In the states of the European Union (EU), the question currently raised is to what extent dependence on technologies from the USA and China will have a lasting impact on state sovereignty. The concept of digital sovereignty represents the EU's efforts to compensate for the deficits of the past decades caused by an inadequate positioning of Europe as a location for software and hardware development. Autocratic states use the path of digital autarky, the USA a path of liberalisation and high degrees of openness. In the EU, on the other hand, regulation, data protection and liberal values developed over centuries play a major role in the less pronounced IT development. The path of European states to more digital sovereignty has been addressed politically as an “action plan”, but there is still no common understanding or definition of what digital sovereignty exactly means, where the EU and thus also an individual European state stands. There is a lack of a target and a measurable index as well as evaluated measures derived from it. The present article articulates the basis, namely the common understanding and the definition of digital sovereignty. It places the concepts of digitalisation and state sovereignty in a historical framework and locates them in the current literature, then analyses digital sovereignty as a composite term and places it in the context of current research. Finally, a definition is proposed that can serve as the basis for further research to identify an index of digital sovereignty. This definition can also become the basis for EU legislation to implement the “action plan”.
In the states of the European Union (EU), the question currently being asked is to what extent dependence on technologies from the USA and China will have a lasting impact on state sovereignty. The term digital sovereignty stands for the EU’s desire to compensate for the deficits of the past decades, which were caused by an insufficient development of the location for software and hardware development. Autocratic states use the path of digital autarky, the USA a path of liberalization and high degrees of openness. In the EU, on the other hand, regulation, data protection, and liberal values developed over centuries play a major role in the less pronounced IT development. The path of European states to more digital sovereignty has been addressed politically as an “action plan,” but there is still no common understanding or definition of what digital sovereignty exactly means. There is a lack of a target and a measurable index as well as evaluated measures derived from it. Based on a historical derivation, this article proposes a definition for European digital sovereignty and the formation of an index. The index needs to be further scientifically elaborated for applicability.
The use of digital technologies for state-relevant institutions, government organisations and administrations has grown steadily in recent decades. Therefore, the question arises whether the mastery of these technologies has an influence on a state's ability to act and whether state sovereignty is affected. In the European Union, the concept of digital sovereignty of states is being intensively discussed. However, it is unclear what exactly is meant by the term digital sovereignty and how it can be defined. The research gap is the lack of a clear qualitative and quantitative definition of that term, so that the goal of the article is to provide an overview of a qualitative definition. That is the basis for a quantiative model. To achive that goal a hierarchical component model is developed for concretisation. Furthermore, the components are decomposed into subcomponents, each of which is then quantified by suitable metric parameters, which are populated from secondary data sources for states and subjected to selected quantitative analyses. To verify and validate whether the component model and the parameters are suitable and robust for measuring digital sovereignty, a comparative index is formed and compared with existing indices.
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