Two in three companies say no to total digital sovereignty
For Capgemini, the priority is to retain control over critical operations whilst reducing excessive exposure to individual suppliers
Key points
Digital sovereignty has entered the control room, but it is not the same as the idea of ‘innovating’ entirely in-house. A simple premise, in essence, but one that opens the door to a far more nuanced discussion: for businesses, the crux of the matter is understanding which ‘technological dependencies’ are truly strategic and reversible, and what the cost would be if they were to be lost. The picture painted by the report “Digital Sovereignty: From Policy Ambition to Executive Imperative” by the Capgemini Research Institute – the result of a survey of 1,300 executives from major corporations and public bodies – reveals a shift in perspective.
Whilst 93 per cent of organisations have already discussed the issue at board level, 59 per cent consider achieving full digital sovereignty to be unrealistic. The underlying message is therefore clear: sovereignty is not interpreted as technological self-sufficiency ‘pure and simple’, whilst there is growing consensus on so-called ‘resilient interdependence’ – that is, the ability to maintain control over critical activities whilst reducing excessive exposure to individual suppliers.
A priority for 44 per cent of Italian businesses
Italia mirrors the global trend, with 94 per cent of organisations having discussed the ‘issue’ at board level and 44 per cent having made it one of their top priorities, but it also reveals the same ambiguities: 34 per cent of our businesses do in fact have a strategy for digital sovereignty (a further 54 per cent are in the process of developing one), yet 66 per cent consider it unrealistic to achieve it fully, and only 18 per cent state that they have a complete overview of their dependencies (the global figure drops to 14 per cent). Furthermore, 63 per cent of Italy’s leading companies report a high concentration of providers in the data sector, 59 per cent note this in the software sector, and 43 per cent believe it would take more than a year to switch connectivity providers.
‘Autonomy where the business risk is highest’
“The gap does exist,” confirms Monia Ferrari, Managing Director of Capgemini in Italia, “and the main vulnerabilities relate precisely to this lack of visibility, as well as to the concentration of suppliers and the difficulty of replacing them. It is unrealistic to think that we can eliminate all dependencies.” Sovereignty – and this is the paradigm shift – must therefore be measured in terms of the ability to exit a technological relationship without jeopardising the operational functioning of processes, whilst pursuing the objective “of increasing autonomy where the business risk is highest, whilst continuing to benefit from the innovation capabilities offered by the global digital ecosystem”.
What changes with AI?
According to 73 per cent of Italian managers (a figure in line with the global average of 75 per cent), artificial intelligence is one of the priority areas in the digital sovereignty strategy. For everyone, however, there is a risk on the horizon: the race to develop new AI models could lead to a new concentration of power, just as companies are trying to reduce existing concentrations. ‘When it comes to AI,’ Ferrari emphasises in this regard, ‘control is not limited to the model itself, but includes the data used to train and feed it, the platform on which it runs, the technological infrastructure that supports it and, increasingly, the governance of the decision-making mechanisms and levels of orchestration that regulate its operation.”
