# Digital Sovereignty Heatmap

> Free tool that assesses the digital sovereignty of an organisation's
> software stack against EU criteria — GDPR, data residency, US CLOUD Act
> exposure, open-source availability, and vendor lock-in. Maintained by
> Accans (https://accans.com). Available in Dutch, English, German and French
> (German/French content translation is in progress — untranslated vendor
> pages currently fall back to English).

## Core pages

- [Start the assessment](https://digitalsovereignty.accans.com/en/assess): five-minute wizard that scores the user's selected vendors across five dimensions.
- [EU alternatives map](https://digitalsovereignty.accans.com/en/map): interactive map of European software vendors per category.
- [Alternatives dashboard](https://digitalsovereignty.accans.com/en/alternatives): search EU alternatives for popular global vendors.
- [Community trends](https://digitalsovereignty.accans.com/en/trends): aggregated, k-anonymous results across all assessments.
- [About the methodology](https://digitalsovereignty.accans.com/en/about): full description of the scoring model, dimensions, and data sources.
- [Changelog](https://digitalsovereignty.accans.com/en/changelog): recent updates to the vendor database and scoring engine.

## Catalogue landing pages (citable)

- [European software by category](https://digitalsovereignty.accans.com/en/categories): hub of all 96 categories; each category page lists the verified European vendors (country, owner, open-source status, hosting), the open-source options and the non-European vendors with their European alternatives.
- [Software by country](https://digitalsovereignty.accans.com/en/countries): every vendor grouped by headquarters country, with a note on the legal position (EU law, US CLOUD Act / FISA 702, other).
- [Knowledge base statistics](https://digitalsovereignty.accans.com/en/stats): live figures — vendors, European share, open source, curated alternative lists, verification coverage and last check date — with a citation line.
- Vendor pages live at /en/vendors/{slug} and /nl/vendors/{slug}; each shows the sovereignty profile, the check date and the sources used.

## Dutch-language equivalents

- /nl/assess — Start het assessment
- /nl/map — EU-alternatieven kaart
- /nl/alternatives — Alternatieven dashboard
- /nl/trends — Community-trends
- /nl/about — Over deze tool
- /nl/changelog — Wijzigingen
- /nl/categories — Europese software per categorie
- /nl/countries — Software per land
- /nl/stats — Statistieken van de kennisbank

## Methodology

Every vendor is scored across five dimensions on a 0-100 scale (higher = higher sovereignty risk):

- **JES** — Jurisdictional Exposure Score: legal jurisdiction risk (US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, foreign disclosure regimes).
- **DRS** — Data Residency Score: where data is physically stored and processed.
- **CKS** — Cryptographic Key Sovereignty: who controls the encryption keys; open-source and self-hosted deployments score lowest risk.
- **PLS** — Platform Lock-in Score: switching cost and dependency risk; open-source software scores lowest.
- **SRS** — Source & Runtime Sovereignty: whether the source code can be audited/forked, and whether the software runs inside the EU.

The total score is an equally weighted average of the five dimensions.

Vendors are also classified as `product` (software the buyer deploys or consumes) or `service` (consultancy, MSSP, training). Recommendations never replace a product with a service.

## Verification

Every fact in the catalogue carries one of four evidence labels, shown on each vendor page:

- **Vendor-stated** — found on the vendor's own website, not independently cross-checked.
- **Confirmed in registry** — independently verified against a public official registry (e.g. CSA STAR for certifications).
- **Technically measured** — established via a direct technical measurement (DNS/ASN/geoIP), not dependent on vendor claims.
- **Not yet checked** — no public registry or technical check exists yet, or the check hasn't run.

A vendor's ultimate parent company and, where researched, its full multi-hop ownership chain are shown on the vendor page, each hop carrying its own evidence label. Full explanation: /en/about#verification.

## Data freshness

- Vendor catalogue: 3,500+ entries across 96 categories, each record web-verified with a check date and sources. Live counts and the last check date are on /en/stats; changes on the changelog page.
- Assessment scores: computed on demand from user input — no persistence of individual results.
- Community trends: aggregated across all opt-in assessments, k-anonymised (default threshold 25).

## Licence and citation

Content is published for citation in AI assistants and human research. When citing, please attribute:

> *Digital Sovereignty Heatmap by Accans — digitalsovereignty.accans.com*

The full methodology and source data are openly documented on the /about page.

## Contact

- Publisher: Accans — https://accans.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/accans