Digital sovereignty is now a leadership imperative for government. What happens next?
Capgemini ·
How can public sector leaders protect their future digital sovereignty? The post Digital sovereignty is now a leadership imperative for government. What happens next? appeared first on Capgemini .
At a glance:
What if a geopolitical event disrupted access to a critical technology provider across a layer of technology, whether cloud, AI, connectivity, or hardware? How would this impact the ability to deliver crucial government and public services?
New findings from the Capgemini Research Institute show that this question is no longer theoretical. A majority of government and public sector leaders surveyed are concerned that geopolitical tensions and over-dependence on foreign tech providers create a significant digital resilience risk.
As a result, 90% of government and public sector leaders say they have discussed digital sovereignty at board level. Some 44% say it is now a top board-level priority – noting that sovereignty enables governments to stay in control of their infrastructure as they seek to secure operations at a time of crisis.
While the full report, Digital sovereignty: From policy ambition to executive imperative , shows the global findings across industries, the following explores what this research tells us about digital sovereignty in government and the public sector specifically. It also discusses how leaders can start forming pragmatic strategies to reduce dependencies where it matters most.
Digital sovereignty helps governments increasingly dependent on digital technology to maintain control. It enables them to be resilient, freeing them from external interference for critical digital workloads.
Organizations gain the freedom to maintain strategic autonomy and control over essential digital capabilities, data, and technology dependencies, while continuing to operate effectively in an interconnected global ecosystem.
An example of this collaborative, ecosystem approach can be seen in a game-changing digital sovereignty transformation program underway in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein , which is adopting an open-source model and a move away from reliance on big tech companies – see FAQs, below.
Most organizations in the public sector agree that what matters is having the capacity to choose and manage dependencies in order to build operational resilience to geopolitical volatility and disruptions.
Geopolitical tensions, cyber threats, regulatory complexity, and growing dependence on a small number of foreign technology providers risk exposing essential public services to disruption.
Failures in a single provider or infrastructure component, or the use of digital technologies as leverage by one jurisdiction against another, could have cascading effects across government operations and citizen services. Digital sovereignty, with its inherent control and choice of how national infrastructure is operated, is part of the solution.
Maintaining operational continuity, protecting critical data, and reducing dependency on external technology providers are the primary concerns. Some 66% of public sector organizations believe excessive dependence on foreign providers creates digital resilience risks.
This is echoed in the European Commission’s eGovernment Benchmark Report 2026 , which states: “Across the European Union, government portals and their underlying data systems rely on hosting providers, cloud services and network operators that may fall under non-EU jurisdictions.
“When these critical infrastructures are operated by non-EU providers, they can create dependencies that affect strategic autonomy and weaken the long-term resilience of Europe’s digital public infrastructure.”
Findings from the Capgemini Research Institute survey indicate that the risks and concerns of public sector leaders can be broken down as follows:
Most significantly, 85% of government organizations are classified as having “significant exposure” to digital sovereignty risks, according to the report’s Digital Sovereignty Index.
The Digital Sovereignty Index reflects the extent to which an organization relies on foreign or externally controlled supply chains; the concentration of suppliers or tech providers; and the ability to switch or substitute vendors in the event of disruption, conflict, or adverse conditions.
For the purposes of the Capgemini Research Institute report, these aspects were assessed in the context of the operational criticality of each tech layer. This measures how close an organization is to an ideal state, as follows:
Digital sovereignty and resilience are closely connected, but they are not the same.
Resilience is the ability of government to maintain critical public services, decision-making capacity, and operational flexibility under geopolitical, regulatory, supplier, cyber, or technological stress.
Digital sovereignty strengthens that resilience where it gives public sector leaders greater control over critical capabilities, clearer visibility of dependencies, and the ability to switch, adapt, or reconfigure services when conditions change.
This does not mean pursuing self-sufficiency across every system. In an interconnected technology ecosystem, resilience depends less on isolation than on managed interdependence: knowing which capabilities must remain under direct or assured control, where trusted partners are essential, and how portability, interoperability, and exit options can be built into operating models.
Sovereignty matters most where a loss of control would undermine the continuity of essential services or the ability of government to act in a crisis. The objective is therefore not sovereignty for its own sake, but a pragmatic balance of control, choice, interoperability, and trusted partnerships that keeps government services resilient under disruption.
What impact has artificial intelligence had on sovereignty decisions?
Just over three-quarters (76%) of public sector organizations now prioritize AI as part of their digital sovereignty agenda, ahead of connectivity (63%), software (59%), and data (56%).
Control is a key driver of this. Nearly three-quarters (70%) of public sector organizations cite long-term control over AI capabilities, costs, and roadmaps as a key motivation. This reflects concerns about future control over models, compute capacity, costs, and strategic capabilities.
As AI becomes embedded in public service delivery, sovereignty decisions increasingly become resilience decisions: governments must be able to understand, steer, adapt, and recover AI-enabled services under stress. This makes visibility, accountability, and the ability to intervene in AI-enabled operating models as important as control over infrastructure itself.
We are seeing a move from awareness to action. 27% of public sector organizations have already implemented a digital sovereignty strategy and 48% are actively developing one.
We are also seeing a growth in governance capabilities. Almost 12% of government organizations have appointed a chief sovereignty officer or equivalent role, while a further 44% are considering doing so.
Governments have committed to making investment decisions in line with their sovereignty goals. In fact, around 62% have allocated budgets to digital sovereignty. While most commonly this investment is part of IT modernization programs (40%), a quarter of organizations group it with risk/compliance spend.
The investment focus extends across the technology stack. Government respondents most frequently include data (75%), cybersecurity (71%), cloud (69%), software (66%), hardware (54%), and AI (51%) within their definitions of digital sovereignty.
We believe that digital sovereignty should be treated as a strategic leadership issue rather than a narrow technology program.
To this end – and as a global-scale partner orchestrator for sovereignty programs – we recommend the following steps:
Understandably, with digital services increasingly forming the backbone of how government operates and meets citizens’ needs, sovereignty has become a strategic imperative. While European countries have looked at this in considerable depth, we also note that sovereignty has become a key question in other parts of the world.
Sovereignty enables governments to maintain control of their digital domains and resist external pressures across the digital value chain. It also enables countries to continue benefiting from external innovation and technology ecosystems.
Ultimately, public sector leaders want the freedom to make strategic technology choices, switch providers when necessary, protect sensitive citizen data, and ensure continuity of essential services. Digital sovereignty enables this.
It is clear that sovereignty has become integral to the ability to deliver for people – the question is how much, in what areas, and how to do it?
For further insight:
The state is migrating from proprietary software to open-source alternatives in what minister of digitalization Dirk Schrödter describes as “a matter of national security”.
He adds: “Digital sovereignty is best achieved together. European governments can benefit from a shared digital infrastructure without being forced to rely on a single rigid software solution.” Read the full story .
A stand-out AI project can be seen in Germany’s Federal Ministry of Digitalization and Government Modernization (BMDS). Partnering with Capgemini, BMDS rolled out a modular AI platform designed to transform complex planning and approval procedures for critical infrastructure projects.
The solution will expand visibility into acceptance processes while clearing the path for further innovation, in part by being published as an open-source solution that can be reused elsewhere. Read the full story .
As a pioneer in shaping European digital sovereignty, we are engaged in many major transformation programs across Europe.
We support our clients across the full journey, from boardroom‑level strategy and risk assessment to engineering, implementation, and day‑to‑day operations of the full sovereign environments to support resilience.
Our pragmatic, client‑specific approach to digital sovereignty ensures public sector organizations can make the best-informed choices about what needs to be protected, enabling them to form pragmatic, actionable strategies to build their resilience. In other words, we make digital sovereignty real.
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