Dear IGF Community Members,
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You may recall that the Working Group on Improvements to the IGF in its report identified the development of tangible outcomes as a way for the IGF to continue to perform successfully its intended role of addressing issues related to public policy in a bottom-up, multistakeholder fashion. The Working Group stated that "to focus discussions, the preparation process of each IGF should formulate a set of policy questions to be considered at the IGF, as part of the overall discussion. The results of the debates on these questions, with special focus on public policy perspectives and aimed at capacity-building, should be stated in the outcome documentation". "The IGF Secretariat and the MAG should reach out and continue to invite all stakeholders to be more actively involved in the preparation of the IGF, including by identifying pertinent key policy questions around which main sessions for the IGF will be structured."
This recommendation provides an excellent opportunity for the IGF community to engage in the process of shaping and formulating the questions that will guide the discussions during the various main / focus sessions. Therefore, the IGF Secretariat is inviting the community to share its views on the type of public policy questions that could be addressed and discussed at the 9th Annual Internet Governance Forum meeting’s main/focus sessions.
Each stakeholder was invited to submit no more than three (3) questions for each of the following sessions:
- Policies Enabling Access, Growth and Development on the Internet
- Towards a Common Understanding of Network Neutrality
- Evolution of Internet Governance Ecosystem and the Role of the IGF
- IANA Functions: NTIA's Stewardship Transition and ICANN's Accountability Process
- Taking Stock / Emerging Issues
Questions will be compiled and published by the Secretariat, and provided to main session organisers as suggested discussion questions. Please note that organisers of main / focus sessions may need to synthesize and combine questions due to time constraints. Should a contributed policy questions not make it into main session programming, the IGF Secretariat reminds all interested stakeholders that questions can be asked on the day in real-time. The deadline for submitting questions has passed (4 August 2014).
The results of the call can be found here.