Digital Geneva Atlas

​The Digital Geneva Atlas represents the most comprehensive mapping of digital policy actors and the internet governance scene in Geneva. The Atlas provides in-depth coverage of the activities of over 40 actors, including analysing policy processes and cataloguing core instruments and featured events.

The Digital Geneva Atlas is structured around key questions that explore the dynamic between technology and humanity:

• WHO are the main digital actors based in Geneva?
• WHAT are the leading technologies and policy issues they address?
• WHY does Geneva play such a vital role in the intersection of technology and humanity?
• WHEN did this relationship begin to take shape?
• HOW do legal and policy instruments facilitate digital governance?

WHO and WHAT

Mapping Geneva’s digital actors and focus areas

Want to know who’s doing what in Digital Geneva? Click on a technology or policy issue to see the actors driving it forward.

Explore Geneva’s digital ecosystem

Click on the map icon to view the digital profile of a specific organisation, or browse the full list of all featured actors in the Digital Geneva Atlas, including details on their events, policy instruments, and initiatives.

WHY

EspriTech de Geneve

(Tech spirit of Geneva)

Over the centuries, Geneva has been a meeting place between technology and humanity. Today, once again, in Geneva and worldwide, we find ourselves at a turning point facing both changes and challenges triggered by fast technological growth. As humanity steps out of its comfort zone into the new unknown, certainty ends, opportunity begins, and risks increase.

This text takes us on a historical tour to explore Geneva’s contribution towards a social contract that addresses technological development’s benefits and risks. As we seek social contracts for the future, we invite you to examine how your countries and communities’ cultures and intellectual histories have dealt with the interaction between technology and society.

Read more on EspriTech de Geneve, including its’ historical, philosophical, and theological origins.

Ask Digital Geneva

WHEN

A timeline of tech-humanity interplay in Geneva

HOW

Legal and policy instruments of digital governance

Different instruments are used to implement regulations, policies, and programmes. In the digital realm, there is a mix of traditional instruments applied to digital issues (conventions and standards) and new approaches developed specifically for digital issues (e.g. online dispute resolution mechanisms).

Read more about legal and policy instruments that facilitate digital governance.

Evolution of Geneva Digital Atlas (literature and events)

The Geneva Digital Atlas builds on 20 years of research, training, and policy-shaping work by DiploFoundation and the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP), including:

• 2000: Establishment of the first comprehensive taxonomy of Internet governance and digital policy
• 2003: Publishing of An Introduction to Internet Governance, the first reference work on Internet governance policy, now in its seventh edition and available online in 10 languages
• 2012: The study of the Geneva Internet Initiative (GII) (commissioned by EDA); the Study outlined the basic mapping of Internet governance actors and processes in Geneva, it made recommendations, and set the methodology for covering Internet governance in International Geneva
• 2014: The Geneva Internet Conference, which addressed critical issues, gaps, and future developments in Internet governance and digital politics. The Conference set in motion the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP)
• June 2020:  The conference Navigating Geneva Digital Landscape which revisited the Geneva digital governance scene
• ‘Internet Governance in International Geneva‘ by M. Kende, Fondation pour Genève, September 2020
• November 2020: The Launch of the Geneva Digital Atlas
• November 2022: The Launch of the Geneva Digital Atlas 2.0