Project “X-tee” or “Ristmik”

1998-2001

X-tee pilot project

Uuno Vallner, who worked as an Adviser at the Estonian State Information Systems Department between 1993–2001, recalls that a project on a data exchange solution was already discussed around 1998. Cybernetica, which had a leading role in the development of X-Road for years, summarised the debates at those days:

Estonia faced several challenges in economic development, tackling legacy issues and securing a place in the international community. It was evident that overcoming these difficulties required a forward looking, fast paced government.

However, Estonian public administration databases were in isolation and data exchange between agencies, ministries and organizations was slow and inefficient. Governmental information systems were not taking advantage of the opportunities the internet presented and suffered from poor connectivity. It was clear that establishing new connections between governmental databases and systems was time-consuming and expensive. Both of these currencies Estonia could not really spare at the time.

And that’s not the final set of challenges. Battles were also held around organizational issues, as many legal entities were responsible for different registers and most of them were developed independently. The registers used various database back ends and had interfaces that weren’t standardized. Despite all of this, the government still had to function efficiently and offer services to citizens. And since most of the registers contained data that was sensitive (or confidential), security of the system had to be built in by design.

The first actual steps with X-Road were taken in 2000 when, on the initiative of the advisor to the Prime Minister, Linnar Viik, the X-tee pilot project was initiated. It was financed from the budget of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Ministry of the Interior and the Government Office and coordinated by the state information system department (RISO) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

The pilot was ready in 2000 and was showcased at a public conference. Three databases were interconnected, and data was exchanged using the XML-RPC protocol. The main development was done by Tanel Tammet, Hannu Krosing and Vello Kadarpik. One of the biggest challenges facing the developers was whether to use the proprietary technology of a corporation or try to manage using free software.

In those years, Uuno Vallner's main interest was the creation and deployment of SGML/XML based applications. Vello Kadarpik had used XML services while working in finance, and those experiences led him to the idea of incorporating XML-RPC applications into the public sector. In 2000, the State Information Systems Department ordered a thorough concept analysis from professor Tanel Tammet (XML applications and XML-RPC based prototype). Later, a tender document for the X-tee project had SOAP preference. Still, the winner of the public procurement gave preference to RPC – for the simple reason that SOAP technology hadn't yet reached maturity.

X-tee project

The X-tee project draft was submitted to the Estonian government in March 2001. The draft defined the current situation, the purpose of the project and its structure. The vision of the project was 24/7 access to the databases as a single unit. This access should have ensured that

The citizens get and give information within the legal rights;
State officials can use state databases within their mandate in the decision process, and
Entrepreneurs can use information in state databases within the mandate for performing their business operations.

The following guidelines were set for architecture:

Centralised authorisation;
Standard interface;
Open source;
Integral state, consistent state;
Coordinated development.

The two-stage public procurement was organised in April and May 2001. It was won by AS Assert that used sub-contracting:

AS Cybernetica – architecture, protocols and security solutions;
AS Andmevara – test queries to the population register, Estonian Registry of Buildings.
Reaalsüsteemide AS – test queries to Commercial Register;
AS Datel – test queries to electronic Land Register;
Estonian commercial banks - authentication of users.

One of the subcontractors for AS Assert was AS Cybernetica that had a significant influence on X-tee via their programming of the logs chaining module and a lead role in the development of X-Road for many years.

Niilo Saard and Aleksander Reitsakas managed the X-tee project. Early X-tee personnel included Ahto Kalja, Riho Oks, Juhan Vene, Martin Undusk, Andres Kollist, Uuno Vallner, Katrin Lassmann and Peeter Pungar among others. The State Information Systems Department employed most of these individuals, but some were on the payroll of the Informatics Foundation.

As an aside, the initial name of this technology was officially “infosüsteemide andmevahetuskiht” (“Information Systems’ Data Exchange Layer”) and unofficially also “andmekogude teeninduskiht” (“service layer for databases”), “andmekogude integratsioonisüsteem” (“integration system for databases”), “X-tee”, “xt”, “risttee” and “ristmik” (“crossroad(s)”).

The X-tee project was initially launched in 2001 in the cellar of the then existing Informatics Foundation, on Toompea Hill.

One thing that is important to understand about X-tee is that it was not a fundamentally new invention. Estonia simply harnessed then-existing technologies and applied them in a novel way in the state governance context. The outcome of this innovative application of existing technologies was named X-tee (X-Road).

Arne Ansper proposed more in-depth scientific research on the e-State in 2001. Excerpted below is a two paragraph long quote from the research abstract:

This far, the Estonian public administration databases have been kept isolated from each other. The data exchange between them has been slow and inefficient. Fast and reliable data communication networks between state agencies removed the major obstacle on the way of tighter integration of public administration information systems. They have created a possibility to make communication between state agencies faster, safer, and more efficient. To exploit the advantages of new technology, public administration databases should be made accessible not only to one single agency, but rather, to all authorised persons who need that information for doing their jobs more efficiently (and thereby, for improving public services in general). Such a renewed Internet-based public administration is called e-State.

In this work, we analyse the security problems that arise when the public administration databases are opened for a widespread electronic access. The analysis is grounded on the current legal situation as defined by Estonian laws. We present separate analysis for agency-to-agency and for citizen-to-public-administration data exchanges. During the analysis we draw an important conclusion that, due to substantially different scopes of risks and the countermeasures available, security solutions developed for business organisations cannot be directly adopted for using them in public administration environment. As a result of the analysis, a model for the e-State architecture is presented that, together with appropriate legal framework, allows us to achieve the main security objectives.

X-Road® version history and activities by year

2001

Version 1.0 – XML-RPC

The national deployment of X-Road in Estonia began on December 17, 2001.

2002

Version 2.0 – SOAP RPC/encoded

The e-Governance Academy (eGA) in Estonia starts sharing e-governance experience – including X-Road – by training senior officials of Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Azerbaidjan.

2004

Version 3.0 – Asyncronous services

2006

Version 4.0 – Security update

2009

The province of Neuquén in Argentina develops its own distributed interoperability platform that is based on the ”Estonian model”.

2010

Version 5.0 – SOAP document/litteral wrapped. Ubuntu support and installation via Debian packages. Added web management interface (management was possible only through the terminal before).

2013

On December 10, 2013 the Prime Ministers of Estonia and Finland, Andrus Ansip and Jyrki Katainen, signed the Memorandum of Understanding initiating formal cooperation between the two states in respect of “developing and maintaining a software environment enabling secure connectivity, searches and data transfers between various governmental and private databases” – X-Road. This is considered to be the world’s first digitally signed international agreement.

In 2013-2014, the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra played a key role in work leading to the implementation of X-Road in Finland, together with the Ministry of Finance of Finland and two experts from Estonia. Sitra funded two X-Road pilot projects in the cities of Espoo and Lahti. These pilot projects evaluated the feasibility of X-Road in producing social and health care services. In addition to nine municipalities involved in the evaluation of X-Road’s feasibility in municipal use, the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health also participated in the studies.

2014

Version 6.0 – Cybernetica carried out the R&D. X-Road version 6 improved the integrity of data exchange between organisations and introduced additional measures to comply with requirements set by eIDAS. It included support for using qualified certificates to certify digital documents. The aim of version 6 was to provide countries across the globe the opportunity to use X-Road and to have shared services between governments.

At the beginning of 2014, Estonia gave X-Road source code to Finland under the EUPL licence. Later that year, the X-Road implementation project in Finland was kicked off as part of the National Architecture for Digital Services (KaPa) programme.

6.0-2 - 2014-06-25 – Initial version for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

6.1-0 - 2014-12-01 – Added new separately installable component: configuration proxy (xroad-confproxy). Added support for federating two X-Road instances. Added new command-line utilities for managing Signer component. Many user interface fixes and improvements. Several enhancements.

2015

In 2015, the Information System Authority of Estonia (RIA) and the Population Register Centre of Finland (VRK) concluded a cooperation agreement with the intention of formalising cooperation relating to X-Road. RIA and VRK were responsible for the coordination of X-Road core development, and a set of practices and guidelines were agreed to manage the cooperation.

Another important outcome of the collaboration between RIA and VRK was publishing the source code of X-Road core as open source under the MIT free software licence. The source code was published in two parts in 2015-2016 and it was made publicly available to anyone. Since then, dozens of countries around the world have implemented X-Road as their national data exchange layer solution. The cooperation between Estonia and Finland has had a global impact.

6.7.0 - 2015-09-29 Release notes

6.7.1 - 2015-10-14 Release notes

Suomi.fi Data Exchange Layer, the X-Road environment of Finland, was brought into use in November 2015. Since that time, for clarity, the data exchange layer environment of Estonia has been called X-tee and the data exchange layer software has been called X-Road®.

In December 2015 AS Cybernetica released their commercial product UXP, which is partly based on the same prototype (SDSB) as X-Road version 6.

2016

6.7.13 - 2016-09-20 Release notes

6.8.9 - 2016-12-05 Release notes

The Faroe Islands takes their X-Road (version 5) environment “Heldin” into production use.

El Salvador takes their X-Road environment “Tenoli” into production use.

2017

6.9.0 - 2017-01-06 Release notes

Estonia and Finland decided to deepen the cooperation by forming a joint organisation to administer the development of X-Road. The formation and cooperation agreement of the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS) was signed by ministers Urve Palo and Kai Mykkänen in Helsinki in March 2017, during a state visit of the President of the Republic of Estonia, H.E. Ms Kersti Kaljulaid and her spouse.

6.13.0 - 2017-04-11 Release notes

6.14.0 - 2017-04-13 Release notes

The Memorandum of Association of NIIS was signed in June 2017 and the institute launched its operations in August 2017.

6.16.0 - 2017-09-13 Release notes

The province of Neuquén in Argentina partly replaces its custom built distributed interoperability platform by using X-Road.

2018

Finland's and Estonia's X-Road data exchange layers were connected to one another in February 2018, making it possible to easily transfer data over the Gulf of Finland between organisations that have joined the countries’ national data exchange layers.

6.17.0 - 2018-02-14 Release notes

6.18.0 - 2018-05-14 Release notes

In June 2018, NIIS took over the core development of X-Road from RIA and VRK. The first step of the handover had been completed earlier in 2018 when NIIS took the responsibility of running the Working Group that comprises the platform for day-to-day coordination of the joint X-Road development. In June 2018 NIIS also took over the management of the source code of X-Road core.

In September 2018 Iceland became a partner of NIIS.

6.19.0 - 2018-09-27 Release notes