Hi everyone,
I’m coming to you live from a train to yet another think tank meeting in Brussels on digital sovereignty and technical dependencies. And this has led me to write yet another blog post.
So far, the discussions on digital autonomy are going round in circles. Civil society and think tanks want to contribute, and are well placed to do so. In this piece, I urge everyone to look further ahead, beyond legislation and talking about European values. The road to digital sovereignty is very long, and we need to make progress along that entire road, which includes things further afield than what we are discussing now. We will not attain any form of digital sovereignty without the help of civil society, and below is a list of things I think we should be doing more of.
Getting actual “boots on the ground” digital sovereignty requires work by European government technical staff, who need to have management that approves of that. That in turn requires a ministry that has decided to work like that. And that also requires a procurement department that is VERY on board, and willing to suffer lawsuits over their efforts to procure European services. Also, there need to be software/services companies willing and able to deliver such services to governments.
This in turn only happens if senior government people are either forced to do it because of EU rules, or they themselves believe this is necessary, and that in turn only happens if politicians care.
This is a very long chain of things that need to happen.
Yet when we (civil society) do events on this, no one from procurement is present. Not even procurement groups or trade bodies. And they are important, since they currently have no time or money to deal with the lawsuits that come with doing anything other than big tech.
Also, no IT department people ever join the conversation over at think tanks. We rarely have vendors present. And also, no member state government executive people in general chime in.
The work on digital sovereignty is appreciated, and I know it is also well-intentioned. But we need more.
Do read on for more in the post EU & Civil Society need to progress on Digital Autonomy!
Cheers,
Bert