In our last roundup, we were thinking about how governments are responding to and adopting AI, focusing on the UAE’s shift to the Agentic State and Singapore’s Mythos-induced cyber-resilience meeting. Geopolitically, these questions have become even more important in recent days and weeks, and remain emerging stories around the world.
This week, our focus remains on these dynamics. We look at NATO’s procurement of digital software, as well as Poland and The Netherlands’ respective sovereignty responses when it comes to domestic digital infrastructure. Elsewhere, the UK Home Affairs Committee has delivered a scathing verdict on the Digital ID “BritCard” rollout, a warning lesson to any other governments working on similar products.
Our main stories this week:
NATO’s digital back end could fall apart without change - David Eaves, Foreign Policy
Mandatory digital ID launch called a ‘fiasco’ by scrutiny committee - Jennifer McKiernan
Making Agentic AI work for government: a readiness framework - World Economic Forum
Netherlands blocks US takeover of vital digital supplier - Pieter Haeck, Politico
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Writing in the aftermath of February’s Operation Epic Fury, Eaves argues that cloud capabilities have become a core part of allied warfighting, rather than a back-office IT concern.
During the US campaign in Iran, peak daily use of one Pentagon “AI targeting system” reportedly jumped a staggering 4,400%, exposing how dependent live operations are on rented compute and other software.
Eaves points to the familiar gap between NATO’s stated digital ambitions and reality - a proposed alliance-wide cloud and data-sharing “digital backbone” by 2030 contrasted with a slow, fragmented pace of action.
This piece lands at a time when NATO is leaning further into commercial providers, sharpening questions about resilience and dependency.
Our Take: This is the defense-flavored cousin of the sovereignty debates we keep returning to, especially in Europe. The uncomfortable thread here is that “wartime tempo” and “careful procurement” pull in opposite directions. Eaves is right that compute is now a weapons system in itself and not simply a piece of the puzzle, and procurement is yet to catch up.
The UK’s Home Affairs Committee has delivered a blunt verdict on the government’s handling of “Britcard”, concluding the original mandatory plan was rushed and poorly explained.
Committee chair Dame Karen Bradley called the early rollout “nothing short of a fiasco”, noting the announcement “came out of the blue” with no real policy groundwork behind it.
The compulsory element was quietly dropped in January after a public backlash that included a petition with nearly three million signatures.
MPs also flagged that mandatory digital right-to-work checks remain on the table, effectively forcing those without a passport into the digital ID system anyway.
Our Take: This is a textbook case of how clumsy sequencing can sink a policy. The committee’s “staircase, not a slippery slope” line is a neat one, and other governments eyeing their own ID rollouts would do well to take note of the critiques being aimed at the UK government before announcing similar policies.
The WEF’s second GovTech report with Capgemini and GGTC Berlin sets out a department-agnostic way of working out where agentic AI is actually ready to do useful work. It scores readiness across 70 government functions, rather than taking a ministry-by-ministry approach.
The headline framing is a potential $9.8T public-sector opportunity by 2034, with roughly 90% of institutions reportedly planning to explore or deploy agentic AI within the next two to three years.
More usefully, the analysis finds that around half of the functions WEF assessed combine high potential with manageable complexity, meaning there are plenty of places for governments to begin.
The emphasis throughout is on human oversight, strategic sequencing and avoiding the all too familiar trap of ambitious pilot phases which never scale.
After months of public debate and protest, the Dutch government has blocked US firm Kyndryl’s acquisition of Solvinity, the cloud provider that hosts DigiD (the country’s digital identity backbone).
State Secretary for Digital Economy Willemijn Aerdts told parliament that the national investment-screening authority had advised blocking the deal as a “possible risk to the public interest.”
The core fear was that DigiD data could fall under US jurisdiction and be demanded by American authorities, a common sovereignty concern given fresh urgency by the current transatlantic mood.
The decision followed parliamentary motions, citizen legal action and sustained campaigning from groups like Privacy First, with the Solvinity contract having earlier been extended to avoid a risky rushed switch.
Luxembourg opens tender for AI-generated content detection tool - Masha Borak, Biometric Update
Luxembourg is seeking vendors for a deepfake detection platform aimed at helping its media regulator monitor AI-generated and manipulated content.
Why Italy’s DPI doesn’t feel like infrastructure - Ottavia Porcellini, GovInsider
Italy’s digital public infrastructure has expanded through national platforms such as SPID, pagoPA, and IO, but still faces challenges around consistency, adoption, and user experience.
Nect selected to provide digital ID alternative to BundID in Schleswig-Holstein - Masha Borak, Biometric Update
Schleswig-Holstein will offer Nect Wallet as a digital ID alternative for accessing public services in an attempt to boost participation in a country where digital ID adoption lags.
Presentation of “Albanian Digital Solutions”, a new step in the digital transformation of public services - Government of Albania
With Albanian Digital Solutions, Albania is looking to build stronger in-house capacity to modernize public services and move the administration closer to the AI age.
The Philippines made digital inclusion land by making communities co-own it - Si Ying Thian, GovInsider
In rural communities in The Philippines, the Smart Villages and Smart Islands initiative is driving innovation and resilience through collaborative digital transformation.
Poland will introduce “sovereignty test” for government tech purchases as Tusk warns AI dependency has reached dangerous proportions - Alina Maria Stan, NextWeb
Poland has become the latest European country to add sovereignty rules to its procurement practices, including mandating annual IT independence reports to assess the state of sovereignty.
Finland is Europe’s most digitalized country - but older people are still left behind - Jeff Hearn et al, The Conversation
With Finland’s ombudsman for older people finding that 40-45% of those aged 65+ lack digital skills, Hearn explores the demands of digital inclusion in the most digitized country in Europe.
How digital public services are changing daily life in Central Asia - Tamila Olzhbaekova, The Times of Central Asia
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are moving core public services into mobile apps and online portals, producing as many unanswered questions as concrete results.
Digital sovereignty is in the fine print - Gabriela Ramos and Emilija Stojmenova Duh, Project Syndicate
Ramos and Stojmenova Duh suggest that beyond megaprojects and eye-catching announcements, governments can build leverage on digital contracts through public procurement and services rules.
Digital embassies and AI sovereignty: building resilient states beyond borders - Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
As AI infrastructure increasingly becomes a question of national security, the Tony Blair Institute explores whether and how digital embassies might provide safeguards against domestic disruptions.
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