Body of Knowledge
Related work
Others are working on UK digital sovereignty. Here is what they have published, where they stand, and how this Body of Knowledge complements them.
What is distinctive here
A layer-by-layer map of what nine public sectors actually run, scored on twelve control dimensions, with every finding sourced and the data open to search and reuse.
Where we agree with others
Concentration and lock-in are real (CMA); open source and open standards are the route to control (Open Rights Group, OpenUK); control matters more than location (BritishAmerican Business).
Our position and interests
The Sovereign Stack is an initiative of Buckden, a UK venture builder. We publish our method and data so the evidence can be checked independently of who produced it.
Parliament and regulators
The official baseline and the competition evidence.
| Who | Work | Position | How the Body of Knowledge relates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Science, Innovation and Technology Committee | Report calling for a sovereign AI capabilities strategy Select committee report, July 2026 | Warns the UK risks being cut off from critical technology and urges targeted investment and procurement. (Freevacy, 2026) | Calls for a strategy; the Body of Knowledge supplies layer-by-layer evidence to build one. |
| Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology | POSTnote on digital sovereignty Parliamentary briefing, expected summer 2026 | Neutral overview of data sovereignty, sovereign capability and international approaches. (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, 2026) | Definitional baseline; our twelve dimensions are a more granular, measurable framework. |
| Competition and Markets Authority | Cloud services market investigation, final decision Regulatory decision, 2025 | Found AWS and Microsoft hold about 80% of UK cloud, with lock-in and licensing harms; recommended strategic market status investigations. (Servers.com, 2025) | Independent confirmation of the concentration and lock-in we find in public-sector estates. |
Civil society and industry
Policy arguments, surveys and the counter-case.
| Who | Work | Position | How the Body of Knowledge relates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Rights Group | Tech giants and giant slayers: the case for digital sovereignty and the digital commons Policy report, April 2026 | Treats dependence as a national security issue; recommends public code for public money, investment in UK open source, in-house expertise and international cooperation. (Open Rights Group, 2026) | Closest in policy recommendations. We add the measured evidence base, the business case and the skills pillar. |
| Civo | The digital sovereignty revolution 2026 Commissioned survey of 1,000 UK IT leaders | Sovereignty is a rising priority, but few organisations have actually migrated to domestic providers. Published by a UK cloud provider with a commercial interest. (Civo, 2026) | Measures attitudes in organisations generally; we map what the public sector actually runs. |
| OpenUK | State of open reports Annual reports on the UK open-source economy | Documents the scale and value of open source in the UK. (OpenUK, 2023) | Evidence on the UK open-source supply base that the hardening fund would grow. |
| BritishAmerican Business | Strength in partnership: UK tech sovereignty and the case for a deeper transatlantic digital alliance Business association paper, July 2026 | Sovereignty is a spectrum; keep US partnership and secure audit, substitution and non-interruption rights rather than build a parallel stack. (Lentini, F. and Adam, E. (BritishAmerican Business), 2026) | The main counter-argument. We agree control matters more than location; we argue open, multi-supplier building blocks are the most reliable way to secure it. |
| Tony Blair Institute for Global Change | Work on sovereign AI and compute Think-tank reports | Argues for UK compute capacity focused on AI deployment. (The Register, 2025; New Statesman, 2025) | Relevant on compute. Readers may wish to note the Institute’s funding from the founder of Oracle, documented in our investment and influence table. |
Indices and data
Other attempts to measure sovereignty, and how ours differs.
| Who | Work | Position | How the Body of Knowledge relates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forrester | Global sovereignty forecast and technology sovereignty index Analyst index, July 2026 | Scores 14 countries on nine national capacities (chips, cloud, data centres, AI models, talent and more); puts the UK at 30% in 2025, rising to 32% by 2030. (Forrester, 2026) | A national capacity view. Ours scores what UK public institutions actually use, and how much control they hold. |
| Nextcloud | Digital sovereignty index Vendor index, August 2025 | Counts self-hosted collaboration deployments per 100,000 people; the UK scored 9.21 against an EU average of 16.31. Published by an open-source vendor; measures deployments, not their size. (Nextcloud, 2025) | A proxy for self-hosting culture; ours covers the whole public-sector stack. |
| Computer Weekly | Data dive: mapping the UK public sector’s hyperscale dependence Data journalism, June 2026 | Mapped internet infrastructure of 29 departments and councils and found almost all exposed to US jurisdiction; reports £9.9bn of £17.7bn tech spend going to hyperscalers or resellers. (Adshead, A. (Computer Weekly), 2026; The Next Web, 2026) | Closest in method, for infrastructure only. We cover 28 layers, nine sectors, ownership and control. |
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