Workshop: Digital Sovereignty: Understand, assess and strenghten your digital sovereignty

Do you know exactly how dependent your organisation has become on a handful of cloud providers, or what you would do if one of them changed its terms overnight? 

For most SMEs, digital sovereignty still sounds like an abstract policy topic. In practice, it shapes your negotiating position with suppliers, your resilience against price hikes or service disruptions, and your ability to make deliberate choices about the tools you depend on. Taking control of your dependencies reduces risk, strengthens your position and gives you a technology strategy that fits your organisation. 

In this workshop, we help you discover which sovereignty profile fits your organisation, assess where you stand today, and work out what to tackle first. Over two half-day sessions, you get a clear view of your dependencies and a concrete starting point for a roadmap. 

Session 1: Discover your Digital Sovereignty Profile 

In the first session, we start with a short introduction to the concept of digital sovereignty and its key components. Through a hands-on prioritisation exercise, you discover which approach currently fits your organisation best: are you the ideologist, the pragmatist, the economic rationalist, or the architect? Each of these profiles has its own strengths and blind spots. By confronting you with concrete sovereignty dilemmasand real cases that challenge each profile's assumptions, the workshop pushes you to think more broadly about your own approach to digital sovereignty. 

Session 2: Taking steps on the road to Digital Sovereignty: where I am? Where do I need to go? And how am I going to get there? 

In the second session, you assess your organisation's sovereignty maturity, explore practical ways to work towards greater sovereignty, and get an introduction to the EU ‘tech sovereignty package’ that can support your next steps. You leave with a sharper, more resilient strategy and a clear view of what to tackle first. 

What you will learn 

Understanding digital sovereignty. You get a clear picture of what digital sovereignty means in practice andwhich components matter, from cloud infrastructure and office software to the AI services you rely on. 

Mapping your organisation's profile. You see how your current set-up, based on a questionnaire, compares with the profile that fits your organisation's ambitions, and where the two differ. 

Building your sovereignty roadmap. You learn how mature your organisation currently is, which practical steps reduce dependency first, and how the tech sovereignty package can support them. 

Hands-on sessions 

Session 1 (27 November 2026) 

•    Pre-workshop questionnaire: ahead of the session, you complete a short questionnaire on yourorganisation's current digital sovereignty, covering cloud storage, office environment, AI services, exit clauses, and cybersecurity. 
•  Introduction to digital sovereignty: a short, vision-paper-based introduction sets out the keycomponents of the concept. 
•  Conversation starter: a prioritisation exercise reveals which profile, ideologist, pragmatist, economicrationalist, or architect, best matches your organisation's current thinking.   
• Profile comparison: we compare your current profile from the questionnaire with your ideal profile from the conversation starter, and discuss the gap between the two. 
• Group discussion: together with the other participating organisations, you discuss what you canalready do yourselves and which problems still need to be solved. 

Session 2 (8 December 2026) 

• Sovereignty maturity: you assess how mature your organisation's current approach to digital sovereignty is, and where the biggest gaps are. 
•  Working towards sovereignty: practical guidance on concrete steps your organisation can take toreduce dependency and gain more control over your digital tools and data. 
• Tech sovereignty package: an introduction to the EU package.  

Who is this workshop for? 

This workshop is aimed at Brussels SMEs exploring the theme of digital sovereignty who want to understand where they stand and where to go next. No prior knowledge of the topic is required.  

Price 

Thanks to the support of the European Commission and Innoviris in the framework of the EDIH sustAIn.brussels, Brussels SMEs and midcaps receive this training free of charge in the context of de minimisaid. Large companies and participants without a company pay € 1500,- ex VAT. 

Practical information 

• Language: English 
• Location: BeCentral, Cantersteen 10-12, Brussels. 
•  Organised by: sustAIn.brussels 
• Duration: 6 hours across two sessions  

o        Session 1: 27 November 2026, 13:00–16:00 

o        Session 2: 8 December 2026, 13:00–16:00 

Watch out! If you sign up for this workshop, we expect you on both dates, 27 November and 8 December. 

If more people from your organisation are interested in attending, feel free to send an email to marco.houben@vub.be 

Questions? 

Contact Marco Houben at marco.houben@vub.be