On December 10th, 2013, Prime Ministers of Estonia and Finland digitally signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on cooperation in the field of information and communication technologies.
Based on this MoU, the two countries will jointly use and develop the governmental data exchange layer X-Road that has been used in Estonia since 2001. X-Road is a secure distributed service bus for inter-organisational database access. In Estonia, the aim of X-Road is to provide 24/7 availability of the state registers for usage by both citizens and officials.
The X-Road core was developed by Cybernetica in successfully collaborated with the Estonian Information System's Authority and many other governmental institutions and private companies. In 2011, Cybernetica started developing the next generation of X-Road together with Competence Centre in Electronics-, Info- and Communication Technologies. One of the main motivations behind this effort was the need to exchange the data over X-Road also with other countries.
The new X-Road uses standard digital signature format for messaging while the messages to be exchanged will correspond to the European digital signature requirements.
In the future, X-Road will support joining different independent installations, managed by different countries, into one federation, enabling secure cross-border data exchange between companies and organisations as seamlessly as within one jurisdiction.
According to the contract signed in 2013 between the Estonian Information System's Authority and Cybernetica, the next generation of X-Road (labeled version 5.5) will be ready for piloting in the beginning of 2014.
Beside general X-Road development efforts, Cybernetica has since summer 2013 collaborated on an X-Road pilot project with the Finnish company Kuntien Tiera OY, belonging to a group of Finnish local municipalities. The aim of the project is to deploy X-Road for the Finnish municipalities and connect several registers to it. This project will provide technological insight for the Finnish authorities, together with the understanding about the necessary legal agreements and the need for unified requirements.
Cybernetica welcomes the MoU signed by the Estonian and Finnish Prime Ministers. It will support the development of X-Road, and also set an example of cross-boarder collaboration for other European countries for joint deployment of X-Road as a robust and secure platform for data exchange.