X-Road® as a Digital Public Good – enabling digital transformation in emerging countries

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted pre-existing global inequities and generated new challenges, from public health management to economic recovery. A good lesson learned, now more than ever, is that digital technology can support development and resilience in crisis mode and outside of it. As a result, digital transformation has accelerated everywhere. 

When it comes to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), however, the lack of financial and human resources can become a significant obstacle toward successful digitalisation and sustainable development. In response, institutions like the World Bank and the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) have started facilitating the discovery and implementation of open-source software and other openly available digital assets under the concept of digital public goods (DPGs). 

Within these efforts, X-Road® has recently been listed in the DPG Registry and recognised by the World Bankas a notable open-source tool for digital development in resource-constrained environments. We spoke to stakeholders from the World Bank and the DPGA to find out the value they see in X-Road as a DPG and how it can meet the needs of LMICs such as Madagascar – a notable case featured in this post.

BACKGROUND AND INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK

Founded in 2019, the DPGA has the mission to accelerate the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in LMICs, specifically by facilitating the discovery, development, use of and investment in DPGs. Among their wide-reaching activities, the DPGA has focused on setting an open DPG standard and created the DPG Registry. 

Lucy Harris, DPGA Co-Lead, outlines that according to the alliance’s definition, DPGs: 

1. Are open-source assets (software, data, AI models, standards, and content) that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws;

2. That do no harm;

3. And that help attain SDGs.

This three-component definition further breaks down into nine indicators captured in the open DPG standard. “When it comes to the DPG Registry, anyone can nominate a project on our website,” Harris explains. “We then review the nominations against the DPG standard. If approved, they go into the registry, with a stamp that certifies them as DPGs,” she adds. 

Although entry into the registry typically happens via direct nomination, X-Road appeared on the DPGA’s radar through a community of practice. “We bring together experts in certain areas to identify DPGs that are hyper-relevant to a timely development need,” Harris explains. “This specific group focused on financial inclusion at scale, which comes down to digital public infrastructure,” she continues. 

“Looking for projects that sit at this intersection of DPGs related to financial inclusion that were also digital public infrastructures, we came across X-Road,” Harris concludes.

NEEDS AND CHALLENGES

The mandate of the DPGA focuses on the digital development needs of LMICs. Regarding the donors and countries with whom they interact, Harris notes increasing interest in building digital infrastructure on open-source. 

Indeed, one such example can be found in the World Bank’s support of the digital transformation of Madagascar. The latter has been working on X-Road implementation in their public sector for the past few years and is fully committed to building their digital infrastructure with DPGs. “In emerging countries, like Madagascar, we like this philosophy and mindset because we do not have the financial means to afford proprietary solutions,” shares Tahina Razafindramalo, Chief Digital Officer at the Digital Governance Unit of Madagascar (Unité de Gouvernance Digitale).

The question of financial resources is not only relevant during the short-term implementation, but also for the long-term sustainability of the digital infrastructure that is being built. This is primarily due to the long-term risks of vendor lock-in when relying on proprietary solutions – as donor support is limited to a specified timeframe, the question of what’s next needs to be built into the long-term strategy from the start. 

THE SOLUTION

The DPGA sees open-source solutions, such as X-Road, as more accessible, preventing vendor lock-in, facilitating innovation, and helping governments retain their sovereignty.

Representatives from Madagascar and the World Bank echo these value points. “The fact that X-Road is open-source and accessible means that it is easy for us to build a sustainable solution,” Razafindramalo highlights. “With the World Bank, we have already set up a proof of concept regarding 2 or 3 ministries, so we have already seen how easy it is to onboard everyone to the project,” he adds.

Considering the higher long-term costs of maintaining proprietary solutions, DPGs – such as X-Road – boast one of the most significant advantages of supporting sustainable and affordable development, especially in LMICs. “With the help of our donors, we can leverage a project for a specific time period to implement the best-in-class technology and solution, but after that, we must finance it internally from the government,” Razafindramalo underlines.

On top of accessibility and sustainability, Hajarivony Andriamarofara, World Bank Consultant, adds simplicity to the list of benefits that X-Road has as a DPG. “Rollout is possible with very minimal support,” Andriamarofara notes. To the extent that support is needed, the X-Road Community and other stakeholders with relevant experience are available to provide it. So can do, additionally, those companies listed as X-Road Technology Partners, in the form of commercial support. “Even if it is a solution that comes from the far North of Europe, it is relatively easy to find a solution with the X-Road Community to any obstacles we may face,” he concludes. 

The benefits outlined by the World Bank and Madagascar representatives align with what the DPGA sees in X-Road. “For us, X-Road ticked all the boxes and was approved both as a DPG and as relevant digital public infrastructure. In other words, having this cross-sectoral impact, being an interoperable solution that people are building on top of and building with,” Lucy Harris underlines. 

For countries now drafting or revisiting their digital transformation strategies, selecting the proper solutions will determine their development path for years to come. The DPGA and World Bank view X-Road as an affordable and sustainable tool to advance digitalisation across the world and create widespread access to services, especially in LMICs.

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.

Estonia and Finland launch automated data exchange between population registers

In September 2020, cross-border interoperability between Estonia and Finland took another step further with the launch of automated data exchange between the countries’ national population registers. With the support of X-Road, the solution replaces the previous batch data processing and improves information accuracy and security.

Automating the exchange of population data is the third cross-border interoperability link in place between Estonia and Finland, after connecting the countries’ business registers and tax boards in 2019.

Together with Timo Salovaara, Deputy Director General at the Finnish Digital Agency (DVV), we outline the main features of the cooperation and solution at hand.

BACKGROUND AND INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK

The exchange of population data between Finland and Estonia dates back to the signing of a collaboration agreement between the countries’ population register authorities in 2005. The document provided a framework for the exchange of details of citizens living in the other country, when and where necessary. Relevant subjects cover the following:

1)    Deaths

2)    Name changes

3)    Changes of address

4)    Information on their dependent children.

The collaboration created a framework that has enabled batch-based data exchange between Finland and Estonia for almost 15 years, with data being requested and provided on average once a year.

The increasing digitalization of the Finnish population register, and the national data exchange layer, have now led to a partial institutional overlap. Automating the existing collaboration seemed, logically, the next step. “The DVV is the owner of the population register in Finland and, since 2014, we also own the national X-Road infrastructure – the Suomi.fi Data Exchange Layer,” Salovaara explains. “So, with the existing data exchange framework that we have in place with Estonia, these two things meet here,” he observes. 

The technical foundation for cross-border interoperability between Estonia and Finland was established in 2018 with the federation of the two countries’ national X-Road. While connecting the national ecosystems paved the way for an array of technical possibilities, their development and implementation have been dependent on resolving legal intricacies. “Despite this, we decided to use X-Road to update the information exchange system from 2005, as we already had the legal framework in place,” Salovaara states. 

NEEDS AND CHALLENGES

Data exchange automation responds to the need for greater data accuracy and a decreased manual workload – all while maintaining and improving underlying security. 

“Previously, we had a facility that allowed uploading a file into a system, which could be accessed by the Estonian Ministry of Interior,” Salovaara says about the process in place since 2005. “Our Estonian colleagues could log into the service, access the file prepared by us and then update their records in the population register based on that. While all of this was secure and audited, it was not as practical and required a lot of effort. 

The new automated solution secures the data exchange, ensuring improved maintenance of the entire system at the same time. 

“For example, we have a similar arrangement with the Nordic countries concerning population data exchange,” Salovaara brings forth. “But we are using legacy systems from the beginning of the century. When updating information security protocols, we need to wait until the last country is ready to make the updates before completing the process,” he continues. With a standardized interoperability solution, such as X-Road, the system updates are conducted faster and more securely. 

Besides the legal boundaries set by the original collaboration agreement from 2005, the technical implementation of the solution did not see any significant challenges. “We can say that technology is no longer the barrier, especially in this case where both parties already had experience with X-Road infrastructure,” Salovaara observes. “This means we can focus more on the substance and needs of the specific use case, as well as the legal details surrounding new types of data exchange,” he says. 

THE SOLUTION

X-Road has now automated the data transfer between the population registers of Estonia and Finland, improving information accuracy and timeliness as well as increasing the efficiency and security of the data exchange process.

The solution breathes new life into this long-standing collaboration. Population authorities can now easily access up-to-date information on their citizens whenever necessary; e.g. when preparing for national elections. While the legal framework established by the 2005 agreement currently limits the type of information that can be mutually accessed, the solution is a significant stepping stone to expanding the scope of data exchange in the future. 

Further negotiations are ongoing between Estonia and Finland, but a similar technical solution between population registers also has significant potential beyond the Baltic Sea region. With the free movement of people in Europe, there would, for example, be a need to standardize data exchange between EU member states. 

“Currently, if someone moves to Finland, we verify their identity by using their passport and verify their family relations with legalized paper certificates given by the authorities of their country of origin,” Salovaara explains, bringing up a typical case. “But requesting and providing these documents takes time – from both the public authorities and the citizens – and at least theoretically, the risk of forged paper documents remains. To have the most accurate data at all times, this information could be requested directly from other countries’ population registers. If these kinds of arrangements can be made, facilities like the X-Road would be very useful in the technical implementation of the data exchange!”

Automating data transfer between the population registers of Estonia and Finland serves as another example of how X-Road can simplify and enhance international collaboration, for both citizens and the state.