AI Is Rewriting the Rules. Who Controls the Outcome?
Open Source, DPGs & the Fight for Digital Independence
- Date
2026-05-26
- Location
FWD50 Virtual
- Speakers
Mike Gifford (CivicActions)
Digital Transformation Is Hard
The last 30 years of digital are now legacy
- Proprietary software was important
- It helped organize both people & technology
- Sadly, it became entrenched, restrictive & proprietary
- Open source now powers most modern software
- Europe is correctly calling open source digital infrastructure
- Today, there are solid, reliable, secure open source alternatives
Building the Digital Commons
The rupture is driving strategic autonomy
- Digital Public Goods (DPG) / Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)
- Tied to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals
- Open source / standards + security + privacy + documentation
- Digital is driving all governments
- Code is a national security matter
- Digital independence is now defined the ability to choose
- 3rd Annual UN Open Source Week
- Lower budgets & bigger needs
Proof of Concept: Europe’s Shift
Europe is truly leading the way
- Digital independence is possible
- Europe is quickly proving this
- We can choose to do more than accommodate & hope
- Governments can build & buy local but contribute globally
- The strongest alternative to America-first is global collaboration
- DPGs & DPIs help focus global initiatives
- Open source investments become technical equity
Most Governments are Digital Tenants
Proprietary software is now a risk
Performative Sovereignty
- Data residency is meaningless
- Corporate pledges are sales-talk
- SaaS models have become another form of vendor lock-in
The Harsh Reality
- Dependency: Limited audit-ability
- Laws: Parent company's laws win
- Framing: We are Digital Colonies
You must be able to inspect, improve & distribute, to control digital.
AI: The Sovereignty Fork
Two paths for the future of state power
Algorithmic Clientelism
- Consolidated: Total control by hegemonies
- Surrender of Authority: State dependancy on corporate End-user license agreements
- Monoculture: One-size-fits-all values & logic
Participatory Stewardship
- Distributed: Governed by community ecosystems
- Active Authority: Governments able to co-design, fork & fix the code they run
- Diverse: Models localized to jurisdictions
AI investment must shift from replacing human labor to augmenting national autonomy.
The Middle Power Strategy
Participatory Sovereignty Through DPGs
- Independence is already an illusion, but we can have choice
- Middle powers gain leverage through shared code
- Mature DPGs become collective insurance
- Interoperability: Building on global, open DPI building blocks
- GovStack: Building a roadmap for the future / not passive consumers
- Independence: Ensuring no external entity can turn off government services
Sovereign SLMs: "Weights as Law"
Deploying open government AI safely
- Local Deployment: Running models on sovereign, domestic & renewable compute
- Context-Aware: Trained strictly on our laws, regulatory frameworks & cultural context
- Regulated: Small, distributed, truely-open LLMs
- Open Weights/Data: With AI, code alone is insufficient to understand the model
- Predictable Outcomes: Trading generative chaos for deterministic public administration
- Controlled Costs & Versions: Keeping power over critical system
Procurement as Industrial Policy
Feeding the Ecosystem, Not the Hegemons
- Public Money, Public Code: If we pay for it, it should be public
- Modular Contracting: Breakup with corporate lock-in
- Shift Incentives: Encourage responsible collaboration
- Local Ecosystems : Leveraging SME innovation
- Open Source / Open Standards are now critical infrastructure
- Currently most governments aren't contributing
- Sovereign Tech Agencies are supporting better governance
- We aren't going to vibe-code our way to better digital government
The FWD50 Call to Action
From Tenants to Architects
- Audit Your Stack: What can you inspect?
- Prioritize DPGs: When buying software or services, investigate if a DPG exists
- Find the Others: Are there other agencies with similar needs?
- Collaborate Globally: Governments must start to collaborate more
The future will be controlled by those that best steward digital infrastructure.