Digital sovereignty: Time for Britain to take back control of our data
They might not realise it, but the average person uses 36 cloud-based services every day.
Chatting on WhatsApp, watching Netflix, sharing your work calendar with colleagues — all these services use the cloud, a network of remote servers accessed over the internet.
But the cloud systems used by Europe have long been far from European. In fact, according to the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, just four per cent of western world data is currently stored in Europe.
Europe’s voice on the international cloud market has been largely confined to a whisper, drowned out by a select few who have grown all too large and powerful.
Signs that we are heading towards data monopolisation are plain to see. Of the $56bn generated globally between 2017–2018 by on-demand cloud computing platforms known as “infrastructure as a service (IaaS), three quarters of that cash went directly to the top five providers. Four of those providers were American, one was Chinese, and zero were European.
The extent to which the big tech companies now control how and where our data is held was brought home forcefully by Google’s decision to move the data of millions of British users from its European HQ in Ireland back to the US.
European nations have recently moved to rectify this imbalance. The launch of European Cloud Service Gaia X in November last year by Germany and France put data at the heart of the continent’s agenda for the first time.
Linking various cloud providers across a European platform subject to robust data privacy and security standards, Gaia X’s quintessentially “made in Europe” message offers an opportunity for Europe to obtain the digital resilience and data capability that has been long been overdue.
However, trends elsewhere in Europe have yet to impact the UK. Top level interest in developing our own data capability remains low, and we continue to procure public sector services from the same small circle of big international tech players.
According to 2019 figures from the approved supplier’s marketplace known as G-Cloud, Amazon Web Services (the cloud computing arm of the tech giant) was the leading supplier to the government, at nearly £83m.
This level of market influence is uncomfortable when you take time to consider the immense importance that data has to our economy — and also to sensitive areas such as healthcare and national security.
Britain is the most significant digital economy in Europe, with investment in the tech industry last year more than twice that of Germany and France combined. Nevertheless, we are at risk of losing out if Europe becomes a pioneer in cloud networking.
As we forge new trade deals, the opportunity to invest in our own national data capability has never been stronger. Some of the world’s most innovative and competent tech businesses are based right here in the UK, and there is a hunger among companies, industry specialists and individuals alike to create a UK cloud provider platform — the benefits of which would be enormous both socially and economically.
Developing our own version of Gaia X has the potential to provide Britain with a transparent and regulated national capability that could begin to level the playing field among a variety of suppliers: small and large, British and international.
In turn, we will be able to harness the power of our data assets across new industries, generating new wealth and jobs and forging a twenty-first century tech sector driven by the latest innovations.
Such a development would make Britain a formidable tech powerhouse, and grant us real digital sovereignty.
Main image credit: Getty