Digital sovereignty is ours to shape

Most organisations didn't really choose the digital systems they depend on.

The office suite came with the job. The learning platform was picked years ago by someone who has since left. The case management system arrived as part of a framework deal.

Over time, these decisions become part of the furniture. We adapt our work, our processes, and sometimes even our ambitions to fit the technology available to us.

When a supplier puts its prices up, removes a feature or rewrites its terms, we ask whether we have any choice but to accept it.

But what if we asked a different question?

What could we do if we had more choice in the first place?

What might our companies, organisations, communities and public services look like if we could meaningfully influence, shape and create the technologies we rely on?

This is what interests us about the growing conversation around digital sovereignty. Not simply the opportunity to protect what we already have, but the possibility of creating things we haven't yet imagined.

An idea that's still being defined

Digital sovereignty is everywhere at the moment.

Governments are talking about national capability and strategic autonomy. Technology companies are selling 'sovereign clouds'. Communities are exploring different models of ownership, governance and infrastructure.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out in Digital Sovereignty: What It Is, What It Could Be, the term means different things to different people.

In a recent piece, Sovereignty isn't a place, Tom explored this distinction. He argued that sovereignty isn't defined by geography, a flag, or even who owns the technology. What matters is whether people have meaningful choices, and the knowledge, resources and rights to act on them.

It's an important distinction. A British technology company can still lock its customers in. A locally hosted AI model can still be impossible to inspect or challenge. And a government gaining more control over digital infrastructure doesn't automatically mean its citizens gain more control over their digital lives.

So we need to ask: sovereignty for whom, over what, and what for?

But we'd like to take that conversation a little further. If sovereignty is about the ability to choose and act, then there's an opportunity to expand what people are capable of doing in the first place.

The agenda isn't settled. And that means there's an opportunity to shape it.

Not just for policymakers and large technology companies, but for the people building, maintaining, commissioning, funding and using technology. And, just as much, for the people whose lives it affects.

From control to possibility

At FIELD STATION, we've been thinking about digital sovereignty as the practical capacity of people, communities and organisations to understand, choose, shape and change the digital systems they depend on, including the freedom to leave.

Choice matters, but sovereignty shouldn't stop at having a better selection of products to buy.

Picture what that could look like:

• a group of small organisations pooling their knowledge and resources to create shared digital infrastructure that none could afford individually
• communities having genuine influence over the technologies used to deliver local public services, rather than simply being consulted after decisions have been made
• public investment in technology creating things that others can freely build upon, adapt and improve
• software and infrastructure being designed from the outset to work with other systems, making it easier for people to combine tools and invent entirely new ways of working

These aren't necessarily new ideas, and none is particularly easy. But they point towards something more interesting than a different supplier or a new procurement framework.

They suggest that sovereignty can be generative.

It can help create new capabilities, collaborations, forms of ownership and ways of organising. Things that weren't possible, or perhaps hadn't even occurred to us, within our existing relationships with technology.

As the barriers to building technology change, we have an opportunity to reconsider who gets to be a "builder", whose problems get solved, and who gets to decide what is worth creating.

Choosing our dependencies

Of course, none of this happens in isolation. The idea that any organisation, community or country could become entirely technologically independent is neither realistic nor particularly desirable.

Our digital systems depend on an extraordinary web of people, knowledge, energy, materials, standards, infrastructure and relationships. There is value in sharing, specialising, cooperating and depending on others.

So perhaps the aim shouldn't be independence at all, but better forms of interdependence.

Relationships in which people have meaningful choices, where knowledge can be shared, where systems can be adapted, and where power and responsibility aren't so concentrated that everyone else becomes powerless.

Open Source software offers some of this possibility, but it's not a complete answer. Software still needs maintainers, funding, documentation, governance and people with the skills to use it. Equally, regulation, procurement, open standards, public infrastructure and community ownership can all play a role.

There's no single model that works everywhere, and there are trade-offs to be made.

But that's part of the opportunity: to experiment with different arrangements, learn what works, and create more possibilities for others.

Starting in the North East

Well, for one, it's where we both live. But more than that, we're holding our unconference in Newcastle upon Tyne, in a region with significant ambitions around technology and AI.

The North East's AI Growth Zone brings together investment in infrastructure, skills, innovation and the development of new businesses. There are real opportunities here for economic growth, new jobs, research and stronger public services.

There's also a wider set of questions worth asking.

What does it mean for a region to develop its own technological capabilities, rather than simply becoming a customer for technologies developed elsewhere?

What skills should we be developing, not just to use AI, but to understand, question, adapt, build and govern it? How might investment help develop a diverse ecosystem of local businesses, suppliers, developers and maintainers? And how could the organisations and communities that use technology help shape that ecosystem?

How do we make sure the benefits of investment extend beyond individual companies or infrastructure projects, building lasting knowledge, skills and capabilities that people across the region can use?

And as the UK government grapples with its own "what do we mean by sovereignty?" question, why shouldn't the North East take a step towards doing something about it?

There's an opportunity to think about sovereignty not just as a question of who supplies our technology, but as a question of what we're capable of doing, building and deciding for ourselves, and with others.

We don't expect all the answers to come from the region, or from any one institution or sector. Quite the opposite.

Some of the most interesting possibilities might emerge when people who don't normally find themselves in the same conversations start working through these questions together.

Asking better questions

Our work on TechFreedom has approached digital sovereignty through five practical risk lenses: jurisdiction, continuity, surveillance, lock-in and cost exposure.

These help organisations ask important questions about the technology they currently depend on.

What happens if our supplier disappears? Who can access our data? How expensive would it be to change course? What happens when we disagree with the decisions a technology company makes?

Those questions are necessary, but increasingly we're interested in what comes next.

• What might we do differently if we understood our dependencies better?
• What could we achieve together that we couldn't achieve alone?
• What could be shared rather than repeatedly bought or built?
• What would technology look like if the people most affected by it had a greater role in shaping it?
• And what possibilities are we missing because we've become so accustomed to the way things currently work?

An unconference, and an unfinished agenda

In early 2027, FIELD STATION will host a Digital Sovereignty Unconference in Newcastle upon Tyne, with support from a Spark Grants award.

We're bringing together people from across public services, community organisations, technology, academia, cooperatives, Open Source, policy, business and beyond.

People who build and maintain technology. People who buy and commission it. People developing skills and businesses around it. People who use it, regulate it, fund it, question it or live with its consequences.

Why an unconference

We've chosen the format deliberately.

At a traditional conference, someone decides in advance what's important and invites people to speak about it. An unconference puts the agenda in the hands of the people who participate.

People arrive with different experiences, questions, challenges and ideas. The agenda emerges from those conversations.

And it strikes us that digital sovereignty is at a similar moment.

There are plenty of people telling us what sovereignty should mean. Governments, corporations, campaigners and technologists are all putting forward their visions. But much of the agenda is still up for grabs.

What if we treated that uncertainty as an invitation?

An opportunity to bring different people and perspectives together, challenge assumptions, find common ground, share practical experience and perhaps develop entirely new ideas.

We aren't starting from the assumption that the answer is self-hosting, Open Source, regulation, decentralisation, buying British or building everything locally. We want to explore what those approaches can enable, where they fall short, and what else we might do.

There will be difficult questions, competing interests and disagreements. That's OK!

But we also hope there will be new connections, collaborations, experiments and possibilities that couldn't have emerged from any one organisation working alone.

Help shape what comes next

We're still in the early stages of planning, and there's plenty of opportunity to influence what the event becomes.

We'd love to hear from people with ideas, examples, questions, challenges or experiences to share. Whether you're building new technology, developing skills, shaping policy, exploring different models of ownership, grappling with difficult decisions, or simply wondering whether things could be different.

We're particularly interested in what we haven't thought of yet, as perhaps that's the most exciting thing about digital sovereignty.

It's not just about having more control over the digital world as it exists today. It's about having more say in the digital world we create tomorrow.

And we think that conversation should belong to all of us.

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