44 COVER STORY Microsoft’s ecosystem of partners is also adding value to data sovereignty initiatives, especially for public sector organisations. For example, Atea is the first partner in Sweden to offer Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty to its public sector customers. The firm has worked with the solution for over a year and is helping its customers to ensure their data meets evolving protection policies, such as the EU-US Adequacy Decision in July 2023 under the EU GDPR that now allows data transfers to the USA to be made without extra protection measures. Meanwhile, Leonardo – a technological partner for governments, defence agencies, institutions and enterprises in Italy – is working with Microsoft to build a solution that meets the Italian government’s data classification standards and supports the country’s goal to migrate 75 per cent of its public administration to the cloud by 2025. Plus, Inspark – a Microsoft Cloud Incubator for governments and enterprises – is working to provide a compliant approach to meet the demands of Dutch public sector customers, such as the Municipality of Amsterdam, with Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty. The solution allows Inspark to leverage cloud capabilities for processes that use or create sensitive information, which in turn enables the Municipality of Amsterdam to offer modern services and experiences for citizens by migrating to the cloud in compliance with the Dutch BIO regulations for information security. “Partners are critical in this space,” says Thomas. “Governments need partners who understand the technical controls in the cloud and can help tailor those controls to individual countries and regulations. Our collaboration with partners who deeply understand national requirements enables us to provide a global solution for local requirements. These requirements are often complex due to a layered landscape of evolving policy, trends and regulations. Partners are helping to build policy packs that localise the sovereign landing zone to different geographies, assisting in determining which sovereign controls are appropriate for which data.” Microsoft is also investing in strategies to enable independent software vendors to produce a single global standard that will meet most of the requirements in a given country. “We hope this can bring some great solutions to our government customers and open up new opportunities for our vendors,” concludes Thomas. “ With Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty, governments don’t have to choose between digital innovation and control over their data” KATHLEEN MITFORD, MICROSOFT
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