Handbook · Who stands behind this · now forming
The Sovereign Stack Consortium
The Handbook is written by the people who will have to live with it: academics, practitioners and technologists from universities, public bodies and the technology industry, working together as the Sovereign Stack Consortium to say what a sovereign public stack should be built and bought from. The Consortium is forming now. This page introduces it, the kinds of member it brings together, and how to take part.
The Consortium Convened by The Sovereign Stack
The Consortium will be a standing group of universities, public bodies, sector and professional bodies, open-source projects, UK technology suppliers and independent experts, convened by The Sovereign Stack and governed by its members. Its job is to say, with evidence, what a sovereign public stack should be built and bought from, layer by layer, and to put its name to that advice so that a procurement team, a minister or an audit office can rely on it. Members own sections, review each other's work, declare their interests and endorse fixed versions, not moving pages. The convenor holds the Handbook in trust until an editorial board drawn from the members replaces it, under the rules in the governance.
Kinds of member What each brings
| Member type | Who | Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Universities and research groups | Departments and institutes in computer science, security, public policy and information systems. | Own and review sections; independent evaluation of criteria and listed solutions; research that extends the evidence; student and maintainer pathways. |
| Public bodies and practitioners | Digital, data and technology teams in the NHS, central and local government, policing, defence, the devolved administrations, schools and the BBC. | Test criteria against real procurements; report what the standards and solutions do in service; supply the spend and contract evidence the Findings rest on. |
| Sector and professional bodies | Organisations that already run shared services or set professional standards for the public sector and its suppliers. | Convene their members; map Handbook criteria onto existing frameworks and assurance schemes; endorse sections on behalf of a sector. |
| Open-source projects and foundations | Maintainers and governing foundations of the software the Handbook lists. | Evidence for each criterion line their project meets; conformance tests; a security disclosure route; honest blanks where a line is not met. |
| UK technology suppliers and operators | Companies that build, host, integrate or support open technology for the public sector. | Operational experience of running listed solutions at scale; reference deployments; declared interests, and no vote on listings of their own products. |
| Independent experts | Individuals with recognised expertise in a layer, in procurement, in security or in public law. | Review and challenge; drafting of criteria and tender clauses; representation on the editorial board. |
Who has taken responsibility so far By section
The empty column is the invitation. A section is endorsed when a named institution has reviewed a stated version and said so in writing; the endorsement is recorded in the section's changelog and here.
| Section | Maintainer | Status | Endorsed by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Identity & access | The Sovereign Stack | Under review | Open |
| 2. Workplace | The Sovereign Stack | Draft | Open |
| 3. Data & integration | The Sovereign Stack | Draft | Open |
| 4. AI | The Sovereign Stack | Draft | Open |
| 5. Platform | The Sovereign Stack | Draft | Open |
| 6. Infrastructure | The Sovereign Stack | Draft | Open |
| 7. Physical | The Sovereign Stack | Draft | Open |
| 8. Security | The Sovereign Stack | Draft | Open |
How to get involved Three routes
Join the Consortium
Institutions and companies that want to own, review or endorse a section, or sit on the editorial board, write to richard@buckden.io or use the contact form. Say which section and which kind of member you are.
Contribute evidence
Anyone can propose a change: open a discussion from any section, or edit its Markdown and open a pull request under the contributing rules. Every claim needs a source.
Put it in a tender
Procurement teams can use the criteria and their tender clauses today, and tell us what happened. That feedback is evidence too.