Emma Irwin

Digital sovereignty is the ability of a nation, organization, or individual to maintain control over their own digital data, infrastructure, and operations. It matters for security, safety, and compliance, and increasingly for managing the emerging risks that come with depending on tools, platforms, and jurisdictions outside our borders.

Sovereignty doesn’t mean isolation.

This session makes the case that education sits at a critical intersection of human rights, data rights, consent, and security risk, and that this intersection makes Canadian post-secondary one of the most consequential places to show leadership. We’ll work through what each of those pillars looks like in practice, and where openness fits: as a concrete way to mitigate risk, and as a benchmark to hold proprietary vendors to.

You’ll leave with sharper vocabulary, a clearer sense of where Canadian education fits in a sovereignty conversation that’s moving fast, and a set of recommendations to bring back to your institution.