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Forward-thinking government for citizen-first services
Highlights
- As governments become the principal guardians of citizen data, the stakes of digital trust and national security have never been higher. Ensuring data protection is a sovereign imperative.
- Governments face a strategic dilemma between retaining control over citizen data and leveraging the scalability of public cloud platforms.
- The sovereign cloud emerges as a hybrid model that balances innovation with national interest in an AI-driven future.
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History of data: From clay tablets to zettabytes
Throughout history, information has been leveraged from time to time to build and destroy civilizations, leading to the modern world where we live today.
Not much has changed except the volume, velocity and strategies that have been consistently transforming the world.
Over 5,000 years ago, ancient Sumerians recorded harvest yields and tax ledgers on clay tablets. The Egyptians curated vast libraries of religious texts and historical accounts, while Indian temples preserved the rituals and religious information and were entrusted with astrological records, agricultural information, and taxation details. We are aware about how war strategies were formulated secretly and executed with precision; any leakage of even a small bit of information would be disastrous. Therefore, each set of information was so sacrosanct that only strong, loyal, and wise were entrusted to serve as secret keepers. This was to ensure the security, integrity and governance of the information.
Fast forward to the 21st century, while the basic principles of data generation and management remain the same, the quantum, scale, and speed with which this information is generated and utilized have transformed its management. Every interaction that happens between individuals generates data points. From Aadhar in India, social security number in the USA, to e-health records in European countries, trillions of data points are generated that are personal, permanent, and must be kept confidential, putting a massive load of responsibility on the governments to manage them well.
- India processes more than three billion Aadhaar authentications per month, showing the scale and sensitivity of its digital infrastructure.
- Approximately 402.74 million terabytes of data are created each day, and 181 zettabytes of data will be generated in 2025.
- Videos account for over half of internet data traffic.
- The US has over 2,700 data centers.
- In 2023, India had 888 million broadband users, half a million common service centers and over 4,38,000 PMGDisha training centers.
Today, we are fighting information wars every second. With the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), these battles have become more challenging with unimaginable consequences if the information is not protected meticulously.
Today, governments have emerged as the primary custodians of sensitive data. As digitalization grows across sectors, vast volumes of citizens’ data – measured in data points – are continuously generated, heightening the risk of threat exposure if not managed and protected well.
When, for example, citizens apply for a passport or access to any public service, they are required to consent to the government holding their critical information, including fingerprints, eye scans, and other personal information, entrusting it with the sacrosanct duty of care to the government. Governments across the federal structure must ensure this data remains secure in the current times when everything is interconnected.
Digital frontier: Governments, globalization, data, and geopolitics
With traditional battlefields giving way to digital warzones, we are living in an era where a minor slip on data security will send us spiraling down into an abyss.
The world has witnessed a surge in high impact cyberattacks with geopolitical undertones. In 2020, the SolarWinds breach affected U.S. federal agencies. In 2023, healthcare systems in Australia were crippled due to ransomware attacks. India, too, faced multiple attacks on power grids and defense-related assets.
In light of such developments, all eyes are on governments to protect data from internal inefficiencies and external adversaries. The geopolitical implications have made the situation more complex, and the impact of any breach is profound, jeopardizing national trust, political stability, and digital sovereignty.
The evolving reality demands an urgent reassessment – how and where should governments store and safeguard the invaluable data? The challenge lies in ensuring integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility in the face of rising threats.
Challenges: Data management is nowhere close to being manageable
Governments are in a conundrum at the intersection of limitless technological capabilities, ethical responsibilities, and the imperative to maintain public trust.
A key question arises: What is the most effective and secure way to store and protect the vast volumes of data being generated?
In the early stages of digital transformation, several governments rightly invested in building a significantly large number of state-owned data centers, under their complete control. However, building, managing, and scaling these data centers has never been easy, considering the velocity with which terabytes of the data is generated. Beyond storage, these data centers demand very high capex and opex. Moreover, IT infrastructure is often not a core competency of government departments, resulting in fragmented, inefficient, and sometimes insecure data management practices.
If data systems are not designed and maintained with precision, they expose nations to high-risk situations, including data breaches and compromise of sensitive information.
While public cloud platforms offer immense scalability, innovation, and price competitiveness, they also introduce significant concerns about jurisdictional and regulatory complexities. For instance, the US Cloud Act 2018 empowers US government to access the data stored by American cloud service providers, regardless of where it is stored globally.
Governments must carefully assess if cloud providers meet relevant regulatory requirements such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This has led to concerns about potential conflicts and genuine need for the governments to look for alternatives for managing their digital infrastructure, sensitive data, and reduce reliance on US-based cloud service providers.
As a result, governments are increasingly grappling with a difficult trade-off: on premises infrastructure may ensure greater control and data sovereignty, while public cloud environments promise scalability, cost competitiveness, and ease of management. The duality makes it challenging for stakeholders to make an informed decision on the same and has triggered a major strategic question: How can governments unlock the benefits of both worlds without compromising on either control or capability?
Enter the concept of a sovereign cloud – a hybrid framework designed to address the challenges of data sovereignty and security. It ensures that data remains within the country's borders, under the control of the government. The accountability and responsibility for the scale and security of the data lie with the service provider, while the ownership of the data remains with the government.
Introducing sovereign cloud: A balanced, secure approach
By definition, a sovereign cloud refers to a cloud infrastructure and associated services operated in a country’s legal jurisdiction.
This essentially must be owned and done by large, certified, compliant and tried-and-tested providers. The data, both primary and backup, reside within the country with control at the hands of authorized personnel only.
The core principles on which sovereign cloud works are:
- Data residency
As per this principle, all the data whether primary, backup, or archival, is stored and processed strictly within the national borders. For example, in case of India, governments must explore options that leverage indigenous infrastructure of owned data centers in major cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Pune, and so on.
- Data sovereignty
Data is subject exclusively to the laws and governance of the host nation, such as the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, ensuring immunity from foreign legal jurisdictions and extraterritorial subpoenas (e.g. US CLOUD Act). It is protected from foreign jurisdictional claims, ensuring that only local legal frameworks apply to its access, usage, and oversight.
Operational sovereignty
Cloud infrastructure and services are operated, maintained, and monitored by government-owned or certified entities to comply with national standards such as audits, policies, and frameworks. This includes adherence to local audit mechanisms, staffing policies, and operational transparency.
Cybersecurity compliance
The cloud environment must conform to national cybersecurity protocols and standards, such as those defined by CERT-IN (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team), MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology), and NIC (National Informatics Centre). This ensures robust protection against cyber threats, data breaches, and unauthorized access.
This is achieved through:
- Implementing role-based access control with minimum privilege enforcement ensures users only access the necessary resources
- Leveraging AI-enabled security information and event management for real-time threat detection and analysis
- Securing data at rest and in transit with strong AES-256 encryption and
- Utilizing geo-fencing and tenancy-based audits to enforce regulatory compliance and enhance security posture
Compliance and certifications
Sovereign cloud platforms are certified under ISO 27001, ISO 27701 (Privacy), SOC2 Type II, and CSA STAR Level 2. These certifications ensure robust privacy, security, and operational controls
AI-native architecture
Integrated AI capabilities support automation, analytics, and intelligent decision-making across public sector applications from pension systems to aviation regulation
Sustainability and self-reliance
At its core, sovereign cloud is built on the key fundamental pillars of sovereignty, security, and sustainability. This addresses the balancing issues of data management for the customers and also aligns with the efforts across the nations in building the ability to build, control, and protect its digital future.
Table 1 provides some quick tips for decision-making in this regard.
Attribute |
Global public cloud |
Government-owned dc |
Sovereign cloud |
Data residency |
May be offshore |
Local |
Local |
Control |
Shared |
Full |
Full (via trusted partner) |
Scalability |
High |
Low |
High |
Security compliance |
Varies |
Moderate |
High |
SME involvement |
High |
Low |
High |
Table 1: Making an informed cloud choice
The comparison shows that going the sovereign cloud way is a balanced and futuristic approach. This would lead to deploying the workloads with complete flexibility across the areas of jurisdiction supporting both scale and innovation with no compromise on risk. Europe’s Gaia-X initiative aims to create a secure federated data infrastructure, where data security and sovereignty remain at the core. Importantly, the sovereign cloud strategy also simplifies data migration at any stage, ensuring seamless transitions while maintaining sovereignty, compliance, security, and control with minimal change management issues.
What next: A roadmap for modern governance
In the face of uncertainty, it is always advisable to look for those who have already dared to lead.
A benchmark today for governments across the globe is the Estonia story.
Estonia, a small Baltic nation, transformed itself from a post-Soviet state into one of the most digitally advanced societies in the world. Instead of choosing a traditional path, Estonia leapfrogged into the digital age – digitalizing all government services and launching the world’s first e-residency program. While this may sound like a science fiction narrative, Estonia has faced real-world issues around protection, control, and management of data. This is where the sovereign cloud concept proved instrumental. Guided by principles of data residency, legal compliance, security, and public trust, Estonia successfully built a resilient digital backbone.
The sovereign cloud model is undoubtedly a game changer in today’s environment, where governments must strengthen control and security over public data, ensure fiscal responsibility, and prepare for the accelerating impact of artificial intelligence.
As technology continues to advance, it will become increasingly difficult to address national data needs through either self-managed data centers or complete reliance on hyperscalers. A hybrid approach needs to be taken to ensure readiness for the next decade.
In countries such as India, where public-private partnerships have worked well as in case of nation-building projects such as Passport Seva and Aadhaar, further strategic collaborations will be crucial to extend the benefits of sovereign cloud models.
In summary, the sovereign cloud offers a proven, robust solution to the core challenges governments face today across data management including security, scale, cost, and control. The model provides a compelling and comprehensive solution to the complexities of data management.
