Harald Tveit Alvestrand (born 1959) is a Norwegian computer scientist. He was the chairman of the Internet Engineering Task Force from 2001 until 2005. He is an author of several important RFCs, many in the general area of Internationalization and localization.
He was born in Namsos, Norway, received his education from Bergen Katedralskole and the Norwegian Institute of Technology, and has worked for Norsk Data, UNINETT, EDB Maxware and Cisco Systems, Inc.. He currently (2008) lives in Trondheim, Norway, and works for Google.
At the end of 2007 Harald Alvestrand was selected for the ICANN Board., where he remained until December 2010. In 2001 he became a member of the Unicode Board of Directors. He has more recently been a co-Chair of the IETF EAI and USEFOR WGs.
Harald Alvestrand is the Executive Director of the Linux Counter Organization., He is a member of the Norid Board, and the RFC Independent Submissions Editorial Board.