De meeste organisaties hebben hun digitale landschap niet bewust ontworpen met soevereiniteit als uitgangspunt. In plaats daarvan zijn architecturen, platforms en afhankelijkheden in de loop der tijd gegroeid, gedreven door schaal, efficiëntie, compliance en snelheid. Dat roept vandaag een ongemakkelijke maar noodzakelijke vraag op: Waar staan we momenteel, en wat betekent dit voor Practice(s)? 

Digitale soevereiniteit is allang geen abstract begrip meer. Het heeft directe invloed op cloudkeuzes, AI-architecturen, gegevensbescherming, governance en de operationele weerbaarheid waarop organisaties dagelijks vertrouwen.

Op 4 maart 2026 organiseren de Practices Architecture, Business & Strategic IT Consulting, Cloud & Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, Data & Analytics en Digital Business Process Management gezamenlijk een practice-event.

Reken op een avond met inspirerende sessies van zowel interne als externe sprekers, ruimte om ervaringen en inzichten te delen, en een uitstekende gelegenheid om collega’s binnen CGI te ontmoeten. We zijn verheugd om opnieuw zoveel practices samen te brengen. Eerdere edities waren een groot succes en we kijken ernaar uit je weer te zien.

Most organizations did not consciously design their digital landscape with sovereignty in mind. Instead, architectures, platforms, and dependencies have grown over time, driven by scale, efficiency, compliance, and speed. Today, that raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: Where do we stand, and what does it mean in Practice(s)?

Digital sovereignty is no longer an abstract concept. It directly influences cloud choices, AI architectures, data protection, governance, and the operational resilience organizations rely on every day.

On 4 March 2026, the organizing practices Architecture, Business & Strategic IT Consulting, Cloud & Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, Data & Analytics, and Digital Business Process Management will host a joint practice event.

Expect an evening with compelling sessions from both internal and external speakers, space to share experiences and insights, and an excellent opportunity to connect with colleagues across CGI. We are pleased to bring so many practices together once again. Previous editions were a strong success, and we look forward to seeing you again.

 

Keynotes

From Strategy to Architectural Decisions
Ron Broeren - CIO, Nexperia

With over a decade of leadership experience, currently serving as VP Head of Digitalization & Transformation at Nexperia. Bringing expertise in digital transformation, global IT technology and innovation and data/AI. Adept at building and empowering people/teams combined with driving organizational change.
 
In addition, Ron Broeren is deeply engaged in Nexperia’s digital sovereignty agenda, strengthening European control over critical digital capabilities, protecting IP and sensitive know-how, and reducing dependencies in response to heightened geopolitical and regulatory scrutiny around Nexperia’s ownership and governance.
 
This includes driving initiatives across secure and compliant data/IT architectures (e.g., data residency and access controls), resilient supply-chain and operational continuity, and risk-managed collaboration models with external partners, reflecting the broader national-security sensitivities and interventions that have recently surrounded Nexperia’s operations.
 
During his keynote, Ron will share lessons learned and practical insights from this journey, what worked, what didn’t, and how digital sovereignty can be translated from strategy into concrete decisions across architecture, security, data, and operations. 

Ron Broeren - Nexperia

Sovereignty: where are we, why is it so hard, and what is the future?
Bert Hubert

All of a sudden we (belatedly) started worrying about all modern computing running exclusively on US clouds. In the talk, I cover how dire the situation is. The question is then, how do we diversify?

For this we must also understand how we got into this situation, which we'll also talk about. Finally, there are chances for operators willing to do more of the work & using different, standards based and perhaps open source solutions. I round off the talk with some predictions on what might happen, and what role governments, contractors and integrators might play"

Bert is the founder of PowerDNS, open source software that powers a significant fraction of the Internet.  He also worked for a Dutch intelligence agency and later co-founded a software company in that field. Until recently, Bert was a regulator of the Dutch intelligence and security agencies.   There he discovered how countries treat each other internationally, and what that might mean for our society if things turn bad. Bert is now a very part-time technical advisor at the Dutch Electoral Council, and the Authority Online Terrorism and CSAM Material (ATKM), and spends a lot of time writing articles in hopes to improve government policies on technology & innovation.  To keep it real, he also maintains various open source projects like the OpenTK parliamentary monitor.

Bert Hubert

Program

Breakout sessions 

17.00 - 18.25 Walk-in & dinner
18.30 - 19.30 Welcome & opening keynote
19.35 - 20:00 Breakouts - slot 1 
20:05 - 20.30 Breakouts - slot 2
20.35 - 21.30 Closing keynote
21.30 - 22.00 Drinks

Breakout sessie 1 - Marius Heyneke
•    European Alternatives to U.S. Owned Cloud Providers
 
This presentation explores the growing importance of European-owned cloud providers as alternatives to U.S. hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. It highlights key drivers such as data sovereignty, GDPR compliance, and the impact of the Schrems II ruling, which invalidated EU-U.S. data transfer agreements. The document outlines challenges with U.S. providers, including CLOUD Act risks, vendor lock-in, and market dominance, and contrasts these with the benefits offered by EU providers—such as legal compliance, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability.
Breakout sessie 2 - Robert Voûte
  • Can we live without GPS? 

If our safety and maybe sovereignty are at stake, even our GPS might be interrupted or wrong. How does this affect our IT world and how are we and our clients preparing ourselves? 

Breakout sessie 3 - Wouter van der Harg
•    Your client wants sovereign AI. How do we do this? 

What is sovereign AI and how do we create a classification?

Breakout sessie 4 - Marco Schramp
•    Securing data with external key management

Keys are used to encrypt and decrypt data. But who manages these keys? Who has access to these keys? Can you manage keys yourself? Do you trust your vendor with the keys to your data? Various approaches to key management are presented. A solution is presented using external key management.

Breakout sessie 5 - Morris van der Heijden, Nienke Bloksma
•    Digital sovereignty: from technology to governance and culture 

Drawing on their expertise in change management, transition and digital transformation, Morris van der Heijden (business consultant) and Nienke Bloksma (DCE Change) demonstrate how digital sovereignty in practice is primarily a matter of governance, collaboration, and purposeful movement. Based on change practices, current research and academic work, and their portrayal on the Digitization of the Dutch Government, they provide an in-depth framework for understanding digital sovereignty beyond purely technical or executive approaches. This session invites you to explore digital sovereignty through a change and organizational lens and to develop a professional stance for navigating complex digital transformations.

Breakout sessie 6 - Jeroen Derriks

•    Space Data Sovereignty - Introducing

Due to the classified nature of the projects and data in our Space unit, we are already doing a lot of self-hosted work for data sovereignty.
 With the boom in AI we want to add that on the projects as well, but obviously don't want to feed our information to the Googles/Meta's of the world with their AI services. Therefore we took the step to bring AI into our own offline environment, with Role-Based Access Control to not only keep our data internally, but also have data sovereignty between the various projects on our infrastructure. In this session we want to highlight what we build and the challenges we faced.

Breakout sessie 7 - Arjan van Delden, Erik Leijen

•    Sovereign Operations in practice 

This interactive discussion explores how sovereignty, data, operational, and regulatory, impacts IT hosting and managed services. Participants will examine real-world challenges, opportunities, and best practices for aligning sovereignty requirements with business goals, whether as providers or advisors to clients.

 

Breakout sessie 8 - Alessandro Vozza (Leader Cloud Native Netherlands)

•   Take Back Control: Sovereignty Is an Illusion Without Open Source

“Sovereignty” has become one of the most overused words in technology. Governments demand it, enterprises market it, and cloud providers promise it. But what does it actually mean?

Across this year’s FOSDEM tracks, from cloud native infrastructure and open hardware to digital identity, AI, and data platforms, one theme emerged repeatedly: sovereignty without open source is performative. Running workloads in a specific geographic region does not guarantee control. Owning data does not guarantee independence. And compliance does not equal autonomy.

In this round table session, we will explore a simple but uncomfortable proposition: if you cannot inspect it, fork it, replace it, or run it yourself, you do not truly control it. We will reflect on lessons from the open source ecosystem, including Kubernetes, Linux, OpenStack, open AI models, open hardware, and community driven standards, and discuss what real digital sovereignty requires in practice: portability, transparency, replaceability, and shared governance. The session begins with a brief framing introduction, followed by an open discussion with the audience. Whether you are a public sector architect, a platform engineer, an open source contributor, or simply skeptical of marketing narratives, this conversation invites you to rethink what “taking back control” really means in 2026.