How it began
X-Road began in Estonia as a pilot project in 1998, known as X-tee or Ristmik. A first prototype was shown publicly in 2000, and national deployment began on December 17, 2001. The designers proposed a decentralized system with synchronous data exchange between organizations, which the Estonian government chose. The first version was drawn up in step with consultation with the country's data protection authority.
Before it existed
In 1996 Estonia suffered a large data leak when a government contractor and computer specialist, Imre Perli, compiled a so-called superdatabase of personal data from several government sources and offered it for sale. The episode influenced the architectural choice to keep data distributed in the separate registers that own it instead of gathering it in one central store.
How it works
X-Road is a centrally managed but distributed data exchange layer between information systems. Each organization keeps its own data, and exchanges take place directly between the parties over the public internet. Security rests on public key infrastructure: each member holds key pairs for authentication and for digital signatures, so that messages are confidential and their origin and integrity can be proven.
How it spread
The central components were released as open source under the MIT license on October 3, 2016. In June 2017 Estonia and Finland jointly founded the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions to manage and develop the code. On February 7, 2018, the Estonian and Finnish data exchange layers were connected to each other, which allowed data to move across the border between the two systems.
Where it stands today
X-Road is used across the Estonian public administration under the name X-tee and in Finland's Suomi.fi data exchange layer. It links private as well as public sector organizations. The Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions maintains the software, and X-Road has been described as a model for open-source digital public infrastructure.
