## What is digital sovereignty?

La souveraineté numérique est a topic that we see increasingly cropping up in public discourse, whether in the media, on social networks, at conferences, etc...

But what really lies behind this theme? Why do we talk about digital sovereignty specifically, and what are the overall stakes involved in having a state (France, in this case) be sovereign over its digital ecosystem?

Note that this article is an introduction; the topic of digital sovereignty is linked to many other related and complex subjects.

What is sovereignty?

If we take the etymological origin of the word "sovereignty", we find a notion of power there.

Back then, sovereigns were kings and queens and held power over a land and its population.

But today, in our modern world, and particularly in our economic (and technological) ecosystem, we could rather speak of "control" and "decision-making power".

A state that is fully sovereign over its economy, for example, is a state that can make decisions, have a strategy, decide to move in a certain direction, without external constraints.

When we talk about the state, we mean the state and its citizens. Decisions and strategy can be decided through a democratic process!

Why would the state have constraints?

A nation can encounter constraints in its own management when it is part of unions (commercial, economic, legislative, etc.) with other states or private companies, and when these unions are unbalanced to the detriment of the country in question.

Let's use the image of a plane in which 3 people can pilot at the same time as you:

If you want to land, but the three other people want to keep flying, you are forced to keep flying, unless you manage to convince everyone.

And why is sovereignty such an important topic? Are we no longer able to pilot our own plane?

The stakes of digital sovereignty

When we talk about "digital", we too quickly end up reducing it to "websites and mobile applications"...

But the reality is that digital encompasses our electronics industry, (components, boards, controllers), our telecommunications (antennas, smartphones, network infrastructures), our tools (software, applications, websites), our data (work data, scientific research data, medical data) and other even broader topics.

And when we don't control an industry, we don't control the consequences that it can have on our territory, we don't control the security of users, their privacy, and the long-term availability, or not, of products and services.

In economic terms, these are products/services that take money out without ever reinvesting it at the national level (and often paying little or no taxes).

In ecological terms, these are products/services designed without regulation, using heavily carbon-intensive energy sources and materials sourced at the expense of our planet.

In social terms, working conditions, pay, and worker safety are often not a concern.

The legitimate question we can ask ourselves is: Can we do better in France?

And the simplest answer will be: Yes, but we need to give ourselves the means to do so, and regain confidence.

Today, among the decisions made by those in power, the option of financing and investing in the national digital industry rather than internationally is not even considered, or at least not sufficiently so.

What is needed is support. If there is support, then perhaps (surely) we will be able to do better and relearn how to master our digital world on a national scale (and why not a European one).

Improving digital sovereignty is a long-term strategy; some actions decided tomorrow will only have repercussions in ten years.

This is one of the reasons why these are important issues that must be discussed starting today!

Moreover, the issue of digital sovereignty should not be France's alone, but that of all countries, which must invest massively and give themselves the means to regain even partial control over their digital industries.

A concrete example

We have used rather generic definitions and explanations up to this point in order to give an overview of the concept, but let's take a concrete example to fully understand the ins and outs of digital sovereignty.

In 2015, the Ministry of National Education accepted an investment from the giant Microsoft amounting to 13 million euros to accelerate the digital development of French public schools.

Which, in theory, is a positive development.

Except that by making such an investment, an American company simultaneously gains oversight over a strategic French administration, as well as a point of (economic) pressure on future decisions!

Is the national education system looking to train its teachers in the use of office software? Microsoft therefore "offers" free training on its Office 365 suite.

Office 365 thus becomes the default office suite learned from a very young age, to the detriment of free software

Does the national education system recommend teaching coding at school? Microsoft offers "Coding with Minecraft", which of course runs beautifully on the computers provided!

Telemetry (usage analysis) will then provide Microsoft with important data on coding education in France for years to come!

And this is only the tip of the iceberg; in reality the impact is far-reaching, but very well summarized by the association Framasoft in this article:

"What Microsoft wants right now is not for you to use this or that tablet, it's for you to use Microsoft software, so you get used to it"

In short, with this investment, Microsoft succeeded in getting the entire future generation used to using its products Windows, Edge, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Minecraft, etc., reaching more than 6 million young French citizens.

That's an investment of barely 2 euros per future user...

The current state of affairs

The idea here is not to point fingers at anyone, but simply to give you some food for thought, topics to bring up and possibly defend, among a few current concerns regarding digital sovereignty:

• Health data for medical research is still today stored on Microsoft's Health Data Hub (source)
• Some government websites and content are hosted on Amazon AWS (source)
• French members of parliament received Huawei routers for their offices (source)
• Higher education and scientific research take place on Google Docs (source)