Digital sovereignty is no longer a policy goal—it’s a technical challenge. Many government and EU platforms remain deeply dependent on external vendors and closed systems. This session reveals how to transition from dependency to control through a practical, actionable Drupal roadmap.

By leveraging Drupal’s open, modular architecture and commitment to open standards, public organizations can build platforms that are transparent, interoperable, and fully under their control—reducing lock-in while ensuring long-term sustainability and adaptability.

Prerequisite

Basic understanding of Drupal and web architecture concepts. Familiarity with public-sector or enterprise digital platforms is helpful but not required.

Target Audience

Developers, solution architects, technical leads, and decision-makers working on government, EU institutional, or large-scale public-sector digital platforms. Also relevant for organizations seeking to reduce vendor lock-in and adopt open, sustainable architectures.

Outline

Digital sovereignty is becoming a strategic priority for governments and EU institutions, yet many public-sector platforms remain dependent on proprietary vendors, external cloud providers, and closed ecosystems.
This session provides a practical, step-by-step roadmap for moving from vendor lock-in to sovereign digital platforms using Drupal. Rather than focusing on theory, it breaks digital sovereignty into actionable layers: dependency assessment, architecture design, implementation strategy, and long-term governance.
We will explore how public organizations can identify critical risks in their current stack, redesign systems around open standards, and adopt modular, interoperable architectures that support data ownership and long-term sustainability.
Key topics include:
Identifying and reducing vendor lock-in in public-sector systems
Designing open, API-first architectures with Drupal
Infrastructure and hosting considerations in a European context
Migration strategies from proprietary or SaaS platforms
Governance models that prevent future lock-in
Attendees will leave with a clear, reusable framework they can apply to real-world government and institutional projects.

Learning Objectives

-Understand what digital sovereignty means in practical, technical terms
-Identify risks and signs of vendor lock-in in existing systems
-Learn a step-by-step roadmap to design sovereign digital platforms
-Apply Drupal’s architecture to support open standards and interoperability
-Evaluate trade-offs between SaaS, cloud, and open-source approaches
-Understand how adopting digital sovereignty reshapes the way we design, build, and maintain digital platforms in our day-to-day work

Experience level
Intermediate