Interoperable Sovereignty: The Democratic Alternative to Digital Authoritarianism

A Democratic Architecture for the Digital Age Digital sovereignty has become a central concern for governments worldwide, yet its meaning remains contested. Too often it is framed as...

Sovereignty and Landscape | Simon Wardley | 15 comments

X : What is digital sovereignty? Me : I was asked that question by some friends within Government at the beginning of this month. I know some have been working on the idea, which is very encouraging, but I gave my tuppence worth of a definition. "Digital sovereignty is a country's ability to make its own decisions about the technology it uses, the data it creates, and how digital systems work in service of its people rather than being forced to accept choices made by other entities. This requires continuous situational awareness of the economic and technological landscape to anticipate changes, maintain strategic advantage, and shape international digital norms. Digital sovereignty is achieved through strategic control over critical digital assets and relationships, extending from public sector systems to the broader digital ecosystem affecting citizens and economic interests." The key is choice. You are sovereign if you retain the ability to make your own decisions rather than being forced to accept the decisions of others. This doesn't mean you need to own the entire tech stack, or all the data but you do need to maintain control over critical assets and relationships. This can be achieved by many means not just by conflict with others but through co-operation and collaboration (i.e. all the forms of competition matter). You also can consciously compromise, accepting some loss of sovereignty in one space to gain sovereignty in another. Anyway, I quite like the Mike Bracken description https://lnkd.in/eFjzcAdr "Digital sovereignty is the agency and capacity of any organisation to make intelligent, informed choices to shape its digital future by design". I used to do a lot of work on sovereignty many years ago, so if you want to know more about my view and how to achieve this, well I have a series of hopefully useful but somewhat introductory posts. Sovereignty and Landscape https://lnkd.in/eku2X_Ea Societal versus Market benefit https://lnkd.in/eXxkCv-K Whose interests are you serving? https://lnkd.in/eAgHS5wc | 15 comments on LinkedIn

15 Open-Source Tools for Digital Sovereignty (2026) | Comparisons & Alternatives | Vucense

Own your digital stack. The 15 best open-source tools for privacy, security, and full control over your data — reviewed and ranked for 2026.

Digital Sovereignty: A Framework to improve digital readiness of the Government of Canada

The Government of Canada (GC) must be able to manage and protect its data, systems and infrastructure to operate securely and independently in a globally connected environment. This paper explains what digital sovereignty means for the GC and how it informs the management of government digital operations. Broader issues such as Canada’s economic, industrial, or national security interests are out of scope of this paper.

Digital Sovereignty

Digital sovereignty has a bad reputation. In internet governance circles, sovereignty is considered awkward enough to be referred to by as the "s-word." It is often associated with misguided attempts at returning to the era of national champions, like building a French search engine or a European Google, or worse with the eternal boogeyman that is the "splinternet." It doesn't have to be this way!

Funding Open Source for Digital Sovereignty

"Open Source alone won't deliver digital sovereignty. Europe must fix procurement and fund those who actually build it."

Law and Borders - the Rise of Law in Cyberspace

Global computer-based communications cut across territorial borders, creating a new realm of human activity and undermining the feasibility--and legitimacy--of

Governable Stacks against Digital Colonialism

Critics have been converging around the logic of colonialism to describe the Internet economy. If we are serious about the laden language of the colonial, we should be ready to learn from struggles against pre-digital empires and colonial regimes. Although acts of insurrection may attract more attention, one thing leaders and theorists of anticolonial resistance have stressed persistently is the centrality of self-governance in everyday life as both a means and end of their movements. But the dominant platforms for online communities are not well-suited for durable self-governing. Resistance often relies on the same colonial firms it opposes. What would community-governed technologies look like? This paper introduces the concept of “governable stacks”, a framework for self-governing as resistance to digital colonialism.

Legislation as Code | Version: 2

Deploy documents as digital infrastructure

The Case for Open Sovereignty in a Fragmenting Internet

Once, the Internet promised to dissolve borders. It was humanity’s great experiment in connection — a place where ideas, innovation, and communities could move freely, unburdened by geography or...

Eaten by the Internet

This book makes internet infrastructure visible as a force of political power, which is transforming the social world, from the bottom up—through fifteen chapters contributed by a global set of researchers, activists, and techies. We are living a unique moment: internet technologies are the default infrastructure for society, not just how we communicate but also how we organise our social life, politics, and economy, all the way down to our material environments, like cities. Our world is eaten by the internet. This means that those who control the internet control the bounds of public speech, economic production, social cohesion, and politics, making its infrastructure a core political terrain in the networked age. The book’s chapters cover a wide set of topics, spanning from the global politics of content moderation by internet infrastructure to the colonialism inherent in the race to plug the moon, from the harms wrought by blockchain companies in rural America to the particularities of online censorship across Asia. The chapters take on thorny topics, discussing power consolidation in the advertisement and cloud industry, the role of internet infrastructure in the war in Ukraine, and tech’s environmental impact—amongst others. In doing so, this book roots contemporary technology debates in the politics of internet infrastructure and urges us to ask how can we ensure our infrastructures sustain us, rather than consume us?

Radicle: the sovereign forge

Sovereign code infrastructure.

Radicle: the sovereign forge

Sovereign code infrastructure.

Open Source Beyond Licensing - The Evolution Ahead

Boris Mann's digital garden and personal site.

Funding Open Source for Digital Sovereignty

Open Source alone won't deliver digital sovereignty. Europe must fix procurement and fund those who actually build it.