Thomas Schneider is the Ambassador and Director of International Affairs 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 has been 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.) since 2003.
Mr. Schneider has represented 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 has been the regional coordinator for the WEOG governments in the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) of the Internet Governance Forum since 2006. As the responsible person in the Swiss government for the hosting of the UN IGF 2017 in Geneva, he is acting as co-chair of the IGF MAG for 2017. He has represented Switzerland in ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) since 2009 and has been vice-chair of the GAC since 2013 and been elected as the chair of the GAC and GAC liaison to the ICANN board in October 2014 and been reelected in October 2016. He is one of the initiators and co-coordinators of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG - the European IGF), since 2008. He is also one of the initiators of the Swiss IGF which had its first meeting in Bern in May 2015. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP), an initiative of the Swiss government to facilitate capacity building and access to information on Internet governance issues and processes, since 2014. He has been a bureau member of the Council of Europe's new Steering Committee on Media and the Information Society (CDMSI) since 2011 and vice-chair in 2014. He is a member of the Council of Europe (CoE) expert group on Internet intermediaries (MSI-NET). He was a member of the CoE expert group on cross-border flow of Internet traffic and Internet freedom (2014-2015). He was vice-chair of the CoE’s expert group on rights of internet users (2012-2013) and chair of the CoE's expert group on new media (2009-2011) and on human rights in the information society (2006-2009). He has represented Switzerland in the ITU Council Working Group on WSIS (since 2005) and co-chaired the ITU Council Working Group on Stakeholder Participation in ITU's activities related to WSIS (2006-2010).
From 2003-2005, he coordinated all Swiss activities in both phases of WSIS (Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005) on behalf of the Swiss State Secretary responsible for both WSIS phases including the Swiss hosting of the first phase of WSIS in Geneva. He represented Switzerland in the Bureau of the WSIS for the second phase of WSIS (Tunis 2005).