From Quality to Quantity: How Can Digital Sovereignty be Parsed into Measurable Components?

Abstract

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.

Managing digital sovereignty: The importance of control and ownership in the digital age using the examples of Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany

“…The method includes selecting parameters, collecting data, calculating indices, statistical analysis, comparing results to state-specific indices, and visualizing results (OECD, 2008/2020). A set of relevant parameters was chosen to measure digital sovereignty in the author's work, including control over digital data and infrastructure, security and privacy, domestic development of digital technology, and parameters related to state sovereignty (Kaloudis, 2022). Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany were used as examples to assess their relative strengths and weaknesses in these areas.…”

“…Some of them compare the degree of sovereignty of states (Barnett, 2017/2017), others focus on the digital capabilities of states (Yera, Arbelaitz, Jauregui, & Muguerza, 2020) (United Nations, 2022/2022). An index tailored to the self-conception of EU states, the Digital Sovereignty Index (DSI) is based on publicly available secondary data and provides a ranking of UN states (Kaloudis, 2022(Kaloudis, /2022.…”

12-th International Conference of Management Sustainability – Security – Quality Book of Proceedings

“…The method includes selecting parameters, collecting data, calculating indices, statistical analysis, comparing results to state-specific indices, and visualizing results (OECD, 2008/2020). A set of relevant parameters was chosen to measure digital sovereignty in the author's work, including control over digital data and infrastructure, security and privacy, domestic development of digital technology, and parameters related to state sovereignty (Kaloudis, 2022). Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany were used as examples to assess their relative strengths and weaknesses in these areas.…”

Digital Sovereignty as a Weapon of Diplomacy in Cyber Warfare in Democracies

“…A recognised index on digital sovereignty, which converges the concepts of sovereignty and digitalisation and their measurability, is currently being developed; a DSI consisting of 30 parameters to assess sovereignty in the context of European values, the ability to develop key technologies and technological independence. The collection of secondary data and suitable aggregation results in an index value per country that can be ranked [40].…”

“…The two previously mentioned indices, the digital sovereignty index (DSI) (DSI) and the national cyber security index (NCSI), are used to confirm the hypothesis. The DSI measures parameters relating to state sovereignty, key technologies and technological sovereignty, while the NCSI measures cyber security policy, a state's contribution to global cyber security, education and professional development [27,40]. The hypothesis to be rejected is, therefore, as follows: The higher the DSI/NCSI rank, the higher the digital sovereignty/cyber resilience rank of a state (Figure 3).…”