IDC PlanScape: Digital Sovereignty for Regional and Local Governments

This IDC PlanScape gives regional and local government IT leaders a framework for understanding, evaluating, and operationalizing digital sovereignty. It also gives technology vendors the buyer context they need to engage effectively with government clients. The guidance draws on IDC survey data, industry research, and conversations with government technology leaders globally. Three key findings shape the document. First, sovereignty for regional and local government centers on access control, legal authority, and auditability - enforceable controls matter more than where data is physically hosted. Second, most government IT estates span workloads with different sensitivity, risk, and regulatory profiles, making a multimodel sovereignty strategy the practical norm. Third, AI governance has become part of a sovereignty strategy: across all regulated industries IDC surveyed, increasing control over AI model governance and transparency was the leading driver of sovereign cloud adoption for AI workloads."The governments that will get sovereignty right are not the ones that deploy the most restrictive controls everywhere; they are the ones that know exactly which workloads require them and have the contracts, audit infrastructure, and organizational processes to prove it," said Alison Brooks, research VP, WW Smart Cities and Spaces.