FI-EE cooperation in Nordic Institute forInteroperabilitySolutions (NIIS)

MS MIIA MÄNDCOO of Government CIO

Office for Estonia

MS KATJA VÄÄNÄNENSenior Specialist at the

Ministry of Finance, Public Sector ICT

What we talk about

• Why EE and FI have common interoperability infrastructure?

• And a joint venture?

• How we did it?

• How it operates?

• Cooperation experience

• What is the outcome?

• Challenges

• Future vision

Why a common interoperabilityinfrastructure?

• Actual need of cross-border data exchange: closely connected economies, people and businesses move across borders

• Shared fundamental ideas and values: openness

• Personal identification code

• Pragmatic approach: if we couldn’t exchange with Finnish, who else?

• Political will was there

How we did it?

2013 Prime Ministers signed MoU – start of official cooperation

Population Register Centre of Finland (VRK) and Information System Authority of Estonia (RIA) – the X-Road operators concluded a Cooperation Agreement – coordinated X-Road core development

March 2017 Formation and Cooperation Agreement was signed by Ministers– establishing NIIS

June 2017 Memorandum of Association was signed between the Ministries

June 2017 NIIS was established as a non-profit organisation under Estonian law

June 2017 CEO was reqruited

August 2017 NIIS started its operations

June 2018 NIIS took over X-Road core development from VRK and RIA

NIIS structure

Light and lean structure,

easy to manage

General Meeting

Advisory Group

CEO

CTO

Development Teams

CDOProject

Manager

NIIS

NIIS’ strategy 2020-2022

Ensures high standard development and strategic management.

Is agile, innovating and influencing.

Is both a network and cooperation platform, and executioner of IT developments.

Cooperates actively in Europe, onboarding new partners and members.

Focuses on practical collaboration.

NIIS’ strategy 2020-2022

X-Road version 7 is a modular, easy-to-implement, cloud native, secure data exchange solution.

Development is done iteratively using agiledevelopment methods in efficient manner and with an ear to the user field.

X-Road is thriving as a core digital infrastructure component in EU.

Just great!

Policy level (GM, AG):

• Consensus

• Willingness to find it

Working group level:

• Consensus, true cooperationatmosphere

• Priorities aligned

Cooperationexperience

Benefits of cooperation

• Deeper and more permanent cooperation between Finland and Estonia.

• The development is centralised, under the member states’ direction and according to joint strategies.

• The clarity and visibility of operations have increased.

• No overlaps.

• The product is developed with an ear to the user field, in an agile and efficient manner.

Benefits of cooperation

• The combination of resources is bringing cost-savings as well as resourcing efficiency.

• Allows multilateral operations. Iceland and Faroe Islands.

• Allows cooperation between the countries to be extended to other components and possibly also to new products.

• Both countries have learnt from each other in terms of digital development practices.

Challenges: bringingcross-border dataexchange to life

• The need, the use case, the senseof urgency

• Alignement of priorities: political, financial, dealing with unexpectedtechnical issues

• Trust: do we trust data fromabroad

Future vision

• What if my government interacts with me like my personal virtual assistant using my digital twin?

• X-Road as a EU wide data exchange layer

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Thank you!