Ivan Bartoš

Deputy Prime Minister for Digitalisation; Minister for Regional Development, Government of the Czech Republic (Czech Republic)

Ivan Bartoš is the long-time chair of the Czech Pirate Party, having been at its founding in 2009. He has served as a Member of Parliament of the Czech Republic since autumn 2017 and defended his mandate in 2021. He has also served as Chairman of the Committee on Public Administration and Regional Development in the Chamber of Deputies for four years, where he has focused on issues such as digitisation. Ivan Bartoš was born in Jablonec nad Nisou, North Bohemia. At the age of seventeen, he went to the United States to study and successfully graduated from university. Subsequently, he also passed the Czech matriculation exam in his hometown at the Gymnasium U Balvanu. At the age of nineteen, he began studying at two universities in Prague: theology at the Hussite Theological Faculty and information studies and librarianship at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. Eventually he decided to focus more on information studies, in which he received a doctorate. During his studies he also returned to America once more, where he spent a semester at the School of Computer Science at the University of New Orleans. Professionally, he has worked in several Czech and multinational companies in the field of information technology, working for Newton IT, Monster Worldwide, T-Mobile or starting the Air Jobs job portal. He is married and has two children. He speaks fluent English, French and Russian.