Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

A new report from eSam, Sweden's public sector digital collaboration initiative, addresses a challenge familiar to government IT teams across Europe: how do we enable collaboration across agency boundaries while maintaining control of our infrastructure and data? Published in January 2026, "Common Federation Protocol for Public Sector Chat" examines different approaches to this challenge.

‍ Government agencies face a fundamental question when choosing communication tools: who ultimately controls your data? For public sector organizations handling sensitive citizen information, classified communications, or cross-agency coordination, the answer matters enormously.

European government agencies face critical compliance challenges using cloud-hosted Slack due to US CLOUD Act jurisdiction over data controlled by American platforms. The key distinction: the issue is not the software itself, but who controls the data. This guide defines what a sovereign communication platform is, presents the leading compliant alternatives: Rocket.Chat, Mattermost, and Element.

Rocket.Chat is built for organizations that require secure, sovereign and resilient collaboration under continuous governance. Rocket.Chat 8.0 expands that foundation with workspace federation, attribute-based access controls (ABAC), integrated voice escalation, and intelligent search. In environments where security, governance, and operational continuity are non-negotiable, collaboration cannot rely on a model in which access, context, and boundaries are configured ahead of time.

On December 12, 2025, something significant happened in The Hague. The Netherlands officially launched the Digital Commons EDIC (European Digital Infrastructure Consortium), bringing together nine EU member states in a coordinated effort to build sovereign digital infrastructure.

7.13 is a quiet release on the surface but a heavy one under the hood. It is the kind of release that makes everything feel more secure even before you notice what changed. → We hardened encryption, sharpened call workflows, tightened governance for federated comms, and set the groundwork for post-quantum security. If you care about clarity, control, or cryptographic durability, this is the version you will want to update to.

Open source software powers nearly everything we build today. According to the 2024 State of the Software Supply Chain report, open source adoption continues to accelerate. This scale lets teams move fast, share knowledge, and build on proven foundations instead of starting from scratch. But it also expands the attack surface. The same openness that accelerates innovation can also invite risk.

Stop configuring. Start collaborating. What if you could deploy Rocket.Chat with the confidence that comes from built-in best practices, automated setup, and expert guidance—all in just minutes? That's exactly what Launchpad delivers. Meet Launchpad, Rocket.Chat's opinionated deployment path that gets your Secure CommsOS instance up and running quickly and reliably.

A command center is always buzzing with activity. Imagine a major infrastructure failure has occurred, the kind that brings multiple agencies scrambling to a virtual command center. You have analysts coordinating field teams, urgent updates coming in from every direction, and decisions need to be made in seconds. Rocket.Chat v7.11 delivers the architectural backbone needed to support the kind of complexity that defines day-to-day operations in mission-critical environments.

Over the years, we’ve been on an incredible journey at Rocket.Chat—working to make communication more interoperable, secure, and sovereign. Today, we’re excited to share three big updates on this journey: the alpha release of native federation, our continued support for Matrix.org, and what you can expect from us at the Matrix Conference 2025.