Digital Sovereignty

The story is, on paper, narrow. Solvinity, the Dutch contractor that operates infrastructure underneath Logius and DigiD, looks set to be acquired by Kyndryl, an American spin-off of IBM’s managed-services arm. DigiD itself remains owned by the Dutch state via Logius, so technically the system is still Dutch. Politically and operationally, the distinction does not calm many people down. A rented engine room is still part of the ship. Across Europe there has been a push for “digital sovereignty”, meaning less dependency on American hyperscalers and infrastructure providers after years of quietly outsourcing half the state to Silicon Valley with the serene confidence of a man juggling chainsaws because the first three catches worked out fine. ...

Ten years ago, Nonprofit AF , in Weaponized data: How the obsession with data has been hurting marginalized communities, warned that nonprofits’ data obsession could dehumanise and harm marginalised communities, reducing lived experiences to reductive metrics, ignoring power dynamics, and prioritising funder dashboards. Now it’s 2025. Technology, AI, data regulation, and global politics have changed, but many threats have only intensified. What changed? What has improved Stronger legal guardrails (sometimes) Since GDPR (2018), Europe and other jurisdictions have enacted data protections that at least nominally strengthen consent and individual’s rights. Data-sharing rules and transparency mandates force nonprofits to be somewhat more accountable. ...

The EuroStack initiative is Europe’s ambitious attempt to reclaim digital sovereignty by building its own federated, standards-based infrastructure. In the healthcare sector, this means enabling patients’ health data (much of it generated by Internet of Things (IoT) devices) to move securely and interoperably across national borders. The goal is to make care more responsive, especially in emergencies or when people travel, without compromising privacy rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). ...