Presentation given at the Service Design and Delivery in a Digital Age - Academies for EaP countries organised by the SIGMA Programme and the GiZ Eastern Partnership Regional Fund. Topic 2: Digital transformation.

1. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU.
1
Siim Sikkut
Managing Partner – Digital Nation
www.digitalnation.eu
SERVICE DESIGN AND DELIVERY IN A DIGITAL AGE
Academies for EaP countries
Make Data Move –
Not People

2. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU. KEY PRINCIPLES - RECAP
Once only
User-centricity
Trust-by-design

3. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU. BENEFITS OF DATA EXCHANGE
▪ Better services for people
▪Seamless / frictionless
▪Integrated (e.g. life events)
▪End-to-end
▪ Better policy decisions (data inputs)
▪ Saving money (reuse of data & solutions)

4. proactive government
seamless public services around life-events
starting a business driving
licence
buying
a car
childbirth start of
school
unemployment
& job search
military
service
divorce
change of residence retirement death (succession) building
houses
disability
marriage
falling victim to an
accident
falling victim to a
crime

5. Seamless
beyond
public
sector

6. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU. INTEROPERABILITY FRAMEWORK in ESTONIA: PRINCIPLES
▪ Distributed set-up: resilience and agility
▪ Service-oriented architecture
▪ Openness & neutrality
▪ Reusability & scalability
▪ Transparency
▪ Security

7. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU. INTEROPERABILITY FRAMEWORK: INTERLINKED PILLARS

8. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU.
▪ Platform / layer for decentralized secure data sharing
▪ Resilience
▪ Autonomy for agencies
▪ In Estonia from 2001, in 25+ countries now
▪ 300M+ end-users
▪ Used in case of legal right-to-know or consent
▪ Leanest & most scalable interoperability platform in the world
▪ Core technology built by intergovernmental consortium www.niis.org +
available open source (MIT licence)
Estonian Interoperability Solution:

9. x-tee.ee

10. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU.
https://x-road.global

11. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU.
https://x-road.global

12. abi.ria.ee/xtee

13. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU.
▪ 3 environments: development + test + production
▪ 2 message protocols:
▪ SOAP / xml
▪ REST / Json
▪ Any & all types of data
▪ Can be hosted on-premise or in cloud
▪ Trust services: in-house or from market
▪ No need for private network or VPN: encryption & transfer over open internet
▪ Works on top of any stack
▪ Currently synchronous messaging, asynchronous / one-to-many coming
Tech specs of

14. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU. REGULATORY / GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK
Onboarding process:
▪ Self-service portal online for application
▪ Signing of ecosystem membership agreement
▪ Configuration of security server(s) or service order to vendor
▪ Ordering certificates to the security server
▪ Describing own system and data services
Data exchange launch:
▪ Agencies agree on data service details (SLA, security
measures, semantics, etc)
▪ They sign data exchange agreement
All regulated with Cabinet-level decree / legislative act

15. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU.
▪ PKI – Public Key Infrastructure – certificates
▪ National Digital ID – protecting interface access
▪ National data catalogue – findability of data
▪ MISP – browser-based queries
▪ Base registries and other databases
▪ Transparency solutions:
▪ Data tracker
▪ Access authorisation service
▪ Interface systems for citizens and officials
Related systems: for enabling interoperability

16. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU. SOME LESSONS LEARNED
▪ Organisational readiness takes time:
awareness & capability
▪ Bring the vendor / industry ecosystem onboard
▪ 80% is governance and policy, 20% is tech
▪Example: once only rule, privacy safeguards, etc

17. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU. UPTAKE DEPENDS ON POLICY
Once-only rule brought X-Road
to masses in Estonia
Kristjan Vassil (2015) World Development Report Background Paper

18. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU. CROSS-BORDER DATA EXCHANGE ENABLED
X-Road supports
cross-border
data exchange:
federation
Estonia-Finland case
In works:

19. A
joint
initiative
of
the
OECD
and
the
EU,
principally
financed
by
the
EU.
Resources on X-Road from NIIS
▪ X-Road playground: https://x-road.global/xroad-playground
▪ X-Road Academy: https://x-road.thinkific.com/
▪ Documentation: https://docs.x-road.global/
▪ Knowledge hub: https://x-road.global/