Digital Sovereignty Index: How countries compare in digital independence

Around the world, discussions about digital sovereignty are intensifying. Governments, institutions, companies and civil society are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of controlling their own digital infrastructure. From concerns about data protection and vendor lock-in to questions of political autonomy, the topic has moved from niche circles to mainstream policy debates. In our new Digital Sovereignty Index, we show how countries compare in digital independence!

While the debate is global, the actual state of digital sovereignty varies widely between countries. Policies may exist, but how much infrastructure is really running locally, instead of the cloud? What choices do people make? And how does this compare to the policy of the public sector?

Introducing the Digital Sovereignty Index

To address this question, we developed the Digital Sovereignty Index (DSI): a simple metric to illustrate how much self hosted collaboration applications are actively used across nearly 60 countries. It represents the relative amount of deployments of self-hosted productivity & collaboration tools per 100,000 citizens, compared to other countries.

We selected 50 of the most relevant self-hosted tools for digital collaboration and communication. These include platforms for file sharing, video conferencing, groupware, notes, project management, and more. We then measured their real-world usage by counting the number of identifiable server instances per country.

Uneven progress and surprising gaps in digital sovereignty across Europe and beyond

The results of the first Digital Sovereignty Index show significant differences in the adoption of self-hosted infrastructure across Europe and beyond. While the public debate around digital sovereignty has gained momentum in recent years, actual usage of sovereign digital tools remains fragmented – and in many places surprisingly low.

Find out more about the Digital Sovereignty Index, how countries compare in digital independence and the methodology on the website: dsi.nextcloud.com.

Contribute to the Digital Sovereignty Index

We welcome your feedback to refine the index over time, including improved search definitions and suggestions for additional tools to include in future iterations. Please find more information how you can contribute on the DSI website.