1. X-Road
Estonian Information Systems’s Authority
Rävala 5, 15169 Tallinn, Estonia

2. The Problem
late 1990s
– Many information systems
– Very little paperwork in the back office
– A lot of paperwork for citizens
early 2000
– many projects for interconnecting information
system
– security issues discussed

3. The General Architecture
Distributed architecture (no SPOF)
●
Properties – data integrity, authenticity and
authentication, encryption, reliable, verifiable, scalability
and availability
●
Neutral – using X-road must not change systems FURPS
settings level
●
Two-level authorization model
●
Loosely coupled services - transparent to data models,
database/system management technologies and usage
patterns
●
XML-based
●

4. Arhitecture of State IS
X-Road
centre
Government
information
systems
RIHA
Internet
X-Road
Portals
common component
custom component
citizens
enterpreneurs
civil servants
Estonian
PKI
infrastructure

6. Architecture
Technology
WSDL
UDDI
Layer
Services
Components
SOAP
(XML RPC)
LDAP
…
Data traffic
X-road
Security server
Central server
MISP
Citizen portal
Java
.NET
Python
SAP
Information
systems
Traffic register
Population register
Passports register
…
Parential benefit
My vehicles
My penalties

7. X-Road Versions
Version 1.0 – 2001. XML-RPC
Version 2.0 – 2002. SOAP RPC/encoded
Version 3.0 – 2004. Synchronous services
Version 4.0 – 2006. Security update
Version 5.0 – 2010. SOAP document/literal
wrapped
(Version 6.0 – 2014? Federation, External trust
service providers)

8. The Initial Years

9. All The Years

10. All The Years (Monthly)
30
Number of requests
in Millions
25
20
15
10
5
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Month
9
10
11
12

11. Results
X-Road is a long step of moving towards the
Information Society
●
X-Road includes Estonian and European best
practice in the using of new technologies
●
X-Road provides e-Services to citizens, to civil
servants and to enterpreneurs
●

12. Future?
Continuous improvement... version 6, 7...
It is not about technology – it is the way of
thinking!
Thank You!
Questions?