Power to the Public Stack: Governing Europe’s Digital Commons

Europe’s IT landscape has long been heavily reliant on just a few large American tech providers, and this is equally true for the systems used in public administration. This dependence jeopardises the administrative services that underpin our states’ functioning. To counter this, Europe needs a tech stack that strengthens digital sovereignty at every level, from databases and virtualisation to operating systems and end-user applications.

Various governments and governmental organisations in Europe are already working to provide building blocks for a sovereign public infrastructure. The newly founded European Digital Infrastructure Consortium for Digital Commons (DC-EDIC) can fuel this development. This session brings together actors involved in setting up DC-EDIC in conversation with civil society and the wider open source community. We will explore the EDIC's role in supporting the open source ecosystem, as well its connections to European policy:

• How can we support long-term sustainability for open source public infrastructure?
• What capacity barriers still stand in the way of OS adoption?
• What governance models can enable meaningful participation from stakeholders?

With this session, we hope to help steer the EU's ambitions for digital sovereignty toward models that genuinely empower the open source community and reinforce the sustainability of Digital Commons.