P28 From Digital Dependency to Proactive Sovereignty

Panel Chairs

Corresponding chair

• Stig Ole Johnsen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway. stig.ole.johnsen@ntnu.no

Review Group Chair

• Sanjay Misra, Department of Digital Sovereignty, Institute for Energy Technology, Halden, Norway. Sanjay.Misra@ife.no

Co-Chairs

• Paula Rodriguez Müller, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Seville, Spain
• Luca Tangi, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy
• Greta Nasi, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy
• Patrick Mikalef, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway

Description of the Panel Topic

European public administrations increasingly is dependent on robust and resilient IT/OT infrastructure and increasingly embed artificial intelligence (AI) in service delivery, regulatory enforcement and internal decision-making. AI accelerates digital dependency by concentrating reliance on external providers of computing capacity, foundation models, cloud services, data infrastructures, software and expertise. These evolving dependencies create information asymmetries, switching costs and single points of failure. They also introduce AI-specific risks, including hallucinated outputs, bias, model drift, opaque training data and embedded values, adversarial manipulation, data leakage, automation bias, unclear accountability and supplier-controlled changes. Under polycrisis, these become questions of safety, security, democracy and strategic autonomy.

This panel conceptualises technological and digital sovereignty neither as technological self-sufficiency nor as a binary condition of autonomy versus dependence. It is a public governance and management problem: which capabilities must remain under public control, which dependencies are acceptable, who decides, and how can administrations retain choices while remaining open to innovation and international collaboration? It requires organisational capabilities to procure, develop, deploy, oversee, adapt and replace AI responsibly. Digital resilience concerns the ability to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, recover from and learn from disruption.

Governance-as-Imagined assumes that contracts, compliance frameworks and trusted suppliers perform as intended; Governance-as-Done examines actual control when services, models, suppliers or jurisdictions fail or change.

The panel combines two complementary structures. The four areas identified by Bryson et al. (2026)—people, markets and products, infrastructure, and governance—provide cross-cutting analytical lenses. Within them, the panel progresses from diagnosis to proactive capability-building.

First, Wake-up Events and Knowledge Sovereignty examines (hidden) dependencies, AI and cyber incidents, technology and service denial, model and data provenance, outsourced expertise and learning from failure.

Second, Democratic Information Infrastructure asks how public records, archives, research data, news infrastructure, emergency communication and public learning can remain authentic, accessible and democratically controlled under political pressure, or when AI may distort information or obscure provenance.

Third, Human-Centred Digital Sovereignty examines necessary stakeholder participation, citizens’ rights, usability, accessibility, appealability, human and organisational readiness, human fallback and meaningful human control.

Fourth, Operational Sovereignty addresses need for AI and IT/OT security, critical infrastructure, outsourcing, remote access, suppliers and subcontractors, safety- and security-by-design implementation, degraded operation, continuity, independent assurance and access to data, logs, model documentation and evaluation evidence.

Fifth, Sovereignty-by-Procurement considers contracting, open standards, open source, interoperability, portability, supplier diversity, audit rights, market shaping and the balance between large providers and European SMEs.

Sixth, Exit Capability and Public Digital Commons examines tested migration, continuity during transition, and rights over data, prompts, configurations, fine-tuning assets, evaluation sets, documentation, functionality and operational knowledge.

The panel welcomes conceptual, empirical and practice-oriented contributions across organisational and multilevel governance. Relevant perspectives include public value, public-sector capacity, resource dependence, institutional and multilevel governance, sociotechnical systems, resilience governance, human-centred design, digital infrastructures and procurement. Qualitative, quantitative, comparative, mixed-method, design-oriented, incident-based, scenario, red-team and action-research approaches are welcome. Contributions should consider trade-offs among sovereignty, resilience, efficiency, innovation, affordability, cybersecurity, inclusion, service quality and access to advanced technologies.

Building on the international workshop and JRC brief Advancing EU Digital Sovereignty in Public Administrations, the panel examines how administrations govern IT/OT infrastructure and AI-enabled systems safely, democratically and resiliently.