Agile Organizing of National Cyber Defence Capabilities: Decoupling External Dependencies and Catalysing Digital Sovereignty

Today’s interconnected and digitalized world has necessitated armed forces and military organizations in various countries to transcend across their traditional operating sphere of geopolitical and economic arenas to the digital realm. The boundary spanning nature of cloud-based technology solutions, inadvertent dependence on non-sovereign vendors has prompted cyber defence organizations to rapidly digitalize to reassert and regain control in the digital space. Through this explorative case study of a national cyber defence organization in Europe, we attempt to identify the influence of an agile transformation as part of a wider digitalization push on the realization of national digital sovereignty agenda and aspirations. Our findings suggest that embracement of agile organizing principles and methods in a cyber defence organization possibly serve as an important underpinning for reducing technological dependencies, regaining control over digital infrastructure and assets, improved cyber resilience capabilities and catalysing the journey towards greater national digital sovereignty.