European reliance on US big tech raises both economic and data protection issues. At this members’ meeting in the Norwegian Association of Data Protection Officers we look at open source alternatives to US big tech.
Dr. h.c. Marit Hansen is State Data Protection Commissioner of Land Schleswig-Holstein and Head of the independent data protection authority (ULD) in Kiel. She will share experiences with replacing Microsoft services with open source in the public sector in Schleswig-Holstein, and will also give other examples from other Germany.
Dr Hansen graduated with a diploma in computer science in 1995, and has since worked in privacy and security aspects. Her focus is on data
protection by design and data protection by default from both the
technical and the legal perspectives.
She is a member of ENISA’s Ad-Hoc Working Group on Data Protection
Engineering. Her contribution to education and research on
privacy-enhancing technologies was given as a reason when she was awarded an honorary doctorate
from Karlstad University, Sweden.
The meeting takes place at 13:00 – 15:00 CET in Teams (in English) and is open to all member associations of the European Federation of Data Protection Officers (EFDPO). A link has been distributed to all members.
Agenda, 1 December 2025 (in Teams)
13:00 Welcome
13:05 Marit Hansen, Data Protection Commissioner of Schleswig-Holstein: Digital sovereignty in the Land of Schleswig-Holstein
13:30 Michael Ørnø, Director, Agency for Governmental IT Services, Denmark: Defining a software strategy. What can the public sector gain from diversifying purchases?
13:55 – 14:05 Coffee break
14:05 Tobias Fonsmark, CEO, Semaphor, Denmark: How may Open Source software solutions be used as real alternatives to Big Tech?
14:30 Linda V. Priebe, Practus, LLP, Washington DC: How secure are European personal data under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework?
15:00 Ends
Do you want to join the Norwegian Association of Data Protection Officers, you may do so by clicking here. Other European associations may be found at https://www.efdpo.eu/ .
