Ambassador, Swiss Government
Thomas Schneider is Ambassador and Director of International Affairs at the Swiss Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) in the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). He is a long-standing expert in digital governance and in the governance of the information and knowledge society and artificial intelligence. He is leading the Swiss delegation in various key international fora in these fields. He has been coordinating the Swiss activities with regard to the implementation and follow-up of the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) since 2003. He is currently the vice-chair of the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Media and Information Society (CDMSI), a member of the bureau of the CoE’s Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI) and a vice-chair of the OECD’s Committee for Digital Economy Policy and he is the president of the EuroDIG Support Association (since 2012). From 2014-2017, he chaired ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and he has been responsible for organizing the 2017 UN Internet Governance Forum in Geneva, on behalf of the Swiss government. He has been participating in the meetings of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, as personal advisor of former Swiss president, Ms. Doris Leuthard (2018-2019).