The Media Change & Innovation Division, represented by William J. Drake, has organised two workshops at the World Summit on the Information Society Forum in Geneva, May 2016:

Moderated by William J. Drake, the first workshop titled "Internet Fragmentation" built inter alia on an initial mapping report, "Internet Fragmentation: An Overview" that was written by William J. Drake, Vinton Cerf and Wolfgang Kleinwächter and released at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos in January 2016.

As there is no general consensus about the nature, scope and potential impact of Internet fragmentation, much less how the issues could best be addressed, this workshop brought together a multistakeholder group of analysts to advance the conversation and help build a shared understanding of the topic.

Topics included the nature of Internet fragmentation; technical, commercial and governmental forms of fragmentation; and options for advancing global awareness and distributed responses to problematic cases.

The second workshop titled "Enhanced Cooperation and Internet Governance" was co-organised with the Centre for Communication Governance at the National Law University, Delhi and Global Partners Digital. The 2005 Tunis Agenda for the Information Society called for enhanced cooperation to enable governments, on an equal footing, to carry out their roles and responsibilities in international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet, but not in the day-to-day technical and operational matters that do not impact on international public policy issues. In the decade since, the international community has struggled to reach consensus as to the precise meaning and implementation of this enhanced cooperation. This workshop brought together a multistakeholder group of analysts and participants in the debate to provide initial inputs for the reconvened discussions to come and help build a shared understanding of the topic.

WSIS is a UN summit that was initiated in order to create an evolving multi-stakeholder platform aimed at addressing the issues raised by ICTs through a structured and inclusive approach at the national, regional and international levels. The WSIS Forum 2016 represents the world's largest annual gathering of the ‘ICT for development’ community.