Implementing WSIS+20 Review Outcomes through Collaboration amongst European National and Regional Initiatives – WS 07 2026
27 May 2026 14:30h - 15:30h
Implementing WSIS+20 Review Outcomes through Collaboration amongst European National and Regional Initiatives – WS 07 2026
Summary
The discussion focused on how European national and regional Internet Governance Forum initiatives (NRIs) can help implement the WSIS+20 review outcomes through collaboration, while linking global principles to practical national and regional action.[4][12][16] Sabina Heber framed NRIs as increasingly important spaces for multistakeholder discussion, cooperation, and policy exchange, and said the workshop would examine both concrete action and new collaboration mechanisms.[15-20]
Several speakers stressed that NRIs do not usually see themselves as direct WSIS implementation agencies, but rather as bottom-up fora that reflect local deliberations into regional and global processes.[32-37][65-67] Matthias Kettermann argued, however, that in the post-WSIS+20 context NRIs should engage more deeply with action lines and translate them into national priorities, which he said is feasible.[45-48] He illustrated this with Austria’s focus on youth panels and regional outreach, showing how national IGFs can align WSIS goals with local stakeholder needs.[49-59] Dijana Milutinovic similarly emphasized NRIs’ practical role in monitoring country-level developments, raising issues for debate, building public awareness, and learning from peer NRIs, especially on shared regional problems.[105-113]
Declan McDermott presented a framework for NRI impact based on “scaling out,” “scaling up,” and “scaling deeply,” meaning respectively expanding reach, increasing policy influence, and changing how internet governance is understood in society.[68-81] He argued NRIs need a clear theory of change and a concrete definition of success, warning against collaboration for its own sake.[95-101] On messaging, Jordan Carter said the UK IGF produces annual key messages through a multistakeholder steering committee and cited dialogue around the Online Safety Act as one example of possible policy influence.[117-120] He also noted that an Australian WSIS+20 message was sent to government and appeared to be reflected, at least partly, in official policy discussions.[124-127]
A major theme was how to strengthen cooperation and participation. Concettina Cassa proposed voluntary “NRI labs” as non-regulatory spaces for peer learning, experimentation, and exchange on implementation topics such as trustworthy AI in public administration or child protection online.[181-199][204-207] Participants also discussed practical tools like Dutch argument maps, which organize competing perspectives on contentious issues for policymakers without forcing consensus.[225-233][241-249] Multiple speakers identified business participation as difficult, saying companies respond better when discussions address concrete problems, offer visible value, or provide access to decision-makers.[151-165][272-281][282-288][301-305]
In closing, speakers noted that NRIs’ ability to scale up their messages often depends on resources, knowledge of national consultation channels, and broader public awareness of internet governance.[326-335][338-340] The workshop’s final messages stated that NRIs are effective multistakeholder fora for advancing WSIS+20 goals, that collaboration should include experimentation and best-practice sharing, and that EURODIG should continue reviewing progress through regular dialogue.[345-356]
Keypoints
The overall purpose of the discussion was to explore how European national and regional IGF initiatives (NRIs) can help implement the WSIS+20 review outcomes in practical ways, especially by translating global commitments into national and regional action and by improving collaboration across NRIs [2-4][12-20][173-176].
– A central discussion point was whether NRIs should see themselves as direct WSIS implementation bodies or primarily as bottom-up forums that reflect local stakeholder views into regional and global processes. Jordan Carter argued that IGFs have generally not operated as “WSIS implementation agencies” and have instead focused on relaying local deliberations upward, warning against a top-down reversal [32-39]. In contrast, Matthias Kettermann argued that in the post-WSIS+20 context NRIs should engage more directly with action lines and align them with national priorities [45-48].
– Speakers emphasized that NRIs can contribute most effectively through practical national-level engagement: convening stakeholders, raising awareness, monitoring local developments, and putting issues onto the public agenda. Dijana Milutinovic stressed that NRIs are well placed to monitor what is happening in their countries, raise issues for debate, and improve the chances of implementation through regulation and legislation by increasing public attention [105-113]. Matthias also gave examples from Austria, including youth-focused panels and rotating the IGF across regions to involve local stakeholders [49-60].
– Another major theme was how NRIs can think more strategically about impact. Declan McDermott framed NRI work in terms of social impact, proposing three strategies: “scaling out” to reach more stakeholders, “scaling up” to influence policymakers more effectively, and “scaling deeply” to change how internet governance is understood culturally [64-81]. He also argued that NRIs need a clear theory of change and should avoid “collaborating for the sake of collaboration” without defining what success looks like [95-101].
– The discussion highlighted different methods for producing messages, recommendations, and policy influence, with varying levels of formality across NRIs. The UK IGF produces annual key messages through a multi-stakeholder steering committee and has seen some evidence of influence on policy processes such as the Online Safety Act and WSIS+20 submissions [117-128]. Serbia similarly drafts messages during sessions, sends reports to the ministry and IGF Secretariat, and publishes them online [133]. Austria, by contrast, does not emphasize formal key messages, preferring to create a space for connection that later generates initiatives and outcomes indirectly [129-131].
– Participants explored new cooperation mechanisms, especially the proposal for “NRI labs” as voluntary spaces for peer learning, experimentation, and exchange of implementation practices. Concettina Cassa argued that implementation is now the key challenge and that NRIs are a distributed cooperation infrastructure connecting global debates with local realities [181-193]. She proposed NRI labs not as policymaking bodies but as collaborative spaces for sharing methodologies and operational learning on issues such as trustworthy AI in public administration or child protection online [195-207]. This idea was reinforced in the final workshop messages, which called for innovative methods of collaboration, room for experimentation, and continued EuroDIG review of progress [350-356].
The overall tone was constructive, reflective, and collaborative throughout. Early in the session, there was some mild tension or productive provocation around whether NRIs should adopt a more top-down WSIS implementation role or remain primarily bottom-up forums [32-39][45-48]. As the discussion progressed, the tone became increasingly practical and solution-oriented, with speakers sharing concrete examples, challenges, and proposals for experimentation, stakeholder inclusion, and future cooperation [105-113][175-207][345-356].
Speakers
– Sabina Heber – Workshop moderator; working for DENIC, which runs the Secretariat for the German IGF.
– On-site participant – Various unnamed audience participants/interveners.
– Matthias Kettermann – Representative of the Austrian IGF; associated with Austria’s IGF. Matthias C. Kettemann. [S6]
– Co – moderator – Session co-moderator; assisted in coordinating the session. [S4]
– Dijana Milutinovic – From Serbia; stakeholder for IGF Serbia; affiliated with Serbia’s ccTLD .rs and .срб registry.
– Declan McDermott – Works for IGF Ireland and for .ie, the ccTLD for Ireland.
– Concettina Cassa – Also referred to as Titti Cassa; from AGID, the Agency for Digital Italy; joined for the Italian IGF.
– Brahim Baalla – Town Councillor from Italy and YouthDIG participant.
– Jordan Carter – Representative of the UK IGF; in a new role at Nominet, the .UK domain name registry; member of the IGF MAG this year. Jordan Carter has also been identified in external sources as speaking on internet governance legitimacy and multistakeholder participation. [S24] [S25]
Additional speakers:
– Philip – Mentioned by Sabina as helping draft/share the workshop messages; later appears to read out messages, likely as co-moderator.
– Mark – Mentioned by Sabina as helping write the workshop messages.
– Doreen / Serene – An on-site participant invited by Sabina to explain the “argument maps” used in the Netherlands; exact name unclear due to transcript quality.
– Teresa – An on-site participant who asked a question about agenda setting, trends, and business participation; identified by Jordan when responding.
– Craig Sandenson – From the UK Department of Science, Innovation and Technology.
– Bill – Mentioned by the co-moderator while handing over the reading of one of the messages; exact identity not otherwise specified.
– John – Referenced by Sabina when inviting comment; likely a transcript error referring to Jordan.
– Titi Cassa – Variant rendering of Concettina Cassa used in the transcript; same speaker as Concettina Cassa.
Sabina Heber opened the workshop by linking it to the morning’s session on the WSIS+20 review outcomes and framing the discussion around how European national and regional IGF initiatives (NRIs) could support implementation through collaboration [2-4][12-21]. She noted that while WSIS provides global orientations, implementation often depends on work at national and regional level, which makes NRIs important spaces for multistakeholder discussion, cooperation, and policy exchange [12-16]. She also outlined the three-part structure of the session: reflections from European NRIs, discussion of collaboration and experimentation mechanisms, and then an open floor discussion followed by final workshop messages [17-21].
The first part of the discussion focused on what NRIs are for and how they relate to WSIS implementation. Jordan Carter said that, in his experience across several IGFs, NRIs have generally not thought of themselves as “WSIS implementation agencies” focused on action lines or formal implementation [30-39]. Rather, he said, they have usually worked bottom-up, reflecting local deliberations into regional and global IGF processes within the broader WSIS framework [32-35]. He described it as a slightly provocative point that shifting from that role toward direct implementation would amount to a reversal of the traditional logic [35-39].
Matthias Kettermann took a different view, arguing that in the post-review environment NRIs should engage more deeply with the key WSIS messages and action lines and translate them into national priorities [45-48]. He suggested this was feasible as part of the long-standing NRI role of activating stakeholders and connecting broad commitments to local policy agendas, including enabling environments and links with the 2030 Agenda [45-48]. He illustrated this with examples from Austria: strong youth engagement, including panels composed entirely of young participants aged 14, 17, and 21, and an effort to hold the Austrian IGF in different parts of the country to involve regional stakeholders such as innovation departments, museums, and school boards in discussions on AI governance, digitalisation, and cultural tools [49-60].
Declan McDermott shifted the discussion toward impact. He agreed that NRIs do not usually treat themselves as formal implementers of WSIS action lines with those lines as key performance indicators, but argued that they still pursue social impact if they treat responsible internet governance and defence of the multistakeholder model as a public good [63-68]. He proposed three ways of thinking about scale: “scaling out,” meaning broadening reach to more people and stakeholder groups; “scaling up,” meaning increasing influence over policymakers and decision-makers; and “scaling deeply,” meaning changing how internet governance is understood culturally in a society [68-81]. He then used the “five whys” method to argue that NRIs need to identify the root cause of weak impact before deciding which strategy to prioritise [83-95]. In his example, what looks like a government implementation problem may actually be a lack of public awareness or stakeholder participation, in which case scaling out is the right response [84-95]. He argued that NRIs therefore need a theory of change linking participation, legitimacy, influence, and advocacy, otherwise they risk collaborating without a clear sense of success [95-101].
Dijana Milutinovic grounded the discussion in practical national experience. She introduced herself as representing Serbia’s ccTLD registry (.rs and .serb in Cyrillic), linking this to the importance of diversity in online content, including linguistic diversity [102-104]. She said that outcome documents often reflect issues already visible in national settings, and that NRIs are valuable because they are close enough to identify emerging problems, raise them for debate, and involve the relevant stakeholders [104-110]. She gave the example that once infrastructure is well developed, attention may shift toward abuse or misuse of technology, and NRIs are well placed to notice that change and put it on the agenda [105-107]. By surfacing such issues publicly, she said, NRIs can improve the chances that they are later taken up in regulation or legislation [108-110]. She also stressed the importance of exchange among NRIs and regional initiatives, especially where countries face similar problems and can learn from one another [112-114].
The discussion then moved to what kinds of outputs NRIs produce. Jordan explained that the UK IGF publishes a report each year with a one-page set of key messages drawn from the event [117-120]. He said these are drafted by Nominet’s communications team based on the recordings and then refined with the multistakeholder steering committee toward consensus [117-120]. He noted that they are not discussed on the floor as grassroots text, but colleagues had seen some evidence that the dialogues behind them mattered in policy terms, including in discussions around implementation of the Online Safety Act [118-120]. He also cited an Australian example in which a draft outcomes paper was circulated before the IGF, discussed at a town hall during the event, and then adopted by absence of objection; he stressed that it was framed not as a recommendation or formal policy advice, but as a tested multistakeholder point of view [118-120].
Asked what happened to such texts afterward, Jordan said that in 2024 one message document was sent to government as a contribution to the WSIS review process [124-127]. He said the government acknowledged it and appeared to refer to it at some points in the negotiations, and that similar ideas were reflected in an Australian government non-paper, while cautioning that he could not say whether this showed causation or only correlation [124-127].
Matthias contrasted this with the Austrian approach, saying Austria does not produce formal key messages because the organisers wanted to reduce burdens and focus on convening stakeholders, enabling discussion, and building connections [129-131]. He said initiatives that emerge among participants during the year may later contribute to work in areas such as standards or laws and generate outcomes more indirectly [129-131]. Dijana then described a Serbian model closer to the UK practice: messages are drafted during sessions based on stakeholder agreement, incorporated into a full report, sent to the ministry and the IGF Secretariat, and published online so they can also provide material for future sessions [133].
A related part of the discussion examined stakeholder buy-in, especially for newer NRIs, through the case of the Irish IGF. Declan said government had been relatively easy to engage because the national Governmental Advisory Committee representative and related contacts were supportive and helped connect the organisers to different departments [137-145]. This was important because internet-related policy issues are spread across disconnected portfolios such as cybersecurity, connectivity, and media regulation [141-144]. The technical community was also comparatively easy to mobilise because those actors already understood what the IGF was and why it mattered [146-148].
Civil society and especially the private sector were harder to engage [149-165]. Declan said some civil society actors did not know what the IGF was, while many businesses judged participation in terms of return on investment for time, money, or staff effort [149-160]. Because the IGF is not intended as a revenue-generating or lobbying space, he found it difficult to demonstrate immediate value and had to explain that it was not a venue for product promotion [152-160]. He suggested that one response is to show companies that responsible internet governance and regulation directly affect their sectors and are therefore in their own interest [161-164]. He also described a chicken-and-egg problem in which some firms would only join if their competitors did too [165]. Returning later to the question from a broader perspective, he said that one of the main challenges for a new NRI is legitimacy: even if people understand the IGF concept, they may hesitate unless they see it as a trusted and recognised forum where their concerns will be taken seriously [289-300]. He added that agenda-setting methods depend on the maturity of the initiative, with newer NRIs often needing more targeted outreach rather than relying only on open calls [297-300].
The workshop then turned to new collaboration models. Sabina introduced the problem that digital governance often has strong global principles but weaker practical mechanisms for cooperation and invited Concettina Cassa to present the idea of “NRI labs” [171-176]. Concettina said that twenty years after the original WSIS, the main challenge is now implementation: translating global commitments into operational cooperation, learning, and action at national and regional level [181-183]. She linked this explicitly to paragraph 102 of the WSIS review outcome document, which she said calls for reinforcing NRIs and promoting innovative, open, inclusive, and agile collaboration methods [184-185].
Concettina described the IGF not as a single annual event but as a distributed ecosystem of communities and collaborative processes across global, regional, and national levels [186]. In that ecosystem, she said, there are today around 180 national, regional, and youth initiatives, and these should be understood not merely as local extensions of the global IGF but as a distributed cooperation infrastructure that translates global debates into local experience and feeds local perspectives back upward [187-191]. At the same time, she said, there is still too little space for deeper operational interaction, peer learning, and structured exchange of implementation models across NRIs [192-195]. Her response was the idea of “NRI labs”: voluntary multistakeholder spaces for peer learning and shared experimentation that would not be new institutions, would not make shared policy, and would not produce binding recommendations [195]. She gave examples such as a lab on trustworthy AI in public administration, covering procurement, governance models, human oversight, and risk management, and another on child protection online and age-based access to social media [196-197]. She argued that Europe was well placed to pilot this kind of work because of its dense NRI network, strong multistakeholder tradition, and increasingly shared policy frameworks [199-200][203-207].
When the floor opened, audience interventions added substantive and practical points. Brahim Baalla asked whether the WSIS text adequately addressed AI-related harms such as bias, gender-based violence, and manipulation [210-211]. Declan replied by stressing that NRIs should not begin from a fixed substantive position on AI governance but should convene the local internet community and relay the views emerging from balanced discussion [212-216]. Because AI governance is complex and rapidly evolving, he said, legitimacy depends on ensuring broad stakeholder diversity so that no single sector dominates the discussion [217-221].
An on-site participant from the Netherlands described “argument maps,” developed with the Argumentation Factory, as a tool for contentious policy issues [225][236-247]. She said the goal is not to produce a shared message but to map the main arguments on all sides so policymakers can better understand the debate [226-230][248-249]. She noted that a recent map on age verification had not yet been translated into English, while the example shown in English concerned restricting encryption [227-228]. She explained that the maps are usually developed through a structured process over several sessions with diverse stakeholders, who can comment on the wording throughout [236-247]. The arguments are not weighted; the aim is to provide a clear overview while leaving political judgment to decision-makers [248-249].
Another audience question asked how the wider IGF could better detect trends emerging through NRIs and reflect them in agenda-setting, including themes relevant to business stakeholders [252-267]. Jordan agreed that one value of the NRI system is precisely to help shape the global IGF agenda [268-271]. Speaking as a MAG member, he said the MAG likely needs a better process for distilling what is happening across NRIs into a usable input for programme development, and suggested that AI tools might help with synthesis, while noting limits to what they can currently do [268-271]. He also stressed that the key is not only business concerns, but identifying the most important issues for whichever stakeholder groups matter most in a given national or regional context [269-271].
This led into a more specific discussion of business participation. Matthias said NRIs do not fully do justice to their mission unless they make a serious effort to include business, especially local firms [272-273]. In Austria, he said, the organisers worked early with the Chamber of Commerce to ask what issues companies cared about and what would motivate them to attend [274-276]. The answer was practical added value, so the organisers offered a concrete incentive: the Secretary of State for Digitalisation would attend, and companies could book short slots afterward to discuss digitalisation issues directly [277-281]. For Matthias, organisers therefore had to make a business case for participation [281]. Dijana agreed that the private sector is difficult to attract, but said companies respond when NRIs give them space to explain what troubles them and how regulation affects them [282-285]. She added that many internet governance issues can be connected to companies’ own business models and value propositions, including around sustainability and responsible business identity [286-288]. An on-site participant from Italy said that, in her experience, businesses become engaged when NRIs discuss concrete cases and practical problems, particularly around European regulation, AI regulation, AI procurement, and connectivity [301-305].
Toward the end of the session, the conversation returned to how NRI messages might scale upward into national and global policy processes. One participant observed that only a small number of countries had submitted reports to the WSIS review and asked whether NRIs had considered scaling up in that sense as well [310-315]. Craig Sanderson of the UK Department of Science, Innovation and Technology said that only months after the WSIS+20 outcome there was renewed momentum and recognition for NRIs, and he argued that this conversation should be repeated at EuroDIG so participants could come back together to assess progress over time [317-323].
A practical caveat in the closing round was resources. Dijana stressed that many NRIs operate with limited capacity, and that the ability to draft documents, engage in coalitions, and submit inputs depends heavily on whether they have dedicated staff [326-331]. If an initiative relies mainly on volunteers, she said, expectations about output and scale need to remain realistic [328-331]. Declan added that once an NRI has a clear sense of what its local internet community is saying, it should understand the formal public consultation mechanisms available in its country and use them to feed those views into policymaking [332-335]. Matthias closed by noting how low public awareness still is: a survey before the Austrian IGF suggested that many ordinary people did not know what internet governance or the Austrian IGF was, leading him to conclude that NRIs need to bring internet governance to the people [338-340].
The workshop concluded with four agreed messages read out by the co-moderators. First, NRIs were described as effective multistakeholder fora for implementing WSIS+20 goals, outcomes, and action lines through outreach, engagement, sharing of best practices and national experience, methods for agreeing priorities and messages, progress monitoring, and awareness-raising in support of social impact [345-347]. Second, participants stressed that this role requires innovative methods of collaboration and room for experimentation, including through spaces such as NRI labs, while preserving the bottom-up model [350-352]. Third, the workshop recognised argument maps as a useful method for giving comprehensive overviews of contested policy issues, such as age verification, from different perspectives [354]. Fourth, participants agreed that EuroDIG should maintain this dialogue and monitor progress among European NRIs through periodic reviews [355-356][317-323].
There was a final clarification when Brahim Baalla asked whether the mention of age verification implied a substantive position [357-359]. Another participant clarified that the reference was only to the argument-map method, which presents arguments both for and against a proposal rather than endorsing one outcome [360].
Overall, the workshop highlighted both the value and the limits of NRIs in implementing WSIS+20 outcomes. Speakers agreed that NRIs can connect global commitments to national realities through convening, awareness-raising, issue monitoring, peer learning, and practical experimentation, including new methods such as NRI labs and argument maps [15-16][45-48][105-114][181-195][225-249]. At the same time, they emphasized that legitimacy, stakeholder diversity, business participation, and resources remain decisive constraints [149-170][272-288][289-300][326-331].
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 Milutinovic 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.
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.
Thank you.
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.
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.
Thank you. I’m Dijana Milutinovic 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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
very good thank you do you want to say a few
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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
Thank you for answering that one. I know that Doreen also has could look like so can I put you on the spot here?
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
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?
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.
Thanks, Serene. Does anyone have a question or comment about the argumentation mess? Because otherwise I think I saw a question over there.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
Thank you. And, Titi, do you have one last conclusion remark as well?
nothing from my side thank you
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
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.
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
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
should maintain this dialogue on innovative mechanisms and monitor progress amongst European allies with periodic reviews.
Okay, so is everyone happy with the messages, or is there strong opposition? Opposition?
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
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
“Sabina Heber said NRIs are important spaces for multistakeholder discussion, cooperation, and policy exchange at national and regional level in support of WSIS implementation.”
This is consistent with the WSIS follow-up framework, which explicitly envisages regional WSIS implementation activities as policy debate, information exchange, and multistakeholder cooperation [S27]. It is also supported by analysis noting that NRIs provide grounded national and regional perspectives and connect local developments to global agendas [S67].
“Jordan Carter said NRIs have generally not thought of themselves as ‘WSIS implementation agencies’ focused on action lines or formal implementation, but rather as bottom-up mechanisms feeding local deliberations into regional and global IGF processes.”
The knowledge base supports the bottom-up part of this characterization: local and regional IGFs are described as starting from local needs and priorities and serving as channels to project these messages upward into the annual IGF [S53]. More broadly, subsidiarity analysis also emphasizes that digital policy solutions should be developed closer to affected communities and that ‘policy elevators’ should connect local, national, regional, and global levels [S28].
“Matthias Kettermann argued that NRIs should engage more deeply with WSIS messages and action lines and translate them into national priorities, including links to the 2030 Agenda.”
This aligns with the Tunis Agenda, which says WSIS implementation and follow-up should take account of the main themes and action lines, include multistakeholder components, and contribute to internationally agreed development goals [S27]. The knowledge base also notes that NRIs are seen as important engines for bottom-up participation in national positions and global processes during WSIS+20 [S34].
“Matthias Kettermann cited Austrian IGF practices such as strong youth engagement and outreach beyond the capital to involve regional stakeholders.”
While the knowledge base does not verify the Austria-specific details, it provides broader corroborating context that NRIs are expected to strengthen inclusivity and support emerging and diverse participation, including new initiatives and underrepresented groups [S55] and [S54].
“Declan McDermott said NRIs do not usually treat themselves as formal implementers of WSIS action lines with those lines as key performance indicators, but they still pursue social impact through responsible internet governance and defense of the multistakeholder model.”
The knowledge base supports the broader framing that NRIs and IGF processes are valued for multistakeholder participation and practical impact even when they are not formal implementing agencies. For example, NRIs are described as engines for bottom-up multistakeholder participation [S34], and prior discussions on European NRIs emphasized moving from dialogue toward more concrete results without changing the IGF’s basic mandate [S93].
“Declan McDermott proposed thinking about impact in terms of ‘scaling out,’ ‘scaling up,’ and ‘scaling deeply.’”
The knowledge base does not directly confirm this specific three-part terminology, but it adds relevant nuance: discussions of digital governance emphasize not just participation volume, but meaningful participation, institutional capacity, and cultural embedding of practices through capacity development and subsidiarity [S28].
“The report frames NRIs as mechanisms that can support implementation of global digital governance outcomes through collaboration rather than as formal implementation bodies.”
This is strongly supported by multiple sources. The Tunis Agenda assigns formal implementation roles primarily to governments, UN agencies, and regional intergovernmental organizations while stressing multistakeholder facilitation and cooperation [S27]. At the same time, newer NRI discussions emphasize that NRIs can contribute through capacity building, issue mapping, collaboration platforms, and feeding bottom-up inputs into broader policy processes [S55], [S34].
The discussion showed broad agreement that NRIs are important bottom-up multi-stakeholder mechanisms that can support WSIS Plus 20 follow-up by translating local realities into dialogue, awareness, agenda-setting, and policy-facing outputs. There was also clear convergence around the need for stronger cooperation among NRIs, more practical experimentation, better agenda capture from national and regional processes, and more deliberate stakeholder inclusion, especially of business [32-38][45-60][64-110][117-127][181-207][255-271][272-306][345-356].
High consensus on core functions and practical direction. Implication: European NRIs appear well positioned to deepen cooperation around WSIS Plus 20 implementation without abandoning the IGF’s bottom-up model.
The main disagreements concerned role definition, output style, and methods rather than ultimate objectives. Speakers largely agreed that NRIs matter for WSIS Plus 20 follow-up, public awareness, stakeholder inclusion, and stronger cooperation, but they differed on whether NRIs should act as direct implementation vehicles or remain primarily bottom-up conveners [32-38][45-48][105-110][345-347]. They also differed on whether success should be expressed through formal messages and reports or through looser convening that enables later outcomes [117-120][129-131][133], and on whether structured innovations such as NRI Labs are needed or whether lighter-touch interaction is preferable [181-198][350-352].
Low to moderate. The discussion was mostly constructive and complementary, with disagreements appearing as differences in emphasis, institutional philosophy, and preferred working methods rather than sharp substantive conflict. This implies that cooperation among NRIs is feasible, but future work will need to clarify expectations about mandate, outputs, and the balance between preserving bottom-up legitimacy and pursuing more operational implementation.
The discussion was shaped by a productive tension between caution and ambition. Jordan Carter’s opening challenge prevented the workshop from treating WSIS implementation by NRIs as self-evident, while Matthias Kettermann and others responded by showing that action-line alignment can be practical without abandoning bottom-up principles. Declan McDermott’s framework of scaling out, scaling up, and scaling deeply gave the conversation a shared strategic language and influenced both the moderator’s follow-up questions and later reflections on legitimacy, policymaker impact, and stakeholder buy-in. Concettina Cassa’s proposal for NRI labs then moved the workshop from diagnosis to institutional innovation, while the Dutch example of argument maps introduced a concrete deliberative method for handling contested policy issues. Later exchanges on business participation and legitimacy grounded the discussion in the realities of organizational incentives and NRI maturity. Overall, the key comments transformed the session from a general endorsement of collaboration into a more sophisticated conversation about the identity, methods, constraints, and future evolution of NRIs within the WSIS+20 landscape.
Disclaimer: This is not an official session record. DiploAI generates these resources from audiovisual recordings, and they are presented as-is, including potential errors. Due to logistical challenges, such as discrepancies in audio/video or transcripts, names may be misspelled. We strive for accuracy to the best of our ability.
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