Michael was appointed President of the Bavarian State Data Protection Authority (Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht) on 1 February 2020 for a tenure of five years. After studying law in Würzburg and completing his traineeship in Bamberg, he began his professional career in 1995 as an administrative lawyer for the district government of Upper Franconia in Bayreuth (Bavaria). He joined the Supreme Building Authority of the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior in 1997, followed by the Bavarian State Chancellery in 2000. In 2002, Michael was appointed Head of the Department of Public Security and Order in the Landshut District Administrator’s Office. In 2006, he returned to the Supreme Building Authority of the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior as a staff member in the road law department. In 2009, Michael was appointed head of the data protection department in the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior. There, he also held the office of administrative data protection officer, in addition to serving as a member of the Bavarian State Parliament’s data protection commission. From 2012 to 2015, he was involved in the deliberations of the Council Working Party on Information Exchange and Data Protection (DAPIX) on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on behalf of the Bundesrat (the Upper House of the German Federal Legislature), assuming the role of country observer in the committee.