IGF 2020 OF #16 Internet Governance with and for the Citizens

Internet Governance with and for the Citizens 

Humanity deserves and asks for better governance. Both citizens and decision-makers are ready to experiment with new approaches. Decisions taken on behalf of 7+ billion human beings require to augment the traditional expertise with the vision and experience of ordinary citizens that will enrich, legitimize, and strengthen the decisions. New forms of political non-partisan dialogue between citizens, decision-makers and experts are one of the most promising solutions to improve governance towards a more inclusive, more trustful, and less divided society, at all levels, from local to global. By relying on such processes, decisions become more in tune with the complexity of our age, more legitimate and more sustainable. Decision-makers gain in legitimacy, insights, and transparency. Citizens enter the realm of complexity of decision making and get the feeling of being respected and considered by the political sphere. Both are strengthened by this unique interaction. The recent global COVID crisis has shown that Internet and they way we govern it has an impact on all humanity. There is a profound need to discuss its future with everyone.

Bringing Citizens into Internet Governance 

The Global Citizens’ Dialogue on the future of Internet (https://www.wetheinternet.org) aims at addressing core questions of the future of Internet with ordinary citizens and stakeholder around the world. It supports the decision-making process on the future of this common good of Humanity. In 2018 and 2019, and with the support of a global coalition of partners, we prepared and tested the approach in 17 Dialogues around the world. In 2020, it’s time to scale the process:

1. Global Coalition: We will consolidate and extend the coalition and work with the Advisory Board, the Scientific committee and the community in order to design the dialogues and how they will interact with policy making.
2. Deliberation Day: Together with a group of 60+ national partners we will implement a series of at least 50 Citizens’ Dialogues on October 10th, 2020. Citizens will address following topics: Internet and me, Building a strong Digital Identity, shaping the digital public sphere, governing artificial intelligence. They will also work on a national topic and formulate joint recommendations with stakeholder of their country. National partners will receive a comprehensive capacity building to ensure a high quality of the process.
3. Stakeholder Dialogue on Internet Governance: In order to use synergies and the window of opportunity opened by the Report of the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, we will roll-out a Stakeholder Dialogue in parallel to the Citizens’ Dialogues. These will gather local groups of stakeholders that will work on recommendations 5a/b of the Report and produce recommendations for implementation to be submitted to the UN. The dialogues will take place online in June and face-to-face in October.
4. Impact: From Summer on, we will feed the findings into policy discussions before, during and after IGF 2020. At European Level, the German Presidency of the Council will give a major opportunity to bring the voices of Citizens into the policy discussion. At global level, the UN week in September and the activities around the 75th Anniversary of the UN will open a global stage for impact.

 Goal of the Open Forum

The Open forum aims at:
1. Presenting the results of the Dialogue to the Internet Governance Community in order to transform them into actionable actions and discussions for the multi-stakeholder process.
2. Reflecting the method in order to improve it and to understand how to best integrate it in the Multi-stakeholder process in the coming years.
3. Launch the Follow-up process for 2021.

Program
The Forum will be shaped as a participatory event: participants will sit at tables and discuss the results of the debate in order to transform them into actionable learnings and actions for them.
1. Opening (5’) Short presentation of project and process (Missions Publiques). Feedback from core partners of the Advisory Board and national partners of the project.
2. Discussion / Break-out groups (35’) Participants are randomly split into groups of 5 (maximum diversity). In each group, a facilitator and a note taker guide the discussion. They discuss the following questions (not exclusive): How do these results inspire me for my strategy, my advocacy, my position? What do they mean for us as a community? What are most meaningful results in relation with the IGF agenda?” Which discussions do they impulse, which actions?
3. Presentation of results of the groups and conclusion (20’) Participants gather in plenary, note takers present the key results of their group.

Online participation will be organized as a mirror of the f2f participation:

1. E-Opening (5’) The remote participants will be in a listening position and will be in the virtual room. Two of the feedback in the beginning will be delivered by remote participants: One organizer and one participant.
2. E-Discussion / E-Break-out groups (35’) Online participants will be invited to join virtual rooms (links will be provided at the beginning of the session - participants will be dispatched in function of the first letter of their country of origin). In each group, a facilitator and a note taker will guide the discussion. The virtual group will discuss the same two questions as the f2f groups.
3. E-Presentation of results of the groups and conclusion (20’) Online participants will join back the plenary, remote note takers will present the key results of their group.