Secure Data Exchange in Digital Government Context – Petteri Kivimäki – NDC Security 2022

X-Road is an open source, distributed data exchange layer solution that enables organizations to exchange information over the Internet. X-Road ensures confidentiality, integrity and interoperability between data exchange parties. X-Road is released under the MIT open source license.

X-Road is used nationwide in the Estonian data exchange layer X-tee, in the Suomi.fi Data Exchange Layer service in Finland and in the Straumurinn data exchange platform in Iceland. However, X-Road is not just for public sector organisations – all kinds of organisations regardless of size or type can use it. Two X-Road ecosystems can be joined together, federated. Federation enables easy and secure cross-border data exchange between countries using X-Road.

Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS) is a non-profit association with the mission to ensure the development and strategic management of X-Road® and other cross-border components for digital government infrastructure. The republics of Estonia, Finland and Iceland are members of NIIS.

X-Road provides a solution to API management and its approach is quite different from other solutions on the market. In addition, the development model – multiple countries developing an open source solution that‘s used for implementing nationwide services in multiple countries – is quite unique even in global scale. The aim of the presentation is to discuss X-Road as a platform, the security guaranties that it provides, its cross-border data exchange capabilities and its unique development model.