Essay
In Europe, ‘digital sovereignty’ is one of the hot
issues right now but what is it exactly and why
should any of us be concerned about it – either as
individuals or as organisations?
Digital sovereignty refers to the control an entity has
over its own digital footprint. At an individual level, this
involves a person’s right to choose how and where their
personal data is gathered, processed and distributed. At
an organisational level, it refers to the control the
organisation has over its own systems and how customer
data is gathered, processed and distributed.
The introduction of the EU’s General Data Protection
Reg ulat ion (GDPR) in 2018 set out ke y principles to gover n
how organisations use customer data, relating to
lawfulness, fairness and transparency; purpose
limitation; accuracy; storage limitation; integrity and
confidentiality; and accountability. As a result, European
businesses are taking their data security and storage
arrangements more seriously than ever before.
THREATENING CLOUDS
However, European businesses and customers also
transact with countries all over the world, not all of
which will be bound by the provisions of GDPR. This
starts to create some interesting conflicts around the
idea of ‘digital sovereignty’.
For example, both the German and the UK governments
are currently considering whether to allow Chinese
telecoms giant Huawei to play a leading role in the
implementation of their countries’ 5G networks. While
ne ws repor ts ine v itably focus on whipping up sensat ional
claims of potential espionage, the more mundane issue
to consider is whether a UK or German firm can claim
to have total sovereignty over its data if that same data
is fully accessible by an organisation based in China or
the US. Legally, right now, this is a concern that remains
a grey area.
Likewise, consider this: the number one trend in
business IT in recent years has been the migration of
software, systems and data to cloud-based platforms,
often platforms from major vendors based in the US.
This is understandable, thanks to factors like the stable
environment, the cost savings from reducing
infrastructure, the centralisation and mobile accessibility
of data and so on.
However, with the growing popularity of relocating
services and data to the cloud, we are creating growing
dependencies on a small number of large US firms,TAKE BACK CONTROL OF
YOUR DATA AND SYSTEMS
Illustration by Kym WintersDIGITAL SOVEREIGNTYDale Murray on why he believes the trend towards proprietary
cloud services clashes with GDPR and ‘digital sovereignty’, while
open–source solutions offer a genuine alternative