PlanetCross brings secure data exchange to the Japanese energy sector

Readers and X-Road® technology enthusiasts around the globe may have spotted a pattern by now – use cases of the data exchange layer prominently feature applications in the public sector. This is true to a certain extent, as X-Road is notably the backbone of Estonia’s digital public services. But private sector companies are increasingly considering taking up the technology, even far beyond the borders of Estonia.

In Japan, X-Road is now enabling efficient information exchange of clients’ data in the energy sector. National energy operator Nippon Gas Co., LTD (hereinafter Nichigas), partnering with tech startup Planetway, is using a proprietary product based on the X-Road data exchange layer to bridge back-office IT gaps between its subsidiary companies. Improving processing time of clients’ inquiries, Nichigas is already a case study of result-based applications of X-Road for the Japanese private sector.

Raul Allikivi, Chief Relations Officer at Planetway, and Yuki Matsuda, Executive Officer for the IT Department at Nichigas, introduce us to this shining example of how the technology can dramatically benefit operational efficiencyin private sector organizations everywhere.

Background and institutional framework

A series of reforms throughout the past five years has changed the configuration of the Japanese energy market. Since 2016, the progressive liberalization has given companies the possibility to change their organizational setting, and the way energy is distributed to customers nationwide. “For what concerns electricity, in that same year, the three largest companies on the market divided their operations respectively among three subsidiary branches – for power generation, operating the network, and retail. Then, in 2017, market liberalization affected the gas industry too. That is what allowed us to start selling city gas from then, and electricity as a retailer from 2018,” Yuki Matsuda explains.

Such changes are key to understanding what triggered the need for interoperability in the eyes of Nichigas’ executives. The company is currently the largest LPG (Liquefied petroleum gas) retailer in Japan, as well as the 3rd main LNG (Liquefied natural gas) retailer and pipeline operator in the Greater Tokyo area. The Nichigas group gathers a total of five companies between the mother branch and its subsidiary agencies. As one of the top actors in the Japanese energy market, it needs to take care of a vast customer base, counting over 1.5 million people.

Needs and challenges

Just to give an intuitive account of what having so many users entails, imagine one company serving a market larger than the whole population of Estonia (yes, children and elderly citizens included). “With information on users spread across five subsidiary companies, it is clear that this was meant to mess up the efficiency of our customer care. Upon receiving a call, the only piece of information our operators know is the name of the caller. But to provide correct, helpful responses, naturally they need to know much more,” Matsuda says.

That is when the cooperation between Nichigas and tech startup Planetway started. The needs were clear but, on the other hand, the solution was too. After the first contact in spring 2018, Planetway got to the drawing board. And in just one year, the company developed a secure data access platform based on the X-Road technology – PlanetCross.

“Traditionally, we are used to think of X-Road as a tool that predominantly benefits governments. However, in larger countries where digitalization is not so fast to pick up in the public sector, companies can take the lead. But this can happen only if top executives are deeply committed to digital transformation, see its business value, and have the human capital necessary to make the change,” Raul Allikivi explains.

From the match between the clear intents of Nichigas and the expertise provided by Planetway, the Japanese company could reap the benefits of the proprietary product based on X-Road created by the latter. The platform, tailoring the functionalities of the X-Road technology on the needs of the private sector at large, is currently active as a service for Nichigas’ operations. But the possibilities to further increase the pool of firms it serves are plenty. 

The solution

PlanetCross is an award-winning, highly secure data access platform. Drawing from almost 20 years of Estonian experience with X-Road, it incorporates all core features of the pioneering solution to establish bridges between relational databases, ensuring availability and traceability of the information exchanged.

Source: Planetway

The platform is the backbone supporting call centre operations between Nichigas and its other four subsidiary companies. Currently, PlanetCross enables the Japanese energy group to handle around 1.5 million transactions each month through the company’s software Nichigas Search. And beyond capacity-building, the efficiency gains in average handling time of the requests received are also evident. From the initial 6 minutes per call, operators have now reduced it by 45 seconds.

“Planetway’s product and support empowered our effort to make our call centre operations more sophisticated,timely, and of higher quality. As liberalization of the energy sector increases in Japan, digital transformation can unlock opportunities also in the LPG market. In practice, PlanetCross can help reduce operational costs of switching from an energy company to another for customers – and not just due to the way data is handled, but also thanks to a change in the overall approach to relevant business processes. Ultimately, the platform gives an interesting IT character to our activities, and paves the way for further developments in this direction,” Yuki Matsuda says.

The vision for PlanetCross, indeed, stretches beyond the partnership with Nichigas for Planetway too. “In Japan, there are many players with vested interests in the IT field. But in that context, Nichigas is a great example of a relatively medium-sized company where the leadership has a strong vision, and capable people within the company can follow suit effectively. Other companies too, are considering the uptake of this solution to achieve higher efficiency in their operations, unsurprisingly. Scalability is certainly not a problem,” Raul Allikivi explains.

“We believe that, in the near future, private companies could become the main users of X-Road-based technologies. And as our CEO Noriaki Hirao said in a recent interview as well, we have already reached a point where corporations hold much more private data on individuals than governments do. But people should be able to still be the owner of their personal information. X-Road and PlanetCross provide a pretty good blueprint to understanding how this can actually take place. In the future, we hope these technologies and standards can become everyone’s first choice when sensitive private data is involved in environments that need efficient information exchange,” Allikivi concludes.

Piloting digital prescriptions in Germany through secure data exchange

Germany has notably been among the nations that best coped with the threat of the new coronavirus. And now, following the latest plans on further improving readiness and efficacy of its healthcare sector at all levels, the country sees in digitalization one of the steps ahead.

A project in the federal state of Hessen is currently piloting the creation of an electronic portal to manage digital prescriptions, paired with the increased usage of medical video consultations. Nortal, multinational strategic change and tech company from Estonia, took part in the consortium of actors that is making it possible, relying on its previous experience with secure data exchange in diverse contexts. 

We spoke to Taavi Einaste, CEO of Nortal Germany, to find out what sparks interest towards the X-Road® technology there, and how this digital leap to improving public health is progressing.

Background and institutional framework

The pilot project taking place in Hessen must be contextualized within the general public policy strategy to modernize the German healthcare sector. Such a plan is being pushed passionately by the incumbent German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn. In an interview with news portal Politico Europe, released not long before the Covid-19 outbreak, Minister Spahn already highlighted 1) digitization, 2) the intensive and appropriate use of health data, as well as 3) fast and secure data exchange as priorities that stretch beyond national needs. Efforts should be directed to these goals, among others, at the European level. And Germany has already started making a significant move in this direction.

In November 2019, the German federal parliament approved the Digital Healthcare Act, a concrete stepping stone to fostering digital transformation in the country’s healthcare system. In a recent editorial on national newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Minister Spahn pointed out that trust in digital healthcare will grow as people experience first-hand how these solutions can improve their everyday life. The ongoing pilot project in Hessen aims to provide a practical, tested sample of this.

“The combination of a serious lag compared to the digital leaders and fresh, top federal leadership has forced the German establishment to switch gears. The pandemic has, of course, intensified these efforts, and has been extremely powerful in converting the opposition,” Taavi Einaste adds on the topic. These premises, and Nortal’s expertise and business relations in the German market, enabled the Estonian tech company to take part in a consortium with billing and financial service provider Optica, and start developing the German way to digital prescriptions.

Needs and challenges

Two dimensions emerge more markedly as the drivers of this project – the public policy side of the equation, and a public health-related one. For what concerns the first, there is no question whether increasing digitalization in the healthcare sector could be postponed or not. As Minister Spahn himself outlined, such a step forward was long overdue. Deploying ICTs in as many spheres of governance and society as possible means to provide citizens with better services, particularly when it comes to the protection of their fundamental right to efficient healthcare. That is one of the reasons why Germany’s 2020 EU Council Presidency, from July to December, will incorporate these goals too in its lines of action.

Secondly, on the public health side of the coin, the Covid-19 crisis has made digital solutions a necessity more than ever before. With face-to-face contact dramatically limited, and social distancing enforced, data must move securely instead of citizens. “In Hessen, for example, we expect people and the medical system to get better healthcare services, when and where they are most needed. The pandemic has made this flexibility crucial. Being able to build and set up secure service flows for people independent of their locations, or of moving paper documents between stakeholders – this will both make citizens’ lives easier, and avoid a lot of eventual mistakes. Last but not least, it will probably make everyone save some money in the process too,” Einaste points out.

The solution

Medical video consultations are a powerful tool whose increased usage can dramatically benefit patients. However, these provide real added value only if the preceding and  following steps take place electronically too. To the end of improving their effectiveness, KV Hessen, doctors, health insurance firms and a consortium of IT companies developed the e-prescription portal MORE based on the relative Estonian blueprint. 

After a video consultation takes place, when a digital prescription is issued to patients, they can manage it on the e-prescription portal MORE. With the option to forward it directly and electronically to a registered pharmacy, patients would have to move from their homes just to pick up the supplied medications. Job’s done, as reported in Pharmazeutische Zeitung.

Nortal, drawing from previous experiences in Lithuania and Abu Dhabi, among others, built the back-end solution based on HL7/FHIR standards. In parallel, the X-Road technology was implemented to connect all medical stakeholders involved and ensure secure data exchange between the parties. “Interoperability is a basic need, so that might not be the right word to focus on in this case. The ingredient that makes something like X-Road fit into the German reality, instead, is that we focused on the security and governance of data exchange. The fact that each transaction can be treated as a legal document is an important part of the appeal in the German context,” Einaste says.

“I think the pandemic has opened the eyes of digital pessimists and paper enthusiasts: the lack of digital services should be considered a systemic risk for any modern society. The opportunity to handle even a small section of healthcare cases digitally, or partly digitally, is something I think every medical administrator in the world has been looking for in the last 3-4 months. That’s why Nortal is now discussing the deployment of many new solutions in Germany. And beyond that, with our partners ottonova from Germany and inHealth in Abu Dhabi, we are working on a global travel enabling platform as well,” Einaste concludes.

Access to electricity and gas smart meter data in Estonia powered by X-Road

Energy efficiency, renewables and consumer centricity figure among the lines of action to boost the transition towards cleaner energy systems - ways of producing, delivering and consuming energy in a more sustainable way. In the framework of a global call to action, the European Union has established targets related to these main areas in its Clean Energy for All Europeans package. However, commitment to the common good consists not only of great objectives, but also of tools that effectively allow us to reach them.

The deployment of information technology has a significant impact on the feasibility of contemporary policy actions. Elering, the Estonian independent electricity and gas transmission system operator (TSO), has decided to rely on the X-Road technology to create Estfeed – the solution for data access and exchange on Elering’s smart grid platform. Kaija Valdmaa, Project Manager of Estfeed at Elering, tells us how innovation represents a potential meeting point between environmental sustainability, active participation, and cost efficiency for consumers.

Background and institutional framework

The mission and main purposes of Estfeed as an energy data exchange platform are entrenched in the history of Elering as a company. The approval of the Third Energy Package (2009) by the European Parliament pushed for the liberalisation of national energy markets. The Government of Estonia opted then for founding Elering already in January 2010, separating the company from the production and sales activities of Eesti Energia. The duties and competences of Elering focus on the security of energy supply, and the management of the Estonian electricity and gas system in real time. Through activities of market monitoring and research and development, the company also contributes to policy formulation through expertise and technical know-how.

Elering was already part of the Estonian national X-Road environment X-tee, which gave ground to the creation of Estfeed. The amendments brought to the Electricity Market Act (2003) in 2014 and to the Natural Gas Act (2003) in 2017 were meant to facilitate market competition and foster information exchange. As a result, regulations contributed to give Elering further legitimacy on legal grounds to develop the Estfeed data exchange platform.

More recent EU-wide developments – such as the GDPR regulation and the provisions of the Clean Energy package – contributed to the ongoing refining of Estfeed’s tasks and prerogatives towards becoming the energy data exchange platform for the whole EU. Operative since September 2017, Estfeed ensures smart meter data access and management in Estonia. Third parties that would not have access on a legal basis, like suppliers, app developers, and consumers, can now access consumer smart meter data – if users have previously granted access rights to the specific service provider.

Needs and challenges

Estfeed is located at the intersection of the needs of consumers (data owners), energy service providers (data users) and meter data hubs (data providers). With the amount of data generated on consumption, production, and transmission, effective information management is the key to systemically increase the efficiency and reliability of the energy system. Consequentially to such improvements, app developers and Elering itself can provide further customer-friendly e-services for citizens to keep track of their electricity or gas consumption and production data. 

For this to happen, the presence of smart meters in offices and households needs to become the norm – a target achieved in Estonia by 2014 already, with 100% coverage. But as Kaija Valdmaa points out, “In the energy sector, challenges are not anymore about building new physical grids, but about their smart management, especially because of the increase in renewables, distributed production and service provision.” With all the changes witnessed in the energy sector, “the market requires accurate and real-time data to be more and better accessible,” Valdmaa continues.

Though Estonian regulations already granted market participants the possibility to access data by law, universities, research centres, and app developers also wished to join the network. However, providing them with this chance was not stated in any kind of legal act. Based on such elements, the resulting research project initiated by Elering identified X-Road as a feasible solution to the challenge. Features like secure data exchange, and organisation and machine-to-machine level authentication, are provided by X-Road out of the box. In addition, the Estfeed consent management system (built on top of X-Road) monitors and grants third parties access to users’ information, as citizens remain the owners of their own data.

The solution

Active since September 2017, Estfeed is capable of harmonizing energy data access for companies, developers, and citizens for an efficient management of energy meter data in a trusted, GDPR-compliant environment. It also allows consumers to participate in the energy market – an essential goal in the Clean Energy Package - using smart services like consumption management, providing flexibility services to the transmission grid through the aggregation of many consumers.

The platform developed by Elering is based on the X-Road technology. It features high security standards in access and authentication, interoperability, efficiency in information exchange through standardization. “The decision to choose X-Road in the first place was not a technical matter, but about the business value of the technology. Thanks to reliability, transparency, the certification and transaction systems, X-Road could offer the trust and credibility needed to develop our own platform,” Valdmaa explains.

Furthermore, the e-Elering portal – as the front office of Estfeed´s consent management system – gives customers the possibility to check, compare, and grant third parties access to personal energy metering data through 14 different services. All while in the background, the Estfeed platform exchanges and manages data hubs and sensors information seamlessly. In its main functionalities, Estfeed enables: 

• Data access and sharing;

• For end-consumers, the possibility to check consumption and production information, as well as to authorize third parties to access their meter data;

• The endurance of a central platform for the efficient management of electricity and gas meter data access. 

In an integrated European framework, TSO-s are also tasked with the role of managing inward and outward fluxes, as well as data access. Elering and Estfeed stand as an example of how information technology can help monitor and redistribute energy resources. It means working for the common good in two ways – cutting costs for citizens and caring about the environment.

Source: Elering.ee