Organizations in this sector rely to a large extent on Big Tech digital platforms - like Microsoft's Azure and 365 or Google's Cloud Platform - as infrustructure for its digital services. This is increasingly seen as a problem, and there is currently much focus both in and outside Norway of digital sovereignty in the public sector. For example, the European Union recently published a overarching strategy for strengthening Europes's Technology Sovereignty and the Norwegian government has established a committee for strenghtening the use of Open Source in the public sector.
The students in this project will themselves, in cooperation with the supervisor, decide a research problem and scope within the larger theme. This could for example be:
- Why do organizations rely on big tech digital platforms?
- What critical dependencies exist to such platforms in the organizations and how do they deal with them?
- How can public sector organizations move to open source alternatives?
- How can open source alternatives be maintained responsibly across contributors to mitigate risks?
- What are the synergies and tensions emerge between open source initiatives (e.g., development methods) and public sector project management frameworks?
- How can openness requirement in public sector procurement be leveraged strategically?
- What role can small and medium sized businesses play in open ecosystems that provide alternative technologies?
- How can standardization and interoperability mitigate Big Tech dependencies?
The students are expected to perform a qualitative study to investigate these or similar questions. The supervisors have already established possible cases, but the master students can in cooperation with the supervisor also find alternative cases. Established cases include cooperation with:
- Norwegian Institute of Public Health (Folkehelseinstituttet)
- Directorate of Digitalization (Digitaliseringsdirektoratet)
- HISP Center
- A digitalization project on funeral and burial information with Statsforvalteren i Vestfold og Telemark
- A digitalization project on transport service cards (TT-kort) with Digi- and IKTAgder
This project fits students from the DESIGN, DIGHEL and DIGØK programs. It will be expected for the students in this project to attend group supervisions throughout the master project and participate in writing a joint report at the end.
The project will be coupled to the Research Council funded project The Platform Bind (link will soon be published). Feel free to contact Alexander for more information.