Thanks Chris. That’s a reasonable take, and one more sign of a growing awareness of a
problem that needs new perspectives. It does prompt me to make two comments:
1. In its focus on economic potential, the article assumes the key actors in the
emergence of Canada’s data sovereignty strategy should be “firms.” Elsewhere, I’ve argued
that the starting point, and real societal issue, is individual digital autonomy, not just
data sovereignty as a matter of national economic development.
2. In paragraph 2, I note the phrase “purposeful innovation.” I believe that to be an
oxymoron. There’s many ways of understanding organizational change. But there’s one
description that seems meaningful to me. Change occurs because someone says “I can’t
stand this anymore,” and acts to change it. It is individuals acting as catalysts in the
context of self-organizing communities of practice that cause organizational change.
Management’s purposefulness mostly seeks to control. All the more reason to ensure the
digital autonomy of the individual.
GG
On Mar 24, 2026, at 8:16 AM, Cope, Chris <Chris.Cope(a)ottawa.ca>
wrote:
Thought you might like to read another position taken on Digital Sovereignty: “Data is
not the destination.”
Cheers
Chris Cope