State Digitalization in an Era of Digital Sovereignties

This project on “Big-Tech Alternatives” studies whether, and if so how, alternatives to ‘big tech’ digital infrastructures are developed for state services in Norway and New Zealand. The project is taking place at a time when nations are pushing to digitalize their state infrastructures. However, there is simultaneously growing awareness on the part of politicians and publics that reliance on ‘foreign big tech’ for state digital infrastructures introduces significant vulnerabilities, leading to widespread discussion of ‘digital sovereignty’. In our project we study how the future digital state is being built in the light of digital sovereignty. We conduct long term fieldwork in two contrasting digital state projects-- the Norwegian Cloud project and New Zealand’s GovGPT project, to understand the overlooked role of state workers and consultants in shaping the relationship between digitalization and digital sovereignty in practice. Our work will advance scholarship in anthropology and science and technology studies (STS) on comparative digital sovereignties, and through arts-based methods, open up spaces for public participation around these political issues that often hide behind the technical.