Tech
Inspired by the EU: Sweden eyes open standard for encrypted chat services | Computer Weekly
Government departments in Sweden are considering deploying “open network” encrypted messaging services as an alternative to proprietary collaboration tools.
Some 40 of Sweden’s government agencies are collaborating on a project that could see them rolling out a secure messaging service across government departments.
The initiative comes as European governments are accelerating the deployment of “sovereign” technologies that allow them to be less reliant on “siloed” software from technology suppliers.
The trend has been given new impetus by the war in Ukraine and growing political upheaval in the US.
A membership organisation for government agencies interested in digital technology, eSam has proposed developing a government messaging service based on Matrix, an open network offering secure decentralised messaging.
Replacing emails and phone calls
Kenneth Edwall, a government employee and member of the eSam working group on the project, told Computer Weekly that one of the aims of the proposal is to make it possible for government departments to communicate more efficiently.
“We as agencies need to collaborate with each other,” he said. “Having email is not the best tool, and having phone calls is not a good method either.”
When eSam first began evaluating collaboration technology in 2021, government departments in Sweden had standardised on Skype for Business as a collaboration tool across government.
The tool was easy to use, and it was possible for government employees to collaborate with colleagues by searching on their email and initiating a chat.
They deployed Skype in a decentralised way, giving agencies the freedom to buy the service from suppliers or deploy it on their own datacentres.
This created a robust, decentralised network, said Edwall. “If you have 100 different deployments of Skype, it’s hard to target them all in a cyber attack,” he added.
Multiple messaging services
Since then, partly as a result of Microsoft phasing out Skype in favour of its Teams software, government departments have taken up a range of incompatible messaging apps. They include Rocket.chat, Teams, Zoom, open source platform Mattermost, video platform Jitsi Meet, and Element.
“We are now seeing at least five or six messaging tools being chosen by authorities today, and if it continues, we are going to have a big mess of fragmented systems,” said Edwall. “There is no open protocol that allows them to interoperate with each other.”
Imagine taking email and splitting it among five or six different email suppliers, each of which was incompatible with the other. “That is what we have today with messaging,” he added.
This means government employees in Sweden are having to learn several collaboration tools so that they communicate with people in other parts of government.
The security risks
The apps pose security risks as collaboration tools fall outside security safeguards, and when people leave their jobs, they may still be connected to government-focused chat groups.
In January this year, eSam began a review to look at how to solve these problems. One option was to do nothing and leave it to technology providers to develop interoperable messaging services, but it ruled that out.
“We don’t believe that the entire market wants to be interoperable,” said Edwall. “We believe that some of the larger vendors have an incentive not to be interoperable with other vendors.”
Another idea was for Swedish government departments to standardise on a propriety platform, such as Zoom or Microsoft teams. However, under Swedish law, government departments can not legally chose to buy technology from a favoured supplier. Each contract has to go out to tender.
Federated open source messaging
Eventually, eSam settled on an open-source federated messaging standard that allows government departments to build interoperable collaboration platforms, either in-house, or bought in from a provider.
“The key is we are not taking sides in regards to public cloud, private cloud or on premise,” said Edwall. “We are not taking sides on proprietary or open source solutions, but we want them all to have the same open protocol that allows them to interact with each other.”
The eSam members looked at a variety of options, including the Matrix protocol, Signal, XMPP and others, before deciding on Matrix.
“We had meetings with other public sector authorities in the EU [European Union] and we realised that most of the authorities we talked to were looking at the Matrix protocol,” he said. “Some of them were already in it and others were evaluating it.”
For eSam, Matrix offers a number of advantages. First, it is federated, which means the Matrix network relies on decentralised nodes. If one fails, or is hit by a cyber attack, messages can still re-route to the right destination.
Second, different government agencies can chose to deploy the technology in different ways. “You can also decide who you want to deploy our setup,” said Edwall. “You could use public cloud services or private on-premise services.”
European governments are using Matrix
Matrix is widely used by the public sector in France, Switzerland – where it has been championed by Swiss Post – and Germany. The European Commission and the Netherlands also have plans to roll out the technology.
The team has prepared a report that it will present to the eSam board in November.
Its recommendations are to build on open standards and protocols to ensure government agencies can avoid being locked into one supplier, and to give organisations the ability to choose how they want to deliver technology, either through public cloud, private cloud, on-premise systems or third-party suppliers.
If the plan is approved, the move to Matrix-based messaging is likely to take years – or even decades.
“We don’t want authorities to just throw out their current communication, because they might have a five or 10-year contract,” said Edwall.
“We want the market to shift so the vendors understand what they gain from using an open standard, similar to the open standards we use in email,” he added. “We want the market to understand that they should start adapting their products.”
Meta is giving Instagram users a rare glimpse into why certain posts are showing up on their Reels, the platform’s feed of algorithmically curated videos. Starting today, users will now see a list of what Instagram considers to be your top, recent interests. This kind of peek behind the algorithmic curtain is already uncommon in social media apps, but Meta is taking it a step further by allowing Instagram users to influence their algorithm directly by picking topics they want to see more or less often in Reels.
This feature, called “Your Algorithm,” drops as Instagram and TikTok continue to battle for prominence with younger users. It’s these users who potentially want more control over what they’re consuming as they scroll through video feeds, as well as other personalization options. The new feature is landing on Instagram first for those in the US, with a global rollout for English users in the works.
The change arrives around the same time as the European Commission claims Meta will offer users in the European Union more options about how their data is being used for personalized ads. Instagram’s current approach, where users can pay a subscription to not see ads, does not meet the standards for choice set up under the Digital Markets act, according to the EU. Users in this locale are expected to see a choice soon whether to share all their data, or opt for a smaller sliver to be used for advertising purposes.
Instagram currently has the lead in overall app adoption among young users, but TikTok isn’t that far off. According to a 2025 study by the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of US adults under 30 used Instagram whereas 63 percent used TikTok.
When a user opens the new “Your Algorithm” tab on Instagram, they’ll see a brief summary of what they’ve “been into” while scrolling through Reels. The topics displayed are based on recent user activity, and the summaries are made using generative AI. Meta’s examples of topics that users could add with the new feature include “Horror movies,” “Chess,” and “College football.”
Courtesy of Meta
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An initiative by a UK-based charity, supported by technology companies and universities, has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered digital twin that allows people with communications disabilities to speak in a natural way.
The technology, known as VoxAI, represents a step-change from the computer-assisted voice used by late physicist Stephen Hawking, one of the first well-known public figures with motor neurone disease (MND).
The Scott-Morgan Foundation was set up by its founder, roboticist Peter Scott-Morgan, to apply engineering principles to disability after he was diagnosed with MND.
A five-year project led by the trust has developed an AI-powered platform that is helping people with MND, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), to communicate in a natural way despite their disabilities.
It was developed by the foundation’s chief technologist, Bernard Muller, who is paralysed with MND and has learned to write code using eye-tracking technology.
The platform brings together AI technologies to create photo-realistic avatars that move in a natural way, with natural facial expressions, and can reproduce the voice of the person using it. It is able to listen to the conversation and offer disabled people a choice of three answers that they could select based on its understanding of the person.
One of the people testing the technology, Leah Stavenhagen, for example, worked as a consultant at McKinsey before she developed MND. The AI she uses has been trained on a book she wrote, along with 30 interviews in English and French.
LaVonne Roberts, CEO of the Scott-Morgan Foundation, told Computer Weekly that while people did not mind waiting to hear what Stephen Hawking had to say, delays in communication usually cause problems for both the speaker and the listener.
“When you have someone that is having to spell something out laboriously, they are fatiguing their eyes, which has been shown to further progression of MND, so we are trying to protect from that,” she said.
“The other thing that happens is people start giving much shorter answers because they don’t have the time to stay in a conversation,” added Roberts. “And, honestly, you end up with awkward pauses.”
The Scott-Morgan Foundation, which demonstrated the technology today at an AI Summit in New York, plans to make the software available free of charge, so that it can be used by as many people as possible. It will also offer a subscription version for more advanced features.
Many off-the-shelf computers and tablets now come with workable eye-tracking, and tracking devices provided by the NHS may also be able to use the technology, said Roberts.
“The idea was to democratise the technology by putting it on the web, giving the license keys, so that people have their voice back again,” she said.
More than 100 million people in the world who live with conditions that severely limit speech – including people recovering from a stroke, or living with cerebral palsy, a traumatic brain injury or non-verbal autism – could benefit from the technology.
The foundation plans to start a two-year trial of the platform, which will track some 20 participants using the technology, led by Mexican university Tecnológico de Monterrey, which will evaluate its impact.
It is also developing a simplified platform that could be used by people who do not have access to Wi-Fi.
Gil Perry, CEO of D-ID, which creates digital avatars for businesses, contributed to the project after the company helped a few people with MND/ALS in ways they found life-changing.
His company joined the project with the Scott-Morgan Foundation about two years ago, after meeting with Roberts. “I saw that LaVonne has the vision and can connect all the dots together, because she has a group of people who just sleep and dream that vision day and night,” said Perry.
The company has improved its technology so that it can create an avatar that shows facial expressions, even for someone whose condition means they are at an advanced stage of immobility.
Roberts said that one of the breakthrough moments came after a mother told the foundation that, although the technology was good, “You just didn’t capture my daughter’s smile”. That sparked work to make the avatars more lifelike. “I remember Erin’s mother crying when she saw Erin on a video, and she was like, ‘That’s her smile’,” she said. “And I knew we were onto something.”
Muller, who architected the platform, said that his avatar not only makes him visible, but also “present”. “When someone sees my avatar smile or shows concern, they are seeing me, not a disability,” he added. “That changes everything about how I connect with the world.”
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