IGF-USA 2009 — In-Depth Report: Minutes Digest & 3-Line Summary

The 3-Line Summary

1. On 2 October 2009 the first-ever IGF-USA convened at the CSIS think tank in Washington, D.C., bringing government, business, civil society and academia together across seven workshops on the Internet's future.
2. Markus Kummer of the UN IGF Secretariat and NTIA administrator Lawrence Strickling headlined; speakers welcomed the ICANN-U.S. 'Affirmation of Commitments' signed two days earlier and endorsed extending the global IGF's mandate.
3. The meeting became one of the templates for national IGFs worldwide — a founding record of how a country builds a multistakeholder forum of its own.

Welcome — this is the Japan IGF Support Organization. This in-depth report on IGF-USA 2009 draws on official outputs, session records and on-site reporting. In a hurry? The three lines above and the diagrams carry the gist.

Conference at a Glance (from official records)

(See the source list at the end of this article.)

Discussion Digest — from the Session Records

Key exchanges extracted from session records and transcripts.

1. America's First National IGF — an 'Enthusiastic Endorsement' of Dialogue

Sessions: Opening session (Markus Kummer and Lawrence Strickling)

"It's an impressive gathering. This has turned into an enthusiastic endorsement of the IGF as a platform for dialogue"
— Markus Kummer (Executive Coordinator, UN IGF Secretariat) [2][1][5]

"The hope and expectation is that today's event will be first of many U.S. IGFs that will shape priorities in the Internet governance arena"
— Lawrence Strickling (Assistant Secretary of Commerce; NTIA Administrator) [2][1][5]

• Top-down control or widely distributed decision-making? Kummer traced how the global IGF chose to 'continue the dialogue in a multistakeholder mold' [2][1][5]
• The forum grew out of informal consultations after the Tunis WSIS summit, aiming to contribute to global policy debates rather than purely domestic ones [2][1][5]
• A mixed steering committee of NTIA, business, civil society and academic members ran the event — the template for every IGF-USA since [2][1][5]

2. Fresh off the Affirmation of Commitments — a Turning Point for ICANN and the U.S.

Sessions: Opening session and the 'News from Capitol Hill' segment on the Affirmation of Commitments and ICANN

"I was pleased I was able to represent the United States on Wednesday to sign the historic document"
— Lawrence Strickling (Assistant Secretary of Commerce; NTIA Administrator) [2][3]

• The Affirmation of Commitments between the U.S. Commerce Department and ICANN — which internationalised ICANN's accountability — had been signed just two days earlier, on 30 September 2009 [2][3]
• Strickling voiced strong U.S. support for the rapid introduction of internationalised country-code domains and said the U.S. government 'supports extending IGF past five years' [2][3]

3. Freedom and Privacy in a Web 2.0 World — Governing Social Networks and the Cloud

Sessions: Workshops 'Freedom of Expression in a Web 2.0 World' and 'Privacy and Security Implications for Web 2.0'

• Panellists explored how US-based companies and values could help the IGF promote free expression online [1][4]
• The privacy and security implications of social networks and cloud computing were examined from government, industry and civil-society angles, with US privacy advocates such as EPIC's Marc Rotenberg taking part [1][4]

4. Youth at the Table from Day One — 'GenNext' and Cybersecurity

Sessions: Workshops 'GenNext's Online Future' and 'Cyber Security: A National Priority in a Global Context'

• A dedicated workshop on young people's online future ran from year one, and Pew Internet Project director Lee Rainie keynoted on how Americans actually use the Internet [1][3]
• Cybersecurity was framed as 'a national priority in a global context', discussed alongside DNS abuse (e-crimes) and technical-foundation topics such as IPv6 and DNSSEC [1][3]

Three-Minute Short Talk — Your Questions Answered

Q. What is this meeting for?

A. It's the U.S. edition of the UN's Internet Governance Forum — not a decision-making body, but a place where government, business and civil society talk as equals and feed the results into the global IGF.

Q. What was the big story of the first meeting?

A. The Affirmation of Commitments, signed by ICANN and the U.S. Commerce Department just two days before. Assistant Secretary Strickling, who signed it, discussed the 'historic document' on stage.

Q. Why does it matter now?

A. National IGFs have since spread worldwide. IGF-USA 2009 is a founding record of how to build a national multistakeholder forum from scratch.

What Is USA IGF? (for first-time readers)

USA IGF is a National or Regional IGF Initiative (NRI), aligning local internet governance discussion with global IGF principles.

Why It Matters to You

What was discussed here becomes the baseline for national digital policy, platform rules and AI regulation worldwide within a few years. The principles confirmed at the 2009 meeting are the foundation of the "next rules" for the phones, social platforms and AI services you use every day.

Sources & References

1. IGF-USA 2009（公式アーカイブページ） — IGF-USA (accessed 2026-07-11)
2. Internet Governance Forum – USA, 2009: The opening session – UN and U.S. representatives emphasize vital need for transnational dialogue — Elon University Imagining the Internet (accessed 2026-07-11)
3. Internet Governance Forum – USA, 2009（セッション別記録アーカイブ） — Elon University Imagining the Internet (accessed 2026-07-11)
4. Imagining the Internet team documents IGF-USA in Washington, D.C. — Today at Elon (accessed 2026-07-11)
5. United States: IGF-USA（GISWatch国別報告） — APC / Global Information Society Watch (accessed 2026-07-11)

Quotes are translated or condensed from the records listed above. Bracketed numbers [n] refer to the source list.

Related links

• IGF official (NRI list): https://www.intgovforum.org/en/content/national-and-regional-igf-initiatives
• Japan IGF: https://japanigf.jp/
• Yuki Nakazawa's blog: https://nkzw.jp/category/igf/

Revision History

Rev. 1 — published 18 October 2009, 10:00 (Article published)

Rev. 2 — updated 16 July 2026, 20:09 (Fully revised into the in-depth edition: added the 3-line summary, minutes digest, short talk, source list and diagrams (all quotes verified against the listed sources))

— 中澤祐樹