[IGFmaglist] Reflections on Grading IGF Workshop Proposals and How Far We have come as a MAG

[Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro]

Dear All,

As I sit and reflect on how far we have come since we graded Workshops in
New York in conjunction with the High Level Forum at the UN Headquarters in
New York, I cannot help but smile at how far we have come as the MAG and
the IGF Secretariat. It is important that these milestones logistically are
celebrated and that we continue to push for greater progress and look for
even more efficient ways of grading and data analytics. Things I am
grateful and thankful for in this journey:


   1. Those who were present and marking Workshops in 2016 can only
   remember how painful grading and marking were as we went through our
   troughs without any systematic way of grading causing us to work through
   the  3 days and 2 nights to get traction. We did manual data analytics in
   our efforts to assist.
   2. The establishment of a Working Group of MAG members to establish
   criteria for grading was set up following discussions/debate and eventual
   consensus with Dr Rasha leading the Charge.
   3. The IGF Secretariat took feedback from the processes and in turn
   developed a continuing evolving mechanism for grading which enabled less
   paper handling and moved to more efficient platforms and in turn better and
   more efficient data analytics in 2017. Clearly, there is still room to
   improve indicators by differentiating them and work is still underway.
   4. Collectively, we continued to seek ways to reduce conflict of
   interest in the manner in which Workshops were graded and the IGF
   Secretariat in redesigning the platforms this year, 2018 enabled this
   feature so that we did not have to manually do the same.
   5. As a MAG we were conscious of the transitionary nature of the entire
   IGF process post WSIS+10 and sought to implement what we were collectively
   seeing as calls for improvement and there is still much to be done.
   6. In 2017, we struggled with budgetary allocations which led to our not
   being able to support all the intercessional work and we entered 2018
   conscious of these impediments in the past.
   7. There are numerous people to thank for how far we have come, firstly
   to all the former MAG members that have served and contributed to reforms
   and developments turning what used to take 1 month to a mere few days and
   what used to take an exhaustive 3 days to I am sure more efficient
   mechanisms for dialogue (save the occasional heated exchange from being put
   in the same room for a long time - tongue in cheek), secondly to Lynn St
   Armour for her leadership, Chengetai Masango, Eleonora, Luis, Anja and all
   the amazing Secretariat staff and consultants, all Working Groups within
   the MAG and their respective Chairs, all MAG members, observers at MAG
   meetings,  THANK YOU. I am grateful and thankful for all your lives. I am
   thankful that one of the recommendations that the MAG made to get in
   potential new MAG members at the IGF meeting to ensure more seamless
   handing over has come to fruition.
   8. There are still many things to build on and improve but that is why
   we have a Working Group on Improvements which started last year and
   re-commissioned this year, for us to collaborate to continue to make our
   tasks as efficient as possible.
   9. I have been thinking lately about how we can well before the call for
   Workshop Proposals issue a call (I know we already have a resource list
   that exists on the IGF website which again was one of the recommendations
   for improvement by the MAG and also calls from the community) but to have a
   more systematic and reformed way by geography and region to allow conveyors
   to pool together to submit Workshop Proposals.
   10. I am impressed with the level and quality of Workshop Proposals this
   year even with the very little notice given but the volume and breadth of
   diverse workshops this year, although one of the continued challenges
   remains - attaining geographical and constituency diversity as per my
   Sample Space for grading at least.
   11. For once, I am happy and pleased to say that Grading this Year was
   not a struggle. Thank you Luis!!!! :):)

Till the next virtual meeting.

With every best wish,
Sala