IGF 2022 Open Forum #34 Assessing Citizen Engagement into the Global Digital Compact

In his 2021 “Common Agenda”, the UN Secretary-General, proposed to agree on a “Global Digital Compact (GDC)” on shared principles for the digital future. The UN invites governments, civil society and the private sector to join a multi-stakeholder digital technology track in preparation for the Summit of the Future, during which the Global Digital Compact will be agreed upon. We think that ordinary citizens should also answer this call and bring their perspective based. That is why we launched citizens’ dialogues all around the world to contribute to the Global Digital Compact. Citizens from a sample representing the diversity of the population worked on what they see as the main priorities of the Global Digital Compact. The method is based on a deliberative process aiming at creating a public engagement through information, facilitated discussion and structured agregation. This processes allows to go from collected intelligence to collective intelligence. During this Open Forum, key organizers that have facilitated the engagement process of citizens across the world will share experiences, stories and lessons learned. The Dialogues are one key step of “We, the Internet” , which aims at bringing the voice of citizens into Internet governance to shape a better digital future together. “We, the internet” is supported by a coalition of stakeholders coming from public authorities (European Commission, UNESCO, Council of Europe, German government, Swiss Government,), private actors (World Economic Forum , Google, Meta) and non-governmental stakeholders (Wikimedia Foundation, World Wide Web Fondation and Internet Society).

We will moderate this session the same way we do during the hybrid citizens’ dialogues we have held in the last 2 years, with a double layer of moderation and avoiding a top down session. We will have one moderator onsite and one moderator online, coming from the same organization, used to work together. At the end of each part of the session (5-7 min) the moderator onsite will ask the moderator online if they are any reactions online. The online moderator will ensure that online participants are fully engaged. We also intend to use the chat. The session will be designed and based on the interaction between participants, we will ask them many times to react to what we present or ask what they think about it. We will not have long or detailed presentations to keep the attention alive. We usually use polls and sometimes miro board as icebreakers to get people involved and keep them engaged.