Kevin Dominik Korte: IT Innovation Strategist, Board Member. Expert in identity management, AI and open-source solutions.
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The drive for digital sovereignty is reaching all continents, often throwing long-standing IT architectures and the dependencies that come with them into doubt or disarray. When organizations such as the International Criminal Court in The Hague are forced to rebuild their IT systems from scratch, most other organizations should take note and consider how to handle their existing infrastructure and legacy systems. Pulling off such a switch requires migration strategies, plans and often operating multiple systems simultaneously.
While checking off a list of partial targets might signal short-term success, truly successful projects call for a long-term approach focused on integration, targeted action and a commitment to making broad, lasting change. After 13 years of working with customers on their large-scale IT migrations, I want to share three key insights on how to make digital sovereignty a reality.
First, let’s address a common problem that will often hold up migrations. While most IT projects are driven by the organization's needs or its vision of a better future, few projects are driven by the employees themselves. Consequently, any push for digital sovereignty that affects a large number of employees must be prepared to deal with setbacks and pushback. That’s why support from the top-level leadership is critical for success.
Take the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, which switched to open-source software in a massive undertaking almost without precedent. Migrating 30,000 government employees, their workstations and the entire office back-end software to open-source solutions was a drawn-out process. A strong commitment to this IT project made the crucial difference in overcoming significant technical challenges and procedural setbacks.
Unfortunately, few IT leaders have this top-level approval from the C-suite and the board. Most corporate boards and public agencies still see technology as a cost center rather than an essential part of their services. To make such projects a reality, it is critical to find supporters and champions within the top leadership. Otherwise, adversities can spiral, turning a small tech setback into a veritable crisis.
Closely aligned with the commitment to change is the need to know your target. Many lofty goals sound great until you fail to establish measurable KPIs. As a result, projects around digital sovereignty might never reach their goals, as no one can say for sure what they are. Even worse, you might aim entirely wayward and confuse digital sovereignty with data center locations.
Companies in the air and space industry provide a good example: For them, sovereignty is synonymous with control over the data passing through satellites and access to these mission-critical systems. That means the first step toward defining a sovereignty target is to define data access and control. Likewise, for politically charged areas, such as space-based climate monitoring, scientific independence from political questions lies at the core of their mission.
With these two overarching goals in mind, it becomes much easier to design systems and select services that help achieve them. Setting these goals allows you to prioritize subprojects that move the needle toward accomplishing them—and avoid getting hung up on less critical parts.
Lastly, migration is much easier when users have some familiarity with the tools in question. This can be as simple as maintaining the folder structure within the home folder or using an integrated identity management system to keep the same user names and passwords throughout the system. The more familiar a system seems to the end users, the less they have to change their work habits and the less resistance they put up.
On the project management side, this might mean migrating applications first. This step allows users to adjust their workflows and click patterns before an operating system switchover changes the taskbar's color and throws off team members. It might also include changing back-end systems to introduce alternative options, simplifying overall management for the IT department before users call in with questions about missing buttons and changed names.
Running multiple systems in parallel might stress IT for a time, yet when the migration includes well-thought-out integrations, it should keep both administrative stress and user annoyance to a minimum.
Ultimately, the most important part of any migration project is to maintain momentum. Success breeds momentum, and momentum, in turn, creates success. Moving forward can become your flywheel. By finding your allies, defining the goals and determining working integration states, any IT department can successfully migrate its IT and improve its digital sovereignty.
It is on us as IT leaders to overcome the initial pushback and get the ball rolling. A well-planned strategy, once kicked off and clearly communicated, will sustain the momentum for a successful open-source migration. Migration done right is the path to digital sovereignty.
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