Digital sovereignty refers to the ability of individuals, organizations, and nations to have control over their own digital infrastructure, data, and technology choices. In an era where digital services permeate every aspect of our lives, this sovereignty has become as important as traditional forms of independence.

Today, much of the world's digital infrastructure is controlled by a handful of large technology companies, primarily based outside Europe. This concentration creates several challenges:

• Data Control: Personal and business data often flows through foreign servers, subject to foreign laws and surveillance programs.
• Vendor Lock-in: Proprietary systems create dependencies that are difficult and costly to escape.
• Innovation Constraints: Closed ecosystems limit the ability to innovate and adapt technology to local needs.
• Economic Dependency: Value created by European users flows primarily to foreign shareholders.
• Security Risks: Reliance on opaque, unauditable systems creates vulnerabilities that cannot be independently verified.

True digital sovereignty requires building and maintaining open, transparent, and auditable technologies that can be understood, modified, and controlled by those who use them.

The Next Generation Internet (NGI) is a European Commission initiative that aims to shape the development of the Internet into an Internet of humans. It focuses on building a more resilient, trustworthy, and sustainable Internet that reflects European values of privacy, openness, and diversity.

Since its launch, NGI has funded over 1,500 projects across Europe, supporting innovators who are building the technological foundations for a more human-centric Internet. These projects span the entire technology stack:

• Infrastructure: Networking protocols, hardware designs, and operating systems
• Privacy & Security: Encryption tools, identity management, and secure communications
• Decentralization: Federated systems, peer-to-peer networks, and distributed storage
• Applications: User-facing tools that embody privacy-by-design principles

Key funding programs include NGI Zero (administered by NLnet Foundation), NGI Atlantic, NGI Assure, and NGI Search, each targeting specific aspects of Internet infrastructure and applications.

The Open Internet Stack is the emerging ecosystem of open-source technologies funded by NGI that together can provide a complete alternative to proprietary digital infrastructure. Rather than a single monolithic system, it is a collection of interoperable components that can be combined to meet diverse needs.

The Open Internet Stack is characterized by:

• Openness: All components are open source, allowing inspection, modification, and redistribution.
• Transparency: Development happens in the open, with public discussions and documented decisions.
• Auditability: Code can be reviewed by independent security researchers and users.
• Interoperability: Components follow open standards and can work together.
• Sustainability: Projects are designed for long-term maintenance by diverse communities.

NGI Navigator helps explore and understand this ecosystem by tracking both the funded projects and the durable software products they produce.

NGI Navigator aggregates data from multiple sources to provide a comprehensive view of the NGI ecosystem:

Project Data

The core dataset contains information about NGI-funded projects, including their descriptions, categories, countries of origin, and status. This data is sourced from official NGI program records and enriched with additional information scraped from project websites and the NLnet Foundation project pages.

Enrichment Process

For each project, we automatically check:

• Whether the project website is still accessible
• Links to source code repositories (GitHub, GitLab, etc.)
• Repository activity (last commit date, stars)
• Documentation availability

Product Discovery

Projects often produce software products that outlive the funding period. We discover these products by:

• Analyzing project websites for product signals (downloads, version numbers, installation instructions)
• Extracting metadata from source repositories
• Using LLM-assisted analysis to identify products from project descriptions

Limitations

This dataset is not exhaustive and may contain inaccuracies. Some projects may have products we haven't discovered, and some discovered products may no longer be actively maintained. We welcome contributions and corrections.