A new index lists countries according to who’s most digital sovereign. Finland is a clear winner – ahead of both Germany and France who are focusing a lot on being liberated from big tech dependency. Denmark and Norway are doing really bad in the Nordics while especially Iceland but also Sweden are among the top 15. The index is made by a German open source company with economic interests in the topic.
The Digital Sovereignty Index is developed by Nextcloud and measures the use of self-hosted collaboration technologies across around 50 countries. It tracks about 50 self-hosted software solutions for file hosting, groupware, communication and project management and represents the number deployments per 100,000 citizens relative to other countries.
The shows that governmental organizations are deeply dependent on foreign big tech providers, while the individuals and smaller companies are more focused on services that gives them digital sovereignty, according to Frank Karlitschek, CEO and founder of Nextcloud.
Norway, Belgium, Denmark,, Spain, and Italy score significantly below the EU average and are thus high adopters of big tech services. Digital sovereignty has been high on the agenda in Denmark and other poor performers, so it might change the coming years.
Finland leads the overall index with a strong presence in nearly all categories compared to the other countries. Its strengths lie in sovereign file storage, self-hosting infrastructure and groupware, which includes software that allows individuals and organizations to host essential services like email on their own infrastructure, rather than relying on external cloud providers.
