because in some cases they were not aware, especially for national parliament and, second, to test their reaction.  If they see that that path could be afforded for legitimate improvement, for any kind of intervention, so, again, if we structure the program and we have a time line from here until Berlin that prepare a path, then at the end of this way for what we can invite them.

 Sorry.  And I contradict myself because I forgot one other thing that I want to mention.  We must -- we lost contact with the IPU.  I remember at the beginning of the IGF years ago, we have a very fruitful cooperation with the IPU, the Interparliamentarian Union, that is based 200 meters from here.  They were sending a delegation also informally to some of the IGF.  And I think that they have -- in the last year program of the IPU assembly, the digital was part of the reflection.  So I don't know if they have structured a working group, but this is something that can easily be checked.  And I can help you, if you want.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Giacomo.  Daniela is saying, yes, thank you.  And Chengetai is saying he will also follow up with IPU.  

 Krzysztof, you have the floor.

 >>KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT:  Thank you, Chair.  One short comment and one question.  The comment, I support very much the idea to have as much as possible high-level officials at the IGF.  But at the same time, I have a question from a little bit different perspective.  

 Do we have a plan to prepare the report with conclusions based on the IGF we'll be having in Berlin?  I mean, what we did in Poland, for example, on the regional IGF, we asked the moderators of each session to come up in the end with the conclusions, what was discussed, and what we agreed on.  Based on that we prepared a kind of report, extended version and shorter version, like one-, two-page version and we send it over with a cover letter to the highest official ministers, parliamentaries, and stuff like this.  Maybe we can use that idea and do it the same to have, like, conclusions of the IGF with a cover letter from the Secretary-General so we are the advisors in that sense to the Secretary-General and maybe he could use his power and provide the conclusions to the highest level officials among different states and ministers which may not be able to participate in the event.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Krzysztof, that's a good suggestion.  

 Last year in IGF 2018 we took a fairly significant step in terms of improving the reporting from the sessions, in that the chair's summary was organized following the major themes of the IGF meeting.  And it incorporated everything that took place in the workshops, as well as the intersessional activities, open forum, main session, et cetera.  And, of course, we have the key messages as well.

 I think we'll continue to iterate on that and improve it certainly for 2019.  I think there's an interesting exercise we might look at, though, which is take the results of the IGF 2018, which now the chair's summary I think is 12 pages or so, and maybe look at other things we can do to improve the outreach of it.  So maybe a further synthesis, maybe a couple of subcategories rather than all themes.  But I think we should look at what do we do to further show what was discussed at the IGF in audiences.  It's a good suggestion.

 Sorry, excuse me, everybody.

 I would like to just sort of underline that discussion for a moment.

 I think we'll keep coming back, of course, to things we can do with the German IGF, you know, with the support of the German government as we begin work on some of the other aspects of the program.  What I would like to do right now is give Wai-Min Kwok from DESA the floor.  He'd like to talk about a couple of developments late last year out of the General Assembly.

 And then we will move to our next point in the agenda item, which is when we're going to open it up for more strategic substantive discussions on the work of the IGF over -- any IGF community over 2019.

 Wai-Min, you have the floor.

 >>WAI-MIN KWOK:   Thank you, Lynn.  Wai-Min Kwok, UNDESA.

 I just -- Because it is also the first MAG meeting for 2019 MAG, I like just to quickly -- quickly introduce the connection of IGF in the governmental process.  In particular, there was some discussion about resolutions passed at the General Assembly last year, but the resolution that is particularly connected to IGF is this resolution is on information and communication technologies for sustainable developments.  It's the GA resolution 73-218.  I'm certainly not going to read out the text there but the reference will be made and given.

 So in terms of the process, every year there will be a Secretary-General reports on the follow-up to the implementation of the WSIS.  As you know, the IGF is born out of the WSIS, the Tunis Agenda 2005.  So every year there is a Secretary-General report, and this report is put together by ANTOC (phonetic), and it is first being reviewed at CSTD.  Last month in January there was the intersessional panel, and Chengetai was there to share the progress and also about the outcomes of the Paris IGF.  And then following which, the SG report, there was a (indiscernible) almost a year ago.  

 The -- the SG reports -- sorry.  Not (indiscernible) a year ago, but SG reports, actually right now that is being reviewed by CSTD and this will be formally discussed during the CSTD in May.

 So after the CSTD review and adopt it, that will be proposed for ECOSOC consideration in July in New York.  Then the same resolution will go to the General Assembly, the second committee, in September and October.

 So the resolution that was adopted last year in December that I'm going to share some text, it actually was based on about 10 or 12 months' development back.  So this is actually more about the Swiss IGF rather than the French IGF.

 So in that, I'd just like to recall some text.  And again, I will give the reference to Chengetai that can share with all MAG members.  There are several text that are included in the preamble that will make reference to Internet governance; in particular, like digital device, the current emerging trends of technology and so forth.  But particularly on the Internet Governance Forum it recognized all the past host country, including the Paris that occur in 2018 and also already mentioned that the IGF that is going to be in Berlin in 2019.  It's -- It recognize the mandate of the IGF through January '25, the importance of the IGF as a forum for multistakeholder dialogue on various matters, referring to the Tunis Agenda again, and request the Secretary-General to continue to submit on the progress makes in the implementation and follow-up to the outcomes of WSIS.  It stress the need for enhanced participation of government and stakeholders from all developing countries and asked for all stakeholders to support the participation of government, and in Berlin.  And again, we have the generous support of the government of Germany to help in that -- in that perspective.  And also a fairly new paragraph that talk about -- highlighting there's a solid foundation for capacity building in ICT; however, there is still need for continuing efforts to address the ongoing challenges, especially for developing countries and least developed countries, and draw attention to the (indiscernible) of broaden capacity development and important institutions, organizations and entities dealing with ICT and Internet governance issues.

 So this is actually important because it iterate the, as I say, and emphasize the connection between the IGF and the intergovernmental process.  You all know that IGF is continued by the Secretary-General, so in addition to this resolution is also all the guidance given by the Director Secretary-General including his address to the IGF in Paris as well as his recent.  Like I mentioned yesterday at the opening that among his top priorities, one of the priorities is on governance over technologies.

 So this -- I just said this and I'll end here, and I'm think more of this information can be shared through email.

 Thank you, Lynn.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Wai-Min.  I think those documents are all posted to the IGF website.  Sometimes I think we wait until they've actually been through the appropriate upstream approvals in the U.N., but I think we could do more to actually make it clear where the IGF kind of reports fit in, and particularly those that pertain to WSIS and the WSIS+10 resolution, of course, because that is what renewed our mandate.  

 I'm tempted to just ask -- I see our old friend Peter Major from CSTD there in the back of the room, and of course the IGF does make, as Wai-Min said, the first report into the CSTD.  And CSTD also was one of the more significant review processes with respect to desired improvements for the IGF.  But just invite Peter to see if he has any comments or reflections.  And I appreciate I am putting you somewhat on the spot, so it's up to you, Peter.  Thank you and welcome.

 >>PETER MAJOR:   Thank you, Lynn.  

 Well, actually, I confirm what has been said from the representative of UNDESA.  It is the role the CSTD to follow -- to follow the business process, and in particular, the IGF as well.  And as it has been said, we have had an intersessional meeting in January.  We heard the report from the IGF secretariat about the results of the last IGF, and it has been endorsed.  And probably we are going to reflect the outcome of the Paris IGF in our last resolution, which will be drafted in May during the CSTD annual meeting.  And as it has been said, it will be followed with the ECOSOC itself.

 Having said that, I think it is time to reflect new realities in this resolution, and I try to convey this to the other commissioners in the CSTD, that is the rapid technological changes and the rapid changes in society as well should be reflected somehow in our resolutions, and aligning it to the ongoing debate we are experiencing right now from the U.N. and from the Secretary-General of the U.N. itself, himself, by establishing the High-level Group on Digital Dialogue.

 So I -- I really hope that the next resolution of the CSTD, in addition to what we have been doing up to now, will reflect these new realities.

 So I look forward to have these issues coming up during the IGF in Berlin, and I look forward to participate in this meeting.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Peter.  And we've always appreciated CSTD's support, both in the IGF as well as, of course, participation in your processes as well.  Very, very happy to have you here, too.

 Not seeing any other requests for the floor, and I think that was a great segue from Peter.  I'd like to make just about three or four minutes' worth of opening remarks, and then again open the discussion up for a pretty kind of wide-ranging, strategic view of what the activities of the IGF and its ecosystem might be over the coming years.  

 And just as a quick note, well, both the last speakers said report of the IGF.  It's obviously the IGF and all its intersessional activities as well, and that includes the NRIs, too, which are a very important part of the IGF activities.

 That's pretty much what we have left on the plate today.  We do have Amandeep Gill, who is the co-chair on the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, the HLPDC, coming in at 3:00 to speak to us today.  If you'll recall, for those that were on the MAG last year, I think his first stop, if not one of his very first stop was, in fact, the IGF after the panel was launched last -- last sort of the middle of the year.  So again that will be 3:00 here, so everybody should be back quite promptly.

 So what I want to do is Wai-Min reminded us yesterday and again just a few moments ago, of course, is the MAG is actually convened by the Secretary-General to advise him on the activities of the Internet Governance Forum and its intersessional activities.  We're expected to do that, of course, informed by our own communities, and also doing that with a view to what can this relatively unique vehicle -- actually, very uniquely vehicle but there are a lot more multistakeholder components and processes popping up across the world now -- do to help advance Internet public-policy issues, of course for the benefit of everyone in the world.  

 I want to read from the Secretary-General's comments, not only because we're convened by him but because I think he very succinctly captured many points he has been making over the last two years, many points that are made by many stakeholders in this room, not just governments or intergovernmental bodies, and I think really talked to, as Peter just said as well, some of the fairly kind of profound changes we're undergoing in society today as an advent of -- largely of technological changes and digitalization.

 So his comments at IGF 2018 said that we've made a long journey since the World Summit on the WSIS -- World Summit on the Information Society in 2005 in Tunisia.  In 13 short years the digital world has changed profoundly.  New pathways of opportunity have opened.

 I'm not quoting the full statement so where he has a couple of examples of those pathways, artificial intelligence, I'm not going into some of the more explanatory.  I'm just trying to get the kind of key messages out here.

 New pathways of opportunity have opened, but alongside the tremendous benefits that it can bring, new issues have emerged around cybersecurity, data, and artificial intelligence.  Over time, new forms have been established to discuss these and other issues, and the IGF must consider how it will adapt.

 Today, one of our most important questions is how do we keep the IGF relevant.  The good news is that France, this year's host, and Germany, next year's host, are investing a lot of time, energy and planning into the IGF.  And he says he's particularly pleased to Henri that the U.N. High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, which he launched in July, is working closely with the IGF.  As you discuss how to enhance the relevance of the IGF, I would like to make a few suggestions that I have also proposed to the high-level panel.  First, we must be more than multistakeholder.  We must be multi-disciplinary.  And this is where he introduces philosophers and political scientists and that kind of thing.

 Second, we need to create shared language and references.  In that context, he's asking the IGF, just as he asked the panel, to inspire new thinking and language on digital cooperation, to create shared references, propose new approaches, and look for possible ways to reframe existing problems, be they in trade, security or human rights.

 We need to make sure that the most competent forums are dealing with the most consequential questions and that they can benefit from cross-cutting resources.

 Third, we will need a dedicated effort to include and amplify the weak and missing voices.  A great strength of the IGF is its multistakeholder approach, but he urges our digital discussions to move beyond the so-called usual suspects.  I encourage you to reach out to governments, in particular from developing countries.  Encourages us to listen to their concerns and their ideas on how the IGF can be more important and more productive for them.  Do they suggest more discussion on Internet public policy issues?  How can the IGF help provide help to governments and the private sector?

 [ No audio ] 

  -- discussions on Internet governance cannot just remain discussions.  Policy and, where relevant, normative frameworks must be developed to ensure impact.  We cannot leave our fate in the digital era to the invisible hands of market forces.  

 The classical forms of regulation do not apply to many of this new generation of challenges.  Nontraditional, multilateral, and multistakeholder cooperation will be crucial, including governments, private sector, research centers, and civil society.  

 The IGF needs to reflect how it can have greater impact on Internet governance.  Over the next three days, of course, of IGF 2018, he encouraged us to focus especially on innovative solutions that can increase trust on the Internet.  

 He said that the WSIS provisions that established the IGF Tunis Agenda provide us with enough space to improve current mechanisms.  It is important to gather and consider the proposals that have been advanced about strengthening the IGF.  

 In addition, discussions with the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation can generate new ideas.  Urges us to make the most of this unique opportunity.  And when it comes to governance, he says, as I believe Kofi Annan said as well at the creation of the IGF, that we must be as creative and bold as those who first built the Internet.

 So, again, my -- my comments at the beginning were -- I read the statement out, most of it, because I think it's very succinct and it really does, I think, capture a lot of things we're hearing from across all the communities and the stakeholders.  I will also remind people of the WSIS+10 that was just quoted recently.  That urged us to address our operating -- or to improve our operating modalities and improve outreach, specifically again focusing on developing countries and marginalized communities.  We have the CSTD IGF improvements on which we have been working steadily to improve for some years now, and they're still -- still more work to be done.  We have the DESA retreat from 2016 that had a lot of good ideas, plus we have all of our normal stocktaking procedures of which we've heard a lot about yesterday and today.

 I think we have a lot of guidance in what we need to do.  This year for the first time in a very long time, maybe ever, we actually have time in our process to do that.  We've not had that before.  I think we need to do everything we can to take advantage of that.  I would urge us to be bold and creative, and I want to underline again -- and I really hope we don't have to say this a lot more -- that nobody here wants to break the Tunis Agenda.  Nobody wants to go beyond the Tunis Agenda.  But I think a lot of people in the community and as the Secretary-General and others have said, the Tunis Agenda does allow us to make some room to make improvements in our current processes.

 So I'm going to open up the floor in a moment.  With everything that we heard, from our own communities, through IGF 2018, the last few days, whatever was the last kind of impassioned speech you all heard about what a difference digital technologies and digitalization can make for the world, where can the IGF be more -- most useful?  Where can we have the single biggest impact?  And to me, I think that means we need to choose where we're going to spend our energies.  We heard lots of comments last few years, certainly yesterday as well, about kind of reducing the number of tracks and themes.  We've also over the last few years really trying to be focus a lot more on policy questions, through our workshop submission process.  If you're going to propose a workshop, what's the policy question you're trying to advance or you're trying to move forward?  So what is it we're trying to, if you will, to solve for or to advance.  I would like us to take a lot of those comments into heart and then talk about what that means and what you think some of the opportunities are for -- and maybe a strategic rethinking of the focus of the IGF and the activities over the coming year.  And with that, I will open it up.  

 That's what the rest of the day is for, by the way.  We have Amandeep coming in at 3:00.  I think that will be very useful as well.  And I think we should be prepared to ask him, maybe prepare him --

 [ Laughter ]

 -- that we are interested in specifically what he's heard that he thinks is bold and innovative so that we can understand that, perhaps be challenged by that ourselves as well as understand where we might actually integrate or support some of those activities.

 But, otherwise, that's the work of the day, to come out with, I think -- I hope this isn't an overstatement but sort of a strategic reimagining the way we're going to drive requests, build the entire community's activities around the IGF and all of its activities over 2019 and beyond.  We've also heard lots of requests from multiyear programs so we shouldn't restrict ourselves just to this year.  

 I truly will stop there and see if there are any comments, reflections.  And you all know -- I mean, anything from strong agreement to strong disagreement and everything in the middle is on the table here.  Please take the floor and let's get a discussion going.

 Israel.

 >>ISRAEL ROSAS:  Thank you, Chair.  Israel Rosas from Internet Society.  Food for thought for the MAG, as I'm an, observer.  I believe that it's a critical opportunity to strengthen the IGF.  I mean, we relatively -- in the ten-year mandate renewed by United Nations, the MAG members have been appointed early in the year which is really, really good.  And also we have a steady commitment of the German government, which we really appreciate.  

 So we think that it's a good opportunity to strengthen the IGF with focused discussions on critical issues raised by the community, making room in the program to have those kind of discussions within the community.  And, also, we think that there's no better way to promote those changes, those improvements than the Internet way, collaborative, bottom-up and inclusive.  So we believe that the MAG is the space to evaluate and promote the needed changes to strengthen the IGF.

 A strengthened IGF will mean also that the community has a unique space to address the issues raised by matters of the community in this multistakeholder manner.  Of course, it will be those who help raise the impact of the IGF, its activities also.  And we facilitate the outreach and engagement activities with all the stakeholders.

 We believe that the MAG working group dealing with this proposed changes or strengthen -- or actions needed to strengthen the forum have to quickly evaluate and identify the actions needed to carry on.  There could be some actions to be taken during the current cycle.

 And, of course, it could be an opportunity to hand over to specific working groups dealing with some actions for the long-term.  But we firmly believe that the world is better with the IGF, with a strengthened IGF than without it.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Israel.  Krzysztof, you had asked for the floor.

 >>KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT:  Thank you, Chair.  Very short question before we start maybe the discussion.  I would like to refer to the speech of the Secretary-General that you just mentioned.  How are you -- I mean, the MAG, IGF, UN DESA understand the message or the commitment from the Secretary-General of strengthen the IGF in the future?  What does it really mean?  How do you understand that?  Before we get to the other ideas we may have.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Let me just try to -- Krzysztof, do you want to repeat your question once more?

 >>KRZYSZTOF SZUBERT:  The question actually to all of you, I mean, to all the chairs, how do you understand the message from the Secretary-General made in Paris of "strengthening the IGF" or maybe marking the future, what does it really mean?

 >>WAI-MIN KWOK:  I would say maybe we should actually reverse that perspective.  First of all, the IGF is convened by the Secretary-General and the Secretary-General appointed the MAG to help him to deliver the task because that task is given to him by the Tunis Agenda.

 So I mean in that sense, because he asked us to convene the IGF and he have to rely on the MAG to give him that advice, what he has done in his statement and also not just his statement at IGF but his recent statement as what Lynn highlighted about his priorities on governance, on technologies, on emerging trends, I think that is actually all the very specific directions that we can -- we can look at.

 But in terms of specifically what we can do at the IGF, at the intersessional, I think it's very much dependent on the MAG.  Because it is also a multistakeholder -- it is also a bottom-up approach.  So, in other words, I don't think -- allow me to say the Secretary-General has all the specific advice or A-to-Z instruction what the MAG should do, what the IGF should do.  I think it's actually more of a -- depending on the guidance from MAG.  

 Lynn, if you may.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think that's true.  I think obviously he's concerned as are many about kind of both the impacts in society and the society that's being left behind by the rapid change and by a lot of the technological innovations.  There's increasing concern around cybersecurity.  And "cybersecurity" is a vast term.  It's cyber warfare.  It's cybercrime.  It's cyber harm.  It's interference into elections.  It's a whole host of things that are driving concerns.

 When they look at some of the kind of traditional U.N. efforts to solve some of this, such as the GGE, the GGE after a couple of very, very successful runs failed to deliver a report in 2017.  The working group on enhanced collaboration as well failed to deliver a report last year.  So he sees those things happening within some of these U.N. processes, U.N. institutions.  And as he said in his speech in Davos last week, that the solutions are becoming ever more consolidated and yet the problems are becoming -- the issues are becoming ever more interlinked and, yet, the solutions are becoming ever more fragmented.

 So that was part of what we were trying to fix with the HLPDC, High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation.  I think he's trying to understand whether or not there are some innovative ways to increase cooperation in a way that perhaps doesn't go to treaty and regulation.  UDRP, as I said, was also mentioned in Davos a couple of different times as quite an innovative way to solve a problem 20 years ago.  I mean, quite a long time ago which really was -- it's a dispute resolution name program.  And it's a lightweight vehicle for resolving something that, you know, under other models probably would have started looking at different bodies or treaties or something similar.  So I think he's wanting people to understand the impacts of technology on people's lives, on the fact that he sees a lot of these discussions becoming polarized.  In Davos almost all you heard was a tripolarized world.  I think we know what that is.  He was talking to Russia.  I think, in fact, that polarization is what's causing some of those other processes to be stalemated.

 So, you know, if that's true, and we have the concerns around society being left behind and the impact of technology, then he's encouraging everybody to be bold and innovative and creative about trying to find ways to advance some of these kind of knottier, K-N-O-T-T-I-E-R, issues.  And I don't honestly think it's more than that.  I think he looks at sort of all the tools he maybe has in his bag and says, There's this thing called the Internet Governance Forum.  I think it could do more and I'd like to encourage it to take a hard look at what it could do to solve some of these issues.  And, honestly, I think it's nothing more than that.  Daniela.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thank you.  Maybe just a personal interpretation how I read it, I mean, he asks for more impact on policy questions and maybe he sees the fragmentation and the diversity of problems and the rapid change.  

 [ No audio ] 

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  We will go to the queue now.  We have Susan Chalmers.  Susan.

 >>SUSAN CHALMERS:  Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor.  And good morning.  So this is quite a big question.  

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Just your stakeholder group and organization.  

 >>SUSAN CHALMERS:  Oh, I'm sorry.  My name is Susan Chalmers.  I work for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce.  Government stakeholder group.  

 So this is a big question which I have every confidence that the MAG and the chairs today can explore.  

 Lynn, as you had mentioned, there are a number of resources that have already made suggestions in the way of reform.  And so before we delve into that, I would like to just make a framing suggestion which would be that during the work of last year's multiyear strategic working group -- and I know we have to reconstitute the working groups -- we did develop that program framework based upon a document of -- that was a great document produced by the secretariat that outlined all the constitute parts.  And we also have some core principles, the IGF core principles.  

 So I would just like to kind of draw it down to that as a baseline, if we could use that as a baseline against which any suggestions or -- for improvements could be made going forward.  

 So I just wanted to kind of reference these existing materials before we continue on this conversation, and I hope that's helpful.  Thank you.

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

 Jutta, you have the floor.

 >>JUTTA CROLL:  Thank you, Madam Chair, for giving me the floor.  Jutta Croll working for the Digital Opportunities Foundation in Germany in my second year on the MAG as a civil society stakeholder.  I wanted to pick up on the question that you were debating before, how the IGF could feed more into policy debates which was asked by the Secretary-General.  

 And I try to bring that in connection with things that have been said yesterday by many of the people around here.  I do think it's really the strength of the Internet Governance Forum and the MAG that we have this multistakeholder approach and the diversity.  And usually we can use that to feed into policy debates from various angles and perspectives, and I do think that would be very useful.

 Yesterday it was mentioned that we could pick on governance of the digital transformation.  I do think this covers many aspects, but it's also a broad topic that might not be concise enough to feed into the debate and to give more relevance to the debate of the IGF.

 Then also the transfer of data or the handling of data was mentioned and also personalized data but nonpersonallized data.  I do think this could be one of the major topics we need to define it more in detail.  But I do think we can put a focus on that because it's also related to questions of security and safety when we are dealing with data.

 And then when you mentioned society shouldn't be left behind, that was also addressed yesterday when Mary Uduma, I think, addressed the issue of not only high-level participation but low-level participation.  Taking into account accessibility and social inclusion, I do think this also adds to -- to the relevance of the IGF.

 Last but not least, digital identity was mentioned yesterday, and that's also a topic that could carry on in the debate of the IGF.  And when we are looking for a main theme and subthemes, I do think we could deal with that.

 It was also mentioned that I think Daniela referred to that we had huge debates on how to address Internet governance in the German government, whether we should have a ministry, a state secretary or something, and this is discussed in many other countries as well.  And when we talk about having parliamentarians at the IGF this year, I do think this could be also a topic that could be discussed by parliamentarians from various countries, which model is good for which country, for which situation and how do they interrelate.  So that's a bit of a side topic, I do think, to the main idea but I do think it would be really interesting, and it could also engage parliamentarians from other countries into the debate, learn from each other how we deal with Internet governance in governments as such.

 So that's it for the minute.  Thank you.

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

 Veni, you have the floor.

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   Thank you, Chair.  And I just wanted to draw the attention as we were talking yesterday and mentioning all the different groups that exist outside of the IGF.  We mentioned, you know, High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, groups at the U.N. General Assembly, et cetera, et cetera, and how we should coordinate or cooperate with them.  The only thing that I'm worried about is that we are not driven into kind of trying to frame the IGF within those existing groups.  These groups are founded by different bodies, like the high-level panel was established by the Secretary-General, the General Assembly established other groups.  There are a lot of things -- I mean the global commission, et cetera, et cetera.

 We should not try to kind of find a place for the IGF within those groups because we actually have our own place.  And we exist longer -- a long time before those groups were founded, except for the GGE.  I have to check the dates to see.

 But my point is these are parallel, existing groups, and we have a mandate.  We have -- We know what we are up to and what we are supposed to do, so let's try to focus on what we are doing.  And if any of these entities produces a document that we can use in our work, that would be great, but there is -- I mean, it's equally possible that they won't produce.  You mentioned the 2017 GGE that did not produce an outcome document.  So we cannot wait and see what's happening or try to kind of participate there also because they do not allow such participation, actually, from the IGF, some of them.

 We -- we have to be very careful also, you remember probably -- was it last year or a couple of years ago when there were even questions like who represents the IGF.  I mean, we don't have a formal person who can say, "I represent the IGF."  We are all here, just an advisory group.  And you're chair of the MAG, so none of us can say we speak for the IGF.  The Secretary-General convenes it, and that's great that we have this opportunity to participate in such a great multistakeholder environmental, and we should try to keep it that way rather than try to find a framework that can kind of, quote, unquote, "take us" into it.  Because I think we are so open and we have such a great history of inclusiveness and bringing everyone on board that anyone who wants to do something could come and present, all these groups can come and present their outcomes, can try to tell us and rest of the community -- I mean not even us because we are like, what, 50 people here, but try to tell the IGF participants here is what we have discovered -- let's take the digital cooperation.  Here is what we discovered, and then people will take this to their countries and maybe use it if it's suitable for their condition.

 So I'm trying to kind of make sure that we are not drifted into a direction that we are actually not supposed to go.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Yes, I think the way to clarify is we can talk about the IGF.  We can't talk for the IGF.  So someone says, you know, traditionally the IGF has had activities in cybersecurity or we've had activities in Geneva, and there are these types of activities, and you can find this information and report here.  We, of course, can't forward commit in that sense, but we should all be doing absolutely everything we can to talk up the IGF and its activities everywhere and anywhere we can, keeping in mind the distinction that Veni made.

 Miguel, you have the floor.

 >>MIGUEL CANDIA IBARRA:   Thank you, Chair.  I'll start right this time.  For the record, Miguel Candia Ibarra, Paraguay, MAG member, government.  I'm getting better at this.  Three years now.

 In a consensual way, in the way we need to see this, the IGF needs to keep being a very open platform for everybody to speak in.  So we need to tackle the issues that are hot at the time, of course, but we must force ourselves to always keep an eye on whatever issue that is very important that is not being very much taken into account at some point in time.

 For example, if we -- if we had the IGF right now, we'll be talking -- I don't know, 90, 99% about what we talk at Davos, and that could, you know, leave aside some issues that are very important, such as maybe promotion and protection of human rights, gender issues, or zero hunger that don't really have that much highlight in some scenarios.  This is the force of the IGF.  This is the strength of the IGF.  We have a very well-balanced program that we need to keep that in nature and give the chance of letting people know that technology issues are very important but the lack of technology is even more harmful in order to -- in order for the world to develop correctly entirely, not only the developed world being more developed and the developing world not developing as it should.

 So this should be, I think, the north that we could have in mind when drafting the issues that we need to take year after year.

 And in a more practical thing, a more practical way, I think the IGF could benefit a lot from maybe the experience of high-level officials from the U.N. agencies that are not normally invited.  I don't know, for example, FAO.  We had the very nice experience last year of having the UNESCO Secretary-General, Director General, I'm not sure what the chair is, the position is, but it gave us, you know, the education -- the U.N. education's view aside from President Macron and the Secretary-General of the U.N., that we could, I think, have some experience, maybe inviting the high commissioner for human rights or, again, FAO or whoever we think can help us, you know, bring visions to the IGF that we would normally have at the technical level from the different stakeholders but that we could bring visibility to, inviting the high-level correct officials or adequate officials.  Maybe it could help us for the discussions.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Miguel.  Carlos.

 >>Carlos Alberto Afonso:  Carlos Afonso from Instituto Nupef.  I probably will talk a bit more than I am used to.  I am trying to think about what Macron and the Guterres said in Paris.  There are a few notes that I took here which may be useful.  Macron emphasized more multi-sectoralism, confusing statements on net neutrality, mixing network layers, et cetera, accountability of intermediaries, which was considered a challenging issue, and proposes a third regulated way out of the so-called dichotomy California versus China.  This is basically I think the nucleus of Macron's discuss.

 Guterres emphasized the question of multi-disciplinarity.  He said it has not kept pace with new technologies.  Digital technologies are transversal, yet discussions are still siloed.  For example, that is addressed across policy spaces from technological, economic, human rights, system (indiscernible) and jurisdiction viewpoints.  Guterres also worried about how to reach the unconnected half of humanity.  Adding to this, I would say that once connected, the users have to be able to enjoy the full experience of the multimedia Internet of today which in millions of cases of connected people, this is not the case.

 More from Guterres.  Classical forms of regulation do not apply to many of this generation of challenges we are confronting with the Internet of today.  Non-traditional, multilateral and multistakeholder cooperation will be crucial, including government, private sector, research centers and civil society.  

 The IGF needs to reflect on how it can have greater impact in Internet governance.  Over the next three days I encourage you to focus especially on innovative solutions, et cetera, et cetera.

 Okay.  On cybersecurity, now in my case I have been studying the related issues for a long time both as technician and regarding the social and especially political implications.  On the technical side, I am horrified by the growing vulnerabilities, not -- not paranoid but horrified.  As systems become more sophisticated, this provokes growth of the so-called attack surface, the set of vulnerabilities available to attackers.  Today every connected computer, every operating system is vulnerable.  On the political side, there are many amazing manipulations in social networks which given the complexity of its systems are exploitable in ways their very creators and operators did not expect, and in fact only electoral processes and political and social perceptions and so on.  This is a field which goes well beyond technology.  I am gladly surprised that some significant aspects of these vulnerabilities have been analyzed and quite solid mitigation proposer coming up from civil society experts.  And I can indicate to you if you are interested later.

 So what could all this be reflected in the IGF 2019 dialogues?  For some of the themes, both Macron and Guterres are stressing are already part of the ongoing dialogue processes in the IGF, especially the -- in BPFs and CDs.  However, Guterres called for more multi-disciplinarity, remains a serious issue and a challenge for organizing the dialogues.  

 Macron's third way is obviously a major theme in itself, although portions of it are also related to ongoing dialogues.  The specific issue of data protection and corporate regulations, particularly the proposed and by now almost dismissed Articles 13 and 11 of the EU Copyright Directive, need the discussion space in the IGF.  Borrowing on Guterres interdisciplinary approach proposes a 1.0 holistic approach to the cybersecurity issues is needed and should be reflected in the IGF agenda and in the intersessional work.

 A final observation, which I am with this in my head which Christine Arida mentioned on improving on participation of governments, I wonder if -- There are 80 national IGFs now, 81 if we count China, most of them in the south.  Are governments of these eight countries which have those 81 national IGFs participating in the IGF?  If not, this -- They're probably not.  The national IGFs are an opportunity for stimulating that participation of the various sectors, including the government sector, I think.

 That's it.  Sorry for talking too much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   No, no, I think that was interesting, Carlos.  Thank you.

 Let me just ask Anja if she has any quick reflection on how many of the 81 national NRIs actually have sort of significant government participation.  Any kind of reflections or stats?

 >>ANJA GENGO:  We don't have yet those official statistics, but it is interesting to track that regions -- there is the increase of governments, for example, in the African region or the participation, then especially the northern parts of Europe.  And it also depends on the level of the government involvement.  Some are ministries, some are specialized agencies and so on.  So in that sense I know -- I mean, some of the colleagues are involved with the NRIs, I know, so currently there is the IGF USA and Canada covering the North American part, and they also have involvement of the government.  Actually, they are represented here so maybe they would be excellent to speak.  But to a good extent for sure I can say that there is involvement of governments, but we are working on presenting those statistics.  So hopefully end the February, I think we will share also with the MAG statistics on the stakeholder involvement in the organizing committee on the NRIs by regions.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   That's excellent.  That would be really interesting, too.  Thank you, Anja, and thank you, Carlos. 

 Natasa, you have the floor.

 >>NATASA GLAVOR:  My name is Natasa Glavor.  I work in Croatia Academic and Research Network and represent government stakeholder. 

 My point is in line with Carlos, and I just wanted to stress part of the Secretary-General's speech in the Paris last year, on IGF last year, in which he said that we need to make IGF more interdisciplinary, multi- -- interdisciplinary, and we should try to involve more, for example, philosophers and anthropologists, and for sure also other professions who could help bring new perspectives and new topics on the topics that we will discuss during the IGF.  The following one as well as the previous ones.  I think IGF managed to facilitate pretty broad discussions on the panels, workshop, and other works we had presented on the IGF program, but probably we can think of -- make them even broader.  And I just wanted to mention that during last year's IGF I had pleasure of working as a facilitator for one of the main sessions which was on emerging technologies, and one of the panelist was Ms. Lorena Jaume-Palasi, if I pronounce it correctly.  And I think it was really extraordinary to see that perspective on the ethics that she brought into that main session which was about emerging technologies.  It was really very nice to see that maybe someone that you would not expect to be much involved in that theme of emerging technologies has so new perspective to bring into the discussion.

 Thank you.

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

 Paul Rowney, you have the floor.

 >>PAUL ROWNEY:  Thank you, Lynn.  Paul Rowney from the Africa ICT Alliance.

 Just to mention that we -- and this has been mentioned in the past, but we want to ensure that we don't end up with a two-track IGF, one that has a focus on the Global North and one on the Global South.  Our issues -- issues, interests, and our interactions with technology are completely different.  A couple examples, of course, things like AI tools of facial recognition which are used to help streamline the movement of people, et cetera, in the north are often used as tools of oppression against people in the south.  Things like social media often feared by governments.  We see a lot of Internet shutdowns and I think the first two happened in Africa this year.  Internet shutdowns.  And that's to stop social media.

 So we -- what was I going to say?  When we look at the disconnected citizens, the majority are in the Global South, so we have compounded issues where interaction with technology is different.  The majority of our citizens are disconnected.

 We do want to look at how we can better enhance the digital cooperation between the north and the south so that we can address some of these imbalances, and to try to find a way that the Global South can also be a true participant into the new digital economy, which it isn't currently.  We tend to -- the big tech companies are all in the Global North.  The financial awards of technology tend to flow back to the Global North.  So we could be heading to another divide between the north and the south.

 So I think we really need to try to find ways to address those issues and try to find a way to bring a rebalance to the economies of both the north and the south.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And then, Paul, those were very good comments, and, I mean, building on that and maybe on a number of kind of comments we've heard over the last couple of days, let me just take that one for a moment.  If we actually wanted to say, what could the IGF community do over the next year or two or three years to address issues of inclusion from the south, you know, what are some of the things we think we might do?  We don't need to run right to a call for workshop proposals and a selection of themes and an IGF annual meeting.  You know, we have the ability, we certainly have more than enough creativity from, you know, people in the community as well as, of course, in the MAG to come up with some more kind of creative solutions or maybe more impactful solutions.

 If I go back to a number of things we've heard over the last couple of years and some quick notes I took yesterday, we keep hearing less themes, less parallel tracks, link one IGF to another, the MAG needs to be more brave about trying to address some of these issues, meaningful recommendations.  There were some suggestions on maybe thinking about different types of sessions.  Some that might be about educating and informing.  Others discussing and debating.  Others might have more mature topics which might be more ready for a recommendation or a framing or suggestions on where the work might be.  It might be continued.  Questions on who do we want at an IGF, why would we expect them to be there, and what do they want to get out of the IGF.  Some often those questions I think are particularly pertinent to getting more governments and private sector participation and in particular, you know, kind of goes on.  

 But with that as a framework and with a strategic discussion we've just had, you know, one of the things we might imagine about imagining a different set of activities for the IGF community and perhaps a different proposal to the IGF program committee, right?  We're here to advise the Secretary-General on issues impacting Internet governance absolutely informed by our own communities and own stakeholders and what we're hearing, but with all of that and the luxury of time, I mean, what else might we imagine we can do over the course of the year, with the annual meeting as well as all the intersessional activities?  I mean, I'm just sort of throwing it open again.  I have June, a brave soul.  June, you have the floor.  And then Mamadou, a brave soul equally.

 >>JUNE PARRIS: -- Chair, and welcome to the new MAG members.  I'm June Parris.  I am from Barbados.  I am a member of the private sector and other organizations.  ISOC Barbados.  I have to agree with Paul.  He's come up with a really interesting point, that is a big divide between the north and the south.  We've got members from the south and Africa and Barbados and the Caribbean, but we're still not connecting.  So the only thing I can think of is that we have MAG itself forms a committee to reach out to the other people and bring them closer.  We were discussing yesterday trying to get the IGF outside of Europe into these other places.  So perhaps this new committee that we can form can actually work on that.  I'm not sure if that would help, but we can try.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, June.  I'm just going to kind of let the ideas roll or flow.  Hopefully you're -- Mamadou.  Mamadou, you have the floor.

 >>MAMADOU LO: Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor.  I would like to talk about which I think the point has been mentioned lots of -- yesterday several times.  I think last year some activities lacked sharing information on certain mailing lists.  The IGF website and social media was done.  But I think more has to be achieved to reach a higher level of engagement.  

 On that, we do think we need to see the channel of communication.  I think -- the channel -- we still have a problem on communication channel.  As I said, we had done lot of works on social media and mailing lists and on the website.  

 But I think we have to turn the channel -- the communication channel, doing more media coverage this time, more B2B communication, interpersonal networking with IGF presence in Internet governance activities by, for example, setting booths, attending IGF -- attending Internet governance activities like ICANN meetings or like IETF meetings, something like that.  

 Also, as Marilyn said last -- said yesterday, we have to reach wider community like finance or so, finance committee, transportation, energy, common sector, (indiscernible) so to diversify our audience and reach out to the broad community.  Thanks, Chair.  That was my point.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mamadou.  Let me just throw out another idea then and see if we can pivot off of any of these.  One of the things that I know a lot of the regional NRIs do, which is quite interesting, and so I see Sandra over there with EuroDIG.  You know, they asked the community for expression of interest on topics that are of interest, and then I know there's a great deal behind this but at the highest level what they do is they have a steering committee and a small group of people that look at some of those topics and then craft some kind of sessions, policy questions, almost more, I think in my impression kind of a narrative of what they actually want to advance at a topical level in the -- in EuroDIG.  And I can ask them to come in and correct them in a moment.  But this as a thought exercise for everyone here in the room.  If we didn't start with some number of expected themes and ask for workshops that support those themes and then what we tend to do is sort them on the basis of individual workshops, but they don't necessarily make a quilt.  They don't make a garment.  You know, it's a whole bunch of selected independent workshops.  

 If we wrote a narrative around a small number of themes and said, let's think about inclusion and in particular these are the -- some of the things we'd like to address around inclusion.  We'd really like to understand how we actually more deeply engage, seriously engage, the south in capacity building activities in their countries and in their regions and how we engage them in global forums and whatever else.  I mean, I don't know, maybe gender goes in there.  You know, there's other things you could imagine putting in, but and the narrative was, what might the IGF community consider doing around inclusion over 2019 and beyond, would that give us a different approach to how we might actually think through our structure that discussion of the IGF?  Would tying it to a couple of policy questions that meant, this is what we were, you know, hoping that the ultimate program and all the activities would actually help advance, would actually give us some more tangible outputs that we could actually distribute appropriately?  I'm really just, you know, having talked to many people for quite a long time here now, trying to throw some new ideas into breathe some -- some I think life into the IGF and address some of the systemic things we've heard as well.  We have some people in the queue.  I want to ask first, I think, EuroDIG, did I -- I mean, is there anything you could add that would be more helpful or anything that I just totally got wrong or confused with respect to the EuroDIG process?  So Sandra, you have the floor.

 >>EURODIG:  Hello.  Yeah.  Thank very much, Lynn.  Also for asking me directly, and I'm happy to share experiences and thoughts that I'm -- I would say are my personal thoughts, based on the experience of 11 years of EuroDIG meanwhile.  

 I know that this is constantly under discussion in the mark, how to select the workshops and there comes a lot of criticism from the community and I know the mark is trying hard to find ways to improve the process of selections and shaping the program.

 I would be a little bit provocative and would say, I think the methodology of selecting workshops is the wrong way.  It's the wrong way in this respect, that it frustrates people that are not selected, that are rejected.  And it's also not very multistakeholder bottom-up.  If someone tells you okay, you go, you go out, that's not really nice because those people that are rejected, they are probably lost for the rest of the program planning, although they are bright minds.  And I think it would be better to encourage everyone to participate at every stage, and that's our motto at EuroDIG.  And I'm not saying that everything has to be done the way we're doing it at EuroDIG.  I'm just -- can explain from my experience.

 Also what happens with the workshop selection procedure is something, when you go to another country each year a big part of the community that participates or big portion of the participants come from the local community.  At EuroDIG it is around half of the people.  I guess it is similar to the IGF.  And this local community -- and I mean, that's one of our aims, that we engage with the local community, that we reach out in regions that not yet connected.  Probably not in Europe, but we have been in remote areas in the past with the IGF.  So those people find out rather late the IGF is happening in their country, and it should be possible -- it should give a possibility for them to even participate in the process a little bit later.  Even if they do not fully understand how the workshop selection has been done, even if they don't fully understand the criterias because also the IGF website in this respect is a little bit challenging in understanding how the process works, where are the reports from last year, and all those things.  So the entry level or the entry hurdle for new communities into the IGF is rather high.  And I think we should keep it open until the end of the process, until the actual event, to bring in the local community as much as possible.  And I know last year with the French community this was a little bit of a disaster, that almost all the proposals that came from the French community were rejected.  And this should not happen again with the German community that is, to my knowledge, not really aware.  We are a very small family in Germany that really is behind the German IGF and that has a -- a connection to Internet governance.  

 And then also what happens in the past and what should be avoided is that we totally miss out some stakeholder groups because they do not meet the criterias.  Although I am a fan of criterias, of setting criterias, I think for a program planning process like the IGF setting criterias for workshops does not work.  Because if every workshop has to fulfill all the criterias or, let's say, 90 or 80% of the criterias, we will get a majority from proposals from civil society and academia, which is good, but we only get very few proposals from the business sector.  And I might not fulfill all the criterias or I might not fulfill 80% of the criterias and get rejected.  But when you then look at the overall program, it's unbalanced.  You have the majority of proposals coming from civil society, academia, and most of the proposals from the business sector did not match the criterias and are out of the program.  But for the overall program, we are really missing a stakeholder group.  And I think we should really be brave and be a little bit more flexible to find other ways than select and calling for workshops and selecting and rejecting workshops and the rejecting element is actually the tricky part in this whole process.  And rather as a mark oversee that the overall problem is balanced. That the overall program includes the Global South, the Global North, includes all stakeholders, is gender balanced, and that the mark also defines some topics that are maybe -- that did not come in via the call for issues.  We must be aware that those people who are participating in these lengthy processes are sometimes those who have the time to do so.  But we would also like to reach out to those people who actually don't have the time, who really need it to be done quickly [ snap].  And we should not miss those people.  

 At EuroDIG -- again, I can only explain what we did -- we did ask for the focus areas of the key Internet organizations this year -- I have some of those brochures with me -- in order to get additional input to see what are the key Internet organizations.  What is on the agenda?  And if some of the issues that are on their focus are not submitted via the call for issues or via the workshop -- call for workshops, then we as the EuroDIG team with subject matter experts and so on and so forth, we can still put something into the program that came in via other means.  And I would encourage the mark also to look beyond what comes in from the community if there are topics missing.  Topics that might be relevant for Germany.  Topics that might be -- might be suggested by the technical community but didn't make it through the way you are asking for themes and topics.  

 I'm happy to share more experiences, if that is wished, and I will stop here.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sandra.  To your last point, of course, we've also been encouraged to go beyond the usual suspects.  And if we just draw from the call from issues from those that are aware and respond, then already we've got a -- you know, a very prescribed sort of selection set, if you will.  I'm going to stay with the moment for MAG members before coming to others on the floor.  So Chenai Chair, you have the floor.

 >>CHENAI CHAIR: Thank you very much for the chair.  Chenai Chair, for the record, from Research ICT Africa, representing civil society.  

 I just want to start off, firstly, with a question from the reflection from Israel which I thought was really great.  As someone who has experienced rejection from MAG applications before when submitting a session that was my first time, I found that the feedback was a bit problematic in the area in which I was being criticized for.  Now I think that has been addressed in terms of the kind of feedback you get.  But in terms of capturing those other people we want to bring in into the Internet governance space, they might have a great idea but they're new into the space and they're not connected to other people.  So then how do we offer support beyond the rejection?  Now, does it mean that it's much more work for MAG?  I don't know, but it's something that's worth exploring because I think if we're continuously asking for an inclusive forum yet we reject those people who are first-time participants in the space, we will definitely lose people with great ideas.  But I'm not sure how to connect within the community.

 And then just reflecting on Paul's point around inclusion and as well as the point that was raised by June in terms of how MAG members can engage with the community, I think for me my personal experience as well within the Internet governance space from an African perspective has been around the fragmentation of different initiatives.  So you will have the structured initiatives around the NRIs and the African IGF's but oftentimes you find that small pockets of people working perhaps on a particular issue, maybe of digital rights, of gender issues, of new technologies, and they seem not to come into this space, whether it's lack of awareness or whether it's just simply saying Internet governance, because it's not a policymaking space they will not engage with it.  So I think when it comes to also inclusion of the Global South in particular -- I'm speaking in particular from my experience from Africa, I think it's a need to understand why there is the fragmentation, and I know research has been done.  I mean, Research ICT Africa did the research before.  But I think as MAG members and as a community's instituted, there's a need to understand why there are different pockets of activities that are happening and then how do we then bring those different pockets of activities from the Global South to be able to be included in the discussions without necessarily then continuously calling for inclusion, inclusion, whereas those who are coming from those areas that are excluded are not actually understanding why is my neighbor not coming to the table.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  Thank you, Chenai.  One of the points you made, of course, too is that every year the number of workshop submissions come in, and if we're serious about getting even more focused, I would say that probably means something like one out of seven workshop proposals would be submitted.  And I think that does start to get to some of the kind of concerns we've heard from both Chenai and Sandra and others.  So I think there are some things we can consider in our process as well.  Jutta, you have the floor.

 >>JUTTA CROLL: Yes.  Thank you, Lynn, for giving me the floor. Jutta Croll from civil society stakeholder group again.  Before I come to the point where I raised my hand, I wanted to pick up on what Chenai said and also Sandra because I do think that's a very interesting point that we all know that with so many proposals coming in, we need to reject some of them.  We just cannot accommodate all of them into the program.  And -- but the idea of giving support beyond rejections is a very good thing, and that should not also -- only happen after a proposal is rejected.

 So I do think the process of selection has very much improved over the years, and especially thanks go to former MAG member Rasha Abdulla who has done a really job on heading the working group on the evaluation process and having lots of good ideas how to improve the whole process.  

 And coming to the point where I raised my hand is I really do think -- you mentioned narratives around the topics of the themes, and I do think this is a very good idea.  We ended up last year with the baskets of themes and subthemes, but still there is a misunderstandings what goes in what basket or whether it belongs to another basket.  

 And if we could build these narratives around the themes and subthemes that people better understand what shall be addressed, it would feed into the whole program, I think.  People would better understand.  We would end up with a better proposals, a better selection process.  So I do think this is a crucial idea for the whole process.  

 In the end, one thing Sandra mentioned, I want to understand why from business sector they would not be able to have a good and successful proposal, others and civil society.  It's not a matter of time.  It's a matter being connected to people and to dive into the topics that are addressed at the IGF and do think this could be done from any stakeholder group.  And it's necessary to encourage to do so and to learn that you get something out of doing so.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jutta.  Paul Rowney, you have the floor.

 >>PAUL ROWNEY:  Paul Rowney.  Just going back to my earlier thing and just framing some thoughts, my thought really is this is around digital cooperation and inclusion, which might be a theme that we can look into.  And really it's about creating shared wealth, shared employment, equal opportunity for all in the new digital age so that we create a balanced global citizenship.  

 I don't know whether that can become a thematic part of the process or intersessional or what, but I think it's quite important that we have a focus area there.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  Thank you.  I just wanted to intervene very briefly.  On the two aspects of having narratives and including everyone, what we are planning for Germany, (saying name) is right, let's say, special Internet governance community is not that big in Germany but that's especially why we try to focus on outreach.  And what we will try to do is just the thought of capacity-building, addressing especially those people who haven't applied for workshops, for example, yet at the IGF and to tell them in advance how to do that, to give them advice and to tell them how the process functions.  I think that's a very good point, Jutta made, and I think other communities maybe can do that as well because I think that's -- that's really crucial to have that sort of outreach we addressed yesterday.

 And concerning narratives, I think this is a very interesting point in strengthening the IGF because if you want to have awareness in the media, you need to have messages.  And, I mean, the modern word is "the narrative."  And I had the impression that there are some, let's say, reservations because if you have narratives or messages, then it could be the fear that we leave out some sort of subjects.  And I don't see this has to be the case because I think if we try to group the different aspects and topics, then that doesn't mean that we have to leave some of them out.  But to give them, let's say, yes, more awareness and if you have some, let's say, headline or narrative of digital inclusion, for me, this is something like bridging the digital divide.  This is how to bring new stakeholders to the process.  This is how to integrate as a Global South.  This is how to integrate female and how to address all those aspects of inclusion and maybe that could be a way forward.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Daniela.  And thank you, Paul.  I think those were really good, good suggestions.  And one can imagine if we were to build narratives around some of the themes, we could actually then ask the next set of questions which is:  What is the impact we're trying to have?  And how will we know if we have been successful?  So you can look at setting targets or goals even.  But in doing so, that would sort of, I think, sharpen the activities we were trying to support or build across the community.

 Might also be a really nice way to pull in some of the work of the other pieces of the intersessional activities as well.

 But let me see.  Yes, we have Michael Ilishebo in the queue.  Michael, you have the floor.

 >>MICHAEL ILISHEBO:  Ilishebo Michael, government, Zambia representative.  My information is based on Chenai's point based on inclusion.  I'm a two-term MAG member.  I have been involved in the selection of workshop proposals the past two years, and I must admit it's not an easy process.  

 However, based on the point of what she said, she's had her proposals rejected in the past as a newcomer, as somebody who's probably submitted the proposals for the first time.  

 I would suggest that we probably look at it this way.  With (indiscernible) proposals, we should not grade the first-time proposers in the same manner we grade those who have had workshops -- I would put it, those whose workshops have been accepted in the past.  

 Basically when you are evaluating a workshop proposal, there are some proposals that are so perfect in all aspects.  When you are grading, you know this workshop will make it because it has met all the benchmarks set.

 However, we have to bring in new people who are somehow disadvantaged by the experienced proposers.  I'm trying to look at it in this way, why don't we set another benchmark of saying, out of every accepted proposal, say 80, why can't we just say 15 must be from the newcomers?  Thank you.

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

 Maria Paz, you have the floor.

 >>MARIA PAZ CANALES:  Thank you, Madam Chair.

 My intervention, it's made to kind of summarize.  I'm trying to give some organization to some of the good ideas that I have heard and also, Chair, a little bit of experience of being a member of the steering committee for LAC IGF.

 So to the first point -- the other way around.  I will start for the experience in the LAC IGF better.

 So last year in the LAC IGF, we try a new modality.  We tried to select a way to include more participation, especially from governments and private sector because the usual way in which we select the topics for the different session in LAC IGF, it's through public consultation in which there is a number of topics that are suggested by the committee and asked to the community to vote on those topics and the interest they have on those topics.  So that was the usual way in which we were doing this for a couple of years.  

 But last year we realized that sometimes those list of topics were not equally compelling for all the stakeholder groups and also that civil society have a bigger participation in general in the consultation process so the agenda was driven mainly by the interest of the civil society.  They were more active in that participation.

 So a way to bridge both, like still here, the community was to allocate a bigger number of sessions to the topics that were selected to the public consultation but reserve a small number of sessions, one each for each stakeholder group in order to provide each group the opportunity to propose some of the specific thematics they consider is particularly relevant to discuss for their sector, of course under the principle of multistakeholder participation.  So even if they select a topic, then the way in which the workshop or the session should be organized also should complete the criteria having multistakeholder participation.

 The experience was very good in general with this new modality because it provide, like, an area for not every sector to organize the session in the same way.  For example, technical community tried to do something more hands-on, divide in smaller groups, present around a thematic different subtopics.  And others were making more policy-oriented discussion.  Civil society introduced a new topic that was never discussed before in LAC IGF.

 So I think that -- I'm not saying again, like it is the right way to adhere because it could be slightly more complicated probably the agreement amongst the stakeholders but what I'm trying to say there are other creative ways, I agree, that can be built around this idea of making the policy questions that are particularly relevant for each one of the sectors and around them to try to set a number of a specific sessions.  I don't know if our high-level session or how we want to categorize them.  So that's one thing.

 And the other thing, to the point of inclusion, I think that a lot of stress is put in the idea of bringing newcomers from the Global South, and I think that's still the case, that we need to support that effort.

 But for making really effective the inclusion in the world of IGF to make the -- that participation meaningful, also we need to care like who we are bringing and what opportunities we are giving to them to use this as a platform that is useful for the things that they need to address back home.

 So in that sense, I think that's a very good idea, to have maybe this separate track -- not colleague track, before I made that mistake, but separate a variety of sessions in the sense that maybe, for example, when it's about to organize a session particularly intended to be more informative or allocated to specific topics, ask the people that is relatively newcomer, coming from Global South, probably better suited to explain those topics to their fellow people that is coming for the first time in those workshops.  

 So maybe an example, like, for that type of session, the criteria of selection could be different and it could be given a little bit of a preletter or positive discrimination to these groups and set the other more strict criteria for other type of session that require a more policy discussion or kind of components that still we would need to have the people in the room that it's able to maybe provide more support for moving forward the ideas that were being discussed there.  So that's what I want -- thank you.

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

 Some very thorough comments there.  

 We'll move to Timea just before the lunch break.  Timea, you have the floor.

 >>TIMEA SUTO:  Thank you.  And thank you for the added responsibility of speaking last.

 [ Laughter ]

 I hope I can make up for it.

 Lynn, you asked us to think of creating impact.  And while I appreciate the great input that we've received so far and everybody's thoughts, I think we segued into discussing issues that we think are impactful which is an important question.  But I think we have no shortage of that.  We have been doing that for the past 13 years.

 What I feel we have the greatest challenge with is making sure that what we have to say on these impactful issues is actually heard.  

 Yesterday we heard people noting the main different forms of IGF work, from BPF reports to workshop summaries to the chair's report or just successful case studies of partnerships that are forged at IGF.  And we've also heard outputs -- how outputs of the IGF are not known.  It was an example where the outputs of the IGF on IPv6 were not only not considered but not even heard of.  And I sense a communication problem here.

 So I invite you all to step back for a moment and before we look into issues to discuss or methods of selection or agenda shaping and ask ourselves:  To what end?  If we build a great agenda and select the most relevant policy questions and have summaries and reports, what happens then?  How will these find their way to selected audiences?  

 To those working on these issues that we're tackling, to those not yet involved in the IGF, to the policy discussions that Veni was referencing, to the communities Paul was talking about, I want to make sure that we know that there's a basic necessity here that is communication of results.  And that starts with gathering and cataloging our existing work from the past 13 years, making it easily available in a few clicks to understand what the IGF has done so far.  And what would have we said on the roster of issues that we have continuously explored?  

 Make this available primarily to us as we consider drilling down to some policy questions and topics this year and make it available to everybody else who's working in these fields.

 And we've heard also great examples yesterday and today and before that on how to do that.  You know, from Mamadou on social media and more targeted communication, from Sandra on producing policy reports and outputs, from Krzysztof as well on how we can ask for reporting from the sessions.  And it was also a great effort started last year by the secretariat I want to link back to on.  Yes, we started a bit late in the game but it was about unifying the way of reporting from sessions and making sure that all session summaries can make their way to contribute to the chair's report.  And we in taking-stock contribution from ICC-BASIS made further suggestions on how we could consider doing that this year.

 So I just want to underline that this is a tremendous effort that is required here.  And we are mindful of how much time and energy and resource this requires as well and that we are appropriately allocating this, all these resources we need from that, from carving out time of the MAG to consider these issues, to secretariat support, and to any other support that we need to make sure that our communication is impactful in whatever we have to say.  So thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Timea.  I mean, those are obviously very, very important points.

 I don't think this is an either/or situation though.  We started a lot of activities last year with respect to improving the outputs.  And we need to revisit those, evaluate them, and continue to make improvements.

 And I also think as we launch the agenda planning process for this annual meeting, we need to take into account the improvements we'd like to see in the outputs on the front end so we're really clear, you know, up front and that people -- the proposals are submitted that way, preparations are done in that vein as well.  So I think it's a critical issue.

 We are over -- over time.  When we come back -- there is a meeting in this room at lunchtime at 1:45 to 2:45.  And we'll need you to really finish up at 2:45 as well so everybody can get settled and be ready for the 3:00 session.  But there's an info session on the new dynamic coalition on DNS issues here in this room, 1:45 to 2:45.

 And when we come back, we'll have Amandeep.  I'm guessing that's probably an hour or so.  And then after that I think we need to make a fair amount of progress by the end of the day with respect to how we think we might approach, I guess, what I'm feeling needs to be a focusing on what the IGF wants to focus on over the course of the year.  

 Again, we heard less tracks, less parallel tracks, less themes, less et cetera.  And assuming that's the path we're all in agreement on, then I think we need to think about what's the right approach to our program-setting process, what would allow us to have the most impact and make the most significant steps in terms of helping to progress some of these Internet public policy issues.  So I'll leave that there.  

 I'll ask Daniela if there are any kind of final remarks she wants to make or any other thoughts or guidance and we'll break for lunch.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP:  Thank you, Lynn.  Thank you, all, for the input.  I think that was already very rich.  And, indeed, now the challenge is for us this afternoon to focus.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Any other secretariat announcements?  No?  Okay.  Great.  Thank you very much, everybody.

 Again, 1:45 here if you're interested in dynamic coalition on DNS issues.  Otherwise, 3:00.  Thank you.

 [ Lunch Break ] 

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Okay.  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  Welcome back to the afternoon session.

 Can we please take our seats.

 Ladies and gentlemen, can we take our seats, please.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Excuse me, everyone.  Giacomo, to name names (laughing).

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   I was going to say, shall we start naming names.

 [ Laughter ]

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, everyone.  Nearly everyone.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Can we please sit down, please and start the afternoon session.  Susan.  Thank you.

 So good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  Welcome to the afternoon session of the first day of the MAG meeting.

 As Lynn mentioned earlier, we have the Executive Director and co-lead of the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation here, Mister -- Dr. Amandeep Singh Gill, to tell us a bit about the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation and the state of play at the moment.  

 Lynn, do you want to say something more?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   No, I think just to welcome you, Amandeep.  I said earlier this morning we were very fortunate that you actually spent some time with the IGF very, very shortly after the launch of the panel back in July.  So this is just an opportunity, I think, for us to hear from you some of the current work, the status, if there are specific questions or comments or areas for the IGF.  I think some of the IGF members as well are looking for any insight you can provide the IGF with respect to some of your conversation where we might be able to play a role or improve.  All of us in the Internet governance circles are well versed in continuing evolution and continuing improvement of our processes.  So everyone in the discussion would (indiscernible) what we can do better and what should we be looking at.  

 So just a very open conversation.  You're very, very welcome, and thank you.

 >>AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:   Thank you, Lynn, thank you, Chengetai, for the warm words of welcome.  Yes, indeed, we were before the MAG just the day after the setting up of the panel, the announcement by the Secretary-General in New York.  And it's befitting that we come back to you just a few days after our second meeting and after we concluded our research and engagement phase.  

 With me on the dais today is Isabella de Sola.  She was also with me when we briefed you the last time around.  And in a little while she'll tell you a little more about the results of our engagement process, the kind of coverage that we have achieved, the kind of inputs that we have got from around the world.

 So I will perhaps start, take advantage of your kind offer to be open and reflective with you by telling you a little bit about the state of play, where we are in our work in the panel.  So as I said we concluded our research and engagement phase.  That doesn't mean every research activity is over.  There were a few tasks, research tasks, that the panel members assigned to us last week in Geneva, so we would be focusing on those specific gaps in our coverage, but we are not planning now big outreach events.

 We will, of course, continue with some of the smaller consultations, particularly when we get to a stage where we have some concrete ideas to share and to road test.  And I guess we would get to that stage in a month and a half or two months.

 The panel meeting was addressed by the Secretary-General who joined us through video link, and he told us to be bold, to be ambitious.  And this was also his message at the IGF in Paris.  So it's a fairly consistent message, and we took it to heart.  And, in fact, we were a bit flexible with our working methods, so we got into -- we rolled up our sleeves and did some creative, informal work on day two in line with the Secretary-General's suggestions.

 We also had a very nice, in a sense, orientation from our co-chairs, Jack Ma and Melinda Gates.  Jack Ma exhorted us to focus on the inclusiveness enhancing aspect of digital technology, the tremendous potential they hold for delivering on the U.N.'s SDGs, on many other problems that governments around the world, particularly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, are struggling with.  So the way he put it was like as if we need to put together some common rails for these technologies to help us achieve those goals.

 And Melinda added to that by saying that we also need some guardrails.  We need to make sure we don't go too much off track.  So that, in a sense, captures the sentiment within the panel on how we are to deliver on our mandate.

 When we started work on day one, we had the results of the engagement exercise with us.  We also had a set of enablers, what we call enablers, nine enablers; horizontal issues that are essential to getting digital cooperation right.  I'll list them shortly for you.  And these will not come as a surprise to you.  They are as much relevant in the digital field as they are in other fields, but I think put together, they say something about how digital policies should be pursued.  And these enablers coming out of our consultations are leadership and political will, the alignment of incentives, values and principles, shared meanings, shared semantics, clear roles and responsibilities.  We are in a multistakeholder forum today, so you know how important this is.  Governance in action, inclusiveness, and trust.  So these were the enablers we thought resonated the most in our consultations.  And the panel members agreed that these should guide initial policymakers and leaders and should be reflected in some form in the panel's recommendations for strengthening digital cooperation.

 Then we moved into a discussion on what should be the key messages coming out of our report, what kind of tone it should strike.  And this was like a bridge to our focus on the recommendations, the concrete areas of recommendations.

 We focused on six key messages, and that will lead me shortly to what are the six areas of recommendations that we are exploring.

 This discussion, which was, as I mentioned, attended by the Secretary-General as well, was crucial in giving us guidance, giving the Secretary guidance as we move into the stage of drafting the report.

 Now, as I said at the outset, we rolled up our sleeves on day two and got into an in-depth discussion on six areas of recommendations.  The panel members organized themselves around these areas and acted as facilitators.  So they owned up the discussion.  And our job was to have provided them on day one with enough material and enough grist for the mill, and they got into this exercise on day two.  And the six areas that they discussed in depth on day two with this lens of "we need to get more concrete, we need to be more ambitious" were, one, what we call digital public goods.  So these are the enablers, the (indiscernible) enablers that we need to have in place.  Second, the issue of data.  Third, the issue of inclusiveness.  Then the issue of safety and security.  Then values and principles.  And finally, what resonated perhaps the most with panel members, the aspect of governance.  Not just governance as it's understood usually, but governance writ large, and multistakeholder governance and governance using a spectrum of methods and mechanisms.

 The day two was also interesting from the perspective of an informal discussion over lunch on what could be the panel's vision for the future.  So what is the kind of future that the panel members would like to see, let's say 20 years from now.

 An example of one of the ideas that came up at that discussion was one of the panel members said he would like that in 20 years we do not have any security issues with malware.  So that's just, you know, one thought that a panel member had.

 The luncheon discussions had another aspect.  Day one we had -- we were hosted by the ITU Secretary-General, and he brought together a number of players from Digital Geneva, including the Director General of WIPO, the Secretary-General of UNCTAD, and they shared their own work, their own stories of digital cooperation.  So this helped stimulate some of the thinking within the panel on models of digital cooperation.

 So I'd like to conclude by just sharing what the next steps are in our work.  As I said, we are now in this phase of digesting the inputs from the ground and the guidance in the light of the guidance we've received from the panel members.  The panel members will also be working now on sharpening some of these six -- some of the recommendations within these six areas.  So my guess is that we might need another meeting.  Whether that's virtual or physical, that remains to be decided and that might happen in a month and a half or couple of months from now, where these ideas for value-add in these six areas would be socialized broadly.  I mean groups, small groups of panel members are working on these areas literally as we speak, but then the entire panel gets to see how it all comes together.

 That also links with the road testing of some of these recommendations.  So at that stage we will perhaps come back to -- to some of the interlocutors that we have engaged and ask them how does this feel, how does this help you in your work and so on.

 This is not to take away anything from the boldness piece, because we want to stay ambitious.  The chopping down of ambition can happen in later phases of work, but this is just to make sure that we stay real and we stay connected with all those who have found time to engage with us, have given valuable suggestions and have been most helpful on our journey so far.

 So let me stop there and invite Isabel to add some details about our consultation and look forward to your questions, comments, and advice.

 >>ISABELLE DE SOLA:  Hi, everyone.  Hello.  It's nice to be back here.  I was just looking around the room to see if I now recognize your faces six months into this process.

 When I first came to the MAG, I had literally just joined the team a few weeks before, and digital policy was a blank slate to me, and many of your organizations were new to me, and I really feel like I have aged in the last six months because it's been so intense.  And.  You are familiar to me now.

 So thank you, Chengetai, for hosting us.

 I'd like to complement Amandeep's remarks by just telling you a little bit about the results of our consultation which, in July last, many of you asked us about the design and how it would work and what it was going to look like.  And it took shape over these months, and we are at a midway point, as Amandeep described, where the consultation is just about to close the 31st of January, and we are looking over and absorbing some of the results of the work that we've done.

 By last week, when we reported to the panel on its results, we had managed to connect with about 2,000 stakeholders.  We had attended 60 different policy events and conferences on digital topics around the world.  We had completed five road trips to the ground in places like Argentina, China, India, Israel, and Silicon Valley.  We had also traveled to several other capitals to meet with policymakers in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, then also Washington.  In addition we had been in Nairobi, in Dubai, in Kazakhstan, in Armenia and several other countries around the world.

 We've conducted seven virtual meetings of different small groups of experts that we brought around focus areas of the panel and we also conducted a monthly open virtual town hall, as we like to call it, for all members of the public that wish to hear what was going on.

 Lastly, we had also -- we're just about to conclude, so if you haven't done so yet, you have two more days.  The call for contributions, an official submission process that was made live on our website in the month of October.  To date, we've received about 80 contributions or official submissions from around the world, and also around 400 responses to our online survey.  So I'd love to share with you, but we don't have it here, the map of what that looks like.  It will be up on our website shortly.

 We strove very much for a process that was inclusive, that was geographically balanced, that took into account different types of stakeholders, different types of voices.  We went far and wide to meet people who wouldn't usually connect with a panel like this or with the U.N. process, and we also tried to have conversations, and I would say we were able to have conversations that were not only broad but that were quite narrow on some of the focus areas or key priority issues that the panel had identified.

 And all of this was done really with and through the panel members who took leadership on many of those discussion groups or who participated in the trips or who knocked on the doors of policymakers and leaders around the world so that they could be heard and also take into consideration what this panel was trying to achieve.

 I think I'm still in the process of digesting what we have achieved and listening to those voices.  Amandeep described the nine enablers that really emerged from this consultation.  I think we presented those to the panel members, and they themselves need to spend some time thinking about those, allowing the knowledge from the ground and experiences around the world, cases that we were able to listen to, to inform some bold recommendations.

 I find that I learned an enormous amount.  What we were able to see around the world is that there are many good examples of digital cooperation that are happening.  So this panel can take from that, elevate those examples, suggest some of the formulas for success that those examples have proven in certain parts of the world where they be relevant and helpful to other stakeholders that are looking for that.

 We also saw that there's a great amount of convergence around concerns.  So in those 80 official contributions that were made, the number one issue was inclusiveness.  Submissions dedicated to the topic of inclusiveness came from around the world and from all different types of stakeholders.  

 Likewise, trust and security values, those were concerns that we were able to see in numbers in the submissions but also hear when we visiting different parts of the world:  Nairobi, India, China.

 I also learned that many countries around the world are setting up their own types of systems in the absence of a global framework.  And this is very interesting.  It's very creative.  It provides lessons and fodder for the mil, grist for the mill.  And, yet, many countries are hoping that there will be some sort of global framework that they can use or they could rest on in order to cooperate with other countries.

 And I could go on and on.  It was definitely a very interesting, wonderful experience.  

 I'll share with you one last reflection actually that I have shared with Amandeep before, which was that we reached -- we went into the process very much hoping to connect with individuals as well and to reach beyond organizations that are used to working with the U.N.  So we made a few attempts to go down to the grassroots level or to speak with stakeholders who are the most marginalized and the most vulnerable.  For example, we visited a foundation that's working with street children to teach them digital skills.  Or we connected with new digital entrepreneurs who are trying to get off the ground in East Africa, different examples like that, students.

 And we found that we weren't so able to connect with them or bring them into our process because maybe our language was the wrong language or our tools were not the best adapted tools.  And to the question of how the IGF might help, I think that's one place where our secretariat would like to continue to push, is to perhaps hear more individual voices.  And I want to see if Antoine Vergne is here.  

 Hi, how are you?  

 Antoine, for example, we were able to connect with Citizen Lab and receive some videos of citizens that had been consulted around the world, project these to the panel members.  And I find that this could be an area where we push again.

 Similarly, on youth -- so we had a couple of successful connections with youth at the Web Summit Lisbon.  We tried to go to them.  We went to many universities.  And, yet, I find there's a missing -- missing piece still for our panel of really understanding what the under 30s, 20-somethings are feeling.

 And, lastly, of course, is diversity.  I think that this panel -- I'm proud of our geographical reach.  And we have a couple of debts left that we would like to conclude, which is a consultation in sub-Saharan Africa sometime this winter hopefully.  It can be virtual as well as well as the Latin America region.  We have a bit more listening to do in those two regions.  And if there's possibilities to do that with the IGF, I think we would be eager to take advantage.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  I think that was very interesting, very informative and appreciate the timeliness of it as well given you just completed the second of your physical meetings.

 I'd like to open the floor up to any MAG members for any follow-up questions, suggestions, offers.  

 Give everybody a moment.  Maybe just one -- yes.  Paul?  You have the floor, Paul.  Paul Rowney.  Just again your organization, stakeholder group.

 >>PAUL ROWNEY:  The Africa ICT Alliance.  Quickly, my notes, sorry.  I just wanted to ask, digital cooperation, while it's not new words, it's becoming quite new in the context of discussions.  

 Is it possible for the panel to -- our colleagues from the panel to give us a sense of what they see as the meaning of "digital cooperation"?  And, also, what was your sense of how the stakeholders -- when you consulted the stakeholders, what their view was and whether there's a bit of a divergence between the initial thoughts of what the digital cooperation would be and what the different stakeholders think it should be?

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

 Amandeep.

 >>AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:  So our understanding at the outset was that digital cooperation is about the relationships in different domains, social, economic, legal, among the different stakeholders in the digital universe.

 We had our terms of reference that asked us to look at the enabling side of digital technology but also at the downside, the risks of social harm, other unintended consequences.  So on top of that fundamental understanding -- and this is about a web of relationships, collaborative relationships.  We put this notion of a stretch, a stretch to allow digital technologies to move the needle on developmental problems, on the SDGs, but also a stretch in the direction of risk management.  So this is the understanding that we have used in our consultations.

 Now, your second question about whether our consultees had a similar sense, I would say very much so.  So wherever we've been to, no one has said that these problems, these issues, these challenges can be done by just one set of stakeholders.  In fact, the discussion is around who plays which role and how do you enable the partnerships.  How do you enable the collaboration?

 And, again, no one has really challenged this idea that there is this tremendous upside and to get there, you need to work together more.  And then there are these risks, some of them emerging risks, whether it is manipulation of public opinion or the risk of loss of human urgency as we move down towards greater deployment of intelligent autonomous systems; that we need to use new tools, new ways of working together to manage those risks.

 And as Isabelle said, we have come across some interesting examples from the ground.  To give you just a concrete idea, building up of common capacity, capacity within ministries, within departments to handle the digital transformation.  A couple of countries are doing very interesting work on that.  We hope to be able to highlight those lessons.

 Another example from the ground is handling what is called fake news, so a partnership between local police departments, civil society, workers, and a social media platform in India on giving local context to what is fake and what you should be more careful about sharing, et cetera.  So that's another concrete example.  There are many, many more.  

 And we hope to be able to synthesize these into some grand lines of both design of digital cooperation but also more practical models.  So not prescriptive models because the forums are there, the protocols are there and they are working well.  But some more practical ideas in terms of how do we stretch ourselves and handle the challenges and use the opportunities to the best of our abilities.

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

 Jutta, you have the floor.

 >>JUTTA CROLL:  Thank you, Madam Chair, for giving me the floor.  Jutta Croll from the Digital Opportunities Foundation in Germany.  MAG member for civil society.

 I'm very glad to hear about the six areas that you've been dealing with in the high-level panel.  Since I see so much -- it's so much related to the work that the IGF is doing and has been doing over the last 13 years, there are many linkages.  And I do think it's very useful to see how this works out.  So this morning we've been discussing here how the IGF can have more impact on policy questions and how we can feed into policy debates.  And we -- as one approach, we came up with the idea that we need somehow more narratives around the topics that we want to address.

 And what I get now from what Isabelle said, that you've been visiting so very many bottom-up projects, I do think some of these narratives that we are looking for, how to make more transparent, what does "Internet governance" mean to all the stakeholder groups, because we see the necessity to engage more stakeholders that have not yet got a notion about what is really Internet governance, how is it related to the work that I do in my area or in another area.  And these stories that you've just mentioned, I do think they would help us also.  

 So I'm wondering how we can bring this together as part of the cooperation and how this would help us to make the Internet governance more tangible for those people that have not yet stepped up to it.  Thank you.

 >>AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:  Isabelle, do you want to take that?  

 I just want to say it's been very valuable speaking to the former IGF chair, Switzerland, the current IGF chair, France, and incoming IGF chair, Germany.  So speaking to the officials and other stakeholders who are involved with the IGF processes, that's been one of the richest engagements in terms of learning what works and what needs to be stepped up for us.

 >>ISABELLE DE SOLA:  Along the way, we picked up many stories of how these things are working out on the ground.  And we also asked stakeholders to provide use cases for us that would illustrate either when cooperation worked well or actually when it went quite wrong because sometimes you learn a lot from when it goes wrong.  And we hope in the report to highlight some of these examples that reflect certain elements that are critical to cooperation or certain formulas that seem to be agile and innovative, that respond well, that align incentives and in that way provide examples.  I wouldn't say they are models but rather stories and examples of what could work. 

 Also, the consultation process didn't always go to people who knew about Internet governance.  So on a few occasions, we were explaining who the Secretary-General was, you know, and why we were there.  And we spoke with many people who think they're just fine without the Secretary-General and without the Internet Governance Forum.  So we realized that the level of awareness about some of the issues is not the same all over the place, even with people who would ostensibly be leaders in the field.

 I realize that part of our visiting in the end was not only to receive from people their experience and their ideas but rather to raise their awareness, too.  I would say maybe in at least 20% of our activities, we were engaging with people who didn't know they needed to be engaged.  And so, hopefully, one of the collateral results of this process will have been to bring in more leaders that need to be at the table.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Isabella.  We have Mary Uduma in the queue and then Giacomo.  Mary, you have the floor.

 >>MARY UDUMA:  Thank you very much, Chair.  And thank you, the panel, for coming to speak to us.

 I'm so happy about the areas that you've raised here and those areas of concern for all the countries of the world.  I will start by asking whether you have taken into consideration Macron's message -- President Macron's message to IGF 2018 on the call, the Paris peace call, and the fact that we're looking at -- he is presenting us if the stakeholder is failing that we need another mechanism to be able to have this cooperation.  And, again, have you taken that into consideration?  With increasing call from all governments to regulate the Internet, what has been coming to your desk on that?

 Have you been speaking to governments, and what messages have they been passing on to you knowing that as you stated there's no global framework and each government wants to do -- wants to carry on with their lives and wants to see that their citizens are protected online and that what policies they develop would work for their citizens.

 So my question is:  Would the partnership -- knowing that -- I mean, this collaboration -- knowing that governments want resolutions, they want treaties, and they want where they decide on what to do, do you think the digital cooperation will have a different effect on the government and will it work?  Thank you.

 >>AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:  That's an amazingly rich question.

 Maybe I could start with the last part about what governments feel.  And I'll perhaps begin by what we heard recently in Davos.  A lot of African ministers in particular said to me we missed out in the first, second, and third industrial revolutions.  We don't want to miss out on the fourth one.  So there's this acute awareness of the need to really move with urgency on the enabling aspect of these technologies, whether it is eCommerce or digital identity-based platforms for social innovation or any number of these digital public goods.

 The other thing that we heard consistently, beyond treaties and resolutions is that governments need responses.  So we heard frustration with the time it takes to reach out to the industry on some emerging problems, with countries where particular social media platform may have more than 200 million users.  That company may have only one employee in that country.  So it takes three days to even get responses to a simple message.  

 So there the issue is not so much will you have a treaty or not, some kind of mechanism, governance mechanism, regulatory mechanism, which enables that kind of collaboration.  Whether the answer is yes or no but people would like to hear that more urgently.

 We also heard from governments a commitment to multistakeholderism.  So I don't know if we've picked up that sense that the model is failing, but I think what we've picked up is that it needs to bring in a few more actors.  Like Isabelle highlighted, the translation problem with some stakeholders and what you see on the streets of France, for example, you know, there is a set of stakeholders that don't easily fit into any of the categories today.  So how do we make sure that the intent remains what it is but it becomes slightly more inclusive?  And how do we make sure that none of the partners in the multistakeholder model gets frustrated with the lack of response from others.  

 So that's the nuance on what's working and what's not working.

 Yes, we heard the message very clearly.  I mean, we were at the Paris meetings and we've also noted how the Paris call has become more of a multistakeholder call with a number of governments joining the existing set of companies.  Of course, there is a challenge.  I mean, you don't have Russia, China, or even India and the U.S. in that call yet.  So there's a challenge in taking it more broadly.  And there's also challenge overall in terms of the coordination of international efforts on these issues.  We have two processes on the security issues starting this year, the GGE and the open-ended working group.  And we don't know whether they'll come together at some stage or they will kind of stay in their own tracks and how this will fit in with the Paris call.

 So those are questions that the panel is engaged on, is following very closely.  And we hope to -- when there is no magic wand to these problems of trust, collaboration, the multistakeholder design, intergovernmental progress on some of the harder issues because at the end of the day, some issues would to be dealt through treaties and binding frameworks.  At the end of the day even if you stop -- step short of that, you would have to have some way of reassuring those who are participating in that mechanism, that the rules of the road, what's been agreed as being followed is being implemented.  So a degree of accountability around those issues.

 So those are hard problems.  But we hope to be able to at least draw attention to them, draw attention to some of the things that are working.  So those green shoots of optimism, of hope, some examples, and then hope to catalyze some action in some key areas.

 Like, I'm glad to hear from you that those six areas resonated with you.  But within those, we need more sharpness.  We need more concreteness in terms of what's the bold idea on data.  That helps us to achieve some of what we want to on enhancing digital cooperation.  So what area should we apply that bold idea?  Is it health?  Is it disaster preparedness or response or something else?

 And what is the role there for the WHO, other stakeholders, and so on.

 >>ISABELLE DE SOLA:  I can complement what Amandeep said from other governments as well.  So some governments are looking for more capacity as well.  They don't know if some of their own cadre or don't have the skills to deal with digital transformation or digital diplomacy or to apply that learning to policy and other areas.  I think that would be one place of convergence as well as many of the governments.

 In fact, I would say at the end of the panel meeting that we -- there was a lot of excitement with the panel in that everybody needs some capacity, you know.  Everybody, everybody, not just governments or some marginalized groups.  It's really across the board.  We will all need some capacity and of course government will have a key role to play there.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Amandeep and Isabelle.

 Giacomo, you have the floor.

 Don't forget to introduce yourself, organization, stakeholder group.

 >>GIACOMO MAZZONE:   Yes, I'm Giacomo Mazzone from the European Broadcasting Union.  We have exchanged successful for certain things, but...

 Of course my focus is, my attention is the media because it is what we do day and night, and in this sense I have to inform you that there are two more items that I will submit to you today or tomorrow that has been approved last week at the Council of Europe.  One already I mentioned is about the Internet governance.  There is recommendation for all the member countries in the Council of Europe about the Internet governance.  But there is a second one that for us as media companies is even more important.  It is about how to tackle fake news problem and information disorder through traditional media.  And I think that this is particularly relevant, and the report -- there is a recommendation in the report.  The report is very good because it focus on concrete cases in various countries that have been made in the spirit that are conducted currently.  Some are successful, others still ongoing, but if you're looking for cases, this certain number of interesting ones.

 Then a part of that, my other point is a question, if you already have, through this first month of taking the temperature around the globe about the IG, what you feel, if you already have an idea of how the IGF, future IGF could fit into this picture of the future organization, trying to shape the future world.

 And then last point, thank you for giving us back Chengetai.

 [ Laughter ]

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

 >>AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:   Actually, we stole him away for a few days., you know, he was an observer at the meeting, and he also participated in the team retreat over the weekend.  So -- but I think that's a -- it's a good thing.  It helps your community maintain this window into our work as well.  Our loss is your gain.

 The issue about media -- and thank you for that contribution.  You will join another contribution that we received recently on this particular aspect, the media's role around fake news, et cetera.  This is an online media platform that submitted that to us.

 The IG issue, we've, of course, heard some frustration with the current forums and their ways of working, and there's perhaps too much time spent on resolutions, on prepare talking points, not enough engagement, not enough of a concrete focus on practical problems, challenges that different shareholders need to work on.  Not enough of a presence of the right experts in the room, so when financial inclusion is being discussed, so some of what is happening on the ground is not reflected through the participation of experts.  So those kind of issues.  These are more, I would say, reform and reframing-type of issues.

 So we haven't heard, really, a challenge to the fundamental structure.  So nothing like, you know, a revolutionary reform type of ideas.  What we've heard, including within the panels, it's very interesting that there is a role for a platform which brings together leaders from around the world which helps align in centers, which helps everyone to be more aware of the challenges and to look for partners. but perhaps what is needed is lower down, some networks to support that work, you know, to fill that gap in terms of practical partnerships, in terms of pursuing some of the challenges.  And this is quite separate from the existing mechanisms, the IETF, the ICANN on Internet governance.  And then we also heard that there is, perhaps, further down, a need for some kind of capacity-enhancing support.  Some help desks or whatever you want to call them, where you get guided onto a -- where you get helped with where you might find help, because everyone is very realistic about, you know, more bureaucracy, more mechanisms, and about the funding situation.  There is certainly a role for bringing together some of what already exists in a way that becomes more usable, more user friendly.  I think somebody put it very nicely, that we still don't have, like, a Microsoft Windows of digital cooperation, so we have different applications.  Imagine, you know, each time you went from Word to Excel you couldn't put and paste and you had to shut down the computer, boot it up again with a different operating system.  So this is where we are in terms of digital cooperation.

 So some kind of connective tissue that helps us more along without radically altering what we have and what is apparently working well.

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

 Nigel, exceptionally, I'll recognize you as this is a MAG meeting but if you can keep it somewhat short I would appreciate it.  Thank you.

 >>NIGEL HICKSON:  Ah, yes, thank you, Madam Chair.  I'll keep it short.  And thank you very much, Ambassador and Isabelle, for the report back.

 We've been very -- sorry, Nigel Hickson from ICANN.  Part of the technical community.

 We've been very fortunate in Geneva that we've heard a lot about the workings of the panel.  We're very fortunate that you've consulted stakeholders, that you've done this tremendous number of outreach situations, that you've talked to so many people in so many different venues.  And for that I think the whole multistakeholder community here, and no doubt elsewhere, is truly grateful.

 We had an excellent session Friday lunchtime when there was a report back on the -- on the discussions that took place during the week.  And I just wanted to focus on three brief points, if I may.

 First of all, on the -- last week in Geneva as well as the high-level panel, we had meetings of the commission on the stability -- on the stability of cyberspace.  And this is the multistakeholder commission working to develop and has developed draft norms on the stability of cyberspace.  And it was good that the members of the commission, the members of the high-level panel were able to foster a dialogue between them.

 This raised the real issue in Geneva last week of the -- if you like, the dichotomy, to an extent, of this multistakeholder work that was going on within the commission to develop norms, the multistakeholder work that was going on in the panel.  And at the same time, the multilateral work that was also reported on in Geneva last week of the open-ended working group at the U.N. and the government group of experts.  And there was a clear sort of, if you like, thought in many people that spoke last week in many of the different public sessions of the need to somehow bridge that gap; that no longer was it acceptable, no longer was it sensible, no longer was it intellectually coherent to have a group of governments or a group of businesses or a group of civil society, or whatever, sitting down, making decisions, coming to conclusions in their own might, in their own roles.  

 But we needed to foster this dialogue between stakeholders and beyond the current stakeholders, as you rightly said in your report, and hopefully the commission will reflect -- sorry, hopefully the high-level panel will reflect on that.  

 And secondly, on the IGF itself, and it's so good that you had the opportunity not only to speak to MAG before the last IGF but also to this MAG here and to the Paris IGF itself and to understand some of the dynamics of this Internet Governance Forum which couldn't have been better put this morning by our German host for 2019 in Berlin.  This multistakeholder vehicle that is the only vehicle we have at the moment where people can freely come, can freely express their desires, their frustrations, the issues that they bring to the table, and if you can strengthen through your recommendation, through your report, this vehicle that we have that truly brings people together and from all over the world and you would have done a magnificent job.  Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Nigel.

 >>AMANDEEP GILL:  I agree entirely with Nigel, and it's good to have you at our WSIS+10 security discussion at King's College in London.  And your comments about the U.N.'s role, about how different stakeholders should work in this domain, you know, we took them back to the panel at that stage.  

 This fragmentation of effort is not only there in the policy domain but you also see it in the digital for development domain.  What is called "pilot-itis."  So small pilot, small pools of efforts, they never come together.  We also see that in terms of the anti-virus software we have (indiscernible) and consumers get confused about, you know, what is it based upon and so on.  

 Part of it is necessary because, you know, different pools of efforts are directed at different parts of the problem, but some of it is just -- just superfluous.  So how do we decide wisely about what needs to be connected together, what needs to be left out.  So that's the challenge on segmentation.  

 And as I said before on the IGF, it's a unique forum and we have not heard in our consultations any revolutionary idea, but certainly we've heard clearly there is a role for this kind of platform now.  In what direction needs to be extended, the SG spoke about it, President Macron spoke about it, you've been discussing this, and we've heard it clearly in our discussion groups and in some of the calls for contributions.  This is where I think clarity in roles and responsibilities would help, some models of cooperation would help, and some other ways of enhancing trust and collaboration, whether it's through common values and principles, common ways of bringing them alive in policymaking or through shared semantics.  The degree of interoperability.  Not so much technical operability but thinking and action related interoperability.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Amandeep.  I'd like to invite Chenai Chair to take the floor.   Chenai.

 >>CHENAI CHAIR: Thank you very much for your presentation and an understanding of the work that the HLPDC will be endeavoring on.  I think my big question is around holding everyone accountable through this platform, and in particular my question is around Internet shutdowns.  I come from Zimbabwe, and we've had an Internet shutdown and personally, it was an experience we wondered where is the platform where we could engage and where could our government be -- if not held accountable, where they could at least explain to their peers around their activities.  I've been in other Internet governance platforms where the issues around Internet shutdowns I considered not within their jurisdiction or something that should just be left alone.  

 So I was wondering if this is one of those issues that the body will deal with or find a way of setting up some sort of system that will allow for digital cooperation to sort of mitigate around such knee-jerk reaction towards social media shut down, as an example.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.

 >>AMANDEEP GILL: [No audio] -- but clearly a couple of our members from Africa brought it up, you know, around current developments.  They were seeing others.  And there were, I think, two, three ideas that came up in that discussion, that I can recall.  One is the norms-based approach where you turn this into some kind of a  fundamental guarantee.  In some European countries you're already well on the way to that, but how do you make that into a broader norm.  So that's more difficult to brazenly shut down,  you know, ways of communication, ways of expression of -- with words essential in society.

 The other was that the more this gets embedded into the functioning of governments, the more governments will find it difficult to shut parts of themselves down.  So if it becomes a major part of e-governance type of initiatives, if -- for example, you can't just shut down every airport, road, et cetera for long periods of time because they are so essential for your own functioning.  So that was an idea.  

 And then I think the third set of ideas were around access, diversity and access, and, you know, you're aware, you're aware, of -- that there are many organizations around the world that work on those issues.  But certainly something that's important.  

 To what extent and how we reflect that in our report, that's -- it's too early for me to say that, whether it comes in through our focus on human rights and human agency or our focus on inclusively and access or even the governance problem.  But certainly something that has resonated strongly within the panel.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Amandeep.  There isn't anyone else in the queue at the moment, and maybe I'd just like to make one or two quick comments just to make sure that we're all taking the same language as you move into the, I guess, early days of finalizing your report.  

 When we talk about the IGF, we talk about a whole range of activities across the entire ecosystem so that's a lot of intersessional activities such as best practice forums and dynamic coalitions, it's the 112 national, regional, and youth IGF initiatives as well, and it has been some major policy programs, too.  So it's just something that I try to kind of emphasize.  I think the other comment was, and I don't want to read too much into it, but I also feel that we need to make it clear as well, is that the work of the IGF is actually set by the community, by the multistakeholder community, which is managed through the MAG.  So while we have host country -- honorary host country co-chairs every year like Switzerland two years ago, France last year, and Germany this year, that's not what we would actually recognize as kind of the chair of the IGF efforts.  I mean, again, I'm sure I'm overemphasizing, but it's a really important part.  It's actually the multistakeholder group, the MAG, that actually drives that whole set of -- set of activities.  And through their own -- through their own communities.  Obviously very essential, very critical roles for the host country co-chairs in terms of supporting the annual meeting itself, but that's done in concert with, again, the multistakeholder advisory group.

 I think in -- I think most of the MAG would say that, you know, they're available, whether you need to go into specific parts of the MAG because of a regional connection or something.  If as you get closer to either deepening your enablers or deepening any of the -- the kind of major areas or your connective tissue or, you know, that we're here certainly to facilitate that effort.  And obviously, you still have access to Chengetai.  He can certainly help, you know, facilitate the right linkages between the efforts here.  And just know that we're, you know, very much ready and willing to support kind of the effort or reviews of the effort.  You know, we all care very, very passionately about the Internet and the difference it makes in people's lives.  Most of us are here as volunteers, unpaid.  We're here for three days in this room and lots and lots of other hours over the course of the week.  So it's not a responsibility we take lightly.  I mean, we really do want to do anything we can help any of the other kind of supportive efforts be successful as well.

 Are there any final quick comments from the floor, or Chengetai, anything you'd like to add in terms of what you've seen from the various efforts?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: [Off microphone] -- constant communication, in any case.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay.  Thank you very much.  Really appreciate it.  I know you've had a really --

 [ Applause ]

 Thank you, Isabella.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: All right.  Thank you very much, everybody.  There's lots to reflect upon there.  I look forward to looking through the transcript myself a little bit over the coming hours.  I think I'd like to try maybe a slightly different exercise, and Daniela and I were just sort of chatting briefly here over the course of the break.  And in terms of just getting some new thinking, it might be interesting to pick up on one of the discussions we were having which Paul Rowney started with respect to inclusion.  And if we were to say inclusion is an important area for the IGF in 2019 what's some of the narrative, what's some of the story, what is some of the tangents we might want to address when we actually think about inclusion.  So again, in terms of, you know, we're not trying to sway things here, we're trying to pull -- pull ideas forward from what's actually been a fairly quiet MAG would be to ask the question is, what issues does the MAG think we should be structuring a fairly significant piece of our 2019 IGF activities around? We've had inclusion, we had a quick probably kind of top of the head quick set of things you might think around inclusion.  Just looking for some sort of quick comments and maybe two or three sentences in terms of why you think this particular issue would be worth setting aside a substantive part of the IGF activities on and what that particular issue is or means.  Daniela, is there anything that you want to add to that particular ask or --

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thank you.  No, I think that was perfect.  We just wanted a little bit, if you can, yeah, sort out a little bit those headlines and maybe as you have done, all sub questions or sub-issues you would like to see as part of the program, just to -- to group a little bit.  To find let's say, yeah, point of interest a little bit more and we just want to gather that.  Thanks.

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

 >>SYLVIA CADENA: Thank you, Lynn.  Sylvia Cadena, technical community.  I just wanted to have a little bit of clarification on the process.  If this is -- the question you're asking, Lynn, is about like a replacement or the next whatever it is instead of the CENB, that's what you are asking or is this a separate -- a separate one?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: It's separate.  It's more about the overall program of work for the IGF.  So not even just the annual meeting but all the intersessional activities.  And I was trying to find a different way to break through what's typically not been a very successful conversation for the MAG of, let's reduce the themes, let's reduce the tracks, let's find a way to get more cohesion in the program, let's have more focused workshops.  A lot of this were things we heard last year, so we're trying to find a way to break that by saying we're not asking people to tell us which themes are most interesting to them or any of that at this point in time.  Just when we think about everything we heard from the Secretary-General's comments, President Macron's comments, the high-level Internet governance input we had late last year from the European Commission, when we hear from DESA, CSTDs, stocktaking.  You know, there's a -- to me there's a sense of urgency building around the need for IGF to do something, to do more, to be more useful in terms of advancing, to close some of these gaps, whether it's a connective tissue or a platform or -- so if we just throw all that in the mix, what does that say to the IGF and to the MAG which as I said earlier, we're more than just a program committee.  We're here to advise the Secretary-General on the activities in support of global Internet governance agenda.

 With all of that said, what are the ways we might think about helping to provide some framework for the set of activities the community might take up across the IGF ecosystem?  A big piece of that, of course, is the annual meeting program.  

 So again, last year we had themes and then we had sub-themes and then we had baskets of issues to try and group them in, and every year we end up with ten themes, ten tracks.  Nothing less, no focus, no cohesion.  You know, not making a lot of progress on the things which many, many, many entities have told us is important to them.  

 So we're trying to find just a different way to break open that conversation and say, top of mind, what are the issues that MAG members feel should constitute a fairly significant or substantive part of the IGF activities next year?  And I pulled together one and said inclusion based on some of the things we've heard here over the last of the year might be one and then Paul put, you know, some lightweight framing around it.  So that's what I was trying to build on.  What would be a second or a third area there?  Can you please?

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Yeah.  For me as a newcomer, I mean, I got the impression from yesterday and today that the strength of the IGF is that it's a broad platform where all the issues are discussed, and then I heard we have to strengthen it in the way we communicate because we have to get other stakeholders on board, we have to reach out, we have to communicate better what we are doing to get them on board, and what we -- we are trying to do now is while having the broad range of issues, trying to maybe group them in the sense that it's easier to communicate them to the public.  That's a little bit the exercise we are trying.  And, of course, we want to know what you think could be those headlines like, for example, inclusion.

 And, of course, we wanted to know what you think could be those headlines like, for example, inclusion.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Was that your intervention, or do you still have a question, Sylvia?

 >>SYLVIA CADENA:  I'm still trying to kind of put the horse before the chair, right?  Trying to figure out, okay, if we go -- jump and decide on, like, an overarching topic without looking first at how the analysis that the secretariat did on the stocktaking in the call for issues, we might overlook something that the community is telling us.  And I'm just trying to get back to that to make sure I understand what you are asking of us.  So I will keep rambling here and try to contribute later in the process.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Okay.  Thank you.

 Let me go to Michael next.

 >>MICHAEL ILISHEBO:  Good afternoon, Chair.  Mine is just a question concerning the issues we've just raised.  Are we trying to come up with a main theme through our submissions?  The main theme for the IGF 2019?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  No, not directly.  I think that will come up after we have the topics.

 So let me -- well, Maria is in the queue.  Let me go to Maria and then just -- Maria, you have the floor.

 >>MARIA PAZ CANALES:  I think one topic that resonate a lot in different civil society groups, representatives, and also in the submission is the issue about accountability and from private sector and from government, also connected to what Chenai was asking to the High-Level Panel of Digital Cooperation.  In the case of private sector, probably more related to the use of data, to collection and use of data.  So I think that definitely could be a good candidate for building a narrative and have different related policy decision.

 And I think also from my personal point of view, the issue about digital cooperation also maybe is good to have this conversation inside IGF, like bringing what will be the outcome of the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation and take that topic in this community also and see what this community thinks about the issue.  Because I think that they have done really good work, but there are some things that personally I know that have been raised that I don't see reflected in what they are collecting.  And maybe this is a more suitable venue to have some of the conversation, for example, about the negative impact of some kind of digital cooperation that we have seen or how, for example, a specific type of something that are connected to specific initiatives have impact in setting the agendas, especially in the Global South where there's more pressure for (indiscernible) technologies and the type of eGovernance initiatives without looking so closely to the local content, how that can impact in a social and cultural way.  

 So those are some of the things that maybe setting more multistakeholder and broader than the obvious discussion of a high-level panel could be good to have some kind of track related to that.  Thank you.

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

 Ben.  Ben Wallis, you have the floor.

 >>BEN WALLIS:  Thank you.  Ben Wallis, Microsoft.

 So I'd certainly echo Sylvia and Mike's question about if we're starting to think about issues, then looking at the results for the call for issues is relevant.  I also think I understand it.  You're seeking your way to kind of stimulate some discussion and seeing if there are ideas out there.  So I thought I might weigh in with an idea and more generally, first, to kind of talk about how we would design a theme or an issue in a way that it could bring in all stakeholders because, of course, we want to find ways to bring in all stakeholders.  

 There have been specific comments about the need to better engage business and to get business more involved.  One way of doing that is to make sure that business perspectives are reflected.

 So, for example, we need to find ways to discuss not just the responsibilities of stakeholders, the responsibilities of businesses but also the roles that they play in creating the Internet, in contributing to digital transformation and what needs to happen to facilitate those roles.  So a few people talked to -- and I think maybe Daniela even coined the phrase, talked about the idea of data governance.  And so I can see many different interesting and relevant perspectives there which could come together and bring in stakeholders.

 So, of course, there are important questions about privacy as a human rights.  There are questions about ethics in relation to how data is used in AI and machine learning and whether and where regulation is needed.  But there are also questions about data in relation to the importance of cross-border data flows and the cloud to enabling digital transformation to occur across countries and not just within countries and about access to data for helping to develop machine learning and artificial intelligence and the benefits that those technologies can bring if they're able to access data in a responsible and trusted way.

 So I wonder about that and kind of thinking it is not something I've come prepared with, "This is the topic I want the IGF to take on this year."  It's more something I'm thinking about as we go through the meeting.  But if you are looking for kind of what's an umbrella, what's a theme which could bring in that different perspectives, it seems like that could be one.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Ben.  I think that was exactly in kind of line with the sort of contribution we're actually looking to drive.

 And just to answer the questions in the back of the room, the call for issues is actually still being aggregated, the results of that because it closed to frequently.  But I think of the call for issues as input for the MAG to actually evaluate.  It's not an edict.  So, I mean, we're all here.  In other words, honestly, they could probably do this with an algorithm if it's just what came in with the call for issues, assign a workshop, and -- pretty close.

 But what we're asking is:  Is the IGF and the IGF community doing as much as it can to advance these critical issues and at the same time trying to address things we have heard repeatedly from the community, fewer tracks, more cohesion, more focus, less themes?  

 So if that's true, if we're actually going to act on that, then how do we have that discussion which says, What are the things that are most -- most important and most accessible to the IGF community such that we can actually have an impact on them?  We can make some significant progress over the course of a certain number of issues.  

 It doesn't mean that we necessarily wouldn't cover some of those other areas.  Maybe we cover them differently.  Maybe some of those activities we actually provide a little more support, a little more visibility to dynamic coalitions, for instance, if some of the topics actually fit there.  Or into a BPF.  There are lots of different places across the IGF ecosystem that we can put pieces of work as well.

 But it really was to just start to get a different higher level, more strategic framing of the sorts of issues.  And if this is to say, you know -- somebody said earlier this morning when the IGF is all done at the end of November and somebody says, What did you guys do?  We say, We took on the issue of data governance.  And under the data governance, we tackled AI, machine learning, artificial intelligence, trust, cross-border data flows, and here's what we did with them.  You know, that's somehow a more cohesive driver for the work we do over the next year as well as a more cohesive report out at the end as opposed to open, give us your workshop proposals that have to do with data and, we have a little bit of everything.  We don't actually have them driving towards some outcome.  

 That was the similar thing I heard in some of the comments over inclusion.  And so many times we say we need to reach out to the South.  We need to build capacity.  We need to -- and that doesn't just mean get them into the IGF meeting.  That means actually provide efforts on the ground there that support their needs and skills.  And if we're serious about doing something like that as a major program, then I think we need to elevate our discussions.  We need to make that a critical focus and we need to figure out which pieces of the ecosystem can and should support it, and we need to help facilitate that happening.

 So, you know, to me a little bit is kind of the rubber meets the road, if.  We're serious about making progress on the things we've been talking about for a long time, I think we're going to need to be a little more focused and we're going to need to work to kind of shape some of the activities a little bit more across the system.  MAG members should probably participate more deeply in some of the dynamic coalitions and even, as somebody said yesterday, in their NRIs.  That's what we're talking about.  We're talking about supporting more cohesively some number of activities to the end where we actually have a fairly substantive advance against those activities.

 I am hoping that was helpful.  I don't actually -- for me, I don't think that's radical from where we've been and what we've been talking about.  I do have some other more radical ideas, if people are interested.  

 This is just trying to advance the work more towards something which delivers some more focused, more concrete outcomes.  And, honestly, if we can -- there was a comment made yesterday that said, Maybe we identify three areas.  And if we want to actually increase the linkages between the NRIs and the global IGF and if we want to leverage all of those activities more, then we identify what those three are early so that the NRIs can choose which ones are most appropriate or choose something entirely different.  But if one of those three -- or two or three of those three are appropriate for an NRI, then they know this is what's on the global IGF agenda as well and they can actually work to align so we can get the most out of those collective efforts.  Again, nobody is suggesting the MAG twice the NRI efforts.  Again, there was a concrete suggestion which had a lot of kind of heads nodding that said it would be a good idea to identify those kind of major areas early.  That would allow the NRIs where there was a nice intersect to support them as well and be kind of mutually reinforcing.

 I will stop there at the moment unless -- and go back to the queue, unless, Daniela, there was something you wanted to add.  

 But thank you, Ben.  I think that contribution was exactly the sort of thing we're looking to pop up another possible major area.

 Roman, you have the floor.

 >>MIGUEL CANDIA:  I'm not Roman.  Just making sure of that.  You get your chance afterwards.  

 Thank you very much, Roman, for that moment.  Thank you very much, Chair, for the floor.

 I fully agree with what you just said about Ben's contribution.  I am fully in agreement with what Ben said.  And I thank you for your reflection that you should did, that I can take the introduction of what I was going to say and I'm going to say and just trying to go into the exercise.  

 The issues that were resonating more within maybe in parallel with the IGF and LAC IGF, we're more, of course, of the south.  And to my head, it was -- depending on who was speaking, you could hear a lot of critical infrastructure development and access to a critical infrastructure so I would go for, like -- as an issue in itself, access to critical infrastructure, connectivity and development sorts.  

 And, also, we -- we need to go deeper and help the creation of national content.  And that was very clear in lots of the discussions I followed and heard.

 And one other that we can put within data governance that was  more of a government issue but still very worrisome is what I thought that we can call data sovereignty.  Pretty much countries that don't have national IXPs and to see their data going -- flowing into other countries that they can manage maybe at will.  

 As an issue, it was worrisome particularly for developing countries but not only for developing countries and even more so for land-locked developing countries, LDCs, (indiscernible), and small and vulnerable economies.  

 So I think those three are big enough in order to take a chunk of a program.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Miguel.  And apologies.  I just read incorrectly in the queue.

 Good comments.

 And, Roman, you have the floor.

 >>ROMAN CHUKOV:  Dear colleagues, thank you so much for the previous contributions.  It was really interesting.  And I believe that's in all topics and all MAG discussions, we should have very focused and practical results.  And I believe the success of this year and of our work, the KPI for success will be such practical results which can further built up by any of the additional stakeholders within the U.N. system and so on, right?  Because we have already discussed several other mechanisms such as open-ended working group and so on.  And I really believe a representative of MAG could work with them on a permanent basis as a representative of the community and with, like, great coalition with all MAG members.

 But what -- with regards to the topics, which we and Russia think should be mainly covered by discussions of the fora, I would focus on enhancements of the ecosystem of the global Internet governance, actually defining this structure and model as previous speakers from the high-level panel said of such Internet governance.  

 Then personal data protection, ethical and legal aspects of the artificial intelligence, international information security, digital literacy, cross-border cooperation including eCommerce, protection of children in information space, and development of information society in accordance with our main Tunis declaration and mainly the points according to which IGF was established.  And as it clearly states, it's a platform for cooperation of public policies and on its enhancements and, like, exchanging better practices.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Roman.  I think the list you went through is interesting and I actually think could be fed into a couple -- some of the individual pieces could be fed into some of the narratives we've just heard now as well which again I think makes hopefully for a set of activities that would actually be more concrete, more focused, and further more results.  I think those are an interesting list and also a good illustration of the fact that we could put a lot of them into inclusion or into data governance.  Again, these are just the two that have come up so far.  But some reasonable fit there.

 Helani, Helani Galpaya, who is participating remotely.  So transcript or headphones.

 >>HELANI GALPAYA:  Thank you, Chair.  As somebody who has been doing nothing but research about marginalization of persons on the Internet, I actually meet so many people that are almost tired of going to access sessions because these are to a great extent, not always, national-level policy and regulatory or market issues to be solved.  The international governance issues are somewhere else.

 So I would very strongly suggest support of, I think -- was it Ben and some others, who are proposing dominant themes along data and the governance of data.  And as was already said, you know, sort of issues around open data, economic innovation, right to information, algorithm, ethics.  All of that can very well fit in as Lynn also said, as can issues of cross-border data transfer which then touch upon jurisdictional issues which are really key.  

 I just want to add one thing, which is the conversation -- [ no audio ] -- there are issues when it comes to data and access to data and what you can do with it or who can do what with data and issues of marginalization; that is, decisions made on people who are not represented in the large datasets.

 So these, I think, I would like to add to the list of things if we are looking at data.  That is competition and marginalization in addition to privacy as the key problem that data presents in the today's world.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Helani, we managed to get some additional information from the transcribers.  I think we have kind of dual channels for some of the scribes which helps.  Here comes some more.

 Okay, thank you, Helani.  Apologies for the volume and not even sure you can hear me.  But I think those were very good comments and I think add another level of detail to the discussions there.

 One -- There was one comment I had a moment ago which was pertinent, but I've lost it.  I'm sure it will come back.

 Let me move to Carlos.  Carlos, you have the floor.

 >>CARLOS AFONSO:   Okay.  I'm not sure if -- Carlos from Instituto Nupef, civil society.  I'm not sure if  the results of the high-level panel, they come in May or June, I'm not sure.  If they come in May we have more time to perhaps consider some of the suggestions coming from their conclusions as part of the themes that we would consider.  I'm not sure if it's too late.  But on the other hand, I would like to suggest three -- three propositions for themes.  One is holistic interdisciplinary and protolistic (phonetic) approaches to cryptography and cybersecurity.  The second is (indiscernible) abilities derived from social networks in democratic practices.  And third, regulating the transborder digital economy.

 There are others -- other themes which may be very interesting, but I can't formulate right now.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Carlos.  I did recall my earlier point as well.  One of the other major goals we've had for two years, of course, is to broaden the participation in the IGF, whether that is governments in private sector which we have been speaking about for years now and had some success but significantly less than what we would like.  It doesn't have us reaching out to the philosophers and political scientists and things as we have been urged by various individuals in terms of making sure we're bringing kind of the full breadth into these discussions, and yet if we strike these narratives correctly, and Helani has just triggered it a moment ago when she said, for instance, the commercial -- we're talking about data and talking about commercial policies and things, that's the way to reach out to other players, other actors and pull them in as well because it's a conversation that's important to them and that they can add to.

 So with some -- you know, some sort of thoughtful shaping around the narrative and some careful kind of review or shaping or focusing of the sessions that take place within those tracks of those themes, that's a perfect opportunity to identify other segments we can reach out to with a specific request for them to come in and participate in the discussion and enrich the discussion.

 Simply reaching out to new people and telling them, you know, "we discuss a lot of these things and come to the IGF" isn't working.  It's not enough to get people there.  I think we need to find a way to make the conversation really important to them, mean something to them, and feel that when they come, they have something to contribute as well as, of course, hopefully something they can learn and take away.

 So to me, I think that's not just a nice side benefit.  I think that's a fairly substantive way to pull in new -- new players as well.

 Ananda, you have the floor.

 >>ANANDA RAJ KHANAL:  Thank you, Madam.  I am Ananda Raj Khanal.  I work with the Nepal Telecommunication authority which is a regulator of telecom sector in Nepal, and I represent government stakeholder.

 I don't know -- I'm trying to bring the fundamental issues that most of the countries, especially the LDCs, are confronting with when the Internet is concerned.

 The latest output 2018 report of the ITU says that only 20% of the people in the LDCs are online, so 80% remain offline.  So connecting these unconnected 80% in LDCs, and on the average 50% of the people offline globally.  So that is a daunting challenge.  And how can we contribute in designing a business model wherein we can fund infrastructure for making Internet accessible, available, and affordable for those people who are not connected?  That's the fundamental question.  So I think it should find importance in all the IGF that we discuss.  That's number one.

 Number two, even if the Internet is available and affordable, there is -- many of us are not able to convince people that they are relevant even in the Information Society that we are talking about.  So how do we make it relevant for people?  That is another question.

 So the digital divide, the digital skills gap, the lack of local content that is relevant to the people are very critical components where even if people have access, its usability is limited.  So that is another question that the IGF should address.

 Third thing is if -- you know, there are -- there are places and there are people who are already into the digital era.  So cybersecurity, security of the cyberspace is a critical component, and it will be there for a long time, till the Internet exists.  I think the entire ecosystem on cybersecurity, whether we talk about national, regional or global treaty on cybersecurity, local cybercrime legislation, building institutions, collaboration and cooperation, capacity building and awareness program, including child online protection.  I think this is a third very important component that will find relevance in all IGF.

 The fourth thing is when Internet is so pervasive and when people are online, there are platforms like social media, and we talk about government versus the public, freedom of expression on the Internet, the privacy, data protection, and regulating social media, net neutrality, all these things come into the picture.  So we are confronted with a myriad of problems.  On one hand, there is a connectivity issue; on the other hand, we are talking about freedom of expression in the Internet.  So this is the fourth thing that I think will still find a place in the IGF discussions.

 And all these things revolve around the policy and regulatory interventions to be made by the government, where the stakeholders will facilitate the government to draft the best practices that the whole world is adopting.  Not, you know, working in silos and not counterproductive regulation, so that the growth of the Internet, the openness of the Internet is hindered.

 And the sixth point I would like to bring is especially for the landlocked countries.  The growth in international bandwidth has cost implications, and we don't have access to the submarine cable.  So -- and the cost of the international bandwidth for these countries is hindering the growth of Internet and usability of the Internet.  So I think these are the few points that -- the issues that we are confronting with and probably will find space in IGF.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Ananda.  A thorough set of points there as well.  Thank you.

 Paul.

 >>PAUL ROWNEY:   Hi, Paul Rowney.  Just one more idea.  It follows a bit on what Ben was talking about but it's a little different which is digital trust and security.  And on this, I'm more referring about our digital identities, who does what with our data, is their information safe, data breaches, and things this, what rights we have to our data and how do we protect the next billion when they come online that don't have the maturity level.  You know, we use the Internet all the time and we still get hit by people stealing our money through these spoofs and stuff.  And now we're encouraging a million more people to come online or a billion more people that haven't had that exposure to the Internet.  So how do we protect them, so digital trust and security.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Paul.  A critical, critical area.

 Mary, you have the floor.

 >>MARY UDUMA:   Thank you.  In addition to what -- my name is Mary Uduma.  I'm from Nigeria.  And I coordinate the Nigerian Internet Governance Forum as well as West Africa IGF.  And some of the ideas we have been throwing up in our region is the question of Internet shutdown, fake news, and misinformation on Internet.  And when you say inclusion, it's cross-cutting.  What -- The intersessional programs or activities that the Internet -- the MAG has been undertaking, they are all working towards inclusion.  The CENB, the gender access, and more especially access beyond just connectivity.  There are access that would go beyond connectivity.

 And cuts across gender, cuts across geographic, just like Paul has said about other regions.  And more especially, capacity.  Capacity in the terms of the infrastructure itself, capacity in the terms of the -- you look at the Internet infrastructure and the adjacent infrastructure where you talk of power, talk of all the -- all the areas of infrastructure that will keep the -- that will help the Internet to develop.

 So the ideas we're throwing up as well when it comes to the stakeholders' responsibility in the Internet development and cooperation, in line with this digital cooperation, stakeholders' responsibility in Internet development and digital cooperation.

 So if we are saying that we want to look at who -- are we taking responsibility?  Is the government doing its own part?  The private sector?  The civil society that would always, you know, try to oppose -- civil society and government, they're always going in parallel.  So whose responsibility?  How do we cope with fake news?  How do we make sure we're cooperating in the Internet?

 So capacity building is key to all access in my own region.  So who is responsible for access?  The -- the private sector that is making money out of access, how much are they giving back to the community so that the community will have access?  Those are the -- some of the ideas that I want to add to what -- in addition to what others have said.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you.  That's very interesting to hear the ideas that are being kicked around there as well.

 Thank you, Mary.

 Veni, you have the floor.

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   Thank you.  I mean, it's a fascinating ideas that I hear, and I may take this time to make some comments because there is something that we repeat a couple of times -- we have repeated a couple of times in the last two days.  And I forgot who said what, but there was a proposal again about the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation and how we combine our work with -- or coordinate or whatever with their publishing the report.  I think the natural thing would be -- I mean, they were here, so the natural -- and they have -- we know the secretariat.  And the natural thing would be to ask them -- or to kindly suggest, maybe "ask" is not the right word, to kindly suggest that they sign up for a workshop in November in Berlin, and then come and report what the report is and how they reached out to this report.  And we don't know what exactly will be there, but neither do they at this point.  So instead of trying to figure out how to coordinate with them, better to just follow the process.  And I'm sure that the MAG members will be very appreciative of the fact that we had the ambassadors, and Jovan is doing a lot of reach-out with all of us.

 The other thing which I also -- somebody mentioned something about landlocked countries, and I remember a couple of years ago we were doing ICANN and ISOC and UNESCO I believe.  We were doing a workshop.  We do regular workshops in New York at the United Nations, and we did a workshop with diplomats.  And I'm blanking exactly which the country was but there was a country in South America who were complaining from the same issues with, you know, they're landlocked and they had problems with Internet connectivity, et cetera.  And Jane Coffin from ISOC was speaking and she actually told the ambassador that they just had finished building Internet exchange point.  ISOC with the help of some company.  They provided, like -- I believe it was like $12 million of equipment to build this.  And I was thinking in my mind how I wish I had this in Bulgaria where we would have built, like, several data exchange points with so much money.

 But I think this is one of the ways where we should ask ISOC, and we have the observer right now, but we should ask ISOC to probably also share more of this -- of what they do, because they do a lot in this aspect.

 And the -- So in two -- One Idea which I see we keep on -- many of us are suggesting topics related to cybersecurity or, as Roman said, information security.  It's the same, but it's different words that are being used in different cultures.  I think it's important to probably point to a broader topic, which within the ICANN environment, we call it security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet because it combines everything that you put.  And it also goes into both the technical, which is, anyway, what ICANN does but also it covers a lot of other items related to making sure that the people who use the Internet have as much security as they can get at any given time.

 I mean, I don't want to talk a lot about it because if you open today's newspapers you may see there are new breaches and new problems with using some Internet technologies or even iPhone technology.

 And the last thing which is more of a practical question for the secretariat and a warning for the new MAG members.  Last year I was a new MAG member, and I have forgotten what was -- probably it was a completely different system anyway 15 years ago.  And I remember that I was doing the grading of the workshops and, you know, going through all the 80 or whatever the number was that I needed to put, you know, grades, and I was making some comments and I was thinking, oh, this one, I'll just grade so that I'm within the time frame, then I'll go back.  So it turned out I can't go back once you've put your mark on -- you know, you put estimate and comments and stuff like that.  So I don't know if the secretariat can tell us whether this year it's going to be the same.  In other words, do we put -- Once we start grading the workshops, once you've graded it you cannot go back, and that's it.  Because this is -- I was really hoping that I will be able to edit some of the stuff that I did.  And also, the other thing related to it was there was a field with comments, and I remember I put comments on some of them but then when I was looking on the other people, other MAG members estimates -- and by the way, it's anonymous so you can't tell who wrote the comments, but there was a lot of small comments related to certain workshops than I was expecting and there was almost none on some.  So how does this work?  If you can give us some guidance.  I'll just turn it over to Luis briefly.  

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: And also we might change the system.

 Yes, I think --

 >>LUIS BOBO GARCIA:  Surely it has to be possible to edit the workshop evaluations.  Last year I think it was possible already, if I am not wrong.  I mean, two years ago, but last year it was corrected and it was already possible.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   But this is a segue.  I mean, we can sort this out later.  But you should be able to.  But carry on.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Those are good points, Veni, thank you.

 Xiaofeng, welcome to taking the floor.

 >>XIAOFENG TAO:  My name is Xiaofeng.  I'm a technical professor of Beijng University of Posts and Telecommunications.  I'm a third year -- second year MAG member.  I want to welcome, first of all, the new MAG members.  In recent year more and more people in academic and industry pay much attention to Internet governance since the (indiscernible), leadership and all MAG members contribution.  

 I have three suggestions apart from business model.  The first one, promoting digital corporation and help developing countries in their capacity building so as to bridge the digital divide.

 Second one, opposing protectionism in the new high technologies in order to maintain an open and cooperative atmosphere.

 The third one, the main aim of Internet governance mechanism should be maintaining the peaceful nature of cyberspace.

 Thank you very much.

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

 Natasa, you have the floor.

 >>NATASA GLAVOR:  Thank you, Lynn.  My name is Natasa Glavor.  I'm from Croatian Academic and Research Network and representing government stakeholder.  

 So I second all the proposals that we heard so far.  I think they're all very important.  And I have one suggestion to make, and I don't know what you think about that but that suggestion would be to prepare -- but when we are done we're preparing hopefully focused issues, themes for this year IGF through these MAG efforts and call for issues as well, that we tried to prepare a shorter or more detailed, per our agreement, some kind of summaries of the themes that are part of this year's IGF that were already covered on the previous IGF so we ensure that the workshop and all other work that would be submitted on this year's IGF be some kind of development of the debates already made on the previous IGF.  So we get some new insights or new perspectives and not repeat in a way our outputs or deliverables.  And we managed to end up with the focused themes that it could mean that we do not have so many of them.  So it could end up that it -- it will not be so tremendously huge amount of work and maybe we could divide ourself inside the MAG to pick particular topics and try to cover them.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Some very interesting ideas, Natasa.  There was one other thing I wanted to follow up on what you said but I think you then covered it.  Let me welcome Afi then, an incoming MAG member and her first time taking the floor as well.  You have the floor.  >>AFI EDOH:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  My name is Afi Edoh, and I represent the technical community.  My question is, during last year meeting at France some of you have complained that their Visas have been refused to attend the meeting.  I hope Germany is working to facilitate their attendance.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Afi.  I'm sure you're going to work to do everything you can to facilitate Visas and --

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Yeah, we will -- I mean --

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: ( Speaker off microphone. )

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Yeah, I mean, you know, as Germany, we are part of the Schengen rules so we will have to stick to those rules, but we will do whatever we can.  I mean, I can't give you any guarantee, but I do not know what the problem exactly was for France, so that's why I can't comment on the specific case.  But, of course, we will try what we can to make everybody come to Germany as far as we can.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Afi, and thank you as well, Daniela.  Sylvia, you have the floor.

 >>SYLVIA CADENA: Thank you.  Sylvia Cadena, technical community.  After listening to your -- all your comments and interventions, and being a -- participated at the IGF for quite a few years in the past, I think that the issues that have been raised have been discussed more or less in all of the IGFs at different levels, affordability, accountability, access.  Different workshops tackle on different topics, and there are different ways that different -- during different years of the IGF those outputs were tagged or grouped in different ways.  Some baskets was the name used last year.  But I think they all circled around growth and scale.  So it might not be the same talking about affordability back in 2013, talking about affordability now considering 5G networks and all the technologies out there, for example.  So I think that there are -- what I see is three -- probably three topics building on what my colleague from Nepal mentioned around the capacity building required that is not only technical, it is also business and regulatory and process-wise.  So it's kind of like a broader concept.  The thing about accountability and ethical business models that actually support growth and scale, and the third one around -- what Ben mentioned around data governance.  I see it more like -- is more on the -- the reliance of said business applications of this always present Internet to be able to provide those services and those applications.  So the assumption that the Internet is magically going to be there and requires -- that requires the technical capacity, the business capacity, and the regulatory capacity to cope with that growth and that scale.  

 So I think that the -- probably the challenge that we have at the moment is the same that we have for the amount of information that we receive is not that simple to make decisions because it will not affect just a few folks that are experimenting with something, like back in the '90s when I connected to Internet for the first time.  Now we're talking billions of people.  So any -- any recommendation or solution proposed will affect the lives of too many, right?  

 So I think the issues around scale and growth are critical to the future of the Internet.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sylvia.  I also can't argue with the fact that both the issue is around scale and growth, and I think also the opportunity as well.  And I'm going to say that I participated for half a day in Davos in an ITU and broadband commission activity and they split up into four working groups.  And one of the working groups, for instance, said 45 minutes, we're going to discuss three concrete ideas for what we can actually do to get the remaining 50% online.  And, you know, when you do those kind of lightning talks, it takes away a lot of the -- the words on the draw.  So one of them said, what we need is a $20 handset.  $20 smart handset.  That would give everybody a terminal.  So there was a quick discussion on a $20 handset.  Another one was, we need to really look at spectrum and how spectrum is allocated and a few words on that.  And, you know, at the end of the day -- and there were three other working groups that did something similar in another group.  The steering group across the IGF broadband commission will take those various ideas away and go choose a handful of them that they think they can actually have some impact on and deliver this year.

 So I think to the extent we have some goals we want to try and achieve, and we don't actually that kind of luxury in the same way a lot of other U.N. forums do.  If you look at the SDGs, the SDGs have some very critical targets.  They have indicators.  They have a 2030 deadline, and they look at where they are today and where they're supposed to be in 2030 and they say, here's some plans we can build to address some of this and address some of these targets.  And we don't have that yet, and I think maybe that's something we should think about picking up within the MAG, as part of a multi-year work set of activity.  Not necessarily part of the multi-year work plan but as a set of activities.  If there's some areas that we think the IGF community can really have a substantive impact on, then we should try and quantify -- we should try and specify what that is, quantify it to the extent we can, and figure out where we can actually bring in some support and some partners.  That's the way I think we're going to bring in other partners, other players.  We're going to actually make some substantive progress and that we'll be able to get a lot more people excited about the work we're doing because they'll actually see what they're contributing to and the difference they're going to make and what they're having to deliver.  

 So that's a little bit of what I'm trying to pull in as well with what I hope becomes ultimately some of the sub definitions of work under these main activities, whether they remain themes or baskets or whatever words we've used in the past, but these groupings of work we're actually trying to be more focused and have more impact.  And I mean, again, I think that ITU broadband commission, that's my fourth one, I think, was probably the most driven they've been to be the most concrete -- most focused and the most concrete with respect to trying to achieve something.  Because I think everybody's feeling the urgency and feeling the pain and seeing the opportunities.  And so I think anything we can do to pull some of that same urgency in would be good.  I mean, I think that's what members of our community that aren't here in this room are actually feeling back in their own networks and in their own -- you know, in their own activities day to day.  

 Anyway, probably speaking far, far too much.  So let me in the queue.  I actually have Anamou -- sorry.  Adama and then I have Mamadou.   Put the two names together.

 >>ADAMA JALLOW:  Thank you, Chair.  I have limited devices, so I'm restricted to using the queue online.  My name is Adama Jallow, for the record, civil society stakeholder groups.  

 I have a quicktion (phonetic) -- a suggestion with regards to the multistakeholder groups involved in the IGF.  On this matter it's about the academia.  Mostly or usually we are more focused on the government sector, the civil society, or the private sector, but how much focus are we giving to the academia.  Because I believe this is a platform where Internet governance and policies can be very much sensitized and then create awareness and visibility.  Because especially for the younger generations and the youths coming up, we teach them and then they're taught in the universities.  Most of the knowledge that they get are mostly from the university or the schools they are going.  So to enhance the knowledge or the visibility of Internet governance, I think it's good to focus -- to add more attention and participation of the academia into the whole IGF platform.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Adama.  Mamadou, you have the floor.

 >>MAMADOU LO: Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor.  Mamadou Lo, for the record, for the private sector, working in Agricultural Bank in Senegal.  

 Chair, one misunderstanding I still have is the technology in Internet governance landscape.  With imaging technology I think we need to address the length of the framework of the Internet governance landscape.  There are a lot of issues overlapping digital technologies in other sectors not directly relating to Internet governance for me.  For example, what is the part of artificial intelligence in the Internet governance? The rise of autonomous vehicle, crypto currencies in Internet governance.  As your finance, commerce, or technology is used rather than Internet governance, I think we need to deal with the issue.  Otherwise, we will be dealing with all aspect relating to economic and social efforts worldwide.

 Also, I think we need to tackle child online protect.  Issues as you need to protect the future generation from Internet misuse.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mamadou.  Any other requests for the floor?  Shall I try what's probably a fairly risky experiment here?  Maybe just to see if I can draw a line under where we might be?  I think one of the -- some of the possibilities in front of us are to think about structuring the activities for the IGF annual meeting and all the intersessional activities around a small number -- I mean, we had kind of three momoodsoded yesterday, three or four kind of high-level, to use old terminologies, basket of themes but tied to a narrative that actually says, you know, the MAG is interested in advancing -- I don't know, choose one just because it was the first one -- inclusion along these kind of components.  And we want to dedicate a substantive part of the annual meeting to the -- that set of activities and that we then engender some sort of call for suggestions on projects or how to structure that set of activities over the course of the IGF and we would do the same thing for another two or three areas.  I actually think the way we've -- with all the kind of groupings people have given, most of the things that we have captured as themes in the call for issue, because, of course, we went out with a kind of -- what I call convenience tags which was an easy place for you to put your set of issues as you submitted it, but you also had two other -- you had another category as well.  Most of those themes have actually been picked up in these large baskets here, so I don't think the assumption is that we leave any major area that's identified in the call for issues out.  I just don't think we need to say we have eight equal that say nothing more than a two-word title in the theme.  And if instead we can structure them and shape the call for program activities across the community a little bit more, and have the MAG have that in mind when they actually choose those workshops and/or the intersessional activities that we still need to support, should actually work to supporting and enriching that narrative.  I mean, is that -- that's what I hear various pieces coming together in the room.  You know, I'm -- at one level I'm not even sure how different that looks from what the program looked like last year because under inclusion you might even have two different colored tracks which might have something which is, I don't know access related and the other is capacity building, to choose two off the top of my tired brain.  So you would still have these kind of groupings that people could identify with, but the program would be built on trying to support that top-level narrative around something called inclusion.  And whatever the other -- the other two or three are.  

 In doing that, what I've done in the last bit is tried to talk to some of the national/regional IGF initiatives about what their processes were as they actually built out their own set of programs because I think it's a lot of good learnings and a lot of good experiences and at the same time trying to understand what the topics or issues that are most important for them as well.  So that fed some of the thinking, but there are people here in the room that have actually made comments over the course of the day that, you know, I certainly haven't talked to, so it seems as though there's some level of coming together around a different way structure a -- a different way to get to a more focused planning agenda for IGF.  

 I'll stop for a moment and, Daniela, did you want to say anything?

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thank you, Lynn.  Yeah, maybe I tried to, let's say, draw a bottom line for me, what I have learned and where I have the impression that as we are a group that should give advice to what we think is important to -- to discuss and to address concerning Internet governance, for me personally, as crawling through my notes from yesterday and today, I have the impression that there could be three major, let's say, issues or headlines or narratives.

 First, what we have heard in several ways is inclusion, which means also, of course, access and connectivity and building bridges and capacity-building and all those subtracks.  And the second one for me would be data in a very broad sense where you can have -- who's accountable.  Also big data, privacy issues, whole bunch of things.

 And maybe a third one that I just would call security but means security, stability, resilience, trust, fight against misinformation on the Internet, fight against fake news and shutdowns and all those issues.

 And for me, I have the impression that the most pressing subject could be grouped under those three narratives.  If I had to give now advice to someone, I would say that for me coming out of this group, they are the three main topics.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Daniela.  I'm actually going to stay with the MAG members.  

 Sorry, Israel.  I mean, I know you have a lot to contribute and certainly from your previous role as well.  But for the moment, let me stay with the MAG members and we will put you in at the end of the queue.

 Jennifer, you have the floor.

 >>JENNIFER CHUNG:  Thank you, Chair.  

 As I'm taking the floor for the first time actually in this meeting I'll just do a very quick introduction.  My name is Jennifer Chung.  I work for DotAsia organization, and I'm part of the private sector and in the MAG, second-year MAG member.  But I also have the privilege of working very closely with the technical community.

 So I guess the first thing I really want to appreciate is, Lynn, as chair, that you are trying to tease out a very cohesive message for this year's IGF, listening to a lot of the input that we got from the stocktaking as well as the input yesterday from the community and all the ideas from colleagues.

 What I am a little concerned about -- or maybe this concern is unfounded.  Maybe I'm a little -- didn't understand --  is I'm a little cautious about going away with the decision that we're going to go in a kind of form of just having three main themes without fully looking at the processes that we've had for the consultation to really look into what the community has told us they want us to look at because at the end of the day, I think everybody really wants the IGF to have a cohesive messaging to draw people that we think are underrepresented here.  For example, the Global South.  For example, the governments and also the businesses.

 So for them to take a look at, for example, the main themes of the IGF this year and they would see these things, is this something that would attract me to invest my time and efforts to come and participate?  Does this make me want to participate in the IGF?  

 So I think it's really important for us to look at what the community has told us what they want to see.  And, of course, as MAG members, we have the flexibility to be able to create the program.  And I think this morning Sandra from EuroDIG said we have a call for issues but there's a flexibility for the MAG to consider shaping it in a way that gives importance to certain areas as well as be flexible for issues that arise because issues that we are concerned with right now in January may be different to issues during the IGF in the November in Berlin.  

 So I really want us to have a full picture and really think about when we look at these overarching, connective tissues and overarching issues that we keep the community in mind before we just make any decision.  So maybe this is just, you know, me.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jennifer.  I think that's very important.  I think we'll actually have the call for issues tomorrow.  

 I also want to say, again, though, that I think the call for issues are an input, not an edict.  And we've heard many, many times "outreach to new stakeholders."  That call for issues goes to the usual suspects, which is a phrase we heard many times as well.  

 So what I'm asking the MAG to do is to absolutely look at what our community is thinking, and I'm also asking us to think beyond that because if we are serious -- and sometimes I go home and I say, We're really not serious.  We really aren't serious.  

 If we are serious about reaching out to the South and reaching out to other stakeholders and getting more governments in and getting more private sectors in, we have to do something different than what we've been doing because it's not working.  To that extent, I think we need to be a little bit more hands on around shaping some parts of the program so that we can reach out to those communities, understand what would be of interest to them and get them in.  

 Just continue to go to the same suspects with the same call of issues and reshaping from there, we're falling short of what the Secretary-General has asked us to do on many occasions, our stakeholders ask us to do, the CSTD group has asked us to do, the HLAG has asked us to do, the MAG has asked us to do.  

 We have every single MAG meeting saying, We need more private sector stakeholders.  We need more government stakeholders.  And we need to find a way to concretely go out and get that, and I think it's really time to try some new ways.  The old ways have made some progress but not much and in my reading not enough.

 Susan, you have the floor.

 >>SUSAN CHALMERS:  Thank you, Lynn.

 I think that "edict" is an interesting word.  And I think that in terms of where our edicts come from or how they're developed, Jen really does raise a number of very important points.

 Harkening back to Wai-Min's introductory comments yesterday, on the role of the MAG, many kind of read our official role as has been stated, and then also on the need for the IGF to be adaptable, which I wholeheartedly agree with -- the IGF -- I mean, the MAG really has, despite this mounting pressure and the quality of a narrative, has really tried to innovate and tried to make positive change in the past.

 I guess there's -- there are a few questions that I would have.  I think you appreciate that I'm kind of a process person, believe firmly in transparent and inclusive processes.  

 And without regarding -- without expressing any opinion on the substance of the three themes that we've managed to kind of tease out of this conversation, my questions, I guess, for the rest of this meeting would be:  If you could address a little bit more on the role of the call for issues.  

 I understand now that instead of determining the main themes, it's kind of a coloring effect.  This seems to be what we're headed towards.

 I'd also be curious, there's for all intents and purposes a proposal to replace the workshop -- call for workshop proposals.  I think that would -- and, again, without being adaptable and without expressing any solid position on that, I think that is a discussion that we really need to pay a lot of attention to.  I'm just wondering when that's going to happen.

 And if it's tomorrow, if it's on the agenda, if we are again going to address the working group -- constituting the working groups, then -- so I hope I'm not getting ahead of myself here.  

 But I just kind of wanted to come in and echo Jen's comments because it is a little different than what we have done before.  And for what it's worth, I hope that's helpful.  Thank you.

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

 It was helpful.  Let me just try to answer the question.  Last year when we introduced call for issues, I think amongst at least a subset of MAG members, it was sort of assumed that would give us some sense of the level of interest across a set of themes.  That was in the background of the MAG pretty much having said, "We're going to do fewer tracks.  We're going to have fewer themes.  And we're going to look for a more focused set of workshop selections" and we changed the process to support that.

 And then we found out it was a three-day and no day zero and that was too big a change.  We would have ended up with 40 workshops out of 350 proposals or something and too big a change from previous years.  So we kept ten tracks.  We kept eight themes.  And I recall that everybody took the proportion of themes in the call for issues, the proportion of themes in the workshop submission -- one of those two would be exactly what was in the workshop program -- and we ended up adding workshop slots in.  So we had exactly the same proportionality.  We lost completely the notion that we were going to use the call for issues as a sensing to figure out where the real priority or the real interests were for the community.

 And I think what we're doing with the call for issues, I think -- and I can turn to the secretariat -- it was an expectation that the call for issues again gave us a set of -- a view into the priorities of the community.  Again, it's of the insiders.  And I think we need to find a way to open our process up so we actually open it up beyond that.  That's why I always say it was input.  

 And "edict" is probably not the right word at all.  But it's not something we need to, you know, completely adhere to.

 And I don't think it was ever expected to completely adhere to it.  But it's a good signal of what our community, the insiders, those that cared deeply about Internet governance are paying attention about care about.  And we need to absolutely pay attention to that.

 I also think the reason there are 55 MAG members -- this isn't a small community of four, 55 MAG members -- so we can actually look across the breadth of obviously stakeholders and regions and a host of different diversities and build a program that really reflects what the world -- what this group of intelligent and knowledgeable people believe the world should be paying attention to in the field of Internet governance.  That's really all I'm trying to put us towards.

 Tomorrow would be when we talk about what we do in next steps with respect to themes and the working groups as well.  That's pretty much what I think, yeah, the bulk of the day is.  In fact, we've got a slight start, I think, on some of them in that we talked a little bit about some of the elements today in the German presentation.  So that would be really the bulk of the day tomorrow.  

 Thank you, Susan.  I think those are helpful comments.  I hope mine were in return.

 Jutta, you have the floor.

 >>JUTTA CROLL:  Thank you, Lynn, for giving me the floor.  Jutta Croll for the civil society stakeholder group.  I just wanted to quickly refer again to the three narratives that Daniela had mentioned before.  From my perspective, I do think it is necessary to elaborate a little bit more on these three areas.  

 With regard to inclusion, I do think we need to refer also to human rights in that aspect because talking about the human rights of access to information, to be heard, to participation, this can all be covered by the term "inclusion" but it must not be.  So it needs a little bit more explanation.  Data is fine with me.  And also for security, I would add "safety" as well because in Germany we have only sicherheit, one term.  But in the English language, it's security and safety.  And it has slightly different references so it's necessary to address both.

 Coming back to what you said, Lynn, at the end, so the call for issues might help us to expand a little bit on these areas.  We might get some input from the call for issues so that we can build up these narratives around the three topics.  And then probably one or more of them will be more elaborated than the other, but let's see what we have tomorrow on the table and then continue, I would say.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think that's a good point:  I think there will be a lot of good information in the call for issues.

 There are no more requests from MAG members for the floor.  So let me -- since I think this is an interesting conversation -- call on the two folks that are in the room for some quick comments and then let's see where we are and maybe spend a little bit of time in terms of kind of how we underline today and what we might do with tomorrow.

 So, Israel, you have the floor.

 >>ISRAEL ROSAS:  Thank you very much.  Israel Rosas from Internet Society.  

 Just a quick comment.  I think it is really important at this stage to take into account the MAG has a special and unique role in the IGF ecosystem.  It's not only about grading workshops.  It's about making entire IGF activities.  I mean, we have the NRIs, the dynamic coalitions, the BPFs, and also the workshops.  But I agree with the voices that said that it is important to have a specific narrative around specific tracks or something like that because this could -- this could facilitate for the community to have more cohesive discussion, more focused discussion because the IGF community has really rich and vast integration with those -- the social activities and also the workshops, the main sessions.  But it is important that those activities doesn't compete among them, even -- mainly during the annual meetings because as IGF community, we seek the community participation as a whole.

 And if we as community, if we are capable of developing those narratives and deploy that scenario with specific tracks that doesn't compete among them, it could be even easier for us to do the outreach and engagement with the community and with all the stakeholders, I mean, with government, with private sector, with civil society because they have an opportunity to participate not only in the workshop process but in the intersessional activities as a comprehensive approach throughout the year.  Thank you.

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

 I noticed there are quite a few people in the queue now.  And I'm actually going to allow those speakers.  And I know we've had this rule that it's MAG members that speak during the MAG day and by exception nonMAG members are recognized.  But I actually think what we're talking about is new enough and the folks that I see in the queue have been around these discussions for a long time.  So I think getting some kind of just additional read recognizing, of course, that it's not the decision makers that are commenting here is important.  

 So if the MAG is okay, I will be flexible and adaptable and open and allow those people to take the floor.

 If anybody has a significant objection to it, I guess signal.  I would ask everybody to keep their comments quite short, though, because the queue is growing longer and the clock is growing shorter.

 Peter, Peter, you have the floor.

 >>PETER TAIWO AKINREMI:  Yes, thank you.  Can you hear me?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No, we can't hear you, Peter, but obviously the scribes can.

 >>PETER TAIWO AKINREMI:  Okay.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  You're starting to come in now.  Maybe if people can adjust the volume.

 >>PETER TAIWO AKINREMI:  Thank you so much.  My name is Peter, and I am speaking from Nigeria.  Okay.  I would like to make just a few comments, in the area of the scope of workshop proposals because as it was seen, last year we saw so many workshop proposals.  There was -- the people submitted and then they were unable to make it down or made it on the list.

 But what I want the MAG to put into consideration is if it's a narrowed down workshop and the scope of the workshop so people can easily comply and submit relevant proposal instead of having unread proposals where we are selecting few.

 And, also, I would like to support the proposals of accessibility and inclusion because that is one of the areas --

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

 Sandra, you have the floor.

 >>SANDRA HOFERICHTER:  Thank you, Lynn, for allowing nonMAG members to speak today.  I won't elaborate further on the workshop selection process.  I spoke about this already.  I just want to give some food for thought for the MAG members on the overarching theme.  

 Since you don't have the input from the call for issues yet, because that would be one opportunity to get input, it is difficult -- you cannot decide on this one.  

 There might be two other opportunities to define a call for -- to define an overarching theme because I understand in particular for the host country, also for the IGF as such, it's an important element to promote the event with an overarching theme and not just say Internet Governance Forum, which is a rather abstract term.  

 So one way of looking at it might be to focus on the expertise and the focus areas that is in the host country.  That would be one way but that might be a little bit limited to the rest of the world.

 Another way might be to link to the IGF in Paris.  And since that was said during the open consultation yesterday, that actually there is a desire to link one IGF to the other and have a more rolling and (indiscernible) process.  That could be one way.

 For EuroDIG, we decided to link to Paris.  And since we discussed already today the U.N. Panel on Digital Cooperation and also President Macron was calling upon more cooperation, our overarching theme is "Cooperation the Right Way."  This is for EuroDIG this year.  And maybe the MAG could think along those lines to also link to Paris.  I don't know if "cooperation" is something you would consider for the overarching theme, but this is the result we came in our process of defining our theme that promotes the EuroDIG.  Thank you.

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

 Wout.

 >>WOUT DE NATRIS:  Thank you, Chair, for giving me this opportunity.  I would like to express my thanks on behalf of the technical community that supported me the past two years on the strengthening cooperation context of the IGF report.  

 And I'm very glad to be able to report to them how many of the ideas have come up in the past two days and are expressed in a serious way.  So I think they would be very grateful for that.

 The second is to share a very little bit of my experience on doing a different session that actually got the content for the first iteration.  I reached out to several people around the world that I knew were able to distribute a small, we'll call it, questionnaire.  

 So I got a lot of responses from people in the Global South that would never be able to come to the IGF, maybe had never even heard of it but gave very valuable input to the report that I could work into it.

 At the session itself, what happened is nobody presented on anything except for me giving two-minute explanation again to what we're going to do.  People had received five questions.  The first is on:  What do you expect from the IGF?  Another was:  Where you wanted to go?  And what are your concerns?  What would you do out of the box?  And in the end come up with what are your main focus for 2018.

 And within the session of two hours, we were able to come up with an excellent report, basically, because of the preparation, because of the focus provided, and because the people knew exactly what was expected of them and delivered the answers that we wanted to give them.  And you can get a lot out of a session like that, and whatever we're going to call it, but it provides focus, it provides everything you need.  And from the topics I heard coming up today, I think they're excellent, and they could actually profit from sessions like that, apart from very open sessions like we usually have with presenting new topics.

 So thank you for this opportunity, and I wish you good luck in your deliberations.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you.  For today, was good luck.

 Mark Carvell.  Mark, you have the floor.

 >>MARK CARVELL:   Yes, thank you, Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to comment following today's extensive and very useful discussions.  And I support the approach you're taking for the MAG to deploy its broad and extensive expertise and fulfill its advisory role in shaping the IGF's priorities for this year.  And I think the -- the account that Daniela provided of the three themes looks really good.  Inclusion, that will intersect in a very timely way with the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation.  Data, support that, including, I think it was referenced several times, AI and data ethics.  A lot of governments are looking at that.  We've set up a Center for Data Ethics and Innovation in the UK, and we are developing some international outreach for that over the next few months.  So again, I think that's very timely for the IGF to focus on that particular aspect of data, but the other issues also remain very valid, privacy and cross-border flows of data and so on.

 On security, we would support extending that to include safety, as I think Jutta was describing.  So safety online for adults, for children, for businesses, small businesses, startups, and digital economy to be able to do that in a world of a safer Internet is a priority for the UK government.  And of course that includes disinformation agenda and manipulation and undermining of democratic process as well.  So that broad theme of security and safety we very much support, and that will create greater trust.  That's one of the issues that the Secretary-General spoke about in Paris.

 And a final point.  I think you need to anticipate some space for emerging issues over the next years.  I think the point was made -- I think was it Jennifer who made it?  Yes, okay.  Also need to remind ourselves of that, if that's helpful.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, and emerging markets is a critical one, and we don't have Nacho here this year to continue to stress for to us.  So the ghost of Nacho.

 Rajesh.  You have the floor, Rajesh.

 >>RAJESH CHHARIA:   Thank you, Lynn.  Rajesh Chharia, four-time MAG member, ISP Association of India.  

 I'm attending the IGF since Rio, and the discussion on the online child and human abuse has been discussed since Sharm El Sheikh.  In my opinion, we have spoken about the security, data, access, but we are not speaking about the content.  Everyone knows content is the king of the Internet and every user needs the good quality of content.  But unfortunately, this child and sex abuse and woman abuse on the Internet cloud is creating a big nuisance for this communication media.

 Being from the technical community, we are facing a lot of challenge because in our country, this type of content -- even I'm not speaking about my country; even all the country are opposed to the child and sex abuse, but still, underdeveloped country are the -- countries are getting exploited due to the money part.  And among us, a few of the countries are taking undue advantage of these underdeveloped country from where this content are coming and that content are getting uploaded to the Internet, which is very harmful.

 What is my suggestion to that 2019 Berlin IGF, apart from the workshop what we are doing on this subject, we should also take some concrete step, what the French president has given into his speech about the Internet of trust; that we should come up with the Internet of security, quality, and accountability toward the content.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Rajesh, and welcome.

 Ben, you have the floor.

 >>BEN WALLIS:   Thank you, Lynn.  Ben Wallis, Microsoft.

 So I gave an idea about topics earlier.  At this point, I was just going to make a comment, maybe a suggestion about the process and how we take this forward.

 So I'd agree with those that have said the MAG has an advisory role to shape the -- the meeting that goes beyond just ranking the workshops.  I think this is all a perfectly valid discussion.  I think it's very interesting to look at a much more focused way of organizing the meeting into three or four themes, and to state up front, I think it's what you said, Lynn, the majority of the meeting would be dedicated to those three things, or some might be thinking all of the meeting.  I don't know.  And as you said, Lynn, this is not plucking an idea out of thin air.  I remember from my first MAG meeting last year, lots of people calling for more focus, fewer sessions, fewer tracks.

 So I appreciate that you both put a clear proposal out there this afternoon, and that's helped us focus.  And I think the discussion this afternoon has given a sense of what those three broad themes could be and the many specific issues that would fall under them, but I also note it represents a significant shift from what we've done the last few years.  And as people have noted, it would be useful, important to be able to take account -- into account the indications that are provided by the call for issues.

 So I think what I'm saying is that rather than trying to take a decision here this week, I wonder whether it would, instead, be a question of you both working with the secretariat to just reflect on the various ideas that have been coming up and putting something in writing that the MAG can reflect on alongside the call for issues, and make a decision at one of those MAG meetings in February.

 As I see it, it's important to get this straight before we go out with a call for workshop proposals.  I -- I think Susan wondered whether this was doing away with the call for a workshop proposal.  I think it might be about steering that call and saying, you know, you can have a much more better chance if you look at these three themes or this is what we really want to focus on.  Either way, we need to be there by the end of February, I think, to kind of meet that timeline of putting out the call for workshop proposals.

 So that was a very long-winded way of saying maybe it's not about a decision today but this has been very helpful in steering us towards the discussion over the next couple of weeks.

 Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   And those comments are very helpful, Ben.

 My personal think is I think we need to come out of the meeting tomorrow with a fairly solid straw horse or straw person.  Trying to do these things in virtual meetings is too difficult, and I don't think it actually gives us the richness of the discussion.

 I think we also then start potentially hitting up against the timeline we previously agreed for when we would put out a call for workshop proposals if we're going to do the usual call for workshop proposals.

 So I think we need -- we should continue to progress as much as we can.  We can come back, certainly revisit where we are, but I think to the extent we can think through the component pieces as we go forward through a call and the program-setting process while we're all here in the same room is really, really critically important.

 One other quick -- and it is a shift, and I'm sure you didn't mean that that was bad, because we've of course been hearing about the need for improvements from many different forums and many different vehicles.  So I think we need to make sure that with any new moves or new directions that we take that the MAG is confident that they're good ones and that we're obviously taking into account community interest, commune desires, and managing that process well with the community in terms of communications.  Absolutely need to do that.

 One of the things at the back of my mind I've been getting increasingly concerned with, last year, in fact, was last year we had 380 workshop proposals come in, which probably would have -- if we'd gone to reduced tracks, fewer themes, would have been 380 proposals for maybe 60 workshops.  I'm not sure that's the right way to kind of interface with the community and get the community engaged and build and learn from them either.  And even if we think there are mergers or aggregations we can do, we know those are painful and don't normally work so well.

 So I think there's maybe some learnings we can do about how we do that process as well that would bring us more goodwill from the community, maybe more openness and more debate.  And to that extent, I've talked to a couple of national and regional IGFs about how they manage their process in terms of their more detailed call for what happens with their workshops.  And there's a couple of different models, and maybe tomorrow we can ask a couple of them to just talk through what those are tomorrow so we can think them through, because I'm not sure just putting out a call for workshops, and I don't suspect we'll get less than 380 with all the attention and all the focus and President Macron, Secretary General, Berlin, HLPDC.  We could easily have 500, and now we're choosing 500 for -- I just don't think that's really the right way to pull the best ideas from the community into the work we're doing here.  So I think we need to think about how we can do that a little bit better.

 I'm sorry for responding so much.  I'm really just trying to keep the conversation going and move forward.

 Timea, you have the floor.

 >>TIMEA SUTO:   Thank you.  Thank you, Chair.

 I have two observations.  I'll try to be brief.  I'm cognizant we're coming up to the end of the hour here.

 It's been a very helpful discussion over the course of the afternoon, and I appreciated hearing all of the ideas.  I'm sure that this discussion here was driven by a common goal and commitment to having an impactful IGF.  And all and any ideas that move us closer to that shared goal I think are more than welcome.  

 We've all been hearing repeated calls to focus discussions and streamline the agenda and have a common framework for reporting and producing engaging summaries, et cetera, and I think we let ourselves get carried away by the zeal to get there, and we put the carriage before the horse, to live with the analogy that Sylvia was saying before.  And I think we got ourselves to a really good brainstorming session.  And I think the summary of this brainstorming that was captured by Daniela is spot on and it well captures what we have been saying.  But my second point is to line up with the process persons here.  I mean, you don't come out in your first year as a MAG member and propose a process flowchart if you're anything but a process person, as I am.  And we did embark this year on a process.  We've had a call for issues and I think we need to allow ourselves the chance of looking at what that is telling us.  And it may as well just come out to reinforce what we have been discussing here today.  But I think we need to allow ourselves the, you know, time to look into that.

 So I would propose we take today's take-aways and we look at the analysis side-by-side, and I think Ben read my mind before when he proposed looking at those things together.

 And I appreciate we need to move quickly on this, but I think it will be much appreciated by our communities, you know, back home to have the chance to look at a proposal, a straw man proposal based on the session here today and based on the call or issues, maybe looking at it in writing.  For some people it's easier to consider a text that's put forward, you know, black on white.  Especially if your first language is not English, it might be easier to consider the proposal.  And maybe we can revisit that in our first virtual meeting and take a -- and that would still put us, I think, in a good track of launching the call for issues.

 So just to try to bridge these two sides.  I've seen the discussion.  I think it's very welcome to have a focused approach to the agenda, and the MAG certainly has the prerogative to do so, and we can be, I think, bridging these two sides that I think come from the same general motivation of making an impactful IGF.

 And if I may propose again a look back to our baseline process.  As Susan mentioned earlier today in the IGF program framework chart, I think that is still a very good way to look at the roadmap to get us there, to get to that IGF with a focused agenda and find what are the process steps, what is the, you know, various junctures that are going to happen throughout the year so that that process is clear for everyone, and everybody knows what is the best juncture to come in and contribute to either or the other call or line of work to, you know, two, three, four, however many teams we decide on having.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Let me go to Paul's comments and then come back and see if we can take that last comment and then look forward to what we're going to do tomorrow.

 So, Paul, you have the floor.

 >>PAUL CHARLTON:   Thank you, Lynn.  I guess a couple of things.  First in terms of substance and themes.  I don't have any problem with the three general headings that Daniela described.  I would only add that in terms of inclusion -- and I have to say I don't recall every element that Daniela mentioned under the context of inclusion, but for Canada, both domestically and when we look at things through an international lens, the topic of gender is important as part of inclusion.  I just wanted to speak mainly about process.

 I've been to I think four different IGF meetings, but this is my first time on the MAG so it's my first time getting to see how the sausage is made, so to speak.  And of course as a first-time member, I don't have the benefit of comparing how we did things in previous years.  I understand the function of the call for issues, but I was -- and I also understand your comment, Lynn, about how if we just went by the results of the call for issues, then we could use an algorithm to put together the program.  So we have to add some value here.

 I was also struck, and I think you and maybe some other members mentioned that the call for issue gets answered by the usual suspects.  And I was just wondering how we can address that.  Maybe it's too late to address it.  I guess obviously it is in terms of this year in terms of the process, but I'm just sort of wondering from a process perspective, how do we sort of broaden the audience so that we get a broader -- a brighter range of views.  I know we get some here in the MAG.  We get some in the NRI process.  And by the way, there's going to be a Canadian IGF next month, February the 27th, in Toronto.  So hopefully we'll contribute some useful ideas.

 But I mean I guess I don't know if I'm really adding much to the discussion, but just -- those are just my reflections on there's a bit of a -- I guess a disconnect between we're doing a lot of useful work but we're sort of maybe preaching to the converted.  That's what I'm hearing.  And so I'm very interested in how we broaden the circle and sort of what we give to the -- to what our usual -- if you will, usual stakeholders have been contributing and what we give to whatever new inputs we're getting and how we're going to get those inputs.

 So I'm interested in discussing that, maybe, as we continue tomorrow.

 Thank you.

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

 Veni, and then Daniela.

 Veni.

 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   Thanks.  Just to address something which Paul was saying about the usual suspects, quote, unquote.  It reminds me of a long time ago when Vint Cerf, then chair of the ICANN Board, was saying regarding the Statement of Interest that people in the community should put when they do some job for any of those Internet organizations.  If you don't have some interest, you wouldn't be there.

 So, yes, there are always the usual suspects so to speak, but at the same time it's not just bringing -- kind of bringing people for the sake of bringing new people but also not trying to push away the people who have the knowledge and the background to contribute just because you need new people.  And actually, there are new people.  I mean, the MAG is a good example of that, where you bring every year one-third of the members are rotating.  And not always they come back.  I think, actually, anyone who has served here would not like to come back anyway after, you know, the term.  But it's the same with the -- the same with the topics.

 I think there are good examples of people who have been here since the beginning and have continued, like yesterday we had Marilyn Cade who woke up at probably 3:00 -- 4:00 in the morning to be with us online, and we should encourage those people to continue to share their knowledge and information that they carry around.  We talked a little bit about, you know, walking encyclopedias of Internet governance.  It's good to have those people, and it's good to reach out.  And I think partly the German thought that you mentioned, Daniela, yesterday, to the south to bring the -- the new people from countries that they usually can't afford traveling.  Maybe this will be the next year "champions" of the IGF with regards to the program and stuff like that.  So actually that's partly also a reason to reach out to new funders to find new companies and organizations that can contribute in similar ways as Germany is doing this year.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Veni.  I'll turn to Daniela in a moment, but I want to be really clear that nobody was degrading the usual suspects or the people that responded to the call for issues at all.  The issue was, we continue saying we want to reach out to new communities, we want more policymakers, we want more government people, we want -- we need to find a way to understand what matters to them, what is of interest to them, and build those activities or programs so that they come in to the IGF.  That was the whole point, that was we need to go beyond that, not that there was a degradation of, you know, their inputs or anything at all.  So I want to be really clear with that.  Daniela, and then we'll come back to --

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: Thank you, Lynn.  And thank you all for your comments and the very -- very good input.  I just wanted to reflect a little bit on what you said.

 Maybe Susan first.  We will discuss the input from the call for issues tomorrow, and my drawing a sort of a bottom line doesn't mean that we shouldn't take that onboard.  Of course, we should.  But that was just for the last two days, where we stand now and then we take that onboard.  And I would expect as well that probably a lot of issues we will see tomorrow again.

 Continuing the question of workshops, I completely agree, I do not think that we will reduce workshops by grouping the issues but probably we can reduce a little bit the issues and make them even more relevant by preparing them in a better manner.  And I think that was a very, very important and good point.  And maybe we can discuss tomorrow then what -- what we expect from the workshops and from those who want to prepare them.

 Continuing flexibility and upcoming themes, I think that's a very important point.  Of course, this shouldn't be a -- say the final call but we should keep the process open.  Indeed the issue of content, that's an interesting one, I think.  Maybe we could subgroup some of the issues under safety, but I agree maybe there could be a fourth topic because I think it's a very important one.  And last but least, Jutta, many thanks for mentioning human rights.  I think you're completely right.  I personally wouldn't group it anywhere because for me, human rights is the overarching theme and the overarching value we all should share, and that's why I wouldn't put it in a headline.  For example, say data or privacy.  I would put under data and that's a human right as well, but many thanks for the comment.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  The other phrase that was starting to be used in the same way as human rights was "user centric" and even in particular a lot last week at Davos.  Adama, you have the floor.

 >>ADAMA JALLOW: Thank you, Chair.  I have a question and it's for Daniela.  It's with regard to invitations to high-level personnels in our government.  Is there a government of the host country directly sending invitation to them?  This is to emphasize on the importance of their participation, or is it coming from IGF?  Thank you.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: No.  For the high-level government meeting there will be an invitation by our minister.  So that will come from the German government for day zero.  Rudolf, no?  I'm mistaken.

 >>RUDOLF GRINDL:  You will send it via the perm rep in New York at the United Nations.

 >>DANIELA BRONSTRUP: It will be an invitation by our minister but we will send it to the perm rep because maybe you remember there was already this question of which minister.  That is not for us to decide but that's for the governments themselves to decide who they want to send or who would like to come.  We will send it out by the perm rep, but the invitation will be written by our minister.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Adama, for the question and, Daniela, for the response.  I'd like to just take a moment, if the scribers can stay on for just a few more minutes, and look at that time agenda we actually have for tomorrow.  The first thing is Chengetai says that the results of the call for issues should be published later this evening.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Or published, we'll send it to the MAG.  It will be there late tonight.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: It will be sent to the MAG and published online as well?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And published online as well.  So we'll actually have that visibility.  I think that's probably the first thing we should run through tomorrow morning.  So we have that as kind of a parallel to the -- the discussion we've been having.  I don't know, we have this sort of possible grouping of three that I suppose even sorting through the transcript would start to put them together into some groups, but again, that's just giving us a basket of issues, not necessarily a narrative.  There would clearly need to be more work done if we were to work towards preparing a narrative.  And then the rest of the agenda has us basically talking a little bit about workshops and open forums, including the number of sessions, main sessions, guidelines and then, of course, then some selection criterion things.  That was meant to be the morning session.  

 There's an NRI meeting at lunchtime, and then in the afternoon is when we were actually going to pick up the best practice forum work, some of the other maybe dynamic coalition, NRI, maybe discussion of the major policy program, and specifically ways to integrate intersessional work and outputs, day zero events, and I guess we were really focusing on DCs at this event and hoping to take the working groups up probably at our next virtual call, just in terms of performance of the agenda.  So the rechartering of any of the working groups I think we can maybe go away and reflect on the discussions we have here over the MAG meeting, hopefully turn that back around, get that back out for the virtual call, and pick those -- those discussions up there.

 If we have time, I think there may be one or two straightforward, easy ones we could quickly kind of recharter and move on, but that wasn't part of the established group here.

 You know, I'm not sure if Timea was proposing that we kind of walk through the process proposal, but we've had that in front of us in different formats for like two years now.  In a component table a year ago and in the -- you know, the Prezi format here for the last three or four months.  I would hope that everybody's looked at that and paid attention to that.  It also described and worked to a timetable that was significantly shorter than the timetable we're in today.  I don't know if -- I'm actually just worried that we're going to lose a lot of time trying to get everybody to understand the process document and what it means if we actually go into it in any depth.  I would instead ask if people were okay tonight or tomorrow morning taking a look at the Prezi, maybe Susan or Timea can send the links back out again.  I would also ask everybody to refresh themselves on the timetable that the MAG previously agreed for our activities, which should be posted in the meeting documents as well.  Because what that says is that should we go ahead with some kind of -- because I do think we need to look at our workshop call for submissions process.  That is targeted to be launched on the 4th of March.  So in essence, it's a short month from here, which is why I also think we need to continue trying to get some straw proposals outlined here and hopefully we're fine-tuning those on the MAG calls, not reopening or starting 11 new discussions.  Because I just don't think we have the -- the time in the cycle.  And again, the reason that process is timed that way is because we've always felt that it was -- and we should probably think about this as well -- that it was really appropriate that we have the call for workshop submissions, the review process, and we inform those workshop proposers before the heavy holiday period in the northern hemisphere.  Otherwise, we lose two months, there's a tremendously long period of time where the community hasn't heard anything from us on their submissions, and then we come back and pick it up again in September.  And that's too long.  So the process is skewed towards having that workshop selection process done by early to mid July.  Again, to avoid the heavy holiday period in July and August.  So that's what we're working towards.  It's what the MAG approved.  And it's what's been communicated and what I know a lot of, you know, the other intersessional activities and NRIs are really working towards.  So I think it's really important that we, you know, respect at least the deadline for the -- for the selection process, keeping in mind that, you know, we heard from EuroDIG and I think a couple of other processes and Daniela as well, that maybe there's a way to keep some more flexibility in the process and keep it open that would provide a little bit of kind of flexibility there.  

 So again, I'll come to you in just one minute, Timea.  But again, what we wanted to do was to, I think, view the public call for issues.  Those people -- you know, if this was a different sort of process, I might say, are there three teams that want to meet to help flesh out these three buckets that were proposed earlier and try and see if we can put a narrative around them so we have something more substantive to talk through tomorrow and we have something to compare that against the call for -- against the call for issues.  I don't know if there are volunteers to do that or not.  I'll let that sink in for a moment.  Because then I think we need to come forward and we need to get a high-level shaping of the overall program.  Every year we have a series of tough discussions on how many open forums, how many NRI sessions, how many dynamic coalition sessions.  They all take up slots, and they're all taking up slots in a reduced number of slots that the MAG and the community say they want.  So it's -- you know, that's the other piece of the kind of process intention here.  Let me go to Timea.  Timea.

 >>TIMEA SUTO: Thank you, Chair.  I just wanted to respond very quickly to some of the comments you directed to me.  Yes, we will be happy to circulate the chart to the MAG list again, for those of you who haven't had a chance to look at it.  And perhaps in the interest of time we can reserve a time on the next MAG call at one point or just set up a dedicated call for those interested in looking into this more.  And I'm happy to volunteer mine and Susan's time to look at -- look at my -- look at our framework and look at the timeline that was proposed and see what we can revise to -- and some of the inputs that we also received in our questionnaire.  So I don't know if we need to recharter the working group for that or how is that -- you know, what's the process for going forward but, you know, happy to bridge those two.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Timea.  That's really helpful.  And certainly for that exercise I wouldn't put it in a working group.  I would make an offer to the MAG to sit in on a -- you know, a presentation of that, and I think by the end of the day tomorrow we'll maybe have a better sense of what we're thinking about with respect to call for submissions for the -- for the agenda.  

 Any other comments or reflections?  Were there any volunteers to sit down on those three working groups and just pull them together a little bit?  Oh, you guys are great.  So Paul and June are putting their hand up.  Is that for the inclusion one?  And the transcript should be -- they're published pretty quickly, right, Luis?  I mean, they're published within minutes of us wrapping up the meeting, so we can go in really -- we can go in really quickly and pull out all the different pieces and see how that reflects.  That would be super, and even expanding a little bit on the narrative you had at the beginning in terms of why do we care about, you know, inclusion.  It's not just for access and it's not just for bringing in the south.  It was for wealth and equal opportunity and economic opportunity and those sorts of things.  Anybody want to volunteer for the security, stability, and resilience?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  If it covers safety.  Jutta is volunteering to do that.  We're not looking for a lot of work.  This is probably a half-hour, 45-minute piece of work to put down a couple of narratives and just see if we can capture all the pieces that came through so we're all talking to the same high level.  

 Mary as well?  Excellent.  Thank you.  Can you use your mic?

 >>MARY UDUMA:  I'm saying I didn't volunteer on the first one.  The second one is cybersecurity, security, okay.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  So you want to be on the security, stability, resilience and safety?  Okay.

 >>MARY UDUMA:  Fake news.

 [ Laughter ]

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Is there anybody else that wants to be on that?  Roman, thank you.  And Afi.  Okay, great, thank you, Afi.

 And then the third one was data governance, for lack of a better title at the moment.  All right!  Thank you!  And, Michael.

 Mike?

 >> (off microphone).

 >>MICHAEL ILISHEBO:  I'm going to say something concerning volunteering.  I think this is the wrong time to ask for volunteering because all of us are tired.  You're not thinking normal stakes.  I think it would be better if this issue is brought up early in the morning when we are fresh.  My submission.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  As Chengetai is saying, you can volunteer now and do it tomorrow morning when you are fresh.

 [ Laughter ]

 But if we come into this room tomorrow morning at 10:00 and start that, there is no, you know, time.  We will lose half a day.  And, again, it's volunteer.  People aren't being subscribed.  So those of you that have stamina and a sense of humor -- are you going to?

 >> (off microphone).

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Sorry.  Adama, you are joining who?  Which one?

 >> (off microphone).

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Okay.  Did we have anybody for data?  Yes, sorry.  Anybody else?  Okay.  And Chenai, all right.  Maybe we can even see if there's one or two other people that want to take a look at them.  I'm sure we will all be looking at it in the background.

 This is not a firm straw proposal.  It's just so that when we say we have these buckets, we get some sense of the things the MAG thought might be under data governance bucket and then we can at least compare that to the themes and subthemes and the IGF issue.

 But this is never a fantastic process.  You try and do this in a room of 55 people when data is coming in at the last minute, that's -- you know, that's what we are.  We're not -- this isn't work we've turned to the secretariat to go and do which would frankly be a much saner process and much more like a lot of traditional U.N. processes.  So we try and do things as a large group in the open with consensus and support.  

 And, you know, it comes together a little uneven, I think, sometimes.  All we're trying to do is show that everybody has the same baseline in terms of where our discussion is at the moment.  It is not a given or done -- or done yet.

 And if there were some people that would like to think about how we can improve our workshop submission process that has 400 to 500 submissions coming in and room for 60 -- because I think that's a really kind of large point of concern.

 Unless there are any final remarks from anybody or real objections, we'll close -- Mary.

 >>MARY UDUMA:  Thank you.  First, the assignment.  First, the assignment, the grouping.  Target date or time?  Do we come back tomorrow and make presentation to the group, the whole house?

 Second is whether we're going to have -- whether we have up front the, quote-unquote, location, the size of the rooms, and the number of the halls we have for workshops and other activities we have for the IGF.  Maybe Daniela would give that.  If it's not ready, it's not yet late.  If we can at least get that.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think I'm going to go backwards.  Daniela has already said there is no limit on the number of rooms at the venue, nor on the size of the rooms.  They're all very, very large.  So I don't think we need to constrain our planning purposes around the agenda for the venue.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yeah, it's not a size consideration because we're actually even blocking off some sections, not using some of the sections.  But, of course, we have to follow the -- the advice that we have been given that we have to focus more.  So we have to keep that into consideration, you know, reduce the number of themes, et cetera.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  And then if people are willing, what the request was tonight, if there were volunteers, was that small groups of people get together to take the three themes that were categorized by Daniela at the end, maybe come up with just a quick high-level narrative to the extent you can but more what are the topics of the subthemes that would be captured under every one of those.  That's actually a pretty straightforward exercise.  And it's just so we can look at that and compare that to the call for issues.  So it's not a big -- a big lift split across three groups.

 >>MARY UDUMA:  I ask for the time line.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  For tomorrow morning at 10:00.

 [ Laughter ]

 And, yes, I would just say that we could just then say, you know, this group of three or four people look through the discussion and for security, stability, resilience, and safety these were some of the major themes that were grouped underneath there just so we again understand whether or not there are homes for those sorts of things that we can compare to the call for issues.

 Susan, you have -- mm-hmm.  Yes, please.

 >>SUSAN CHALMERS:  Thanks again, Lynn.  Just an idea for tomorrow morning as we delve into the next phase of our work, I know that there are a lot of folks who are new this year.  So I was wondering whether it might be beneficial if -- and you're a perfect person to do this.  But if we discuss the rough consensus model of decision-making and kind of clarify how the MAG members are expected to take decisions together and work towards consensus.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  That's a good point as well.

 So as MAG members, we don't vote.  We try not to even poll because that's a slippery slope, too.  The rough consensus is something that actually came up within the Internet Engineering Task Force a long, long time ago.  

 And the real shorthand description of it is the discussion continues until all reasonable objections have been addressed.  And so it's more of an art than a science, per se.  I mean, if there's a substantive objection, somebody saying, "This can't work" or, "This isn't appropriate" or, "You're leaving out a big piece of the world," or something, those are substantive objections and we need to continue to revisit the concerns.

 You know, from time to time particularly in technical discussions, you can find people that are just, you know, very, very, very, very focused and at some point there is no argument that's going to move them.  

 So while there might not be consensus that something was done in the technical world, there was rough consensus and that all the reasonable objections have been addressed and it was now time to move forward.  

 So we try to move forward with consensus and sometimes -- I don't know if we ever really had rough consensus.  We really do try to make sure any concerns that are there are mitigated or addressed so that we find another way to support whatever the concern was.

 And, again, everybody is here in their own capacity as an individual, obviously, with all the expertise and skills and desires and support of your communities back home but here to do what's right for the IGF as a whole and for the MAG as a whole.  I don't think that really needed to be said, but just in case.

 Maria, do you have one comment?

 >>MARIA PAZ CANALES:  Education because I want to ensure that I didn't miss something, some part of the instruction of our task.  But my understanding was that the idea was to review quickly the result of the call and draw from there for each one of the topics that we have been considering?  Not only my own opinion but the opinion of the people that is volunteering with me that's addressing on the topic, to see how much input from the community we can drive to this bucket.  Is my understanding correct, even if that imply more work for the volunteers?  

 I think it's the appropriate way to do it to respect the process of the MAG and the IGF in general.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I was actually proposing the other way for a very specific reason because we're here as a MAG to use our brains and to take everything we heard and everything we see and certainly everything that's in the call for issues and determine what's right.  

 I also think many of the things that come in for the call for issues could probably be in a couple of different buckets.  So I'm not trying to place the call for issues in those three buckets.  

 I just wanted this room, first of all, since we seem to be coming not to agreement -- we have to finish -- a reasonable talking point to say in 2019 the IGF is going to address inclusion and this is an area around inclusion; and security and safety and this is an area around safety.  And then we certainly want to make sure that all the things we have heard in the call for issues have a home in there and in the IGF ecosystem.  It may well be some of those move to a dynamic coalition, which may well be a better place for them to be addressed anyway.  I mean, if there are 400 calls for issues, they're not all going to get into a 60-slot workshop.  

 I don't think we need to be sort of so focused on that alignment but more try to capture the, I think, strategic open thinking that we've had here today, capture that and reflect that back in those three buckets and then let's compare that against the call for issues and make sure we're actually dealing with those appropriately.

 I guess we're getting signal from the scribe.  I want to thank the scribes very much.  And I neglected -- I neglected to do that last night before we closed quickly.  So you guys do a fantastic, fantastic job.  And it is just so helpful.  So thank you very much.  

 And thank you to the MAG members for hanging in here today.  One more day.  See you all back here tomorrow morning at 10:00 sharp and good luck to the volunteer teams.

 Natasa.

 >>NATASA GLAVOR: Sorry.  I think I would like to join the data group.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Super, okay.  If everybody is not clear on who the group is, come up here and talk to us afterwards for a minute and we will sort that out.  Thank you.