IBM Digital Sovereignty Index: In the AI Era, Control Is No Longer Enough. Enterprises Must Prove It.

IBM’s new report, Proof, Not Promises: The Digital Sovereignty Index, highlights a widening gap between enterprise confidence and actual evidence of sovereign control over technology, particularly as AI adoption accelerates. The Index assesses organizations’ ability to retain and demonstrate control across AI, technology, operations, and data under pressure, including regulatory scrutiny or vendor disruptions. While 82% of surveyed leaders expressed high confidence in their ability to provide such evidence, only 26% met the Index’s Leading Digital Sovereignty tier, which requires comprehensive, well-integrated proof.

The research reveals that 94% of large enterprises encountered at least one sovereignty challenge in the past three years, such as AI-provider failures, regulatory conflicts, or data-access restrictions. Among those affected, 81% were required to furnish formal evidence to regulators, customers, auditors, or internal stakeholders, underscoring the growing accountability demands tied to digital sovereignty.

AI-related issues, including incorrect outputs, explainability failures, and model or provider breakdowns, were the most frequently reported sovereignty challenge, cited by 44% of respondents. The Index measures control across four pillars—AI, technology, operations, and data—evaluating six dimensions: responsibility, traceability, constraint, intervention, exit, and legitimacy to assess resilience under pressure.

The findings emphasize that sovereignty efforts often fail under scrutiny because they lack continuous testing and robust exit strategies. Only a third of organizations regularly test their ability to demonstrate sovereignty, and enterprises in the Leading tier were more than twice as likely to resolve their toughest sovereignty challenges without disruption compared to those in the Establishing tier.