The Establishment of the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions
Authors: Ville Sirviö, Chief Executive Officer, Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions; Petteri Kivimäki, Chief Technology Officer, Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions
Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS) is a nonprofit association established in 2017 by the governments of Estonia and Finland. Its mission is to ensure the development and strategic management of X-Road® and other cross-border components for e-government infrastructure. NIIS is both a network and cooperation platform and executioner of IT developments in members’ common interests. NIIS focuses on practical collaboration, sharing of experience, and promotion of innovation.
What Is X-Road?
X-Road is an open-source software and ecosystem solution that provides unified and secure data exchange between organizations. X-Road implements a set of standard features to support and facilitate data exchange and ensures confidentiality, integrity, and interoperability between data exchange parties.
X-Road Architecture
An X-Road ecosystem is a community of organizations using the same instance of the X-Road software for producing and consuming services. The ecosystem may be nationwide, or it may be limited to organizations meeting specific criteria, e.g., clients of a commercial service provider.
X-Road was originally developed by the Estonian State Information Systems Department (at the Ministry of Economy and Communications), and the first version was launched in 2001. In Finland, the Suomi.fi Data Exchange Layer service based on the X-Road was published in November 2015. Today, Finland’s and Estonia’s data-exchange layers are connected to one another, which enables cross-border data exchange between the countries. Estonia and Finland have been developing the X-Road core together since 2015.
First Steps
The cooperation between Estonia and Finland officially started in 2013 when the prime ministers of the two countries, Andrus Ansip of Estonia and Jyrki Katainen of Finland, signed the Memorandum of Understanding initiating formal cooperation between the two states on developing and maintaining a software environment enabling secure connectivity, searches and data transfers between various governmental and private databases — the X-Road®. This is considered to be the world’s first digitally signed international agreement.
Deepening the Cooperation
Subsequently, the Population Register Centre of Finland (VRK) and the Information System Authority of Estonia (RIA) concluded a cooperation agreement intended to formalize cooperation on X-Road and function as a contractual platform for deepening cooperation.
Finland’s Population Register Centre and the Republic of Estonia’s Information System Authority were responsible for the coordination of the X-Road core development. They agreed on a set of practices and guidelines for managing the cooperation. Another important outcome of the collaboration was publishing the source code of the X-Road core as open-source under the MIT license. The source code was published in two parts between 2015 and 2016 and made publicly available on GitHub.
Shared Organization
The governments of Estonia and Finland decided to deepen their cooperation in a more formal yet flexible manner by forming a separate, jointly managed special-purpose organization to administer the X-Road development — NIIS. The Formation and Cooperation Agreement establishing this was signed in Helsinki on March 7, 2017. The parties to the agreement are the Ministry of Finance of Finland and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications of Estonia. The Memorandum of Association was signed on June 14, 2017, and the institute started its operations in August 2017.
The governance structure of NIIS consists of multiple levels: General Meeting (GM), Advisory Group (AG), and Management Board (CEO). The highest body of NIIS is the General Meeting of its members, where all members of the association may participate. The Advisory Group was formed for the purpose of supporting the Chief Executive Officer and relaying information and instruction between the operative level and the General Meeting. For clarity, the Advisory Group is not a formal organ of the Institute and has no decision-making power on its own. NIIS is managed and represented by the Management Board. The Management Board comprises a single member who acts as the chief executive officer of the institute.
The practical collaboration and coordination of the joint development of X-Road takes place at the X-Road Working Group. The Working Group consists of representatives from the operators of X-Road environments, NIIS members, NIIS employees, and NIIS development team members. For clarity, X-Road Working Group is not a formal organ of NIIS and has no decision-making power on its own.
The Governance Structure of NIIS
In addition to the two founding members, Estonia and Finland, NIIS also has two partners. Iceland became a partner in September 2018, followed by the Faroe Islands in May 2019. NIIS partners and individual specialists may attend and observe the Working Group meetings by invitation only.
An organization meeting the requirements defined in the articles of association may apply for NIIS membership or partnership. The general meeting of the association assesses and decides membership and partnership applications. Also, an organization may first join as a partner and apply for membership at a later stage.
Joint X-Road Core Development
In June 2018, NIIS took over the X-Road core development from Finland’s VRK and Estonia’s RIA, as well as the management of the source code for the X-Road core. The first step of the handover had already been completed earlier in the year, when NIIS took the responsibility of running the Working Group that serves as the platform for day-to-day coordination of the joint development.
X-Road Development Process
The X-Road development activities follow a well-defined process. Since X-Road is open-source, anyone is welcome to contribute to its development. All contributions are evaluated according to the same criteria, no matter who has submitted them. Enhancement requests, error reports and other proposed changes to X-Road are reviewed in the Working Group meetings. Contributions that align with the product roadmap are approved and sent to the product backlog, where they are prioritized.
New X-Road versions are released regularly, and they are made available to NIIS members and the open-source community at the same time. While anyone can contribute and benefit from new releases, only NIIS members are included in the decision-making about what is included in the product roadmap and backlog, and how the items are prioritized.
The Future
NIIS continues to develop X-Road actively. The aim is to make it a modular, easy-to-use, cloud-native, secure, and sustainable data-exchange solution. The involvement of X-Road users — who provide feedback at different stages of the process — in the design and development plays an essential role in reaching this goal.
NIIS aims to be a strong influencer in the field of e-governance and a growing platform for cross-border cooperation and innovation. NIIS is cooperating actively with the Nordic and European Union countries, onboarding new members, and facilitating the global X-Road Community.
