You've probably heard terms like digital sovereignty, digital governance and data sovereignty bandied around - the latest buzz words to join the techno-babble that can often feel impenetrable by the mere mortal. Let's dive into what the fuss is all about, and why these important terms are so important when it comes to your customer data.

What is digital sovereignty?

Put simply, digital sovereignty is the idea that people and nations should have the right and the ability to control their own digital destinies without being dictated to by technology providers. It encompasses both digital governance and data sovereignty, which we'll get to in a moment.

At its core, digital sovereignty is about control. It represents the organisation's ability to maintain independent control over its entire digital presence, systems and operations - encompassing both the technological infrastructure and the data that flows through it.

Think of digital sovereignty as your organisation's capacity to make autonomous decisions about its digital future, without being constrained by vendor roadmaps, proprietary limitations, or external control. It's the digital equivalent of national sovereignty: the ability to govern yourself, according to your own priorities and values.

In practice, digital sovereignty means having genuine choices about the technologies you deploy, how they operate, and how they can be modified to meet the specific needs of your organisation. It means freedom from dependency on systems you cannot control, inspect or adapt.

What is digital governance?

Digital governance is the regulation and control of operations, policies and infrastructure associated with an organisation or country.

It provides the structure through which digital sovereignty is exercised and maintained. Digital governance encompasses the policies, decision-making processes, accountability mechanisms and operational practices that govern your digital systems and data.

Effective digital governance answers questions like:

  • Who makes decisions about technology adaptation and implementation?
  • What standards and requirements guide those decisions?
  • How are data privacy, security and sovereignty maintained?
  • What processes ensure compliance with relevant regulations?
  • How are external dependencies evaluated and managed?

Without robust governance, organisations may achieve technical sovereignty 'on paper', while still surrendering effective control through poor decisions, unclear responsibilities and insufficient oversight.

What is data sovereignty?

Data sovereignty is where the 'rubber meets the road' for marketers - it's where your data lives, and what laws apply to it as a result of its physical locations.

It focuses particularly on an organisation's control over the data it creates and collects. It determines who can access your data, where it's stored, how it's processed, and under which legal jurisdictions it falls.

For marketers, data sovereignty is particularly crucial because customer data represents perhaps the most valuable digital asset in your possession. This data comprises of contact information at a basic level, but it can also tell a comprehensive story of how customers interact with your brand across channels over time.

True data sovereignty means:

  • You decide where the data resides
  • You control who can access it, and under what conditions
  • You determine how it's processed, analysed and acted upon
  • You can extract complete datasets in standardised formats
  • You know which legal frameworks govern your data

Without data sovereignty, organisations risk losing control over their customer relationships and becoming dependent on third parties for essential insights about their own audience.

Why should you care?

The regulatory perspective

Regulations currently tend to focus on data sovereignty, and while this is only part of the picture, it represents an essential starting point. The alphabet soup of GDPR, LGPD, CCPA, CPRA, PIPEDA, PDPB and more create a complex global landscape of rules that must be followed when working with an international audience. This is especially critical for marketers, who necessarily capture, analyse and use personally identifiable data.

This regulatory landscape becomes even more complex with laws like the US CLOUD Act, which allows American authorities to compel US-based technology companies to provide requested data regardless of where that data is physically stored, potentially circumventing local privacy laws in other countries.

From this basic regulatory standpoint, in virtually every jurisdiction, organisations must know where their data is stored, who has access to it, and what processes safeguard the transfer of data to countries with potentially different laws regarding data access and protection.

When you're in control of your data, you can better comply with local regulations, avoiding potential fines and reputation damage.

The issue of digital sovereignty, however, has a far wider impact than just the regulatory perspective.

The human perspective

While compliance with legal requirements is of course an important starting point, there are some deeper ethical reasons as to why you should be taking digital sovereignty seriously.

It's fundamentally about respecting human dignity and autonomy in the digital sphere.

Some providers are located in countries where sensitive data can be exposed to surveillance or forced disclosure by foreign governments.

Think about journalists in countries with restrictive press laws.  Or activists challenging authoritarian regimes. People who’ve had to protect their identity due to stalkers or fleeing domestic violence.  Or anyone who relies on privacy to stay safe in a society where they might not be welcome. Their digital footprint can be a liability if it gets into the wrong hands.  

When organisations surrender control over their marketing technologies and customer data, they also surrender their ability to uphold meaningful promises to the people they serve. This has profound implications:

  • A loss of trust and transparency - people increasingly expect to know how their data is being used and who has access to it. Sovereign systems allow you to provide clear, honest answers to these questions and to be in control of making decisions that might result in a change of data usage.
  • The ability to provide meaningful consent - if you're bound to technology solutions which cannot function without transferring data outside your sovereign region, you don't give the user the opportunity to object, because they can't interact with you in a digital context without giving over their consent.
  • Determining your own ethical values - in a digitally sovereign setting you can decide to innovate in ways which align with your ethical values, choosing technologies and providers who respect the privacy of your users to your own standards, whereas proprietary and non-sovereign solutions handcuff you to the decisions made by those services.

By maintaining digital sovereignty, organisations can build relationships with customers based on mutual respect rather than exploitation, creating more sustainable and meaningful connections.

The business perspective

Now, let's talk business. Imagine your entire marketing stack relies on one giant proprietary platform.

What happens when they change their pricing like a big email provider did recently, resulting in a 30% uplift in the fees to use exactly the same software.  

Or perhaps your business grows and scales substantially which means you fit into a whole new pricing bracket called 'Enterprise: please call sales' and your profit is wiped out almost overnight by the increase in costs and add-ons you now need to deliver the exact same service?

Or worse, what if your provider closes or goes bust, or is acquired by a company in a region which isn't compatible with your ethical values or data privacy requirements? 

Could you move, including all of your customer data, to another platform?

That's vendor lock-in, and it's a killer. Vendor lock-in is a slow burn.  It starts with convenience, ends with handcuffs.  

Proprietary, non-sovereign platforms can hold your data hostage.  Open source gives you the keys. You control the code, the deployments, the future.  Business resilience is a key driver which is forcing organisations to consider carefully their decisions around digital sovereignty.

Digitally sovereign solutions give you options, flexibility, and control over your digital destiny.  It's about future-proofing your business.

Where do you start?

Digital sovereignty isn't a destination, it's a journey. Most organisations can't transform overnight into a digitally sovereign organisation. 

I advocate the application of a three-step process:

Assess your risks

Begin by mapping your current marketing technology landscape and identifying where customer data resides. For each system, determine the physical location of the data, which legal jurisdictions apply, and what level of control you maintain. This assessment will highlight your most significant sovereignty risks and dependencies.

  • What tools do you use?
  • Where does your data go?
  • What countries are involved?
  • Is that OK with you?

Explore your options

Once you understand your current state, research the alternatives available. These might include self-hosting open source marketing tools like Mautic, working with sovereign cloud providers who respect digital autonomy, or identifying SaaS vendors who offer greater transparency and control than your current providers.

  • Consider open source alternatives
    • Self-hosted on your own in-house infrastructure
    • Self-hosted on sovereign hosting solutions
    • Sovereign SaaS providers
  • Determine which parts of your stack are the highest priority to switch
  • Carry out some disaster recovery tests
    • Where are your backups of your core systems, in case your provider disappered?
    • How would you restore them?
    • What systems could you move to, and how would you migrate your data?

Plan for change

Develop a phased transition plan that prioritises your most critical sovereignty risks. Consider implementing privacy-by-default approaches that minimise unnecessary data collection. Evaluate your ability to export data from current systems and ensure any new solutions provide complete data portability.

  • Make a long-term plan to transition your infrastructure and tooling
  • Determine whether the data you capture is actually required. 
  • Transition to privacy-by-default marketing
    • Only capture what is purposefully used by your business
    • Regularly audit your data and discard data that is not used

Marketers: it's time to take a stand

As marketing becomes increasingly data-driven, marketers must take a stand for digital sovereignty.

It's time to demand:

  • Full transparency about where data resides and how it's processed
  • Full access to complete datasets without artificial limitations
  • Full control over how marketing technologies operate and evolve
  • Full freedom from vendor lock-in and predatory pricing models

By asserting these demands from your providers, marketers can reclaim control over their most critical relationships and build more ethical, sustainable approaches to customer engagement.

In our next article, we'll explore the concept of digital colonialism in marketing technology and how it threatens organisations' ability to maintain genuine relationships with their customers.