Sept 06 2007

Draft Programme Outline for the Second Meeting of the

Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

Rio de Janeiro, 12-15 November 2007

1 Introduction

This paper gives a draft programme outline for the second meeting of the IGF in Rio de Janeiro. This draft programme outline tries to make best possible use of the facilities that are available at the conference venue. It also takes into account the fact that participation at the first meeting in Athens exceeded expectations and that as many, if not more, people are expected to attend the Rio de Janeiro meeting.

The paper is conceived as a rolling document. This paper reflects comments received in the open consultations of 3 September and the discussions of the Advisory Group on 4-5 September 2007.

2 Basic Meeting Structure

The proposed meeting structure builds on the success of the Athens meeting and takes into account the comments made in the stocktaking and planning processes, as submitted through online statements and at the meetings in Geneva on 13 February 2007, on 23-25 May and on 3 September 2007. However, the Rio de Janeiro meeting is not merely repeating the structure of the inaugural meeting, but will have its own character and will go beyond the Athens format. The informal, interactive multi-stakeholder format was generally seen as one of the key factors of the success of the Athens meeting and will be maintained as a guiding principle. Participation will follow the format used at the inaugural meeting and all entities and persons with proven expertise and experience in matters related to Internet governance may apply for registration.

The basic format of the Athens meeting, with main sessions and workshops, will be maintained. The development orientation with a limited number of broad themes will also be retained as the organizational principle for the Rio de Janeiro meeting. In addition to the four Athens themes of Access, Diversity, Openness, and Security, a fifth theme will be added: Critical Internet Resources.

Main sessions, will be developed around each of these five themes. Given the importance of Access, this theme will be dealt with first among the four Athens themes and will be scheduled on the same day as the Diversity main session. The Openness and the Security main sessions will be paired on the third day. In addition, development and capacity-building will continue to be cross-cutting priorities.

Based on the ‘lessons learned’ from the Athens meeting, the following points will be considered:

- Main Sessions of two hours duration.

- Panels that are generally smaller in size, with a maximum of 5-7 panellists.

- The format of the Main Session needs to be adapted to the subject matter and also allow for the possibility of having key-note speakers.

- The relationship between Main Sessions and Workshops needs to be better articulated.

- Space will be made available for the various Dynamic Coalitions that have emerged since Athens. They will also be given the opportunity to report back to the Main Session.

- Space will be made available for additional meetings.

- Enough space will be made available for informal interaction and networking among participants, both in terms of physical space and space in the structure of the programme.

- Greater emphasis will be given to the sharing of ‘best practices’, especially practices that work in development scenarios. While there will be special sessions devoted to the sharing of best practices, discussions of what worked well and what worked less well, and effective methods that have worked in development scenarios should also be integrated into the main sessions and into the workshops.

- Case studies, including examples of successful initiatives and approaches should also be used in main sessions and workshops to foster dialogue on controversial themes.

The objectives will be to maximize the opportunity for open dialogue and the exchange of ideas; to try and create feedback loops between the different types of sessions; to create opportunities to share best practices, successful experiences and lessons learned, to listen, debate and learn as well as to identify key themes that would, in the future, benefit from the multi-stakeholder perspective of the IGF.

The meeting facilities in Rio de Janeiro will leave room for some innovations.

Two proposals that were made in the stock-taking process found a positive echo, namely:

- To offer a space to all major organizations dealing with issues related to Internet governance to hold open forums and to report on their activities.

- To hold best practice forums to allow governments and all stakeholders to present and discuss national success stories.

A ‘stock-taking and the way forward’ working session would allow participants to provide input on the functioning, the structure and the evolution of the IGF, including the role of the Advisory Group, and how to deal with the issues they consider most challenging and important.

As it is almost impossible to accommodate as many people as are expected to attend the Rio de Janeiro meeting in one single room, it will be necessary to split up and hold meetings in parallel as early and as much as possible. However, since the main sessions are of primary interest to all participants, overflow facilities will also be provided, where video and audio feed will be made available.

There will be no prepared statements read out during the main sessions. However, prepared statements can be recorded in a specially equipped audiovisual-studio and shown in a loop in selected areas of the conference venue as well as made available on the IGF Web site. Prepared statements can also be submitted in advance to the IGF Secretariat for posting on the Web site.

A meeting point will be set up within the conference premises to allow all interested entities to showcase their activities free of charge. This meeting point will have the function of a village square, where all participants gather between sessions for sharing experiences and exchanging information.

3 Meeting Types

a) Main Sessions

The main focus of the meeting will be on the substantive Main Sessions. They will be informal and interactive, in a broadly similar line to those at the inaugural meeting and based on the multi-stakeholder and participative principles of the IGF. Each session will have a chairperson and a panel of not more than five to seven people. A moderator will ensure a focus to the debates. These sessions will take place in the main meeting hall and they will be organized around the four Athens themes of the substantive IGF debates, namely, Access, Diversity, Openness, and Security and, in addition, as a first session: Critical Internet Resources. The last session will be devoted to ‘emerging Issues’. The attention of participants will be drawn to related sessions.

Duration of the Main Sessions: two hours.

b) Reporting Back Sessions

Each substantive Main Session will be preceded by a Reporting Back Session, which will also be held in the main meeting hall. The main aim of these sessions is to give individual participants and small delegations the possibility of getting a sense and a flavour of the multitude of ongoing meetings, as it will be impossible to attend all the meetings held in parallel. These sessions will allow the organizers and participants of the other meetings to report back and give feedback into the main meeting hall where non-English speakers can benefit from interpretation and real-time transcription. The focus of the Reporting Back Sessions will be on the workshops that dealt with the same sub-themes as the Main Session as well as on relevant Dynamic Coalitions.

Duration of Reporting Back Sessions: 60 minutes.

c) Workshops

These sessions will be designed to explore in detail particular aspects of the main themes. Workshops that will deal with the main themes will be scheduled before the Main Session dealing with the same theme, thereby allowing detailed debate to be fed into the Main Sessions. These workshops will be supported and facilitated by the IGF Secretariat, but organized by the proposer of the individual session. There will be other workshops dealing with the cross-cutting priorities of development and capacity-building and other relevant subjects related to Internet governance. Each session will conform to the IGF principles of multi-stakeholder participation in both the project proposal and in its implementation. Each Workshop will be expected to report back to the relevant Main Session, where appropriate.

Duration of the Thematic Workshops: 90 minutes.

d) Dynamic Coalitions

The Athens meeting saw the creation of Dynamic Coalitions. The IGF meeting in Rio de Janeiro will provide space for these Dynamic Coalitions to meet and further develop their proposals. They are also expected to report back to the relevant Main Session.

Duration of Dynamic Coalition meetings: 90 minutes.

e) Open Forums

All major organizations dealing with Internet governance related issues will be given a slot, at their request, to hold an Open Forum in order to present and discuss their activities. The sessions should be interactive and allow for sufficient time for discussion.

Duration of Open Forum meetings: 90 minutes.

f) Best Practice Forums

While the sharing of experiences and ‘best practices’ should permeate all sessions, the Best Practice Forums will allow to look in more detail into a country experience and national policies as well as best practices in one particular relating to the broad themes. The Best Practice Forum sessions will include both national policies as well as best practices relating to the four Athens themes. The aim of these sessions is to demonstrate, in a multi-stakeholder environment, some of the best practices that have been adopted with regard to key IGF themes in general and to the deployment of the Internet in particular. The presentations will be based on a common template. Presentations should not only cover practices that were successful, but also focus on challenges and mistakes. Thus, ‘lessons learned’ would be an important output of these sessions. They will be moderated by independent experts/hosts and participants will be given the opportunity to ask questions and make comments. The aim is to provide a space to discuss what constitutes a best practice and share relevant information that can be transferred to other situations and strengthen capacity-building activities.

Duration of Best Practice Forum meetings: 90 minutes.

g) Other Meetings

Unallocated meeting rooms will be given to interested stakeholder groups on a first-come-first-

served basis, as available, in accordance with UN practices and principles. A number of slots will be reserved for this purpose for the duration of the meeting itself, to accommodate ad-hoc requests.

4 Location

a) Meeting Rooms

The following meeting rooms will be available:

(i) Main meeting hall, for Opening and Closing Ceremonies, Main Sessions and Reporting Back Sessions, seating 1500 participants in a theatre-style setting. All proceedings in this room will be interpreted in all six UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). All proceedings in the main meeting hall will be Web cast and will be rendered in real-time transcription.

(ii) Three workshop rooms, seating between 250-300 participants in a theatre-style setting. All proceedings will be Web cast.

(iii) One room for Open Forum and Best Practices Forum seating 250 participants in a theatre-style setting. All proceedings will be Web cast.

(v) One meeting room seating 200 participants in theatre style setting (for Dynamic Coalitions and other meeting requests). The proceedings can be Web cast, upon request.

b) Other Facilities

(i) A fully equipped audiovisual-studio to record prepared statements. The studio can also be reserved for TV interviews.

(ii) A media centre, with work space for journalists and a room for media conferences, seating 250 journalists in theatre-style.

(iii) A Meeting Point or Village Square: A meeting point and learning centre for Internet governance to allow interested entities to present themselves, speak on Internet governance related issues, have poster sessions and reach out to interested participants. The Village Square will be located on the floor of the Main Meeting Hall. The infrastructure, (with tables to present materials) will be provided free of charge.

(iv) Restaurants/refreshments:

- A buffet for quick and inexpensive meals will be set up in the basement.

- Coffee and light refreshments will be available at the terrace on the floor of the Main Meeting Hall.

- A restaurant with a more elaborate buffet is located on the ground floor.

- Another restaurant on the top floor can be reserved for private functions.

5 Format and schedule

The proposed order and flow of the meetings is set out in the draft meeting schedule posted on the IGF Web site. The draft schedule beyond the main sessions is purely indicative. The final scheduling will depend on the interest expressed for the various meeting types.

The Opening Ceremony will follow the traditional format used for this kind of event, with a series of speeches, following UN protocol.

The first main session will be devoted to the discussion of Critical Internet Resources. The following sessions will deal with the four Athens themes, namely Access, Diversity, Openness and Security. The last morning’s main session would take stock and look at the way forward.

The last afternoon’s main session will look at Emerging Issues, with an emphasis on issues that have emerged during the days of the meeting

The Closing Ceremony will follow the same format as the Opening Ceremony.

6 Content

Based on the summing-up of the discussion held in Athens and subsequent consultations, the following non-conclusive illustrative list of issues related to the five broad themes will be the basis for further discussions on the content of the Rio de Janeiro main sessions and thematic workshops. It is understood that the developmental dimension and capacity-building will permeate the entire meeting as cross-cutting priorities.

Critical Internet Resources:

Starting point for the discussion is the definition contained in the WGIG report (Para 13 a):

“Issues relating to infrastructure and the management of critical Internet resources, including administration of the domain name system and Internet protocol addresses (IP addresses), administration of the root server system, technical standards, peering and interconnection, telecommunications infrastructure, including innovative and convergent technologies, as well as multilingualization.”

The session will use a baseline approach, taking into account WSIS principles. The purpose of the discussion is to bring out information and opinion.

There will be a balanced panel of five to seven experts, including the major players, reflecting a range of views

Access:

- Special connectivity problems faced by Africa, land-locked, island and least developed countries.

- Access challenges in rural areas.

- Skills development, training and capacity building in the use of technology.

- Low cost access solutions.

- Mobile and wireless access.

- International infrastructure reliability, connectivity policy and costs.

- Local and regional interconnection and cross-border regulation.

- Economic impact of access.

- Issues related to net neutrality.

Diversity:

• Building support and stimulating demand for locally developed content. This includes content that is not commercially viable, software support and the role of audio-visual communication.

• The role of open standards in promoting diversity.

• The involvement of language communities in developing internationalized domain names (IDN) and in developing multi-lingual content, including content in indigenous and minority languages.

• Technologies, policies, and capacity building to reduce illiteracy and to provide access and accessible content for marginalized and vulnerable groups of society, including older persons and persons with disabilities.

• Public policies concerned with user generated content.

Openness:

• Freedom of expression and the role of governments to protect that right.

• Protection of privacy and its relation to freedom of expression.

• The relationship between national regulations on freedom of expression and the border-free Internet.

• The relationship between private enterprise, human rights, and compliance with national law.

• The balance between citizens’ rights, and the rights of IPR holders.

• Innovative business models, made possible by the Internet, for dealing with digital content and their application in development.

• Open source software, proprietary software and open standards.

• The challenges to access to information and knowledge and what can be done to overcome them.

• Maximizing access to content.

Security:

• Security threats to countries, companies, and individuals as users of the Internet and to the Internet itself

- The definition of security threats, international security cooperation, including such issues as cybercrime, cyber-terrorism and cyber-warfare.

- The relationship between national implementation and international cooperation.

- Cooperation across national boundaries, taking into account different legal policies on privacy, combating crime and security.

- The role of all stakeholders in the implementation of security measures, including security in relation to behaviour and uses.

- Security of internet resources.

• Authentication and identification

- Authentication and identification and their role in fostering trust online and their relation to the protection of privacy.

• Challenges to privacy in a security environment.

- Respecting freedom of expression.

- Privacy and identity.

- Privacy and development.

• Security issues related to the protection of children.

- Protecting children from abuse and exploitation in the online environment.

Emerging issues

- Emerging pervasive nature of the Internet in a political, economic, and social context.

- Policy implication of rapid spread wireless and mobile Internet.

- Policy implications of user generated content.

- Implications of competition policy.

7 Remote Participation / Communication Technology

In order to encourage interaction with and between interested parties who are not able to travel to Rio de Janeiro, all main sessions and workshops will be video or audio cast. Video and audio streaming will be available on the IGF Web site, using open standards. Volunteers are encouraged to act as proxies for remote participants. Additionally, provisions will be made for allowing remote participants to make interventions in many of the sessions. Details on remote participation should be released by the end of September.

Provisions will be made to give all participants full Internet access free of charge, using wireless technologies and, for the first rows in the main meeting hall, RJ45 LAN jacks plug in points. The Internet access will not have blocked ports nor require the use of proxies. Power points for laptops, one for every two persons, will be set up.

8 Preparatory Process

The preparatory process for the Rio de Janeiro meeting will continue to be as open and inclusive as possible. Contributions as an input into the substantive sessions are encouraged on an ongoing basis. All submissions will be posted on the IGF Web site. All contributions received by 31 August will be included in a synthesis paper which will also reflect the discussions held at the open consultations on 3 September. Depending on the availability of translators, the deadline for contributions may be extended. If the deadline is extended, all contributions received by 17 September will be reflected in the synthesis paper. Should it not be extended, all contributions submitted from now on will be posted on the IGF Web site, but not reflected in the synthesis paper.

All papers that are submitted will be made available on the IGF Web site in their original language. Contributors are encouraged to provide translations of their own text in other languages.

Time-line:

Deadlines for :
Proposals for panellists	12 September 2007
Secretariat notification of all meeting organizers	12 September 2007
Possible extension for contributions for inclusion into synthesis paper	17 September 2007
Initial lists of speakers to be provided by meeting organizers (as potential panellists)	22 September 2007
Final lists of speakers to be provided by meeting organizers (for inclusion in programme)	10 October 2007