Body of Knowledge
What is digital sovereignty?
The ability of a country and its public institutions to choose, control, change and understand the technology their services depend on, without being held hostage to any single supplier or foreign authority.
It is not autarky
Sovereignty does not mean building everything at home or shutting out foreign suppliers. It means having real choices: the right to leave, the means to run things yourself if you must, and enough capability to judge what you are buying. Open source and open standards are the most practical route there, because they let many suppliers, at home and among allies, compete to deliver the same thing.
Twelve dimensions
Data being stored in the UK is only one of them. The numbers show the UK public-sector average across our sourced findings (0 exposed, 100 sovereign).
Data
- Residency 82 Where is data stored and processed?
- Jurisdiction 58 Whose law can compel access?
- Crypto keys 20 Who holds the encryption keys?
Control
- Operational control 56 Who runs it and holds admin access?
- Continuity 50 Can it be suspended, degraded or repriced from outside?
- Code / model control 11 Can the code or model be inspected, pinned or self-hosted?
Technology & ownership
- Ownership 53 Who ultimately owns the vendor?
- IP 22 Who owns the code, configuration and derived IP?
- Supply chain 42 Where do chips and hardware come from?
- Portability 36 How easy and costly is exit?
Capability & economy
- UK capability 47 Could the UK run or rebuild it?
- UK value capture 30 How much value stays in the UK?
Why it matters
Continuity
Public services must keep running when a supplier fails, changes its terms, or is bound by another government’s sanctions or export rules. A single faulty security update has already taken GP systems offline nationally. (Digital Health, 2024)
Control of data and decisions
Holding data in the UK is not the same as controlling it. Where the vendor holds the keys and the code, foreign law and commercial decisions reach UK citizens’ data and the services built on it. (The Stack, 2026)
Value and bargaining power
Licence, cloud and platform spend leaves the UK on long contracts with high exit costs. Concentration weakens the public sector’s negotiating position at every renewal. (The Register, 2025)
Skills and capability
When the stack is rented, the know-how to run, fix and improve it sits elsewhere. That limits the UK’s ability to respond, innovate and grow its own industry. (Digital Health, 2026)
What we gain along the way
The benefits do not wait for the end state. Each step towards an open, sovereign stack pays back on its own terms.
Skills that compound
Schools, universities and the BBC teaching on the same open stack the public sector runs builds a pipeline of people who can maintain and extend it.
UK firms that grow
Money spent hardening and supporting open components goes to UK engineers and SMEs, and builds exportable services rather than licence fees.
Resilience by design
Open standards and multiple suppliers mean no single outage, takeover or price rise can halt a service.
Lower exit costs
Open formats and portable workloads make every future renewal a real negotiation.
Faster, cheaper delivery
Shared building blocks such as GOV.UK Notify and Pay show how build-once, use-everywhere components cut duplication.
Trusted partnerships
A UK-led open stack built with EU, Five Eyes and willing partners shares cost and strengthens allies rather than isolating the UK.