DCCG meeting 52

DC COORDINATING MEETING #52

19 MARCH 2021

10:00 UTC

 

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Hello, everyone, this is Markus speaking. I hope you can hear me. If you see me, you can see we have snow where I live. I can't hear any dissenting views so I can take it, and I can see a thumbs up by Jutta, so that we have agreement on the agenda. Then let's go straight to the questionnaire. Sorina, I wonder, can you show it or, well, it may not be necessary, or send it again the link to the Google Doc just in case people have not opened it in front of them. I would suggest, first of all, I would invite you to give overall comments and then maybe we could go through it section by section. Okay. Is there anyone who has overall comments? Yes. Jutta has her hand up, please, Jutta.

>> JUTTA CROLL: Thank you for giving me the floor. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Sorina for the excellent work she has done on the questionnaire or the survey. I do think this is overall a major step forward to realize with the questionnaire and hopefully with the answers to the survey to realize what magnificent work the Dynamic Coalitions are able to do and how this has evolved, so big thank you to Sorina.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: I join in you thanking Sorina for her excellent work. Are there overall comments or do you prefer going section by section? I take it that everybody is happy with the survey. Well, I don't know, Sorina, are you able to say a few words? It would be nice to hear your voice on this.

>> SORINA TELEANU: Thank you, Markus. Hello, everyone. I will speak a bit slower than usual, but many thanks, Markus, for your kind words. The survey is a bit long as was noted in the chart, but where some of them are not going to be compulsory questions so they can be skipped. Some of them are related to one another, so if you reply in one way, then you won't have to answer the other questions. And on top of it all, the DCs will have five weeks and I think that's going to give quite a lot of time to try to provide answers to these questions. I don't have anything else to add at this point. I just tried to cover all of the things that we included in our work plan, things that we want to again reflect in the paper, to this paper, so that's why it ended up a bit long, but if you remember from the work plan, we also intend to conduct some sort of interviews later on. So if you don't feel like writing extremely much on some of the points, we could also discuss more in depth some of them later on when we go into the interviews. And I think that's it for me at this point. Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much. And you see in the chat there are also comments commending you for your excellent work. And, well, let's then go section by section. I think the first section is essentially very factual documenting who you are and a bit of the history and who is part of the Dynamic Coalition. There were some comments in the Google Doc. Are there additional comments on this section? Doesn't seem to be the case. Can we go on then to the second section would be DC activities and output. Again, this is fairly factual and descriptive. Are there comments? Yes, and in the chat, obviously the comments made. There are questions by Avri. Will each question have an optional text space?

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Sorina, can you answer that question?

>> Yes, especially where we have multiple choices, there will definitely be another field, and I will look again through anything to see if there is anything elsewhere we need to add space for additional comments.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that.

>> JUTTA CROLL: If I may, I have one question mainly to Sorina but probably the others on the call have their opinion as well. I understand that we already have a lot of questions. At some point I was considering whether we should in addition to asking what challenges Dynamic Coalitions have faced during their work, whether we should provide them also with the opportunity to celebrate a bit more their achievements. That would then be additional questions or should that go into the questions about the challenges that we would say what challenges or what achievements did your Dynamic Coalitions face? Would that be a good idea?

>> MARKUS KUMMER: I think it's an excellent idea, but, again, I have not -- I just looked at the questionnaire. It seemed to be very comprehensive and I don't have -- is there nothing in the questionnaire where Dynamic Coalitions can celebrate their achievements.

>> SORINA TELEANU: There are a few spaces and beyond asking about the outputs they have produced and how the output has made an impact at different level, there is, for example, in question 23 a point on which this is share examples of good practices in carrying out their activities, and I think there was something -- I can look again and make sure.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: It maybe could be made more visible, what do you consider to be your main achievements or something.

>> SORINA TELEANU: M-hmm.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Just to give it a positive spin.

>> JUTTA CROLL: That is what I had on my mind.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: It is there, but it could be maybe highlighted a bit more. The next section will be the DC coordination. Are there comments on that? That is obviously very relevant for our own work. Any suggestions how can it be improved, made more efficient?

>> JUTTA CROLL: I'm sorry for interrupting, are we sure that all Dynamic Coalitions understand what Dynamic Coalition coordination work is, how it's, that it's these calls and sometimes also something beyond the calls. The meetings we had when we had face-to-face IGF meetings and so on.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: It's a good point, actually, and maybe you just could add the link on the IGF website where you have the terms of reference. And it also explains that ideally we meet in person once a year during the IGF meeting if the IGF meeting takes place as a physical meeting. The next session is the DCs within the IGF framework. And that, I think, is a very important section also looking forward to all of the discussion on IGF plus. Mark Carvell, it is important asking how decisions are outcome for regulations of principles? That is on the DC coordination. That is a very relevant question and it links to the issue I would like to raise under any other business. And so far it has been very light. We have not had much in terms of internal procedures. Avri had a comment, but listen, guys, why don't you take the floor and speak up when you have a question instead of just typing it down.

>> AVRI DORIA: Sure. I did try to put my hand up, but it wasn't noticed.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Sorry, my apologies, my apologies.

>> AVRI DORIA: But, fine. When I was reading it through and I apologize for being such a terrible participant, and such an irregular participant that I'm just looking at this now, but I saw there was a question on seven so I wanted to make a suggestion that the question about are you looking into new membership just felt awkward and that's what the note beside it acknowledged. I was basically asking what degree are you getting new members, and how is that happening or some framing like that. Because I know in ours we don't have membership campaigns, but people read it, they comment, we say come on in. So, you know, there are probably lots of different ways, so are they getting new members is what you want to know and or we want to know, I guess. And how does that happen? What's the process? Just a suggestion, and that's why I wrote it down.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. It's an excellent suggestion. And Mark, yes, please.

>> MARK CARVELL: Thanks for the opportunity to comment on this survey. It's a great initiative, very important, timely. My comment in the chat, actually there are two aspects to it really, and they both come from a bit of a debate we had in the Dynamic Coalition on Internet standards, security and safety which Wout De Natris and I are running, and that is, first of all, what is a member? The survey talked about membership, but we struggled actually to decipher what is a member of our coalition, is it somebody who is following passively as a subscriber or should it be a narrower definition of people who are active in our three Working Groups? And we decided following a consultation actually of people who are following our coalition to go for a very broad flexible approach that would also allow people who are only sort of short term involved to be considered members as well as subscribers who are not actually contributing to active work. We decided they are members too. And then the second aspect is who takes part in decisions of the coalition? We have a very clear idea of the kind of outcomes we are aiming for in terms of recommendations to decision takers and public-private sector on, for example, stipulating in procurement requirements, security, standards, deployment. So quite specific in terms of outcomes. When we formulate these outcomes, who takes part in the decisions? And how are decisions taken based on rough consensus and so on? So I just raise this as something we had to sort of think through. There may be a kind of an established norm amongst all of the Dynamic Coalitions about who are members and how decisions are taken, but without increasing focus on the outcomes of Dynamic Coalitions within the IGF plus, this is perhaps a question that needs some standard definition. How are decisions taken? Should they be put out as we have decided ultimately to completely open process of consultation to any stakeholder who is aware of our proposals to respond to us and react? I hope that's helpful.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you very much. I think that is very helpful indeed. I think it's very much also the core, I think, of our cooperation that we right to begin with a few years back it was left totally open, but then we had some problems that surfaced and it was around 2014-15 we started this DC coordination and Avri at the time was my co-facilitator, and we then developed what is now the basic principles. Also in the terms of reference of coordination group and it very much goes along the lines that you developed that it's a very open and very loose membership and it is open to anyone who wants to participate. And I think also a key element is that any dissenting or minority view should be duly documented and recorded. So that is, I think, the basic principles we agreed on and we abide by, and if we need to be tighter with that, that is, I think, very much open and will be part of the discussion we are starting now. Yes, Avri concerned about there being a single notion of membership. I think that goes the same way, that we are all looking towards a very open and very loose membership notion.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Are there other questions? Comments? Can we go on the section we had DCs within the IGF framework, which I think is something we have been focused on the past few years? I see here question 32, would you like DCs to be more involved in the planning of IGF annual meetings? This is very much something we have been discussing.

>> WOUT DE NATRIS: This is Wout. As a comment going towards the relationship with the Secretariat and the options that may offer to Dynamic Coalitions, at this point in time they have to organize a lot of work around the Dynamic Coalitions themselves, and the question is is there an option to have the same sort of facility that the Forum or fora have where working documents are (?) we are currently working in Google Doc and some people are opening folders there so verse people around the globe can work, but at the same time in my opinion, I can't judge for the other Dynamic Coalitions, but we are working in the Internet standards between all of the different stakeholders in a very sensitive position on neutrality and being able to work through the UN system with documents that would be better, that would guarantee that neutrality, because we will not depend on any commercial or so-called free option that the world has to offer at this point and we would work under a neutral umbrella of the IGF. It's that option that could become available to the Dynamic Coalitions just like a best practice at this point in time. That is a question we can ask in the survey if other Dynamic Coalitions need that neutrality as well. Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: That can be put on the wish list, but it would be a paradigm shift away from having a very self-constituted and self-organized Dynamic Coalitions as we have had them in the past, whether as we discussed a little bit last time, the work, the substantive work is done by the Dynamic Coalitions themselves. Avri, please.

>> AVRI DORIA: My comment is on something else. If there is more discussion on this one, I should wait.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: When we can, you know, we are here to listen and I think Sorina is taking notes. It's a question asked you, I just commented saying that would be a very big change from past practice, but it is, everything can be discussed, but. Avri, please.

>> AVRI DORIA: Mine was a questionnaire point. Looking at questions 38 and 39, again, the idea that there is a question after saying what did you think of the previous question. If all of the questions were going to have life text boxes then what did you think about the previous question. How much time did you estimate somebody was going to take doing this? This looks like it could be a full-time avocation for a DC for quite a bit of time. I apologize for being a bad participant, but has that been discussed about what sort of effort the DC coordinating group is looking for? Because this is many, many hours of work. Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. This is extremely valid point. Indeed, we have not discussed that question, but I think as Sorina said if I got her right, she does not expect that every DC would answer every question. Sorina would you like to jump in.

>> SORINA TELEANU: The idea was to make only the key questions compulsory and leave the rest optional if you want to provide more details into this and that. So even though we have 43 questions, it doesn't mean you have to respond to every single one, but, you know, we haven't really thought about how much time it would take to go through all of them.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Maybe building own what Avri said and what you just said, could it make clearer that you have a section of compulsory questions, then the more granular ones are optional and group them into two categories in each section, have one mandatory question where people can expand for and then you have maybe the granular follow-up questions which are optional. That's just an idea. And please, if I don't see your hand up, just shout. We are not that many on the call. I think we can be dynamic in our conversation here as it is about Dynamic Coalitions. Then there is the section on DCs and the future of the IGF.

>> WOUT DE NATRIS: I think this section ties into the relationship of the MAG in the future, and on what will the IGF be in the future. That is something that I can't answer obviously, but it is something that we could have a discussion on, I think, what ideally would the role be in the future of the Dynamic Coalitions and how in the future if they are elevated to one of the principle cores of the IGF how the topics discussed there would return into IGF program as a whole. And that changes the relationship between the Dynamic Coalitions and MAG somehow in my view. Not that I have a view on that, but it's something that we need to seriously look at, because how do you integrate what is happening in the Dynamic Coalitions and the best practice fora, and the general idea of the IGF is to have this open and structures MAG as possible and that could lead to such a conflict of interest at some point in time. That is something that we need to avoid because that is not what is intended by the IGF. So what sort of questions could we device that would address that and to make sure that the Dynamic Coalitions gather somehow a better say in the MAG process, but at the same time would not invade the open process the IGF is, and that is a delicate matter in my opinion.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Looking at the previous section there are overlap of previous DCs in the framework and DCs and the future of the IGF. This maybe could be looked at like question 31 is very much future looking and that maybe could be added to the or could be shifted around. I don't think we need to go -- it's all good points Wout made, but I don't know whether there are other ideas or can we just leave it to Sorina to figure out how best to deal with this.

>> WOUT DE NATRIS: An idea could be to look at the goals the Dynamic Coalitions strive for and how they tie into the general program. That is something that could be discussed at the first open MAG meeting whether Dynamic Coalitions need to get a bigger role at that point and that would take care of interactions of workshops needed perhaps in the future. So that's an open discussion. And at this point in time, my general idea is that the DCs are there, but they don't play a huge role in the rest of the IGF program and the functionality is forming the relationship, and the DCs are to become one of the major outputs of the IGF, there has to be a tie in somewhere. And that is something that could be discussed in one or two questions. And that would be a future relationship and on content, specifically on content, thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: I wonder if Sorina has reaction on how to deal with this.

>> SORINA TELEANU: I'm not sure whether we want to add more questions building on what has been said, but I'm thinking we can get answers to some of the points raised by looking at responses to the questions we already have in because many look at outputs and how DCs contribute or don't yet contribute to the overall IGF outputs and the future of the IGF, so we can probably draw some conclusions from all of that on the points that Wout has just raised.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: My point would be that some of the questions, like 31 and 32 seem to be more future oriented. They should maybe shift into different sections. My suggestion would be to leave that in Sorina's able hand just to go through it and again and it's simply restructuring and if you make it clear what are the mandatory questions in each section and which ones are the optional ones, I think that might also then be helpful for answering. One thing we haven't said and discussed but we assumed it was understood, we expect you to go through the survey with all of your members, whoever they are. I mean, essentially to have a discussion on your mailing list or with respect to mailing lists for each DC and come back with a consolidated view of your members. Are there other questions? I think we had very good discussion and we are racing through this questionnaire. So it took much less time than I had anticipated, but there is nothing wrong with that if we give you back some minutes of your life. Have we concluded discussion on the questionnaire? Can we then move to the question on the question I raised under any other business which is also very much linked to the questionnaire in many ways? I don't want to close the discussion prematurely if there are still people would like to contribute to the discussion.

>> WOUT DE NATRIS: I will ask the question, I don't know if we have the time to do this. Consider is Wout, that in the comments that are made is that when we started this Dynamic Coalitions from all sides within the Coalition and people who are not even contemplating to participate but have some interest in this topic, we got questions on membership, we got questions on how are you ever going to take decisions, how are we going to legitimize what you are doing, that sort of question. So we have lost months of valuable time to working towards a conclusion on how to address these internal governance and perhaps external governance issues within the DC, and my question to people presently is have you ever experienced these sort of serious questions without doubting the legitimacy of this DC and I'm not saying that a lot of people do that because we have a very active membership. We can announce Chairs of all of the Working Groups and the Vice Chairs pretty soon, but this is an experience that is unique or is that something that is happening to everybody? Because perhaps we can learn from these experiences and incorporate something in the governance document that we have almost finished now so that we can put in some lessons from other DCs.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. We are definitely learning from each other and it is a very useful part of this exercise. Jutta has some comments. Is that in answer to Wout's remarks?

>> JUTTA CROLL: Yes. I would like to try to answer some of Wout's questions although I don't think we -- I think we would need a half a day to discuss the different experiences DCs have made over the years. So from my perspective being a member of two DCs from the second IGF on, I think, it's, it has been evolving over time. So firstly, DCs were just an idea that it could be an additional element in the whole IGF ecosystem, and that has developed from those years. And in this process when Dynamic Coalitions achieved more relevant role in IGF work. I think there is more attention to how they are formed, how they come together, what is the reason, the purpose, and what are the members? So it has gained more attention with the growing role of Dynamic Coalitions play in the whole system, and that might be one of the reasons why there are not more questions posed to Dynamic Coalitions that are newly formed compared to the more, in the first years Dynamic Coalitions emerged as a new form of Internet Governance work. That might be one reason, but I do think all of the Dynamic Coalitions we have now have different experiences made over the course of their formation and then becoming part of the whole system.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. I think that's a useful reminder that there has been a gradual evolution of the Dynamic Coalitions, and the fact that they are more in the centre also of activities, we have since, when was it, 2015 we had the annual main session of Dynamic Coalitions. People may be more aware of them, but Avri, you have a comment?

>> AVRI DORIA: Yes. Looking at that notion of legitimacy of making decisions and such, and realizing, and we haven't participated -- this is the DC schools on Internet Governance, we haven't participated in the main sessions, never feeling that we were that kind of content contributing DC. We work on these documents in terms of clues and helps on how to do a school, and legitimacy, feelings of legitimacy have come from new people having read it by putting together a school and saying, gee, that was helpful, but we needed something on this. Oh, good, please come and write something on this. And, you know, having documents that are open to anybody that reads them to comment, to add text, to delete text, to change text, always in suggest mode and then at every meeting walking through the document and discussing every proposed change. So it's a very different mode. We are not trying to put out content. I don't know -- we know that there are some schools that participate and there are a group of schools that don't, and that's okay. I haven't felt that that makes us illegitimate, just it hasn't gotten universal yet. We hope to bring them at some point. So how does that fit into other notions of legitimacy? It seems that, you know, it's a different sort of thing, it's evolved differently, but I don't know. But that's a question I come up with are is, you know, is that a mode that is accepted? It's a mode that doesn't contribute to the main session because we are talking about documents. We are talking about schools. We are not talking about principles, as it were. At a meta level, yes, we are talking about principles but we are not actually getting into them. I don't know. That's why I worry about standardizing too much, but perhaps that's the trend, so I don't know. Thanks.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, no, that's, again, a very valid reminder of how diverse and Dynamic Coalitions are. There is no one size fits all. And obviously what you just said about the Dynamic Coalitions schools of Internet Governance, it's a very useful type of exchange of experiences, a very useful function, and you learn from each other, and I think that gives you legitimacy. But legitimacy is always a somewhat tricky word, I think. In a way, you know, the Dynamic Coalitions have legitimacy as they operate within the IGF framework which operates under the auspices of the United Nations Secretary-General, but it's a very delegated, shall I put it, legitimacy. But I think in the past, I think we had very good examples of output of Dynamic Coalitions that has been taken very seriously. So it's, I think, first and foremost their own work that gives them legitimacy, that makes them accepted and taken seriously. But I notice there has been some comments also in the chat related to youth representatives, parliamentarians and academics in the survey, and there is a comment by Elliot. Elliot, do you want to take the floor and --

>> ELLIOT MANN: I will turn on my camera. Ignore my disheveled room. I'm part of the Youth DC, and obviously we span a lot of different stakeholder groups, and I noticed, I mean, question five, I'm not sure if it was actually, you can select multiple or just one, but either way, one thing I was going to say if I was to be answering the survey is I would be pointing out that, you know, multiple stakeholder groups are represented, and, you know, particularly when it comes to youth representatives and everything, it can span multiple stakeholder groups so, yes, Sorina is saying it is multiple choice, so that's perfect. That was my only comment.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. Other comments? If not, then I would briefly like to go back to the issue I raised under any other business, and that is how to deal with conflicts or potential conflicts within Dynamic Coalitions, and that maybe not all of you are aware of when we started the DC coordination that was back in 2014-15 there was one Dynamic Coalitions where there was an issue. There was one member representing one particular stakeholder group who complained that his views were consistently and constantly marginalized and ignored. And there we develop this principle that, first of all, lists the three Os, the three opens, the list has to be open, membership have to be open, archives have to be open, and we also said that minority views are potentially dissenting views need to be reflected in outcomes. And so far that has been, I think, working remarkably well, and there was never any need for looking closer into this, but, however, we also discussed a bit what do we do in case Dynamic Coalitions doesn't abide by these principles, but we did not feel the need for developing any sanctioning mechanism or dispute resolution mechanism, and it was felt that if anything happens, it would be best left to the Secretariat, but the Secretariat would not be very happy with having to deal with this as it definitely would have the legitimacy to deal with it, but at the same time, it would put colleagues and the Secretariat in a very uncomfortable position. So I think, and there was concrete case again in one Dynamic Coalitions, and I saw an email which mentioned that one member had not observed the code of conduct of the IGF, and it is assumed that the IGF code of conduct applies to all constituent parts of the IGF, also to the DCs, so I definitely would also consider that it's important that all DC members abide by the code of conduct, but what do we do if one DC says one of our members has not respected the code of conduct? Can we leave it up to them to say you are a bad guy? You have not reflected the code of conduct, or if that bad guy or girl then says, sorry, no, I have respected it, is there a way we can provide an appeal? The difficulty I see if it's one Dynamic Coalitions that does not like what one member says, then it's an easy way out to say you have not respected the code of conduct, but then you judge the party at the same time, and my view is that there should be some kind of third-party review mechanism, whatever form that will take. I'm not suggesting that we discuss this at length now, but I would like to put it on the agenda of our next meeting and I think listen also to the collective wisdom of the DCs and I see there are hands up and we can listen to the wisdom of Avri. Avri first.

>> AVRI DORIA: Not presuming to give any wisdom, but I would have thought that there kind of already is. Now, you may want to formalize it more or do something, but, you know, the groups have to work on their own, but they also do have the ability to go to go to the Secretary when it's a code of conduct. I think that the Secretariat is the next address for an unresolvable code of conduct issue. And I think the Secretariat has an immediate path to the two of you that are coordinators so between the three of you there is already sort of a default address, and it's at that point that you guys can then decide, gee, this is really serious, let's put together, you know, let's get some people to help us, or this is something that's systematic and we should come to the group and say, hey, do we need a rule or do we need a norm, or do we need, you know, a tendency, and then the group goes there and such. So I don't know that from my view, unless, as I say, things have changed a lot, you already kind of do have a process and a sequence as long as you assume that code of conduct is a Secretariat-owned notion. The IGF came up with it, but it's the Secretariat that owns that notion that enforces that notion. That is the only one with an enforcement power, you know, in that. So, but I could see wanting to formalize it, but that's hard. So it doesn't sound like this isn't working. Is it just a concern about the future that there may be something that doesn't work for that kind of scheme that you have got?

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Well --

>> AVRI DORIA: Am I totally out of my mind?

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Definitely not. I agree with you that an overcomplicated and overcomplex mechanism would be too complicated to develop, but what you just said, yes, it may be here in but it's not really spelled out, so maybe one answer could be to spell it out more explicitly so that it's clearer to everyone. But Wout has offered some ideas. Please, Wout.

>> WOUT DE NATRIS: Thank you, Markus. I had to unmute. We have addressed it in our governance document, but that is basically on content, so two groups within Working Group really have divergent ideas, then our concept is on content to write them down both and they can supply their arguments for it and then we present both to the world if that is necessary. And there are two other options, perhaps more, but I will stick with two is when the DC starts fighting amongst each other and stops functioning, and that is something that perhaps never has habited before, but if that happens, then there needs to be some sort of conflict resolution a or decision saying you stopped being a Dynamic Coalitions because you are not functioning. But that is the role of the Secretariat. The third one I would like to mention is when somebody really truly misbehaves in some way, and I think one of the best practices for experiences with that, and I can't remember which one, but I think the one on gender, and that was sold somehow by addressing the person directly, and perhaps I don't know because I'm not a member, but I heard the discussions, perhaps the member was just deleted from the membership list, because that is when someone truly misbehaves and the censure could be you are no longer a member of this group. So you are scratched from the email list, but you can register under another name tomorrow that is something different. But that could be a storm of censure against the IGF, and then it comes back to the Secretariat to decide what needs to happen because people consult with themselves over content. So perhaps there are more options.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. On content, that's clearly well within the overall principles of Dynamic Coalitions that you -- I'm sorry. I mistakenly pressed the mute button. I'm saying on content, there you reflect the current principle that also minority or dissenting opinions need to be documented. But you also mentioned then the possibility of sanctions and, oak, well, the BPFs are different in the sense that they depend more directly from the Secretariat. They are not as autonomous as the Dynamic Coalitions, but, you know, you can say if a Dynamic Coalitions is visibly dysfunctional, then it can be said you don't exist anymore, that would be a Secretariat role could be in theory or you are not given a slot at the annual meeting until you sort yourself out, for instance, these are various options. But Mark and Jutta.

>> MARK CARVELL: This whole discussion, which is think is very important to have, and I understand the reasons you are raising it now, flagging it for the next meeting, it all links into evolution of the IGF and legitimacy and transparency and accountability and what I mentioned earlier, the legitimacy of how decisions are taken. If there are members of a coalition who are disruptive, if there is a risk of capture of the coalition by a particular, a group with a particular position, these situations do have to be dealt with in a way which is respected by the stakeholder community. So I just want to throw that in. I mean, at the risk of capture, I think it's going to become more important to anticipate, hopefully it will never happen, but it could happen. If Dynamic Coalitions become fully integrated component in the way the IGF plus works. So we do need to give serious thought to this. Thank you.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Jutta.

>> JUTTA CROLL: Yes, I wanted to reflect on what Wout said about sanctions. I do think we have legal grounds for sanctions towards Dynamic Coalitions once they do not adhere to the terms of reference for Dynamic Coalitions. That part as far as I know is really clear and compensable. We don't have any legal grounds for sanctions towards any individual member, be it a person or an organisation of a Dynamic Coalitions. So on that basis, we have a clear regulation that Dynamic Coalitions are open to any person and any organisation that wants to join a Dynamic Coalitions. So if we do come to a conclusion and we will discuss that if I understood Markus right in our next call, if we come to the conclusion that we need probably this resolution, dispute mechanisms that include sanctions then we would need to have a mandate to create such a catalog of mechanisms and then also sanctions. So far we don't have legal grounds to a you are no longer a member of this specific Dynamic Coalitions to any person or any organisation.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. I mean, as I said, this is not an issue that we can solve quickly, but I think Avri pointed into the direction that we maybe need to codify a bit more what already exists, and if you look at the terms of reference of the DC coordination group -- it doesn't go as far as that, but it does clearly give the group the mandate to develop further procedures. And maybe some of them are already in place, but I think it would need to be made more explicit. And I think the point also Avri made about the Secretariat being the owners of the code of conduct is, I think, a very sensible remark. Sorina may not like it, but this is something -- I don't know, is that spelled out anywhere on the website? But maybe it should also be made clearer. Is there a sanction for someone who doesn't respect the code of conduct? To be frank, I don't know it, and if somebody knows it, please say so, but we don't need to look too deep into that at this stage. But my suggestion would be to put it on the agenda of our next meeting as a fully-fledged Agenda Item. And we maybe can do a little bit more research on what is around on the IGF website and how maybe put, pull the various strands together, and maybe there isn't really much need for doing that much on this issue, but just really tying the various loose ends together and to make it more explicit of what is already there. Adam joined us a little bit lake. Welcome. He is our co-facilitator and he is the MAG member who has taken on the liaison role, and also Andrea joined us a little bit late, but she apologized. No worries there Andrea, you are always more than welcome. With that, we have almost reached the top of the hour, and unless there are any final comments.

>> ANDREA SAKS: Hi, thank you. Sorry. I had one computer die, and luckily I had an old one that I dug out of a cupboard that I managed to resurrect. So, again, I apologize for not getting on. Did you cover anything about what we discussed by email regarding sign language? And I'm sorry, I have not been able to get that document updated to you, but have you made the other people aware that there is a misconception that International Sign is a shorthand? Because I hope to update what International Sign is and has become because of the increased populations in the ITU is my experience, and now possibly in the Dynamic Coalitions on Accessibility and Disability. Because they know it existed and all sign languages are unique to their own country. International Sign is not a shorthand, and the UN interpreters are extremely proficient now at adapting to who is on, what their sign language is, and adapting words in International Sign that can be understood. It is much more complex. That's kind of what I wanted to say, but I am going to update the passage I wrote years ago for the DCAD and update so I wanted to say that publicly because a lot of people don't understand how interest nationality sign works. I hope that's helpful. And thank you for let he me say that.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you Andrea, we have not discussed any substantive issues relating to the Dynamic Coalitions. We have discussed the questionnaire and more procedure issues, but obviously we all attach importance to accessibility issues and sign language is a relative new to the IGF community, but I think we take it seriously. And Jutta is leaving.

>> JUTTA CROLL: Sorry, I have to be punctual.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: We reached the top of the hour and we are just about concluding. I just took note of Mark's suggestion for future Agenda Item how should DCs and DC coordination engage with the proposed IGF high level board. That is definitely something we can put on one of our future Agenda Items. Okay. With that, then I thank you all for participating. I think Sorina has enough to do to update her questionnaire. Thank you once again to Sorina for her hard work and thank you all for participating actively and constructively to this meeting. And then next, the next DC coordination group meeting we put this Agenda Item as a fully-fledged Agenda Item. With that, goodbye from me. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.

>> Thank you all, stay safe, see you next time.

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