Digital sovereignty

Thursday 20 Aug 2026 @ 13:05
POST (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology)

Digital sovereignty is the agency a country or organisation has to shape, use and maintain its digital word. How sovereign is the UK, and should sovereignty be increased?

DOI: https://doi.org/10.58248/PN777

Digital sovereignty is the agency and capacity a country or organisation has to shape, use and maintain the digital systems it depends on. These systems consist of three layers: infrastructure (such as data centres), code (including artificial intelligence), and data (such as health records).

If countries, companies and citizens can employ digital sovereignty they may be able to direct the use of digital systems to achieve a range of aims, including security and resilience, economic growth, climate commitments, and democratic accountability.

However, there can be risks. If countries adopt overly ‘protectionist’ approaches it could restrict trade, reduce access to leading technologies, and weaken international collaboration.

Stakeholders say that digital sovereignty does not mean isolationism or complete self-sufficiency. Instead, they say countries should exercise digital sovereignty by identifying and reducing their dependency on others for their most critical digital technologies, while also working with a wide range of international partners. They say this can reduce risks by diversifying who the country depends on, meaning the dependencies are less concentrated.

How sovereign is the UK?

The UK Government has taken steps to strengthen sovereignty through investments, including in AI, semiconductors, and sovereign timing capabilities (which are needed, for example, for accurate geolocation and coordinated financial transactions). In May 2026, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched a strategic market status investigation into a large software vendor to see if its business software reduces competition in the cloud services industry.

The UK Government is also forming plans for national payment systems (almost all card payments in the UK are currently administered by US companies Visa and Mastercard).

The UK also has strengths that could be used to improve sovereignty, such as advanced domestic capability in semiconductor design, research excellence, and manufacturing compound semiconductors. UK organisations such as the NHS and BBC also hold advanced datasets that could be used for training AI models.

However, the UK still has dependencies, for example in cloud providers, AI, advanced semiconductor manufacturing, and payment networks, without having a strategy for digital sovereignty that could address them.

For more detail on the models of sovereignty pursued globally, and comparison of EU and UK policy, please see the 2026 House of Commons Library briefing.

How could UK digital sovereignty be increased?

Stakeholders say that to increase its digital sovereignty the UK needs clear evidence about which digital systems are critical, how supply chains work to support them, what they depend on, and how they could fail.

Some also say the UK could make better use of open-source software, freely available code that anyone can see, modify, use and distribute. They say this may help reduce ‘vendor lock in’, a dependence on a specific supplier that makes it difficult or costly for customers to switch to an alternative.

Parliamentary committees and the National Audit Office said that public procurement could do more to support UK digital sovereignty. They said the £14 billion of public funds spent on digital programmes and technology each year could be used to buy domestic products.

In 2023, US firm Palantir was awarded a £330 million contract to provide a data platform for the NHS. In 2026, the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee said that the UK Government should use the 2027 break clause in the contract and develop a UK-based data platform instead.

Some MPs have called for a sovereign procurement strategy.

Skills development may be important for digital sovereignty to ensure that the UK continues to have the skills to buy, check, operate and fix critical technologies.

Acknowledgements

This briefing was produced in consultation with experts and stakeholders, who are listed at the end of the briefing. The briefing was co-funded by the Institution of Chemical Engineers. POST would like to thank everyone who contributed their expertise to this briefing.

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