2025-10-01 –, OSPO, governance and business
Digital sovereignty—the ability to control and influence one’s digital future and infrastructure—is increasingly at the centre of political and technological agendas. Recent signals, such political signals and shifts in attitude toward non-European cloud providers, underscore a broader momentum. While governments pursue different and sometimes overlapping strategies, open source consistently emerges as a key enabler. Through open strategic autonomy, sovereignty can be gained while fostering interoperability, reuse, and collaboration. Open source provides a path to influence without requiring exclusive ownership, balancing self-reliance with global interconnectedness.
However, leveraging open source effectively requires capabilities and know-how across society and industry. This implies actions at multiple levels: cross-cutting training and workforce development, sustainable business ecosystems, supportive policies and OSPO structures in both public and private sectors, long-term procurement strategies, targeted government facilitation and funding, and investments in the maintenance of foundational technologies. Strategic planning is essential to align these capabilities with societal and industrial goals. This talk will delve into how Europe can grow Digital sovereignty through open source, and leverage the strategic opportunity it provides.
Digital sovereignty—the ability to control and influence one’s digital future and infrastructure—is increasingly at the centre of political and technological agendas. Recent signals, such political signals and shifts in attitude toward non-European cloud providers, underscore a broader momentum. While governments pursue different and sometimes overlapping strategies, open source consistently emerges as a key enabler. Through open strategic autonomy, sovereignty can be gained while fostering interoperability, reuse, and collaboration. Open source provides a path to influence without requiring exclusive ownership, balancing self-reliance with global interconnectedness.
However, leveraging open source effectively requires capabilities and know-how across society and industry. This implies actions at multiple levels: cross-cutting training and workforce development, sustainable business ecosystems, supportive policies and OSPO structures in both public and private sectors, long-term procurement strategies, targeted government facilitation and funding, and investments in the maintenance of foundational technologies. Strategic planning is essential to align these capabilities with societal and industrial goals. This talk will delve into how Europe can grow Digital sovereignty through open source, and leverage the strategic opportunity it provides.
Johan is an Empirical Software Engineering researcher mainly focused on the context of open technologies. Open technologies refer to technology-related artifacts that is shared, reused and collaboratively developed between its users and stakeholders. Here, Johan is specifically interested in how actors in public and private sector can use, develop, and collaborate on Open Source Software, Open and shared data, and Open Standards to enable and promote interoperability, technological independence, and open innovation.