IGF 2023 Town Hall #26 Determining a Global Standard for a Trustworthy Internet

As the Internet is increasing a vital service to meaningfully participate in civic life, internet measurement experts must have a framework for what constitutes a trustworthy internet that can be understood, measured, and improved globally. Measurement Lab has a track record of 14 years of measuring the internet, saving the data, and making it available and useful. In this town-hall style session, we will share out our work on a methodology to measure/rate how “resilient, reliable, accountable, and secure” the Internet is “on average”, techniques for data collection and publication to keep decision-makers accountable, methods for communicating data, and recommendations for policy and decision makers to improve their score. We will then host roundtable breakouts for participants to share their concerns and contributions to improve this methodology.


1) We will have virtual participants join ahead of the session and will require pre-registration, video off and sound off, and will turn on video and sound for those who have registered(this is to prevent zoombombing that has happened at regional and global IGFs in 2022). We will have the session divided into an open discussion and presentation with active participation on zoom chat, then the breakout discussion will separate in person and virtual participants to have their own breakout sessions, finally we will bring everyone back together for a readout and q&a to have a hybrid discussion.
2) We have had years of experience since 2015 of running hybrid in person and virtual events. Primarily the needs are: good internet connectivity, a link to the zoom or other platform site that will be used, good registration and communication ahead of time and throughout, and dedicated onsite technical moderators from the session directly interacting with the content moderator for the session.
3). In previous IGFs we have not been given the zoom link from the organizers until after the session is initiated. In this case we will include an additional registration and provide a link to a shared note taking and communication document so that everyone can connect ahead of time, and if needed we may provide our own link.