Sovereign Tech Standards

Standards are developed through open processes, but open doesn't mean equally accessible. Participation in bodies like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) takes time, expertise, and sustained engagement. For large technology companies, this is a strategic investment in shaping the technologies they depend on. For independent open source maintainers — the people who build and maintain the software components that implement these standards — the same participation is often out of reach.

A survey of maintainers with whom the Sovereign Tech Agency has worked showed:

Three-quarters of respondents actively rely on standards, yet very few can afford to participate in their development on a long-term basis.

Maintainers bring something that's frequently missing from standards processes: direct open source implementation experience. They build, test, and operate software that has to conform to these specifications, and they encounter in practice what looks clean on paper. Standards developed without that perspective risk being less robust, less interoperable, and less reflective of how modern software actually works.

The Sovereign Tech Standards network closes the gap between those who write open standards and those who implement them. This ensures that the technologies comprising our digital infrastructure remain interoperable, open, and grounded in real-world practice. For this pilot program, we're selecting up to ten open source maintainers to participate in standards work at the IETF, W3C, and ISO. The program includes training, mentoring, and financial support to make sustained engagement possible.

The Sovereign Tech Standards network supports a cohort of up to ten open source maintainers to participate in standards work at the IETF, W3C, or ISO. The pilot of the Sovereign Tech Standards network runs from mid-June 2026 through June 2027.

Selected participants receive:

• A fixed monthly payment of €4,800 to €5,200 to make sustained participation possible. This covers an average of 10 hours per week reviewing draft specifications, contributing to working groups, preparing technical input, and attending standards meetings.
• Training and onboarding. Participants will take part in an online preparatory course covering how standards bodies work, their governance structures, working group processes, and how to contribute to draft specifications. Participants then attend their first standards development organization (SDO) meeting in person, where they will be onboarded together with other members of their cohort.
• Ongoing mentoring from experienced standards contributors throughout the duration of the program.
• Peer learning as part of a network of maintainers working across the IETF, W3C, and ISO simultaneously.
• Reimbursement for SDO participation fees and travel support for in-person meetings.

Participants are expected to actively engage in standards work throughout the duration of the program. This includes reviewing specifications, contributing implementation experience, participating in working group discussions, and attending relevant SDO meetings. They will also provide short written updates about their engagement on a monthly basis.

The Sovereign Tech Standards network is open to active maintainers of open source digital infrastructure projects whose work connects directly to standards developed at the IETF, W3C, or ISO.

To be eligible, applicants must meet three baseline criteria:

• Active open source maintainer: you are an active maintainer of at least one open source digital infrastructure project.
• Connection to standards-based technologies: the project you maintain implements, depends on, or otherwise relates directly to technologies covered by standards produced by the IETF, W3C, or ISO. Projects that plan to bring substantial new work to one of these bodies are also eligible.
• Capacity to participate: you have the time and availability of 10 hours per week on average to engage in standards work throughout the program, in addition to attending relevant SDO meetings in person.

Applications are open to maintainers worldwide; payments will be made in euros by bank or wire transfer. Participants will need to issue invoices to the Sovereign Tech Agency GmbH.

Applications are reviewed by a panel and scored across four areas.

The call for applications for the Sovereign Tech Standards network were open through 19 May 2026 at 11:59 PM CEST.

In your application, you will need to provide information about

• your work as an open source maintainer and the projects you maintain or contribute to
• how your work relates to standards-based specifications
• what you would aim to work on within the relevant SDO if selected

Applications are reviewed by a panel. Two reviewers score each eligible application independently. We will inform participants selected for the Sovereign Tech Standards network in early June 2026. All applicants — successful and unsuccessful — will hear from us, and we will endeavor to provide written feedback.

The Sovereign Tech Standards network is launching as a pilot program. This is how the Sovereign Tech Agency develops programs: the Sovereign Tech Fund and the Sovereign Tech Fellowship both began with pilot programs, refined through real-world experience before becoming permanent fixtures of what we do.

A pilot lets us learn from an actual cohort, validating our assumptions against reality, understanding what enables meaningful participation in standards processes, and finding out where our model needs adjusting. We've done substantial research and spoken to many maintainers to get here, and the pilot is the next step in that process: finding out what we still don't know.

Our core hypothesis: open source maintainers have deep implementation knowledge that is structurally underrepresented in standards development. Mitigating the barriers of cost, time, and unfamiliarity with process enables them to contribute expertise that makes standards more grounded, more usable, and more interoperable. We expect that to benefit not just the open source ecosystem but the broader digital infrastructure that depends on these specifications.

After the end of the pilot, we will publish an evaluation of the Sovereign Tech Standards network and use those findings to determine how to continue.

Have questions about the Sovereign Tech Standards network, the application process, or whether the program is right for you? Visit our page of frequently asked questions for answers to the most common questions.

If your question isn't covered there, you can reach us at [email protected]