We would like to reiterate that remote participation is a crucial part of organizing the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and we appreciate the effort to provide remote participation for the Open Consultation, the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) meetings, and the MAG meeting this month – February 2012 – which was opened to observers.
The IGC believes that Remote Participation should be an integral part of Internet Governance and IGF Policy Processes. It is impossible to sustain an inclusive global policy process without effective remote participation.
We would like to commend the excellent work of the technical team from Politecnico di Torino, (The Polytechnic University of Turin) which was originally brought by our colleague and former IGC Civil Society Coordinator Vittorio Bertola.
However, we would like to point out some difficulties that occurred with the system during the open MAG meeting. On the third day, morning session, (the second day of the open MAG meeting), remote observers were effectively excluded because they had no access to live transcript.
The MAG and IGF Secretariats should start working with the host to ensure that real time transcriptions are available for all sessions and not just the Main Sessions.
Also MAG members trying to participate online had difficulty in contacting moderators, partly because the moderators were serving more than one function.
We strongly urge MAG and IGF Secretariats and ourselves to consider the following for the future IGF organizing work and the IGF itself, and work together to bring them about:
- Ensuring equal participation between online and offline participants through planning meetings to give online and offline participants an equal opportunity to participate and contribute to meetings.
- Ensuring that there is sufficient capacity and appropriate bandwidth to sustain remote participation by liaising with hosts well in advance to enable greater interactions from offline participants.
- Preparing a clear comprehensive guideline for remote participation and its moderation and post session or meeting reporting for meeting hosts, facilitators and chairs.
- Clearly advertising opportunities for RP in advance of all meetings, with clear guidance for participants on the opportunities to engage through RP that will be available.
- Always assigning exclusive remote participation coordinator/moderators (who do not have other jobs at the same time, and are responsible for interactions between the meeting’s physical participants/current speaker, the Chair and the remote participants).
- Establishing a clear procedure that would encourage remote participants to intervene. Such a system is desirable both for those physically present in Geneva and those observing the meeting remotely.
- Providing as much interactivity as possible by giving remote participants to interact and engage in meetings.
- Providing multiple methods – video, voice and text channel, as well as real-time transcription and video streaming – of coverage of the meeting
- Enabling the meeting and remote participation through interactive presentations access through RP.
- Creating a select Task force or Working Group created that has representatives from the Government, Private Sector and Civil Society that is dedicated to seeing improvements of Remote Participation and to ensure the incorporation of critical elements that have been highlighted to ensure improved remote participation processes.
Because only limited funds are available for face- to -face participation, this issue is crucially important to all stakeholders from all constituencies who are entitled to participate in the meetings, and who wish to do so from a remote location.
We also encourage greater partnership between the governments and private sector in enhancing remote participation.
We have to move beyond advocacy to listing and creating tangible outcomes to make improved, stable and sustainable remote participation a reality.
There are regions around the world where transportation is extremely expensive and one such region is the Pacific which has 22 countries and territories. Remote participation was the only way that any of these countries could access the IGF.
However there is room to improve processes and create an IGF culture where remote participation is prioritised through exploring tested methodology.
The appropriate technical solutions need also to be explored as well bandwidth and ensuring that there is uninterrupted power supply and redundancy options where back up generators are critical to maintain a consistent and seamless flow. The MAG and IGF Secretariats should also ensure that there is sufficient and dedicated bandwidth capacity to sustain the volume of traffic from remote participation.
· Coordinating with people on the ground significantly before the IGF in a series of strategic roll out;
· Identifying how the private sector, civil society and governments can be better involved in the remote hubs etc
We also express our support of the IGF RPWG which published guidelines and recommendations for remote participation and IGF 2011 WS-67 participants prepared a draft of e-participation principles.
Was no aware there were any official; moderators at either the MAG mtg or Open consultations.
shouldn’t it be … urge the MAG and the IGF secretariat …
there is no structure of MAG ands IGF secretariat that I am aware of.
Nice goal, but not really practical. At this point we should be ensuring and enabling the best possible participation. To insist it be equal assumes too many thing – e.g. the inadequacy of bandwidth at the user end is overcome, a world wide timezone variance does not matter
i would recommend replacing ‘to interact’ with ‘for interactions’
i would recommend replacing ‘to interact’ with ‘for interactions’
accidentally put this comment earlier. forgot to press submit before moving on to another paragraph.
would recommend replace ‘plural mans’ with ‘multiple methods’
what is the meaning of ‘select’ task force?
I assume there are only limited funds for remote particpation as well.
Not sure I understand why having multiple countries makes transportation more expensive. In any case, everywhere in the world, including the so called privileged parts of the words, travel is prohibitively expensive for most civil society participants. I think that is what is important in any efforts by civil society.
Isn’t it already too late for Baku to coordinate on the ground 10 months in advance.
Agree. I wouldn’t put the ’10 months’ figure in, but this could say ‘significantly before’ any meeting.
We could say something like ‘Planning meetings to give online and offline participants an equal change to participate and contribute to meetings’ to make clear what sort of ‘equal participation’ we’re aiming at, and to highlight this involves not just bolting RP on, but also planning meetings to incorporate it from the start.
…including guidance for meeting hosts, facilitators and chairs.
Do we want to explicitly ask that real-time transcription is always provided as a point on it’s own? This seems particularly important, and is one element that could be resource intensive and needs considerable forward planning, so needs highlighting as a key point, rather than a sub-point?
This is why we inserted the 10 months planning to factor things like assessing bandwidth and capacity, if hosts need to bring fibre to the building in preparation for this,this will give them time. Real Time transcripts also as you said require planning. We will make real time transcription a key point
I would add a bullet point below about “Clearly advertising opportunities for RP in advance of all meetings, with clear guidance for participants on the opportunities to engage through RP that will be available.”
Suggest instead of ‘direct participation’ we use some term like ‘face-to-face’ or physical participation.
Perhaps say ‘improved, stable and sustainable remote participation a reality’. We’ve had glimpses of great RP, but they have been hard to sustain because of limited resources, and lack of commitment to build it into the process.
We might also want to include a point about reporting back on the success of RP in each meeting. Meeting remotes and minutes should perhaps include a mandatory section on RP, noting any technical problems, the number of remote participants, and the balance of input from face-to-face and remote participants.
(A minor point, but I’m not sure parallel screens just showing RP chat makes the most sense facilitation process wise. Encouraging people to use their own laptops etc. to follow the RP conversation would seem more natural. Showing RP conversations on big screens risks taking those conversations out of their context, though giving RPs an opportunity to ‘speak up’ to a screen in the room may be a possible approach.)
I would also encourage explicitly referencing and linking to the notes coming from the Remote Participation Principles workshop at IGF11.
This might include an equal right to register as meeting participants – something that has been a common request in past RP principles documents and plans.
In DRC, we received the support of universities to accommodate all entries remotely within those universities that are members of Universitic project (www.universitic.net). These universities have a capacity of the logistical and technological facilities for remote participation. it is possible to bring together all actors sounded remotely interests including:
-pubic sector (government, national assembly, senate, lawyers);
-private sector;
-sub-regional , regional and international organizations working in DRC;
-civil society. ;
This organizational arrangement has been made possible during a half day of reflection on connectivity in DR Congo.
We also considered working on the evaluation of the implementation of the Action Plan of 2003 and calendar 2005 Tunis as a pretext of involvement of all stakeholders. It is a reality in the DRC but thereby reinforces the principle of multi-stakeholders.
we need more clarification