Stakeholder Group: Government
Region: Western European and Others Group - WEOG
Biography
Thomas Schneider is the head of the international affairs service and the international information society coordinator at the Swiss Federal Office of Communication (OFCOM) in the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). He is an expert in internet governance and in the governance of the information society, in particular media/new media regulation, human rights and consumer protection. He is coordinating the Swiss activities with regard to the implementation and follow-up of the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and is representing Switzerland in a number of international fora (UN, ITU, ICANN/GAC, Council of Europe, OSCE, UNESCO, etc.).
He is representing Switzerland in the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) which is responsible for assessing the WSIS Follow-up in the UN System, since 2006. He is representing Switzerland in ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), where he is also a member of the "GAC secretariat task force". He is one of the initiators and co-coordinators of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG - the European IGF), since 2008. He is a bureau member of the Council of Europe's new Steering Committee on Media and the Information Society (CDMSI) and also a member of the new Council of Europe's expert group on rights of internet users. He was the chair of the past CoE's expert groups on new media (2009-2011) and on human rights in the information society (2006-2009). He is representing Switzerland in the ITU Council Working Group on WSIS )since 2005) and has been co-chairing the ITU Council Working Group on Stakeholder Participation in ITU's activities related to WSIS (2006-2010).
From 2003-2005, he was coordinating all Swiss activities in both phases of WSI (Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005) on behalf of Marc Furrer, the Swiss State Secretary responsible for both WSIS phases including the Swiss hosting of the first phase of WSIS in Geneva.He was representing Switzerland in the Bureau of the WSIS for the second phase of WSIS (Tunis 2005).
Thomas Schneider was born in St. Gallen in 1972 and lives in Zürich since 1992, where he studied history, national economics and English literature. He likes alternative rock music and French vintage cars with hydraulic suspension.