From Quality to Quantity: How Can Digital Sovereignty be Parsed into Measurable Components?

Abstract

The use of digital technologies for state-relevant institutions, government organisations and administrations has grown steadily in recent decades. Therefore, the question arises whether the mastery of these technologies has an influence on a state’s ability to act and whether state sovereignty is affected. In the European Union, the concept of digital sovereignty of states is being intensively discussed. However, it is unclear what exactly is meant by the term digital sovereignty and how it can be defined. The research gap is the lack of a clear qualitative and quantitative definition of that term, so that the goal of the article is to provide an overview of a qualitative definition. That is the basis for a quantiative model. To achive that goal a hierarchical component model is developed for concretisation. Furthermore, the components are decomposed into subcomponents, each of which is then quantified by suitable metric parameters, which are populated from secondary data sources for states and subjected to selected quantitative analyses. To verify and validate whether the component model and the parameters are suitable and robust for measuring digital sovereignty, a comparative index is formed and compared with existing indices.