Academic Background  and Career Highlights

Dr. Daniel STAUFFACHER, a former Ambassador of Switzerland,  has a Master’s degree in International Economic Affairs from Columbia University, New York and a Ph.D. in copyright and broadcasting media law from the University of Zürich. He worked for the district court of Zurich and was Managing Director of Hans-Rudolf Stauffacher Verlag, a publishing company (1977 – 1982), before joining the United Nations.

In 1982 he joined the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in New York and subsequently the  United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Laos (1984) and China (1987). In Laos he was responsible for UNDP’s rural development and poverty alleviation programmes and in  China for managing UNDP’s technical assistance support to the economic and administrative reform program of the Chinese Government.

In 1990 he joined the Swiss Federal Office for Foreign Economic Affairs (Bawi), where he was in charge of  Swiss Mixed Credit Financing Programmes for investment projects in India, Pakistan and China.

In 1992 he became a Division Chief of the Federal Office for Foreign Economic Affairs,  Division for Financial Cooperation with Central and Eastern European Countries,  responsible for financing of investment projects (mainly in the environment and infrastructure sectors), balance of payment support programmes, credit guarantees for private sector financing of investment projects, debt for environment swaps, technical assistance projects and the elaboration of first Swiss law on Economic and Financial Cooperation with Central and Eastern European Countries.

In this position he was also instrumental in organizing on behalf of the Swiss Government, the Luzern Conference “Environment for Europe” 1993, which called for the elaboration of an Environmental Action Plan for Europe.

In 1995, he was posted to the Swiss Mission to the European Union in Brussels as the Counsellor for Economic and Financial Affairs, responsible for financial services, internal market, investment policy, Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), Energy Charter Treaty, EU Enlargement.

In 1999, he became an Ambassador of Switzerland to the United Nations in Geneva and the Special Representative of the Swiss Government for the preparation and organization of the World Summit on Social Development in June 2000 in Genevawww.un.org/esa/socdev/geneva2000.

In 2002 he was a member of the Swiss Delegation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.

On behalf of the State Secretariat for Foreign Economic Affairs www.seco.admin.ch he was the co-convener of the first Global Compact Meeting in Switzerland (2002): The UN Global Compact and Swiss Business: Making Global Responsibility Work for Business and  Development, 29 October 2002, Palais des Nations, Geneva.

Daniel Stauffacher was also the Swiss Ambassador and the Special Representative of  the Swiss Government for the diplomatic preparation, organization and hosting of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), that was held in Geneva in 2003 (http://bit.ly/RzRRPC). He was the Director of the Swiss Executive Secretariat for WSIS (http://bit.ly/VrLLUd), a Co-Chairman of the Bureau of the WSIS Preparatory Committee (WSIS Prepcom) and Chairman of one of its Subcommittee.

He was subsequently Switzerland’s Ambassador to the WSIS in Tunis in 2005 and an advisor  to the UN in this regard. During that time he launched the ICT4Peace project (www.ict4peace.org) which resulted in the adoption of paragraph 36 of the WSIS Tunis Commitment. He was a member of the former UN ICT Task Force (www.unicttaskforce.org), the former UN Task Force on Financial Mechanisms for ICT4D, and the Strategy Group on Information Society of the Swiss Government.

In December 2005 he left the Swiss Government after 15 years of Government service. He became President of Wisekey (Switzerland) SA, an internet security company (2006 -2007). With Ambassador Blaise Godet he was co-founder and Executive Coordinator of the GenevaNetwork, Geneva (bit.ly/PPRrGe).  In 2007 he created his own consulting firm: Dr. Daniel Stauffacher + Partner (www.stauffacherconsulting.ch).

Present  Positions

He is President of Dr. Daniel Stauffacher + Partner (http://www.stauffacherconsulting.ch),  Founder and President of  the ICT4Peace Foundation, (www.ict4peace.org), a  Co-Founder and President of the Geneva Security Forum (www.genevasecurityforum.org), Founding Director, World Wide Web Foundation Board (www.webfoundation.org),  Member of the Foundation Board, Gulf Research Center Foundation, Geneva (www.grc.ae).

Daniel Stauffacher, on behalf of the ICT4Peace Foundation, is also a Special Advisor to the UN Assistant Secretary General and  Chief Information Technology Officer (UNCITO) (www.oict-un.org), OCHA, DPKO/DFS, WFP, UNHCR, UNDP, UNICEF, OHCHR regarding the UN Crisis Information Management System (CiMS) (http://ict4peace.org/updates/report-of-the-un-secretary-general-underscores-crisis-information-management-strategy).

He is the founding Chair of the International Advisory Board of the  Master Programme of Advanced Studies in Humanitarian Logistics and Management (www.mashlm.usi.ch) of the University della Svizzera Italiana (Faculty of Economics), Lugano.

An Advisor to the Chair of Sociology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH, Zurich,  (http://www.soms.ethz.ch/) for the FuturICT Flagship Project (http://bit.ly/W97J9B) and to the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Swiss Ministry for Defense, Sports and Civil Protection on matters related to Cybersecurity (http://bit.ly/VC1NqP).

In March 2012, on behalf of the ICT4Peace Foundation,  he was appointed  by the Office of the UN Secretary General to carry out a review of the UN Global Alliance on ICT4D (GAID) and make recommendations for its future course. Along with with Dr.  Armen Orujyan, President of Athgo he was appointed Co-Chair of GAID until December 2012 to carry out this task.

In 2012 Daniel Stauffacher was a member of the Advisory Group (Fachbeirat) of the first Open Government Data Study Switzerland (http://bit.ly/10An6z0) carried out by the Bern University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland.

Daniel Stauffacher is also a member of  the Steering Group (http://thewebindex.org/about/who-we-are/steering-group/), that helped produce the first ever Web Index (http://thewebindex.org), launched by Tim Berners Lee’s Web Foundation (http://www.webfoundation.org) in 2012.

Regarding his list of publications, kindly refer to: http://bit.ly/VmyOro

January 2013