---------------------- Goal of the Open Forum ----------------------
The Booth aims at:
1. Presenting Global Citizens’ Dialogue on the Future of Internet and its results.
2. Permitting stakeholder to engage with the results and consider them in their own organization.
----------- Background: 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 60 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.