About me
Tom De Smet is Director of Archives and Innovation at the National Archives of the Netherlands. After his graduation as an Occupational Psychologist in the UK he moved to Venice. There he could combine his love for film and culture producing film festivals, which in 2006 led him to make a move to the Netherlands to work in film post-production and digitization of audiovisual heritage. Later he became involved in the programme ‘Images for the Future’ that aimed at digitizing large audiovisual collections, among which the collection of Sound and Vision. At Sound and Vision he eventually became CIO and Head of Archives. As General Director of the Museum of Communication Museum in The Hague (NL) he successfully merged the museum with Sound and Vision in Hilversum between 2019 and 2021. Tom is a strong believer in the accountability and transparency of governments which urged him to take on his current position at the National Archives.