Barbara Ubaldi is the Acting Head of the Division on Open and Innovative Governments within the OECD Public Governance Directorate.   

Barbara leads the work on digital technologies and data to enhance openness, efficiency and innovation in governments. She is responsible for country reviews, for monitoring the implementation of the OECD Recommendation on Digital Government Strategies and the Recommendation on Enhanced Access and Sharing of Data and for the OECD OURdata Index and Digital Government Index.

Barbara served for eight years as Programme Officer within the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. She gathered extensive experience working on digital government, ICT and knowledge management for development. A Fulbright Scholar, Barbara holds a M.S. on Public Administration from Northeastern University in Boston. Apolitical listed Barbara among the 2018 and 2019 TOP 20 most influential figures on Digital Government worldwide.

Ulrik Vestergaard Knudsen took up his duties as Deputy Secretary-General in January 2019.

His portfolio includes the strategic direction of OECD policy on science, technology and innovation; employment, labour and social affairs, migration, health; education; and trade and agriculture.

He oversees the Centre for Skills and the Well-Being, Inclusion, Sustainability and Equal Opportunity Centre (WISE), and in June 2021 was appointed OECD Gender & Diversity Champion, leading the organisation’s work on Gender Equality.

Jointly with the Secretary-General, Mr. Knudsen transformed the OECD Executive Committee in Special Session into the Global Strategy Group (GSG) to have a strategic forum to discuss issues of global relevance, which he chaired from 2013-2017.

Until the end of 2018, Mr Knudsen was Permanent Secretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Denmark. Prior to this, he served as Sherpa and Chief Diplomatic Advisor to two Danish Prime Ministers on Security Policy and on EU and Foreign Affairs in the Prime Minister’s Office. Mr Knudsen served as Ambassador to the OECD and UNESCO in Paris (2008-09). Besides his diplomatic career, which includes postings in London (2003-04), Washington (1998-2000) and Moscow (1997), he briefly served as Group Director for International Policy at Vodafone in London (2013).

He holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Copenhagen (1994), where he also acted as external lecturer, and he has published various papers and publications on Asia, WTO, trade policy and globalisation.

Carlos Santiso has a long career working on improving lives in fragile states and emerging economies in Africa and the Americas by furthering democracy, strengthening governance and fighting corruption. In the past two decades, he has worked in over two dozen countries in various capacities in multilateral development banks, bilateral aid agencies, and policy think tanks. He is the Director for Digital Innovation in Government at the Development Bank of Latin America, based in Colombia. He previously headed the Innovation for Citizen Services Division of the Inter-American Development, which he joined in 2011 to manage the Institutional Capacity of the State Division; as Sector Manager for Governance at the African Development Bank between 2007 and 2011, as governance adviser to the British government aid agency between 2002 and 2007 and as senior operations officer at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance between 1996 and 2000. He started his career as an adviser at the French Prime Minister’s Office between 1995 and 1996. He is a founding member of the board of adviser of the Centre for Democratic Governance in Burkina Faso. Carlos holds Ph.D. in comparative political economy from Johns Hopkins University (2006), a master in international economic policy from Columbia University (1995) and a master in public policy from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Paris (1993). He has written extensively on digital government, democratic governance, development finance and foreign aid.