How X-Road gets a taste of the big city life in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Argentina is not a new pin on the X-Road® global map. For some years already, the data exchange layer has been identified as a valuable tool to modernise public administration by changemakers in the region.

It wasn’t long ago that we were talking about the experience of the Province of Neuquén. Now, we move to the City of Buenos Aires, which is very populated and with a vast metropolitan area. Buenos Aires embarked on a transformative journey to digitise its public administration, leveraging the X-Road data exchange layer to enhance efficiency and service delivery.

A pivotal goal to attain for a municipal government that serves so many people. But not hard to reach, thanks to the work that many in the administration have already put into moving the process forward. Diego Fernández and Axel McCallum, respectively, Secretary of Innovation and Digital Transformation and Undersecretary of Administrative Innovation at the City Government, take us through past and future steps of this endeavour, illustrating how very large cities in Latin America benefit from adopting the solution.

Background and institutional framework

"X-Road in Buenos Aires represents the next step in the digital transformation of the city that we began almost 16 years ago. It marks our evolution from a government relying on paper-based processes and outdated legacy systems to one that is modern and digital-first,” Diego Fernández begins with.

Argentinians usually care to stress how massive the city is and how big it feels. And context, in this case, does matter indeed – Buenos Aires is a city-state akin to Washington DC or Mexico DF, with a significant population and a daily influx of commuters. Naturally, the need for an efficient and interoperable digital infrastructure is paramount. On par with that, the Buenos Aires City Government aimed to make public service delivery more efficient and user-friendly.

This quest led them to the X-Road data exchange layer, a tried-and-tested solution previously implemented in several countries, known for its open-source license and government-oriented design. Adopting X-Road, known locally as X-BA, marked a significant leap towards achieving a digital, interoperable, intelligent, and proactive government.

The initiative was underpinned by a solid legal and institutional framework, including decrees to establish an interoperability hub, mandating compliance for both public and private entities to ensure seamless data exchange across the city's vast digital landscape. Legal and policy adjustments were crucial, ensuring every stakeholder across the city's digital domain operated within a unified framework, eliminating data silos and enhancing cross-sector collaboration.

Initial explorations in 2021 evolved into active development and implementation by 2022, with the first use cases deployed by mid-2023. The project was governed under the realm of Diego Fernández, with the Secretariat of Innovation playing a crucial role. Each ministry and secretariat within the government had focal points responsible for administering their Security Servers and onboarding their services. Such a decentralised approach allowed individual departments to feel more empowered while maintaining overall coherence and alignment with the X-Road framework.

Needs and challenges

Buenos Aires faced several challenges in its digital transformation journey. The city's existing infrastructure comprised siloed systems that hindered efficient data exchange and service delivery. Additionally, the absence of a unified digital platform made it difficult for citizens to access services seamlessly. The city government also grappled with technical challenges, including integrating X-Road into an existing complex server network, including around 4000 servers and a sophisticated network security infrastructure.

Beyond the technological hurdles of integrating X-Road into an extensive and diverse IT infrastructure, the city faced significant organisational and cultural barriers. Training government staff and aligning various departments with the new digital strategy was vital. So, the initiative required not only digital innovation but also a cultural shift within the government and among the citizenry towards embracing digital solutions. Furthermore, the city had to address the challenge of data security, ensuring that the new interoperable system adhered to stringent standards to protect sensitive information.

Another layer of complexity was developing the human capital needed to support this transformation. The lack of local expertise in X-Road software meant investing in training and skill development. To this end, collaboration with international experts and being part of the global X-Road community became instrumental in navigating the intricacies of the mission ahead. "One of the strong points of X-Road is the quality of documentation and the availability of the community to support new users. This was crucial as we configured our system and overcame initial technical challenges,” McCallum notes.

The solution

Implementing X-Road in the City of Buenos Aires addressed several challenges by providing a secure, interoperable platform connecting diverse government systems, enabling efficient data exchange and streamlining service delivery. The initiative's success was marked by the rapid development and deployment of digital services, with plans for further expansion and integration, including increasing the number of services offered through X-Road and enhancing the digital platform for citizen engagement.

"By 2022, we were running the pilot program, installing the central components and Security Servers. It wasn't just about the technology stack; it was equally about the governance stack. 2023 instead was about liftoff, having our first use cases implemented and really starting to use X-Road on our platforms for administrative procedures, marking a significant point in our journey towards digital transformation,” McCallum explains.

The solution, X-BA, does mark a new era of digital governance in Buenos Aires. The city not only streamlined data exchange across government departments but also significantly enhanced the citizens’ service experience. Services that once required much-loathed paperwork could now be accessed digitally, reducing wait times and improving accessibility. “For example, enrolling a child in kindergarten required parents to provide a vaccination certificate, which was a cumbersome process. We saw X-Road as a solution that could streamline such processes and make the infrastructure more efficient,” Fernández points out. Birth certificate issuance, too, is a notable example of improved access, availability, and delivery of public services.

Scaling the solution involves ambitious plans. By mid-2023, the government had introduced several services through X-Road, aiming to increase this number significantly by the end of 2024. By then, the City of Buenos Aires seeks to have a significant portion of its government services digitised and 30% of government services running on X-Road, reflecting a substantial shift towards digital service delivery. Additionally, the city government plans to integrate more private sector services into the X-Road ecosystem and explore federated systems with other provinces for broader data interoperability.

Integrity and interoperability – the perfect match for Argentina's public service

To many, X-Road® is a synonym of interoperability. National governments, ministries and public agencies have looked at the platform as a viable option to solve their data exchange problems between institutions. However, some might regard security as the main benefit of the technology. 

Of course, the two things go hand in hand, and that's what gives the X-Road technology its unique appeal. But while interoperability itself wasn't all that new in the Argentinian province of Neuquén, security in data exchange is what the public sector was after. 

Gustavo Giorgetti, engineer and serial innovator with his firm ThinkNet, is the person in charge of interoperability projects in the province. With him and his son Lucas, we delved deeper into what drives the interest in X-Road on that side of the world. Because if first was the Province of Neuquén, a nationwide project might soon follow.

Background and institutional framework

Not many stories begin with "It all started on a trip to Estonia" – but this is one of those. As a concept, interoperability had already been lingering among governance experts and engineers in the Argentinian province of Neuquén. In practice, it was a long time coming.

Decisive, to that end, was a trip to Estonia organized by the World Bank which engineer Gustavo Giorgetti participated in. "I had been thinking about interoperability as a way to connect different, siloed government organizations back home in Argentina, but that study trip to Estonia in 2007 was the chance to see it put to work. That experience, the Estonian real-life example, gave us the possibility to set it as a viable goal in Neuquén," Giorgetti says.

The e-government journey of the Province of Neuquén started around that time, in 2008. "Strong political will was necessary, back then, to make the project move its first steps. This support came from engineer Rodolfo Esteban Lafitte, at the time Secretary of Public Service, with a directive that kicked off the roll-out of the first components in our 'Integrabilidad' environment," Giorgetti explains.

Let's focus for a moment on the name. The term indicates a mix between interoperability and integration of digital services in it, setting the two as core prerequisites for a functional ecosystem to exchange information between public agencies. From the Estonian example, the platform in Neuquén borrowed the distributed characteristics of the model and the once-only approach, formalized in a dedicated law on de-bureaucratization in 2012 (Ley N°2819, here in Spanish).

"Mirroring what had been done in Estonia, and drawing inspiration from that experience, we created our interoperability ecosystem. Named 'Integrabilidad', it has been active in Neuquén since 2010," Giorgetti proudly says. But the release of X-Road as an open-source technology under MIT license in 2015-2016 has offered the Province of Neuquén an opportunity to further improve the previously created ecosystem.

Needs and challenges

However, as in all processes on innovation, technology is not the only element that makes them a success. It is also a matter of culture, readiness to adopt new solutions, and working methods. These subjects have posed some challenges along the way, pushing for a reorganization of the processes moving the gears of the public administration in Neuquén.

"For what concerns the cultural aspect, Estonia had quite an advantage in that sense – the fact that pretty much there was little legacy on that. In our case, the cultural change within the public administration triggered by that initial political will, and the methodologies elaborated, were crucial to making Integrabilidad work," Giorgetti warns. "Some might think that it's just a matter of technology, but interoperability implies a reshaping of the processes and the waysto deliver public services," he continues.

Ultimately, the need was to adapt the implementation of the model in mind to a tendency to work on a case-by-case basis. "Change, technological and cultural, finds more favourable ground to take place in situations of emergency. By treating such situations or sudden issues with solutions that would take us closer to the goal we had set, it was possible to gradually deploy the distributed ecosystem we wanted to achieve," Giorgetti explains.

The solution

With the release of the source code of X-Road in 2015-2016, the public administration of Neuquén saw the chance to bring to Integrabilidad a missing feature – security. Because, according to Giorgetti, "the perfect tool for interoperability answers both technological and legal necessities. X-Road is cryptography on the internet, security on the internet."

This is where the primary business value lied for Neuquén to migrate to X-Road from its originally implemented clone. The main difference between the two platforms is cryptography, security, and the legal framework that X-Road guarantees through time-stamping and the digital signature of messages.

In 2017, Neuquén started to replace its interoperability platform with X-Road – first with the help of Riho Oks. Today, ‘Integrabilidad con X-Road’ is the platform for secure data exchange that connects up to 29 information systems and back offices of service providers in the public sector of Neuquén. The Banco Provincia del Neuquén (bank) then joined in 2019, and private healthcare providers followed in 2020 amid the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The security layer offered by X-Road has been a strong argument in facilitating the spread of the platform among both public and private actors," Giorgetti says. The public can check here key statistics and resources on the functioning of the platform.

But the plan is now to take ‘Integrabilidad con X-Road’ to a higher level of governance, beyond the borders of the province. It is underway a project for the integrabilidad of data and services, under the management of the Federal Council of the Public Service and the National Secretariat of Public Innovation, aiming to address two key objectives:

1.     Surveying the interoperability and digitalization capabilities of all provinces to enhance cooperation and innovation within and among them;

2.     Building a model of reference on integrabilidad, to deploy a digital ecosystem across provinces based on the principles of that in Neuquén.

Work is progressing, but it seems that ‘Integrabilidad con X-Road’ has already achieved a significant milestone – setting an example in Argentina for the way processes, data, and services are organized in a local public administration. Can it set the record also as a major bottom-up model for the nationwide exercise of interoperability? In Europe, too, if successful, there could be lessons to learn from Latin America.