Teachers’ data protection in the Google era: A question of digital sovereignty

Foto: Gerd Altmann – Pixabay

License Creative Commons

Jordi Collado

In just a few years, the Catalan Department of Education has promoted the widespread use of Google Workspace for Education across public schools through the XTEC network. Gmail, Drive, Classroom and Meet have been presented as tools to modernise educational management and improve communication with pupils and families.

Yet this digital transformation brings consequences that go far beyond convenience and efficiency. Teachers — who work, communicate and store documents within the Google ecosystem — generate a vast amount of personal and professional data managed by a private corporation. This raises profound questions about privacy, confidentiality and the informational sovereignty of the teaching profession.

According to the Reglament General de Protecció de Dades (General Data Protection Regulation, UE 2016/679), Google acts as a “data processor” under an agreement with the Department. Nevertheless, the structural dependence on a company with global commercial interests and headquarters outside the European Union cannot be ignored. This model also affects teachers’ wellbeing: it can foster a sense of surveillance, technological stress, and a blurring of boundaries between professional and personal life. Moreover, it exacerbates the digital divide among teachers according to their level of technological competence.

As Cecília Bayo observed in an interview with Xarxanet (2023), “teaching children that there are different ways of understanding technology is essential”.

From Barcelona City Council, Arnau Monterde, Director of Democratic Innovation, advocates a digital transformation that is “open, collaborative and under effective public control” (Conferència 4D, 2024). Initiatives such as the Projecte Digital i Democratic— promoted in collaboration with Xnet and several schools — demonstrate that it is possible to work with free technologies such as Nextcloud, Moodle or BigBlueButton without depending on Google.

This alternative model is based on three key principles: technological transparency and sovereignty; the use of free software and data under public control; and the active participation of the educational community in designing the tools it uses. Xnet also stresses the need to guarantee network neutrality, data protection and the inviolability of communications, as well as the auditability of algorithms and the transparency of automated systems. According to this organisation, the struggle for digital sovereignty is also a struggle for democracy and civil rights in the digital age.

Pla d’Educació Digital de Catalunya (PEDC), promoted by the Direcció General d’Innovació, Digitalització i Currículum, has been presented as a commitment to the technological modernisation of the education system.

Another group that exemplifies the internal tensions of this digital transformation is that of the digital coordinators in Catalonia’s state schools. The collective Coordinació Digital de Catalunya en Lluita (Digital Coordination of Catalonia in Struggle) has denounced that the proliferation of devices, platforms and digital projects has not been accompanied by the necessary recognition, time or professional resources to manage them. According to their manifesto, the lack of technical support and the extra workload placed on teaching staff responsible for digital coordination jeopardise the pedagogical quality of the digitalisation process and further widen the gap between schools and professionals. This reveals a paradox at the heart of digital sovereignty: while millions are invested in external infrastructures and platforms, the working conditions of those who make them run are often overlooked.

This sense of unease coincides with the complaints documented in OCTUVRE’s 2023 report — “Digitalització educativa: el negoci d’educar amb dades” (Digitalisation of Education: The Business of Teaching with Data) — which reveals that the plan has allocated hundreds of millions of euros, much of it from the Next Generation funds, to projects and contracts with major technology corporations, without ensuring effective public control or genuine participation by teachers.

OCTUVRE’s report gathers testimonies from teachers and digital coordinators who warn of the absence of pedagogical debate, the lack of transparency in the selection of providers, and the growing dependence on private platforms. Once again, digitalisation has been treated as a matter of infrastructure rather than as a debate about sovereignty and digital rights.

Examples from other regions show that alternative paths are possible. In Denmark, the gradual migration from Windows/Office to Linux/LibreOffice has reduced dependence on external corporations and strengthened digital sovereignty. The EducaMadrid project provides email, cloud and virtual classroom services managed by the educational community itself, with full respect for privacy. And here at home, the teachers’ union Secundària Info has developed a free application that offers resources to teachers without collecting personal data.

These examples demonstrate that it is indeed possible to guarantee security, transparency and digital sovereignty in public education. The Catalan experience, by contrast, reveals a form of digitalisation that has been imposed — often without public debate or evaluation of alternatives.

To reverse this situation, we must commit to free software and public digital services; provide teachers with critical training on privacy and technological sovereignty; ensure transparency in procurement, foster genuine participation by educators; and secure stable funding for locally developed digital projects.

Digital sovereignty is also a matter of labour and institutional sovereignty. It is not only about deciding which tools we use, but about who defines their use, who bears the consequences, and who reaps the benefits. Integrating this human and professional dimension is essential to building an ethical, democratic and sustainable digital transformation in education—one in which data protection, the recognition of teachers’ work, and public control over technology advance together.

Moreover, this lack of digital sovereignty does not only concern the use of applications such as Google Workspace; it extends to other areas of educational management, such as the growing use of biometric data for teachers’ attendance control — a practice that raises serious legal and ethical concerns, to be explored in the next article.

As George Orwell warned, “He who controls the past controls the future; he who controls the present controls the past”. In the digital age, whoever controls data — and therefore information — also shapes the future of our education. Digital sovereignty, far from being a technological luxury, is a matter of collective freedom.

References:

Xnet (2023). Neutralitat de la xarxa. https://xnet-x.net/ca/eix/neutralitat-de-la-xarxa/
Xnet (2023). Institucions que digitalitzin democràticament. https://xnet-x.net/ca/institucions-que-digitalitzin-democraticament/
Udinmwen, E. (2025). Sobirania digital o desastre digital? Yahoo Tech.
Monterde, A. (2024). Conferència 4D: Digitalització Democràtica i Drets Digitals. Ajuntament de Barcelona.
EducaMadrid (2025). Portal institucional. https://www.educa2.madrid.org/educamadrid/
Bayo, C. (2023). Ensenyar a l’escola que hi ha maneres diverses d’entendre les tecnologies. Xarxanet.
App Secundària Info. https://www.appbrain.com/app/secund%C3%A0ria-info/info.secundaria.android.secundariainfo
BigBlueButton. https://bigbluebutton.org/

Coordinació Digital de Catalunya en Lluita (2025): Manifest per al reconeixement de la coordinació digital dels centres públics. https://www.cdcenlluita.com
OCTUVRE (2023). Digitalització educativa: el negoci d’educar amb dades. https://mailchi.mp/octuvre/digitalitzacio

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons