[abstract] Dependencies by Design: Cyprus, Big Tech and the Contest Over Digital Sovereignty in Education

Posted on by nee

 Abstract submitted to the OFA Symposium

 Dependencies by Design: Cyprus, Big Tech and the Contest Over Digital Sovereignty in Education

 This presentation critically examines Cyprus’s evolving digital diplomacy, focusing on recent collaborations with U.S.-based Big Tech firms such as Oracle and NVIDIA and their proposed involvement in the island’s education sector. Through this case study, it interrogates the intersection of education, digital sovereignty, and public infrastructure in the geopolitical context of small EU member states.

While framed by European policy initiatives this investigation examines whether and how EU digital sovereignty frameworks can (a) resist the Big Tech lobby, and (b) enter constructively at a time of increasing global instability and regional militarisation. Drawing from ongoing debates about Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) policy, the piece reflects on issues in FLOSS sustainability, citing recent contributions on critical dependencies (Gaeremyn, 2025), funding fragility, and pragmatic EU sovereignty proposals (Fermigier, 2025).

The presentation draws on the outcomes of the ReFLOSS Tech Policy Unconference (Cyprus, 2025) to show how bottom-up community efforts are reshaping the conversation around FLOSS governance in regions typically excluded from central EU tech decision-making.

This reflection calls for a redefinition of digital sovereignty grounded in ethics, pedagogy, and democratic control, especially as public institutions face increasing pressure to adopt proprietary infrastructure in crisis contexts. Cyprus is presented as both a cautionary example and a potential testbed for public-interest-led digital transformation.

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Published by nee

I sought meaning in academic research about conflict transformation in relation to art and media history, and efforts for recovering the commons (PhD Cultural Studies with the London Consortium). I worked and taught with a number of universities, art-centers and internationally funded programs with increasing focus on free and open source technology, until a child reactivated my connection with a circle of heart-giving art educators in Brasil and helped me see what the Situationists' meant with their rejection of alienated labour. My child and I started mapping out and learning from the bravest and most meaningful art-educational initiatives around the world, and we've been focusing on holding space and community for free play, towards what Silvia Federici describes as a re-enchantment. Through my own learning path (including on-going training in Waldorf and Forest school teacher training, What Future for Education, London Institute of Education 2019; Hand in Hand Professional’s Intensive 2020) I have come to see learning as a state of being that is meaningfully embedded and present in its social setting, prioritising applied responses to local and community needs, and contributing to each other’s creative, practical, scientific, emotional and other developmental processes through a recognition of the abundant nature of the necessary resources, materials, information, peer-to-peer learning, and tools. | neeii.info

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