This year at KubeCon CloudNativeCon Europe there was a day zero event that directly related to many topics the OpenInfra Digital Sovereignty working group have been discussing for several months now around OpenInfra projects like OpenStack. The topics of data sovereignty and digital sovereignty have long been huge focuses driving change in legislation for the EU, leading other regions of the world to follow suit. As laws roll out globally around data privacy and protection, it is becoming increasingly apparent that leveraging open source is the answer.  

The inaugural Open Sovereign Cloud Day was a half day event that could have easily spilled over into several more days of content. While the focus was heavily on how Europe is handling digital sovereignty, a lot of the presentations were applicable to open source usage all around the world. 

Topics ranged widely, from the Cloud Sovereignty Framework that was published by the European Commission, to case studies about evolving to be more digitally sovereign and pitfalls to avoid. While many of the tools and topics were focused on EU countries, open source usage - like OpenStack for open source infrastructure is deeply embedded in a lot of European businesses and is used globally making these tools and advice useful to any cloud provider,  especially an open source based one! 

The common theme that rang through every presentation and discussion was simple - digital sovereignty really starts with open source. There were so many other resounding messages alongside the key theme, however: 

• Progress over purity: is it better to take 18 months to be perfect? Or better to move the key pieces of data in a week? Waiting for timing and whatnot to be perfect before making the move is a trap because the process will likely never be perfect. The fact is that data has gravity and the larger the dataset, the harder to move. 
• Portability is a sovereignty requirement:  Not being able to migrate from provider to provider freely likely results from having less control over your data. Having a strategy for long term control requires portability. Interoperability and avoiding vendor lock in are key benefits of leveraging open source software. 
• Sovereignty requires skills: So much of the knowledge of how to build and operate a cloud has been outsourced to the US over the last couple decades and as a result the industry has less diverse geography when it comes to these skills. People with the skills are becoming more and more sought after as the drive for local cloud infrastructure increases in geographies like the EU. In this day and age, cloud is not just a technical choice anymore, it has become a geopolitical one. 

All of the speakers and organizers did an excellent job at bringing together a compelling schedule full of information and things to think about. The messages from this half day event will echo through the OpenInfra community in upcoming discussions during the OpenInfra Digital Sovereignty working group meetings. This working group, which has been collaborating on documents to help guide organizations leveraging OpenInfra projects to be more digitally sovereign, has representation from 23 organizations representing 15 countries. The diversity of the working group really shows that the topic of digital sovereignty reaches far beyond the EU because of how central open source is to being fully sovereign. The working group is also hoping to begin publishing case studies and thought leadership pieces on more areas of digital sovereignty to add to the ongoing conversation in this space that will only become more relevant as the world continues to pursue digital sovereignty and looks to open source projects like OpenStack, Kata Containers, StarlingX and Zuul to help. If you or your organization are interested in getting involved in this working group, fill out this this interest form.