Ambassador Thomas Schneider is leading the Swiss delegation in various fora in the field of digital and internet governance, including AI. In the past 20 years, he has been chairing several international committees and co-initiated several dialogue fora on national and international levels. He is currently the chair of the Council of Europe’s Committee on AI (CAI), mandated to negotiate a binding convention on AI. He has been a co-initiator of EuroDIG and is the president of its Support Association, since 2012. He is a bureau member of the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Media and Information Society (he was its chair in 2018-19 and vice-chair in 2020-21). He chaired several CDMSI expert groups. He has also been a member of the bureau of the CoE’s Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence in 2019-2021. From 2014-2017, he was the chair of ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee and in this role negotiated the compromise among governments and with the other stakeholders regarding the “IANA Stewardship transition”, the biggest reform in the ICANN system. He was a vice-chair of the OECD’s Committee for Digital Economy Policy (2020-2022). He was responsible for the organization of the 12th UN IGF in Geneva in 2017 co-chair of the IGF’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group in 2017. He participated in the meetings of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, as personal advisor of Swiss president Doris Leuthard (2018-2019). He has also been a co-initiator of the Swiss Internet Governance Forum, since 2013. Since 2003, he has been coordinating the Swiss activities with regard to the follow-up of the UN World Summit on the Information Society.
