Professor Rohan Samarajiva has been appointed as a member of the Advisory Group of UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation.

The UN Secretary-General’s Strategy on new technologies has called for the responsible adoption of AI and other frontier technologies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda.

The UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation has underlined the urgent need to improve global digital cooperation in a manner that is “grounded in common human values–-such as inclusiveness, respect, human-centeredness, human rights, international law, transparency and sustainability.

Prof. Rohan Samarajiva is founding Chair and former CEO of LIRNEasia, a digital policy and regulation think tank active across emerging economies in South and South East Asia.  He also serves as Chair of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, the apex ICT organization within the government of Sri Lanka.

He will attend the meeting of the UN Global Pulse Advisory Group on the 'Governance of Data and AI' which will be held on Palais Wilson,Geneva, Switzerland from 13 - 15  of this month.

The Group includes international leaders from the public sector, civil society, private sector and legal community. Members of the Group serve as advocates for privacy and the human rights-centric approach to data and AI for purposes of sustainable development, humanitarian action and peace. Group members serve in their personal capacity, not as representatives of their affiliated organizations. Opinions and feedback are based on members’ own field of expertise, and informed by generally accepted privacy principles and ethical standards.

In 2014 UN Global Pulse established a Data Privacy Advisory Group to address the challenges posed by the use and non-use of data for global development, peace and humanitarian action in response to the “data revolution”. Prof. Samarajiva  has also served as a consultant in 2014. In 2019, the Group is expanding to incorporate greater expertise in AI ethics and human rights, given the rapid development and use of emerging technologies across all sectors globally. Members’ expertise informs the development of strategies and guidelines on the ethical and privacy-protective use of data and AI, while preserving their transformative value for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda..

Prof .Samarajiva was the Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Ministry for Economic Reform, Science and Technology, responsible for infrastructure reforms, and Director General of Telecommunications, CEO of the Telecom Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka.

He was Associate Professor of Communication and Public Policy at the Ohio State University in the US and Visiting Professor of Economics of Infrastructure at TU Delft in the Netherlands.

He serves on the Boards of Communication Policy Research south and the Lanka Software Foundation.  He received the Sri Lanka Telecom ZeroOne Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution  as a public policy maker and advocate and was recognized as an Internet Pioneer by the Sri Lanka Chapter of the Internet Society.