Implementing WSIS+20 Review Outcomes through Collaboration amongst European National and Regional Initiatives – WS 07 2026

From EuroDIG Wiki
(Redirected from WS 07 2026)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

27 May 2026 | 16:30 - 17:30 CEST | LORD JENKINS | Video recording | Transcript
Consolidated programme 2026

Get involved!

You are invited to become a member of the Session Org Team by simply subscribing to the mailing list. By doing so, you agree that your name and affiliation will be published at the relevant session wiki page. Please reply to the email send to you to confirm your subscription.

Kindly note that it may take a while until the Org Team is formed and starts working.

Check the discussion tab and the mailing list archive for information on the development of the session.

Session teaser

This session is related to Main Topic 1 and provides the opportunity to discuss how European national and regional IGF's could contribute to the WSIS+20 review outcomes. By connecting policy ambitions with operational realities, the session aims to foster dialogue on how WSIS+20 can remain a living framework - one that empowers communities, strengthens regional cooperation, and ensures that digital transformation benefits all. This session will bring together European Stakeholders to:

  • Share national and regional experiences in implementing WSIS commitments
  • Highlight innovative governance models and cooperation mechanisms
  • Identify gaps between global vision and local execution
  • Explore how multistakeholder participation can be strengthened in practice in the European Region
  • Discuss how WSIS+20 outcomes can reinforce sustainable development, digital inclusion and human rights
  • Contribute with input from Europe to the global discussion on the WSIS Review Outcomes

Session description

The review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) twenty years after its launch offers an important opportunity to reflect not only on the achievements of the WSIS framework but also on how its principles and commitments can continue to guide digital governance in the years ahead. While global processes define shared visions and policy directions, their effective implementation often takes place at national and regional level. In this context, National and Regional IGF Initiatives (NRIs), operating within the ecosystem of the Internet Governance Forum, represent valuable spaces for dialogue, cooperation and policy exchange among governments, the private sector, the technical community, academia and civil society. Over the past years, NRIs have played an increasingly important role in fostering multistakeholder engagement, raising awareness on Internet governance issues and supporting policy discussions within their respective communities. At the same time, the WSIS+20 review outcome document (Para. 102) and the evolving global digital governance landscape raise new questions about how these initiatives could further contribute to translating global commitments into concrete actions and collaborative practices.

This session will explore how NRIs and regional Internet governance platforms can support the implementation of WSIS+20 outcomes by:

  • sharing national and regional experiences in promoting multistakeholder dialogue and cooperation
  • identifying practical ways to connect global policy discussions with local and regional implementation
  • exploring innovative mechanisms that could strengthen cooperation, knowledge exchange and policy experimentation within the NRI network
  • discussing how NRIs can contribute to advancing digital inclusion, sustainable development and the protection of human rights online

The discussion will also consider emerging ideas such as the creation of collaborative “NRI Labs” – voluntary spaces for exchanging practices, collecting policy insights and experimenting with approaches that could support the implementation of global digital governance commitments at the national and regional level. Through an open and interactive dialogue, the session aims to identify possible pathways for strengthening the role of NRIs in the evolving global digital governance ecosystem and in the continued implementation of WSIS principles.

Format

To guide the discussion during the workshop, the session will be structured in 2 parts around the following two key questions:

  1. How can outcomes of the WSIS+20 review be implemented through concrete actions at the national and regional level? (Input from European NRIs as per speaker list below)
  2. Are new collaborative mechanisms amongst the NRIs needed to support implementation of global digital governance commitments? (Input from Concettina Cassa and open discussion)·

Further reading

WSIS+20 review outcome document

Argument maps - developed by the Dutch IGF

The maps are developed in a multistakeholder setting to support more constructive discussions and debates on sensitive or polarized digital topics.

Some examples:

People

Please provide the name and affiliation/institution of all people you list here like this:

  • First Name Last Name, Affiliation/institution

Programme Committee member(s)

  • Filip Lukáš, Policy Advisor at CENTR
  • Mark Carvell, Independent consultant on Internet governance policy
  • Milica Vesović, Programme Manager in the Digital Development Unit, Directorate of Security, Integrity and Rule of Law at the Council of Europe
  • Regina Filipová Fuchsová, Industry Relations Manager at EURid

The Programme Committee (PC) supports the programme planning process throughout the year and works closely with the Secretariat. Members of the PC give advice on the topics, cluster the proposals and assist session organisers in their work. They also ensure that session principles are followed and monitor the complete programme to avoid repetition. 1-2 PC members have signed up to each session and will compile the messages.

Focal Point

  • Concettina Cassa, Agency for Digital Italy (AgID)

Focal Points take over the responsibility and lead of the session organisation. They work in close cooperation with the Programme Committee and the EuroDIG Secretariat and are kindly requested to follow EuroDIG’s session principles

Organising Team (Org Team)

List Org Team members here as they sign up.

  • David Frautschy, Internet Society
  • Matthis Pechtold, University of Vienna
  • Sophia Longwe, Wikimedia Deutschland – Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
  • Alena Muravska, RIPE NCC
  • Milica Vesović, Programme Manager in the Digital Development Unit, Directorate of Security, Integrity and Rule of Law at the Council of Europe
  • Isabelle Lois, Senior Policy Advisor at Swiss OFCOM, Vice-Chair of the CSTD
  • Giacomo Mazzone

The Org Team is a group of people shaping the session. Org Teams are open and every interested individual can become a member by subscribing to the mailing list.

Key Participants

  • Sabrina Heber – German IGF as a moderator
  • Matthias Kettemann – Austrian IGF
  • Declan McDermott – Irish IGF
  • Dijana Milutinović – RNIDS as a member of IGF Serbia
  • Concettina Cassa, L'Agenzia per l'Italia Digitale (AgID)


Key Participants are experts willing to provide their knowledge during a session – not necessarily on stage. Key Participants should contribute to the session planning process and keep statements short and punchy during the session. They will be selected and assigned by the Org Team, ensuring a stakeholder balanced dialogue also considering gender and geographical balance. Please provide short CV’s of the Key Participants involved in your session at the Wiki or link to another source.

Messages

Rapporteur: Mark Carvell, Internet Governance Consultant; Izaan Khan, Member of the UK Internet Governance Forum steering committee, Filip Lukáš, CENTR

  1. National and regional IGFs (NRIs) are effective multistakeholder fora for implementing WSIS+20 goals, outcomes and action lines through their outreach and engagement in multistakeholder communities worldwide in support of social impacts. Collaboration amongst NRIs can include sharing best practice and national experience in agreeing priorities and messages, monitoring progress and promoting greater awareness of the importance of Internet governance in line with WSIS goals.
  2. NRIs’ key position in the broader Internet Governance ecosystem necessitates the implementation of innovative methods of collaboration. There should be room for experimentation in the formats of exchange and policy experimentation such as cooperative labs on topics such as emerging technologies, AI and online child protection, while preserving the bottom-up model.
  3. The workshop also considered NRIs’ experience in developing argument maps which provide comprehensive overviews of specific issues and policy challenges, such as age verification, covering different perspectives in support of policy decisions and geared to achieving positive impacts.
  4. It was agreed that EuroDIG should maintain this dialogue on innovative mechanisms and monitor progress amongst European NRIs with periodic reviews.

Video record

https://youtu.be/97C1ElDvaec

Transcript

Disclaimer: This is not an official record of the session. The DiploAI system automatically generates these resources from the audiovisual recording. Resources are presented in their original format, as provided by the AI (e.g. including any spelling mistakes). The accuracy of these resources cannot be guaranteed.

The Geneva Internet Platform will provide transcript, session report and additional details shortly after the session.


Sabina Heber: I come to workshop number seven. Our workshop will build on the first main session we had this morning on the WSUS Plus 20 review outcomes. And during the discussion, the role of the NRI has been highlighted quite a lot. So we want to especially discuss how we can help implementing the WSUS Plus 20 review outcomes through collaboration amongst European national and regional initiatives. So my name is Sabina Heber. I’m working for DENIC, who runs the Secretariat for the German IJF. And I am joined by a few representatives. So we have quite a bunch of people from different European NRIs. So that’s Declan McDermott from the Irish IJF. And then… Dijana Milutinović from RIDF as a member of the IGF in Serbia, Jordan Carter from the UK IGF, and Matthias Kettermann from the Austrian IGF and online to Concettina Cassa will join us for the Italian IGF.

So thank you all for joining us today and coming to a bit of background for this workshop. So in light of the WSIS plus RENI review process that just took place last year, this workshop shall not only offer an opportunity to reflect on the WSIS framework that was doing a really good job and the achievements over the last two decades, but also how we want to explore how its principles and commitments can continue to shape the digital governance in the future. So why WSIS provides importance? Important global visions and policy orientations that practical and like. implementation of these commitments often takes place at the national and regional levels. And in this context, the national and regional IGF initiatives, so the NRIs, have become increasingly important spaces for multi -stakeholder discussions, cooperation, or policy exchange.

So what we want to do in this session is explore how collaboration amongst European NRIs can support the implementation of the WSIS Plus 20 outcomes in practice. And what we want to do, so we split the sessions basically in three parts. So in the first part, we will hear some reflections from several European NRIs on how the WSIS Plus 20 outcomes can be translated into concrete action at national and regional level. In the second part, we will discuss some new mechanisms for collaboration and experimentation within this NRI. And in the third part, we want to open up the discussion to the room. And in the end, we’ll leave another about five minutes for the messages that Philip will share.

and Mark will write together. So, with that said, let us move directly into our first guiding question. As I already mentioned, we want to hear from different NRIs about how the WSIS Plus 20 outcomes can be translated into concrete national and regional action. And let me start with you, John, and then just continue with Matthias afterwards.

Jordan Carter: Okay. Thank you, Sabine. My name is Jordan Carter. I am in week five of a new job at Nominet, the .UK domain name registry. So, if any of you here are UK IGF participants, I’m sorry that I’m here telling you about your IGF. But actually, I only have a very brief intervention to make on this first point. I’ve been working in internet governance spaces for around 20 years, and so my background is in the Australian and New Zealand IGFs. So, it’s not an entirely unfamiliar area. And the first thing that came to mind for me in looking at this question is, in all the IGFs I’ve been part of, we’ve never really thought of ourselves as a WSIS implementation agency, if you like.

Our focus hasn’t been on the WSIS action lines or how to implement them. And it’s more been a bottom up case of wanting to reflect to local communities deliberations on topics into the regional and global IGFs, which themselves are part of that WSIS framework. So I was talking with some colleagues at Oxford and just thinking about what a reversal it would be in a sort of moving from a bottom up to a top down approach. If we were sort of saying, let’s take the action lines and do what we can. And to implement them in the UK context. So I want to start off with that hopefully slightly provocative comment. Unless you want me to go into any of the sub questions now, I’ll leave it at that.

Thank you.

Sabina Heber: Thank you.

Matthias Kettermann: Thank you very much. I’ve just actually come from Austria’s IGF, which was only slightly suboptimally scheduled on the first day of the European dialogue. But I’m here now, fresh within my short -term memory from the ideas of what we’ve discussed at the IGF. But to take one step back, we basically have a feeling that in the post -Basis 20, in the post -Basis plus 20 world, it is incumbent upon all NRIs, about all national and regional IGFs, to deeply engage with the key messages, with the action lines, and to think about how to include them into, the long history of activating national stakeholders. I don’t think that this is something which, you know, is… is a fundamental challenge.

I rather think that by looking at the action lines and then trying to translate them towards national policy priorities, we can do a rather decent job of both. Thinking like, you know, action paragraph 53 on supporting enabling environments or helping to align the national priorities with the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, all of that seems perfectly feasible. What we’ve done, for example, is to look specifically at the youth engagement. We dedicated a specific section only to panels with young people. We had students at the age of 14, students at the age of 17, young students, yeah, young, sorry, the older students at 21, all discussing and debating on how to make Internet work for them with really surprising results. You know, they had lots more fears than we thought they would have, lots more demands, just trying to do it for the youth, just trying to do it for the youth, just trying to do it for the youth, but to make sure that we’re not on policy stakeholders, which, as I’ve heard being reported from yesterday, doesn’t at all align with what people at 20, 23, 25 are saying.

They are looking, according to what I’ve been told, very much more at the possibilities with which to use digital tools, and the younger people by now have a lot of fears which we have to alleviate. We have to try to help them see the opportunities in a more just information society again. So that’s one example of how using the goals of ACES plus 20 can be very well aligned with national IGF systems. Another point which we tried to include was a focus on regional questions, the regional stakeholders. We’re trying to organize. Our national IGF every time in a different part of the country, which is admitted. small but still there are different cities in there and the people are always very happy to see how many regional stakeholders we can get involved.

The regional innovation departments, the regional museums talking about AI governance and digitalization of digital cultural tools, the regional center for the regional school board and I think that those two lines show already how we can just as examples how we can unite both the business priorities and the very idea behind the local and regional IGFs. Thank you so much.

Declan McDermott: Hi, my name is Declan. I work for the IGF Ireland and also for .ie the ccTLD for the .ie domain name. I think that fundamentally … I mean, the question is sort of looking at if we’re talking about how to have concrete actions at the national level, it kind of comes down to how to achieve social impact. I think similar to what Jordan said, we don’t see ourselves as necessarily agents of WSIS’s implementation. We don’t have like the action lines as KPIs. But ultimately, an NRI is still trying to achieve something that it believes is a social good. If we view responsible Internet governance, if we view defending the multi -stakeholder approaches to Internet governance as a social good or a social impact, then generally there are three broad strategies that social organizations like an NRI can kind of implement depending on what their priorities are.

So broadly, those are reaching out or scaling out. Scaling. Scaling up and scaling deeply. So scaling out refers to increasing the reach of impact. If you view social impact as reach versus the depth of the impact, scaling out is about increasing the number of people that you are interacting with or the number of stakeholders that you are engaging with. So for an NRI, this could be implementing a youth IGF, or it could be implementing a regional IGF, or trying to replicate or helping other NRIs replicate best practices that have worked for you. In terms of scaling up, this is about increasing the depth or the actual effects of a social impact. So for an NRI, the most likely way that this is manifested is if you are increasing your influence with policymakers.

So scaling up is if you are increasing. Increasing the amount of… high -profile policymakers or decision makers that you are able to reach and to influence and to advocate for whatever your cause is. So that would be scaling up. Scaling deeply is the most difficult one, but it involves kind of adjusting these cultural roots or how a particular issue is viewed within a society. So this would be how to actually change how Internet governance is thought of. So for an NRI, this could be something like having the School of Internet Governance or having a parliamentary track or specific programs on how to target specific stakeholders involved in Internet governance. So ultimately, this is going to depend on what exactly the issue that is trying to be solved by the NRI.

There is another kind of – it’s a pretty gimmicky trick that you could do, but if you essentially take the thing that you’re trying to solve and you’re trying to solve it, you could take the thing that you are trying to solve. and then you ask why five times, it’s supposed to kind of help lead you to, you know, what your priority should be. So if your question is, if the issue is WSIS is not translating into concrete action at the national level, why? Internet governance is not a priority for the government. Why? They don’t think it’s important enough. Why? Because stakeholders aren’t advocating for it. Why? Because stakeholders don’t know about internet governance issues. Why?

Because they’re not participating in any forum or they don’t know about any forum. So after the fifth why, the issue kind of becomes clear. There’s not enough knowledge or awareness about internet governance. So the action is you need to scale out. You need to increase the reach of the amount of stakeholders that know about you and that you’re engaging. If the root cause is related to awareness or just general just not knowing about internet governance, then the most likely scenario is you need to focus on scaling out. This is. This is very common for new NRIs, especially. however if it’s a situation where they know about internet governance or they know about the principles that have been decided on but they just ignore them or they disagree with them then the action is you need to scale up you either need to increase your influence so that you convince them otherwise or you need to start forming a coalition of like -minded stakeholders to then work on scaling deeply to change how the issue is actually thought of within the community so that is generally kind of you know some three broad strategies that nris can use to kind of frame exactly what the issues they’re trying to do but it ultimately comes down to and like social impact just in general is notoriously difficult to measure and also to manage and to quantify but i think the most common framework that agencies will use is they have something called a theory of change and i think that very first step is you need to take whatever social mission or social narrative and you need to reframe it as a theory of change like if i do x it will result in y so for an nri this could be if we increase multi -stakeholder participation it will increase our legitimacy.

If we increase our legitimacy, it will increase our influence with policymakers. If we increase our influence with policymakers, so on and so forth, until it ends up with, you know, we can more effectively advocate for appropriate multi -stakeholder approaches to Internet governance. So those are just, I guess, high -level sort of examples of, like, different ways that NRIs can sort of, like, frame or position their priorities, because I think ultimately there are two pitfalls, and it’s not just for NRIs. It’s just for social agencies in general. One of the main pitfalls is that they end up just sort of collaborating for the sake of collaboration instead of sort of moving toward something. So it actually is very much essential that NRIs have an idea of what does success look like so we can plan about how we actually can achieve that.

Dijana Milutinović: Thank you. I’m Dijana Milutinović from Serbia NCC, TLD .rs and .serb in Cyrillic. I believe it’s relevant to mention, bearing in mind the… desired diversity in terms of content online, including linguistic one, and we are one of the stakeholders for the IGF SEBIA. Now, there were some matters already discussed here, but as they say, life mimics art or art mimics life. Basically, the outcome documents mimic something which we have already out there in the field, so I was thinking more of a practical approach in terms that NRIs are the ones who are present within their countries, can monitor the situation. For example, if you have a good infrastructure development, there are some other questions that will be raised in terms of infrastructure and technology abuse, which was discussed widely in previous days around here.

So if you are someone who can monitor what goes in your country, you are the one who can help. raise the issue, put something on the table, something for debate. You are in a good position to reach out to other stakeholders here and ask how we can work toward implementing something which is for the public good, as we obviously agreed upon. So basically the role of the NRIs can be quite practical in those terms, maybe without some effective power, but in terms of raising the public awareness about something that could be changed. And when something is on the public agenda where a lot of people are interested in some topic, the chances are much better that it could be implemented through regulation, legislation, and so on.

So basically that is just one of the points we could use. There is also the exchange between other NRIs, experiences we can gather from other people, and as was previously mentioned, also involvement in regional initiatives. Especially certain regions have… most commonly joint problems or joint issues that could be, you know, worked together with, and we can learn from the experience of others in the process. I’ll just conclude with that.

Sabina Heber: Perfect, thank you, and that’s also kind of what we’re doing right now with that workshop, learning from each other and our experiences. So, maybe the next question is dipping a bit in what you said, your point about scaling up, because I still want to ask John and Matthias, you and I, do they give any recommendations or messages, just like you, Dick, for example, does, and if so, how do you find agreement among the different stakeholder groups, and do you somehow see them affected in the governmental policies?

Jordan Carter: Thanks, Sabine. Yeah, the UKRGF proposed a report each year, which includes sort of like a one page of key messages from the event. I haven’t been involved in that process but my colleagues tell me that Nominet’s communications team drafts that based on the recordings of the event and shares it through the steering committee of the UK IGF which is a multi -stakeholder group and then they work to a consensus in that forum so it isn’t a more grassroots or session based, I don’t think that they’re discussed at the actual forum but there has been some evidence of impact from that, one that the colleagues talked about is over several years the UK Online Safety Act legislators drafters, regulators people in child safety advocacy, civil rights activists from the civil society communities were getting together and having dialogues at the UK IGF which they see some evidence as having shaped the way the Online Safety Act has been implemented so that’s one kind of case study another one I can briefly bring from a past life in Australia is that we developed a draft outcomes paper on a topic and the multi -stakeholder steering committee did that.

It shared it with the community a month in advance of the IGF, did a town hall dialogue about it at the Australian IGF and then did a consensus call at the end of the event and a sort of absence of objection was taken as consensus that that stood as a view that had been achieved consensus at the IGF. So not a recommendation, not a policy advice, but a point of view that had been written down and tested. So those are just two examples.

Sabina Heber: Sorry, just a quick follow -up question. Did you send it to government or was it online or what did you do with that document?

Jordan Carter: The example from 2024 was a message to the WSIS Plus 20 review and we did send it to the government and they said thank you and I think they referred to it at some points in the WSIS negotiations. And the views were also slightly reflected in the… Australian government non -paper on shaping the WSIS outcomes that was published mid -last year. But whether that was causation or correlation that we already started with similar views, I couldn’t quite discern that one for you. Thank you.

Matthias Kettermann: Thank you very much. So we do not have specific key messages because we decided to alleviate the burden somewhat by ensuring that everybody can just come and talk and connect and make connections. We feel that by the stakeholders coming together, we already do a decent job in fulfilling some of the key mandates of the NRIs, especially because during the year, there are a number of initiatives by participants who met there or who met there again, which in different fields, from standards to laws, actually then do result in key messages and outcomes in a certain way. so we approach it slightly less let’s say directly which is kind of the Austrian way.

Sabina Heber: very good thank you do you want to say a few

Dijana Milutinović: well sorry apologies we have something which is a bit similar to what Jordan described basically the messages are drafted during the sessions up to what stakeholders agree upon them and the full report is also sent to the ministry also to the IGF secretariat and it’s published online and it can serve as the food for the toast for the next sessions to come

Sabina Heber: so Declan because you kind of already talked about it, I have a slightly different question for you. As the Irish NRI is a rather new IGF and I think you had your last meeting last year, so it’s the second one this year. So how did you manage to involve the different stakeholders and get that buy -in to participate and how would you describe the experience so far?

Declan McDermott: It depends on the stakeholder. I think that there were some stakeholder groups that were easier than others to get buy -in. For government, our government, like our GAC rep and our government contacts have been very supportive. It was a very easy ask for them and they’ve been very helpful with also connecting us with other government agencies that have files that are connected to internet governance. So I think that because of that we had a wide range of different departments. that participated in the IGF last year, which is very helpful because it does seem like, frankly, and I feel like this is the case in a lot of governments, is that digital or Internet issues are often kind of divided amongst other portfolios, or they might be siloed.

You might have one department that’s cybersecurity, another department that’s like connectivity, another agency that’s like media regulation. So I imagine it would be quite difficult for all of them to sort of come together. So it did help that we had someone within the Department for Communications that was able to sort of have that bridging activity and to flag the event to all the different ministries. So that was very great. Other sectors, the technical community, whenever I approached them, they all knew what the IGF was. So it was… fantastic. They all jumped on board very quickly. I think that the biggest issues came from organizations that just didn’t know what the IGF is, or they just, they were unaware because it’s just not a sector or a field that they’ve heard of.

So there were some in civil society where, you know, they were interested, but they just didn’t quite know what it is. But I would say that the biggest pain point we had was trying to get stakeholders from the private sector. Because I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, even if like individuals in the private sector agree with everything, if they’re going in their capacity as a representative of a commercial agency, they are, you know, they are bound by certain metrics, like there has to be a bit of a return on investment on time, or, you know, funding, or any effort that they put into this. And ultimately, the IGF is not revenue driving, it’s not supposed to be.

To be. And it’s hard to, I found that it was difficult sometimes to convey why they should be interested and to also kind of convey exactly what this is. Like this was not a free -for -all lobbying forum. This was not sort of like a convention for them to sort of plug a new product. So I think that the biggest, ultimately the biggest root issue to face up with was just like unawareness of what this actually was. But then also when they did know what it was, trying to come up with like an incentive for them to participate. Because like ultimately, a commercial entity or a private sector, they are looking for something that adds value.

And time and resources that they spend on this, if there’s not a return on it, if there’s no like value for them, then it’s questions of, you know, why are we doing this? So I think leaning a bit into, you know, it’s good for reputation. And also it’s good, it affects their… industries as well if we have responsible internet governance. If we have these responsible regulations, it does impact them as well, so they’re not completely siloed from this just because it doesn’t generate revenue. Ultimately, the internet is not owned by any one particular sector, and it does impact the private sector as well, so it is in their interest that it is managed responsibly. Some were pretty receptive to it, but ultimately, I guess, just speaking practically, some agencies were like, we’ll do it if our competitors do it, and then their competitors were like, we’ll take part if our other competitors take part, so it was a bit of a chicken and egg type situation, but I am hoping that with the success of last year’s launch that we do have a little bit more legitimacy because that was also the thing.

It was somewhat of a big ask. Thank you. because this is the first Ireland IGF ever. They had no idea if it was going to be a success. They had no idea exactly what it was. So I’m hoping that with last year’s success that this year they’ll be a little bit more willing to participate.

Sabina Heber: So thank you, and I have the feeling that some of the challenges might remain the same ones at a later on. But in the interest of time, we’ll move on to the second part of this workshop just to quickly introduce it. So one of the common challenges in digital governance is that we often have those strong global principles, but not enough practical ways to work together and support the implementation. So the second question is, what new ways of working together could help in our eyes to turn discussions into more practical cooperation and real action? And that one… I want to hand over to Titi online because you introduced the idea of so -called NRI labs.

Could you please explain the concept to us and what could those NRI labs look like in practice and how could they support the implementation of the WSIS Plus 20 outcome.

Concettina Cassa: Okay, thank you for your question. My name is Titti Cassa from AGID, the Agency for Digital Italy, and good afternoon everyone. So first of all apologies from my side for not attending Eurodig in person. And thank you also for this opportunity to discuss, I mean, how the NRIs could support implementation of the WSIS Plus 20 review outcomes. Well, the first reflection is that 20 years after the original WSIS process, the digital governance landscape looks profoundly different. And today the real challenge for us is implementation. I mean, we have this challenge on how to translate global communities into practical cooperation, operational learning, and concrete action at the national and regional level. And I think this is a… the IGF ecosystem and especially the NRIs will play a very important role because as you know and as recognized from Paragraph 102 of the Rosis Review Outcome document, the international community calls for reinforcing NRIs initiative and the intersectional activity of the IGF and promoting innovative, open, inclusive and agile collaboration methods.

So this is an important message that we should consider. And then also we should recognize that the IGF is no longer an annual global meeting but over time the IGF has evolved into a distributed ecosystem of initiatives, community and collaborative processes that are operating at global, regional and national level. So the NRIs inside the IGF are one of the most dynamic components because today there are 180 national and regional youth initiatives that are bringing together government, civil society, private sector, academia, technical community, youth in a multi -stakeholder discussion on digital policy issues. So, and then we also have to consider that the NRI are not only a central local extension of the IGF because they are a distributed cooperation infrastructure that connects global discussion with local realities.

They have to translate global debates into context -specific experience while bringing also local perspective back to the global conversation. So, and I think these distributed structures are very important. And this infrastructure is one of the biggest strengths of the IGF ecosystem. But at the same time, we should note that the NRI, actually, they primarily develop dialogue and cooperation within their own national and regional context. And even if the existing IGF structure already provides valuable opportunity for coordination and exchange amongst the NRIs, the growing complexity of digital governance challenge and also the limited space that is available for operational interaction sometimes make it difficult to fully develop peer learning, exchange of information, structure sharing of best practice, and deeper comparison of implementation model that are in some way managed by the NRI on local level.

And this is not a limitation of the multi -stakeholder itself. It’s on the contrary, it’s the fact that it reflects the and the growing maturity and the potential of the ecosystem so in this context that the idea of nri labs emerged the nri will not be new institution will not make a shared policy will not produce bad ending recommendation they will function as a voluntary multi -stakeholder cooperation spaces where the nri’s can exchange experience share methodologies explore implementation and also support peer -to -peer learning across the network so the objective the idea is very simple not to replace dialogue but to complement the dialogue with experimentation operational cooperation and collaborative learning and these are these stages not a finalized model it’s just an open proposal for collective reflection and also the idea the real value of this idea will ultimately depend on whether the enhanced themselves see the value in creating collaborative spaces for operational learning and shared experimentation.

And for example, one lab could be focusing on trustworthy AI implementation in public administration, sharing experience on procurement approaches, governance models, human oversight, risk management practices. Another lab, for instance, could explore issues related to the child protection online and age -based access to social media platforms, considering the different multi -stakeholder perspectives. So this space is an open space that is open and not regulatory and also community -driven. And I think that Europe is well -positioned to pioneer this kind of cooperation because we have a dense network of NRIs, strong multi -stakeholder tradition, and also increasingly shared policy frameworks in areas such as this. So I think that we are going to start to see this kind of collaboration in the future.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This gives a natural opportunity in Europe for collaborative learning and exchange of operational experience. And ultimately, if the WUS is to remain a living framework, implementation cannot rely on global declaration. So it requires a distributed cooperation ecosystem that is capable of connecting global commitments with local realities, national context, and community needs. And I think in this context, the NRI network can play a very important role. So thank you. This is the idea.

Sabina Heber: Thank you very much, Teti, for that already quite concrete proposal and also for highlighting the strength of the whole NRI ecosystem. So maybe now we can move on to the third part of the workshop and open up the discussion to the floor. so I would like to invite you to reflect on practical cooperation models, some new ideas or also challenges of implementation I would ask you to briefly introduce yourself at the beginning so are there any, ok there are already a few questions s

Brahim Baalla: o thank you very much for all the interventions I’m Brahim Baalla, Town Councillor from Italy and Youth League participant my question is related to the text of WSIS I’ve seen that in relation to the artificial intelligence chapter there has not been a mention in relation to threats related to for example biases related to AI and for example We discussed also during this event the uses of AI in relation to gender -based violence, modification, etc. And if there’s any other reference or way in which the text or the implementation phase is treated with the topic. Thank you. Who wants to take that question?

Declan McDermott: I guess it’s not particularly, I guess, answering. But I think it would be important to know, I guess, for our NRI specifically, is we don’t go into it with, like, a particular policy opinion or framework. Like, the point of the NRI is to sort of, like, collectively convene the local Internet community and then relay the views of the… Internet community to, like, for us, it would be relaying it to either… the IGF secretary through the report or through government stakeholders that are there. So I guess ultimately it is going to depend on the national level of what your local Internet community sort of like feels about the particular topic. So I guess for like AI governance in particular, like obviously it’s like an emerging technology and it’s like a difficult sort of thing to kind of keep track of.

I think that what NRIs should do for that is like they need to make sure that they have like a wide range of stakeholders that are providing that input and that are participating so that it’s not dominated by any one sector. So, for instance, if I if I like in Ireland, if we wanted to talk about AI and I only had a panel that was just open AI or anthropic, I’m you know, and like I had nothing on civil society. Or. Nothing from AI governance or nothing from the privacy groups like it would be a pretty one sided conversation. And I feel like the legitimacy of that message would be undermined. I think that where an NRI can help to kind of advance.

different policy proposals is just trying to make sure that the input does reflect as diverse of a stakeholder group as

Sabina Heber: Thank you for answering that one. I know that Doreen also has could look like so can I put you on the spot here?

On-site participant: Yes, thank you very much and I think Philip will help me with a visual but I just wanted to share the tool of the argument maps that we use in the Netherlands. We do this together with the argumentation factory translated to English and these maps are especially valuable with topics that are on the political agenda and are leading to heated debates and the goal is to really create an overview of all the arguments related to a certain topic. One recent example is the topic of age verification on social media. but we didn’t translate it to English yet. So here is an example of an argument map on restricting encryption. And the goal is that this agreement is fine, so it’s not the goal to have a shared message.

But we do think it’s important to understand the arguments behind these different perspectives. And we experienced these maps to be very valuable to hand over to politicians, for example, to help the debates. But also the process itself is very nice because you can discuss with different stakeholders that have different perspectives. But everyone has to come up with pros and cons, so you have to understand both perspectives. So yeah, this has been very useful for

Sabina Heber: Thanks for that interesting idea. May I ask, so how do you agree on these maps? Do they? Do those? continue working on them? Are there new arguments that are brought up at some point? Or how does it work? Is it consensual as well?

On-site participant: So the argumentation factory is very experienced in this. They have this whole process. It’s usually more than one session. So it’s usually three sessions to have all stakeholders involved and that we have diverse perspectives at the table. And then they create these maps during the session and then everyone can kind of comment on the way that they formulated an argument or the words that they used. So it’s very interactive. And then when they create the final version, then everyone has the opportunity to still give comments. And I think an important notion to make is that all these arguments are not weight. So that’s the task of the politicians. or opinion makers, but it’s really to give an overview of all the arguments.

Sabina Heber: Thanks, Serene. Does anyone have a question or comment about the argumentation mess? Because otherwise I think I saw a question over there.

On-site participant: Okay. It’s not on the topic. I have something else I had a question on. So, thank you. This has been really useful. In fact, I had just coincidentally gone to look at something and I saw on LinkedIn a whole list of upcoming national and regional IGFs. So, it’s really remarkable what’s happening. Yesterday and then at this morning’s session there’s been some discussions about how also to make the IGF itself a place that really captures and reflects the trends and the themes at the at the in our eyes and what’s happening. It’s a very good finger on the pulse of what’s happening specifically in certain areas, certain regions, and issues that are of importance. And I’m wondering whether the panelists have any thoughts on two aspects.

One is agenda setting and themes at the NRI conversations that would help bring business that they care about or issues that their business might be facing that they want to share as a conversational point around whatever topic it might be. And then how might one actually look at seeing what the trends are of those themes? Five years ago, it might have been very different. I mean, now it’s AI, but five years ago or ten years ago, it might have been a very different theme. So I’m just wondering if the panelists have suggestions on what practical means that could be reflected. So as the IGF is looking and as the MAG is looking at the agenda items or as one looks at how to capture that.

one can actually really reflect what is happening in the regions in those key issues. So long -winded question. There may not be an immediate answer, but I think that there’s a great opportunity with a permanent IGF and the importance of the NRIs.

Jordan Carter: I think part of your question, Teresa, is about how to attract business. And I don’t know what the UK story is there, so I won’t sort of talk about it, but it did give me a license to say something else. I think part of the value of the NRI system is to help agenda sets for the IGF. And the IGF MAG, of which I’m a member this year, probably needs to have, as part of its process, a better distillation of what is going on in the NRIs to help shape that stuff. and ironically one of the other topics is your AI tools may be able to help with making that a more manageable process whether that can also look through that to find things that have engaged business successfully sounds like it might be a bit beyond the LLMs at the moment but I agree it’s an important question because otherwise we’re sort of in a vacuum with a lack of business participation and I certainly have felt that in all the national initiatives I’ve been part of a two -finger, I don’t like that term and it’s also not just business it could be governments and others so it’s really what are the core themes of the stakeholder in that country or region that are so important and they probably vary depending upon the country or the region and the situation there just an opportunity to capture that and really reflect on it

Matthias Kettermann: I think that we don’t do justice to the mission of the NRIs if we don’t do a conscientious effort to include business, especially local businesses who sometimes fall through the cracks. We focus on the big ones and see them as critical actors, but we don’t so much support the local hidden champions. What we did for the Austrian IGF was to coordinate rather early on with the Chamber of Commerce and ask them, what are the key issues that your members bring to you? What should we focus on? What would make them want to come here? One of the things they’ve told us was you just have to try to catch them with a clear promise of some added value.

Our promise of added value was the Secretary of State for Digitalization is going to be here. You’ll have, after the session, a couple of slots you can book to talk to him on the things which you… for your company matter most in terms of digitalization. that’s where we found out that there’s going to be an Austrian AI agent for every company to support them in their business interactions with the government. We’re very interested to see where they’re going to take over the world. So yeah, make a business case for coming to national RIs.

Dijana Milutinović: Well, Declan pointed out that it’s the hardest thing to bring basically businesses to the table and private entities and well, as was just mentioned like a business case from my perspective, you either help them create a space in which they can basically tell what troubles them the most. When they speak with other stakeholders and explain what’s their point of view as we expect businesses to pay tax, to grow, to do this and that. However, the policies, the regulations around the world have also an impact on them. Well, that’s one point. The other point could be the value. I mean, the many things that are discussed and deliberated can be woven into their business model. If they want to have a, I don’t know, sustainable way of doing things, for example, being a part of that process could help them articulate their own interest in terms of value of their own business, not material one, but rather, you know, something that they can actually use at the end of the day to represent themselves.

Declan McDermott: I think just also at a broader level, I think the main issue that we had with as a new NRI is just we lacked perceived legitimacy. I think that if you have, that if an NRI can reach a point where people recognize it and it’s a trusted name and it’s a trusted forum, that they go, yeah, this is like a legitimate forum that we can. bring our issues to the wider community and it will be considered. Like, if you reach a point where you have that legitimacy, I think, like, it will help increase the demand for all stakeholders. Because, yeah, I think I mentioned, like, you know, there was a lot of unawareness about what the Irish IGF was last year.

But even after I explained it, I think the issue is just like, well, it’s new. I just don’t know if it’s legitimate. We don’t know what it is. So that is our hope is that the more stakeholder participation that we get from all groups, including businesses, that it does, like, the legitimacy is increased and that people want to take part. I guess as just kind of a point for your earlier question, like, each NRI, in their agenda -setting process, they have to have public consultations. But the way that that public consultation plays out will just kind of depend on the local context. So for us, last year I tried to put out an open call and because it was new I think we got something like two or three submissions so we ended up having to do something more of like a targeted consultation and then similarly I ended up just speaking to an industry association about what are some common issues that could be on the agenda so you kind of just have to assess what their strengths are with where your NRI is at any given state and then just adjust.

Thanks for your perspective and I hope that kind of answered the question even though it’s difficult.

On-site participant: Okay, for me I mean I’m sorry but I don’t know I want just to share a kind of comment about involving the business in the IGF because in Italy we have a few business companies that have turned around participating to the EGF committee. So what I noticed, I mean, in our work, that I mean, business, in order to be involved, they need to have, I mean, to discuss concrete cases and problems. For instance, I noticed that there is a lot of attention in regulation, regulation of the SAA in European regions. So for them it’s important, for instance, to put on the table discussion of what problems they see in European regulation, having the national EGF also present the results of this discussion, and also try to fix practical issues related to high governments, to high procurements and so on.

So maybe, just coming back to the agenda setting, maybe the EGF committee, the EGF agenda should also include these concrete examples that you have in the procurement of the AI also. in some kind of regulation that impacts connectivity on the other issues. Thank you.

Sabina Heber: So we do have – no, we don’t. I just wanted to ask whether there are any more questions because in the end of time we should collect them. Okay, so you go first, then you, and then we have like a very quick round.

On-site participant: Okay, thanks. I mean, it’s really echoing part of today’s question, I think. I’m very interested in how the NRAs actually scale up, bring their messages to the global fora. I’m particularly interested when you look at the WSIS review process, countries were asked to submit reports. I’m looking at the website. Eight have done so, including Georgia, Greece, Iran, Poland, Senegal, South Africa, and the Netherlands. So I’m wondering, you know, have the NRAs actually been thinking about – scaling up in that sense as well as participating in the different events that they’re doing. Thank you and Thank you, mine’s more of a quick comment. Craig Sandenson, I’m UK Department of Science, Innovation and Technology. Just to really sort of echo that just six months after what was agreed at WSIS Plus 20, there’s new impetus for NRIs, there’s new recognition and how they can be strengthened.

This has been a really enriched conversation with some really good ideas from the panellists and from speakers here. So I’d really just sort of like to make a point, maybe sort of help wrap this up. This is something that I think we should repeat here at Eurodig. I think it’s something that we should make sure is a regular on this agenda and we can get maybe some of the NRIs to come back together again in the future and actually discuss how this has progressed a little bit and how far it’s going. Thank you.

Sabina Heber: Thank you and now I would ask the panellists to have a really, really short concluding remark on the last question. You want to go first?

Dijana Milutinović: Well, I guess various NRIs have different approaches, and I know the Secretariat is quite open for inputs, and also there are other options to work on, let’s say, joint documents. And there are also different coalitions where someone can participate. But there’s also one other thing, and a matter I didn’t want to mention because we will probably stay here by midnight. There’s a matter of available resources for NRIs. So if you can have a dedicated person who will deal only with that, it’s much easier to draft documents and send them out to scale them up. However, if you are working around edges with what you have, you need to be realistic with your expectations.

Declan McDermott: I would say that once the NRI has a sense of what the local Internet community is saying and what the messages and the positions are, I think it would help. If they understood the mechanisms for public consultation. in their country. So, for instance, like, if we wanted, like, in the future, perhaps, like, through pre -budgetary submissions or something, or if there’s, like, another public consultation of just saying, like, these are the high -level sort of principles or positions that the local Internet community, you know, discussed at this forum. So, something along those lines, I would think. Thank you.

Matthias Kettermann: I’m happy to concede the time. How, if it’s one sentence, then I think what we really, really need to do is bring Internet governance to the people. We did a little survey before we organized the IJF Austria and asked, you know, random people what they knew about Internet governance, and the results were very disheartening. They were very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, because nobody knew what we were talking about, and they didn’t know the IJF Austria. So, we need to

Sabina Heber: Thank you. And, Titi, do you have one last conclusion remark as well?

Concettina Cassa: nothing from my side thank you

Sabina Heber: so then thank you very much for your participation and thanks to all the panelists and over to Philip with the messages I think you said this sorry we were Philip and I were just having a last minute coordination

Co – moderator: okay great everybody that was a fantastic exchange of information a lot of experience and new ideas so we’ve developed four messages a couple of them are quite short I’ll kick off by reading the first one which I think are on the screen yeah so you do have to have very good eyesight to see them on the screen, but I’ll read it, the first one. National and regional IGFs, NRIs, are effective multi -stakeholder fora for implementing WSIS Plus 20 goals, outcomes, and action lines through their outreach and engagement in multi -stakeholder communities worldwide in support of social impacts. Collaboration amongst NRIs can include sharing best practice and national experience in agreeing priorities and messages, monitoring progress, and promoting greater awareness of the importance of Internet governance in line with WSIS goals.

Stop. That’s the first one. Over to Bill.

On-site participant: The second message is that NRI’s key position in the broader Internet governance ecosystem necessitates the implementation of innovative methods of collaboration. There should be room for experimentation in the format of the WSIS Plus 20 goals, outcomes, and action lines through the NRIs. The second message is that NRIs should be engaged in multi -stakeholder fora for implementing WSIS Plus 20 goals, outcomes, and action lines through the format of the WSIS Plus 20 goals, non -IHL protection while preserving the bottom -up model. G

Co – moderator: oing on to the third message, the workshop also considered NRI’s experience in developing argument maps which provide comprehensive overviews of specific issues and policy challenges, such as age verification, covering different perspectives in support of policy decisions, and geared to achieving positive impacts. And finally, the last message, it was agreed that EURODIG

On-site participant: should maintain this dialogue on innovative mechanisms and monitor progress amongst European allies with periodic reviews.

Sabina Heber: Okay, so is everyone happy with the messages, or is there strong opposition? Opposition?

Brahim Baalla: yeah it’s not a very very strong position it’s just like a adapt about uh like uh in relation to age verification if there is a clear opinion expressed or from the document or something else

On-site participant: if i may the that one is based on this the augmentation map is not translated it was only in dutch but uh the the augmentation maps themselves and brian can of course explain much better than me um but the augmentation map includes both arguments uh uh in favor and against of this is in relation to specific question so there is no definitive answer given by the augmentation map but please try if you have

Retrieved from "https://eurodigwiki.org/mw04/index.php?title=Implementing_WSIS%2B20_Review_Outcomes_through_Collaboration_amongst_European_National_and_Regional_Initiatives_–_WS_07_2026&oldid=28569"