The India School on Internet Governance (inSIG) was founded in 2016, when inSIG2016 was convened in Oct-Nov 2016 at IIIT Hyderabad, immediately prior to the ICANN57 meeting held at the same city. The event had 44 participants from 9 countries and 22 speakers from 12 countries. The second edition of
Given the global pandemic, inSIG2020 was organized as a virtual event, hosted by ISOC Mumbai Chapter. The event was conducted over three days (7-10 Oct 2020), with a Day 0 event on 3 Oct 2020.
The 2021 edition of inSIG was organized as a virtual event, with a Fellows meet-n-greet on 14 Nov 2021 and the main sessions during 19-21 Oct 2021. The host chapter was Chennai.
After two years of virtual editions, inSIG2022 was organised as a face-to-face event during 25–28 September 2022. The seventh edition was hosted by the ISOC Hyderabad Chapter and was held at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad. This was followed by the eighth edition, inSIG 2023, which was held at IIT Guwahati and hosted by the ISOC Kolkata Chapter, and the ninth edition, inSIG 2024, which was held at IIM Bangalore and hosted by the ISOC Bengaluru Chapter.
The objectives of inSIG are:
- Impart formal training on Internet Governance to participants so as to prepare them for engagement in global Internet Governance processes. To this end, the programme content is a balanced mix of global IG topics, regional topics and India-specific topics (in the approximate ratio of 60:10:30);
- Nucleate a community of Internet Governance professionals in India through alumni;
- Introduce to participants some of the global experts in Internet Governance as speakers in the program;
- Provide networking opportunities for participants; and
- Provide an international setting for participants through a mix of domestic and international participants, making inSIG a national-regional SIG.
inSIG builds on the vision and design of the past editions and is successfully building a community of IG professionals in India as well as in the broader South Asia region of Asia-Pacific, who can effectively participate in the global Internet Governance processes.The event is also a forum to discuss topical issues of specific relevance to India.
The first edition of inSIG was organized jointly by ISOC India Trivandrum and ISOC India Delhi Chapters in 2016. This group was joined by Kolkata (2018), Mumbai (2019) and Chennai (from 2021). ISOC India Hyderabad chapter joined the Organizing Team in 2021.