Data sovereignty, control and transparency as fundamental software design principles

More about our project

We are building a unified foundation for resilient software systems that returns control and transparency over data, workflows, and intelligence to the people, groups, and institutions that depend on them – even in an AI-driven world.

COKIT enables architectures where users, teams, organizations and public institutions remain in control of their data, logic and AI, instead of relying on trust in platforms, clouds or vendors they cannot fully oversee.

Why do we need change?

Data has become the most critical asset of modern software.

With the rise of AI, data is no longer just stored or processed — it is continuously learned from, replicated and transformed into intelligence. Whoever controls the data controls the system, and increasingly, the intelligence built on top of it. Yet most digital collaboration and software systems today are built on centralized platforms and cloud infrastructures controlled by a few vendors. Control is replaced by trust — trust in providers, contracts and promises that users cannot verify.

We communicate, work and build on platforms that define the rules, control the infrastructure and decide how data is used. In exchange for convenience, users, organizations and institutions give up direct control — often without transparency, insight or real alternatives.

In these systems:

data flows are opaque
ownership is assumed, not enforceable
control shifts away from users toward platforms
AI pipelines are defined and operated by third parties
interoperability is the exception, not the rule
offline capability is absent – if the network or provider goes down, applications stop working

This status quo creates structural lock-in and long-term risk — especially in an AI-driven environment where data and intelligence cannot be separated.

Why should individuals, organizations or even states be required to trust external systems, when sovereignty depends on the ability to verify and control?

Our mission

We are changing the underlying architecture.

Our goal is to enable software systems where sovereignty is based on control and transparency — not on trust alone.

Control over data, access and usage is structurally anchored with those who depend on the system. Ownership is enforced by design. Behavior is inspectable. Decisions are verifiable. Systems remain functional, scalable and AI-ready without requiring users, organizations or institutions to surrender control to platforms, clouds or vendors.

This is our vision of how modern software must be built.

Users physically own their own data

Users, teams and organizations remain in direct, physical control of their data.

Data is stored locally on user devices or within clearly defined sovereign domains under the owners’ control, and it is only shared deliberately – based on explicit rules, user consent, and technical enforcement. Collaboration does not transfer ownership or authority — it happens under the control of the data owners. Control over data persists across workflows, devices, participants and organizational boundaries.

Data sovereignty is not a promise. It is a concrete architectural guarantee.

Only relevant information is shared — directly

Only the data required for a specific interaction is exchanged.

Communication and synchronization happen directly between participants using end-to-end encrypted, peer-to-peer connections. There are no mandatory central servers, no hidden intermediaries and no opaque data paths that require blind trust.

Control stays at the edges — with the individuals, teams and institutions that generate and use the data. It also means the system is highly resilient.

Open and evolvable

Sovereignty requires transparency.

No single vendor should control or obscure the foundations of digital systems that others depend on. COKIT is designed as an open foundation that can be inspected, audited, extended and adapted.

Open source is not an ideological choice — it is a prerequisite for verifiable control. Users and organizations must be able to understand how systems work, how data is handled and how decisions are made, including those involving AI.

Openness ensures that control is not replaced by a new form of dependency.

Interoperable by design

Control requires freedom of movement.

Tools and workflows built on COKIT are designed to interoperate — even across providers, implementations and organizational boundaries. Users and institutions are not locked into isolated systems, and sovereignty does not come at the cost of isolation.

Interoperability is built into the foundation, not added as an afterthought.

Accessible

Control should not be reserved for experts.

The CoKIT foundation is meant to be powerful enough for the most complex systems, yet accessible enough to be used, governed, and understood without deep technical expertise.

Individuals, teams, and organizations can exercise and retain control over their digital systems without becoming infrastructure specialists.

How are we doing it

We build COKIT as a foundational toolkit for resilient, transparent and sovereign software architectures.

COKIT provides the technical building blocks to create systems that:

operate peer-to-peer by default, with no mandatory cloud infrastructure (cloud optional, and everything can even run offline)
using decentralized identity and cryptographic content verification at every step as a zero-trust approach
make control, data ownership, and responsibilities explicit at every level of the architecture and code
support real-time collaboration across devices and organizations without any loss of sovereignty or data control
integrate AI without implicit data extraction or opaque decision-making by external parties

We focus on technology, reference implementations and architectural patterns that make control, transparency and data sovereignty practical, scalable and future-proof — for individuals, organizations and societies alike.

Who we are

We have been supporting global teams with solutions for their complex collaboration processes for over 20 years at BRANDGUARDIAN. While doing so, we have learned a lot about collaboration, enterprise-grade security and compliance.
These lessons learned have directly informed the creation of CoKIT, embedding sovereignty and resilience into its core design.

Well-known brands are already using key components of our technology today.