Nextcloud Enterprise Day speaker spotlight: Felix Gebauer from Schleswig-Holstein
Announcing Nextcloud Enterprise Day speaker: Felix Gebauer from Schleswig-Holstein German state's administration. Join us in Frankfurt on November 6 2024!
Read MoreManifesting in the launch of a “sovereign” European cloud powered by AWS, the global expansion of Amazon risks locking the public sector out of the opportunity to create open, interoperable and internally controlled infrastructure.
Dependency on proprietary hyperscalers like Amazon will strangle local technology, end up controlling and rerouting public spending, and make the state and society vulnerable to blackmail.
A viable strategy to build a naturally sovereign European cloud already exists and should be put into action. It is entirely possible to build local, open-source ecosystems offering government and citizens direct control over data access and security, unmoderated by foreign big tech monopolists.
Due to Amazon’s monopoly-like role in the global cloud market, the employment of AWS cloud locks the government administrations and the European public sector in general within an externally controlled proprietary framework:
As a final result, the state actors critically dependent on Amazon products would be forced to:
The key alternative to the use of Amazon-controlled cloud infrastructure in public administration is the strategic use of open source software. This includes the adoption and further development of open source solutions that already exist and have been tried and tested by millions of users across all sectors of economy and government.
Open source technologies have become so successful because they were able to adapt very quickly to new requirements by a huge developer community. Only in this way could the high pace of innovation of digitization be realized at all. In fact, the large, market-dominating cloud providers such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, have relied almost exclusively on open source software, adapting them to their needs and building their own proprietary offerings on it.
Benefits open source brings, like the excellent usability and functionality, ability to control data access and security provisions, interoperability and complete customization freedom can thus meet the key needs that exist in administrations and industry worldwide.
Open source software is continuously developed by international communities. These usually consist of employees of companies and other organizations that use this software industrially. Conceptually, the state can build up sufficient competence in institutions such as the planned Center for Digital Sovereignty to participate in corresponding communities so that it can competently manage corresponding service providers.
According to studies, investments in the development of OSS bring an impressive 4x return on investment for the European GDP. With targeted investments, a successful strategy to create an equal-opportunity supplier market for European IT and digital ecosystems and platforms is fully conceivable.
As a part of a strategy against escalating dependence of public administration and the industry on the proprietary, foreign cloud technology, the government should implement the following:
It is positive to see the American Big Tech firms realizing they have to take the Digital Sovereignty of Europe more serious, and to see them look for ways around the US CLOUD ACT. However, It is clear that a EU data center does not block foreign entities from accessing EU citizen data, and neither do company policies.
The effectiveness of Amazon’s approach, which to us just seems a slight variation on earlier, unsuccessful attempts, will end up having to be tested in US courts — likely in secrecy under a gag order, so we won’t even know if it made a difference. Even if it does work, it does little to resolve the dependency problem which is at the core of the Digital Sovereignty challenge.
As we now see with various sanctions, foreign companies can be forced to stop services or sales to Europe, limiting the EU’s ability to make its own, sovereign decisions. A real Digitally Sovereign solution would need a fully open source based platform which is fundamentally not under control of a foreign state. Without the ability for European countries to run, maintain and improve a platform, independence just can’t be guaranteed.
We outlined the direction governments should take, and look forward to constructive input and a chance to contribute to the implementation of a strong, European Digital Economy.
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