In a special episode, Professor David Eaves hosts a conversation with Ville Sirviö, CEO of the Nordic Institute of Interoperable Solutions, and Siim Sikkut, CIO for the Republic of Estonia.
Estonia's spectacular journey of digital transformation and the development of X-Road by the Nordic Institute of Interoperable Solutions has been a game-changer in the way digital public goods are created and shared. Tune in to hear Ville Sirviö, CEO of the Nordic Institute of Interoperable Solutions (NIIS), and Siim Sikkut, CIO for the Republic of Estonia, join David Eaves, Lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School in discussion for his Friday reflection series. In this conversation, recorded on February 2, 2021, they reflect on the building and scaling of the X-Road in Estonia and Beyond.
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Siim: In X-Road, look it's not any different from any other bigger digital initiative or project, if you want to call it, or rollout of anything like that right? Essentially all of it just comes down to one thing, which is about you just have to manage that change, manage that rollout program, essentially. And it doesn't matter if it's a national ID, it doesn't matter if it's X-Road, it doesn't matter if it's digital health record, it doesn't matter if it's vaccinations of COVID app.
David: We're enormously privileged to be joined by Siim who's the CIO for the Government of Estonia and Ville who is the Executive Director of NIIS, the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Standards. What I really want to do with the two of you is do two things. On the scene of the Estonia side is to talk a little bit about, what implementation of X-Road look like and what lessons can a student, lessons should they be drawing as they try to replicate this work in their own country?
David: I think from Ville on the NIIS side is this idea that you would then share code across government jurisdictions is fascinating, even across within a given government I think is sometimes very challenging for a lot of organizations. So we're unbelievably fascinated about what that governance looks like, how that impact works. I think actually you two will have things to say that there are things that Siim can bring context onto the work that NIIS does and vice versa. So, that's really our goal for today.
David: So, to maybe kick us off, Siim maybe let's just talk about the roll out implementation of the X-Road. Kind of the story is a little bit like this kind of magically happens in Estonia. We wake up one day and boom there's the X-Road and everything's amazing and everything works. I'm sure the story is not so clear. So what lessons could you just share very high level initially with the students about what rolling out an ambitious project like this involves and what were some of the bigger pitfalls or challenges you had to face?
Siim: Yeah sure. Look it's always easy to talk about like 10 plus years or 20 years of stuff, okay we have 60 minutes or something here now but still. So that's why it's sort of the magic wand or suddenly falling from the sky sort of effect is easy to emerge right, just like you say that obviously it's a gimps you get. By the way Ville feel free to jump in at any point.
Siim: But look so we in some ways if we go back I mean this is also quite a bit before my time so I also have an understanding in terms of how it went without kind of going into details. But I think there's two ways to answer it David, and that's because, well first of all how do you implement and really roll out something like X-Road in the first place? Then how do you do that in the later context like we have with NIIS now. Where basically exactly you take something that's jointly developed, you take something that's out there and then you just bring it into your ecosystem in [inaudible 00:03:02] situation right? They are a bit different those stories.
Siim: I'm assuming you want to go for the first one first at least, right? So, look I want to say a few things and if I start to blabber then stop me and interrupt me with questions. But first of all look in many ways what we are talking about here in your course overall in digital government overall and in X-Road, it's not any different from any other bigger digital initiative or project if you want to call it or roll out of anything like that right? Basically it means that essentially all of it just comes down to one thing which is about, so you just have to manage that change, manage that roll out program essentially.
Siim: I mean it doesn't matter if it's your national ID, it doesn't matter if X-Road it doesn't matter if it's digital health record, it doesn't matter if it's vaccination, a COVID app whatever, right? It's similar sort of logics in a way that they're going to gain. Perhaps I'm sounding a bit too generic, so bear me out with this. At the moment what I want to come down to is I think the journey of X-Road is not special in the end. It still comes down to how do you start something? How do you get it off the ground? How do you then sort of convince the critical mass of folks and agencies to join and then sort of roll from there? And that what sort of incentives you can use along the way?
Siim: So it's not just X-Road specific, it's actually I think a much more generic story. What for us did the trick was a few things. First of all, I mean X-Road falls into the context in Estonia which I think you can perhaps cover, where you know late 90s early 2000s when we were starting with our digital government program, there was literally nothing there. Not much was there. So basically anything that sort of looked promising, we were ready to experiment with and the government at the time was ready to experiment, try it out essentially.
Siim: X-Road first of all in a very first essence was an idea in a master thesis right, then some engineers starting playing with it, it became something more, it became something where we were ready to then actually sort of try it out if it works. It was basically a visionary idea, a concept more than a platform, we then just adopt and take up as a software. So that's the context, I mean it was for us an experimentation at first.
Siim: But what drove us there and what really has been very fundamental to X-Road's journeys is that we had actual need, we had a concrete problem we were trying to solve. The problem was in a way of course yes you need to integrate system, you need to integrate data basis to provide a good service, a seamless service as perhaps it's called. That's joined us across agencies for the citizens. What was our driving factor was that we didn't have enough money to build those connections one by one. So for us basically we had to economize or optimize how we went digital back in the day.
Siim: So, that took us to this sort of platform approach as we then call today and that X-Road was one of those platform along like digital identity and a few other things. So, the financial motive was so strongly then, that helped the roll out because clearly we didn't have enough money to do otherwise. So as the first experiments proved the story and proved that exactly you can make those connections, you become interoperable, you can start exchanging data and in a secure way. Then you had the need, you had something that works, you just basically, that helps the roll out, if it makes sense.
David: Then you have momentum, you just keep the momentum going.
Siim: That keeps-
David: Maybe a question was like one thing too, I think a lot of people think these platforms they become visible to you, they become obvious to you and they're at scale. But actually they don't just appear over night. Was there an initial use case that you started with in Estonia that was like quite narrow, we want to connect this data with that data to solve a very specific ... Did it start with a very specific problem or?
Siim: Now you catch me actually on an interesting question. Ville too you know this, I actually don't, sorry I should but I have to ask the guys who are retired now. Have you heard?
Ville: As far as I know, I think there has been a few different needs one has been connecting databases as they used to say that time, so nowadays we talk about connecting information systems and services, but yes, so connecting data sources was one of the reasons. I think the other one was also the lack of sufficient close net for certain data exchange. So some countries had closed or private government networks in use but at that time, as I have understood Estonia didn't have one. So, that was maybe one motivator behind X-Road to develop a network.
Siim: Yeah if I can jump in. Yeah we also didn't want to build one, but I think David's asking more specifically in terms of what was the first, the preliminary actually use case that was...
David: What two databases desperately needed to be created that a policy maker was like oh I will sponsor this because I need this and what problem were they solving? Was there a specific one?
Ville: The specific use case is I think we have listed some of those in X-Road history paper actually. I don't remember those by heart but it included several different use cases. At least I have seen the list of the use cases that somewhere like describe in the first verse or when it was under development. I think the banking industry was involved heavily in the development. We can see many commercial banks being participants of the original X-Road consortium of companies working around it.
Ville: So, I think it included users or possibly user organizations from different sectors. Not only public sector also private sector users who had some say in the definition of the first X-Road. The use cases in the public sector I think those also varied quite much so it included different data sources from different domains under the public sector.
David: Maybe [inaudible 00:09:09] and Sirviö we should do more investigation on this, because I think one of the things I've observed is like it's very rare that platforms just appear overnight. Usually they actually start solving a very narrow problem and they get traction and success in that narrow problem and then people say can we generalize that tool set to solve other problems? Now, you may have an eye already that you can generalize the tool set but you don't generally arrive and try to solve all the problems with the tool set. You solve a specific one and then build out from there.
Siim: Yeah I mean if I can jump in, so yeah I just looked at the NIIS website, it actually also doesn't list the concrete data bases like that. But I mean I can tell you, if I can just steal 30 seconds I can tell a funny story. So obviously it was very much engineers led project at the time right? The engineers don't really have the best social skills or depth. So, they went around the agency saying look I mean for example a good use case would be death of a person. So, if you die then your family will be able to basically [inaudible 00:10:13] and basically get all the things done in one go. Everybody was like, why didn't you start with this story men?
David: Yeah, you ought to frame that. It is actually a great story because it's a moment of grieving and there are all sorts of great use cases you can solve for. But it's not a happy one where people might get excited about.
Siim: Yeah and it's probably not the biggest pain or something like that. But if I can just add two more things and then I'll promise to stop. So, my point was so we had experimentation approach. So, basically trial and sort of stating approach and secondly we had a need. But third thing, obviously it took quite a bit of exactly change management in a sense as well, we had to literally just convince agencies, you know bribe them a bit. For example, we centrally funded some of the first installments and even paid for the initial service and whatever.
Siim: So, basically just to get them into the program in a way and give them a taste and once they had a taste and obviously they were eager to go ahead themselves further ahead. I mean this all took a few years. The full things, obviously that's very crucial to the story is that so once we hit some sort of initial critical mass and plateau then we took the next leap and brought in the legal requirement to actually make the platform mandatory. That's been really fundamental for the rollout that we have today.
Siim: That legal requirement basically is known as the once only principle, so that drove the legal side of it. Which means that if some part of government knows something about me, as a citizen as an entrepreneur, the rest should not ask again but they're mandated to all exchange in the backend over X-Road. So, this really brought a hike or the hockey sticks of thing into use.
David: I'm going to come to Ville in a second but just to follow up on this. I think for me what's interesting for my students to hear is that actually the X-Road starts off more as a series of carrots. We have this idea, we think it can work, we'll just run some experiments, we'll pay for it so we as a central agency we will come bring money to your ministry to help pay for this idea.
David: So, we're going to use carrots to bring you along. Then at a certain point as it starts to prove itself out, we then shift to having sticks, which we're going to create legislative authority that's going to compel you now to do it. We're going to create a once only policy. For me a huge insight last year was learning, the once only policy always frames as being beneficial to citizens which it is, you only ask for information once. But what it really is, is a big stick to be used on the ministries to compel them into compliance with using the X-Road so they can adhere to actually fulfilling the obligation that comes with doing [inaudible 00:13:02] only.
Siim: Yeah.
David: So it starts with carrots then it moves to sticks. Maybe just one last piece on this is you have these sticks now, to what degree is your job serving around making sure people aren't creating, like a duplicate of database or recreating part of the X-Road that maybe already exists? Is that a challenge or does it really kind of regulate itself?
Siim: It does come in waves I have to tell you. So even Ville and I haven't had a chance to chat about it. For example a few months had again like a small sort of uptake in a sense where some investors were trying to revolt a bit saying like why do we have to use this X-Road now? That was very much in the context of them trying to do more on data science fronts and basically building up sort of what's the English word? Not database but-
David: Like a learning data set?
Siim: Yeah more like a data lake stuff and so forth. The other challenge and we had to fight a bit but obviously we still won, so, the case is very simple. But I think in the end it's not about just basically somehow enforcing our power, in the end what it comes down to and this is really crucial. Why it comes in waves is that obviously the needs change in time, right? The needs, how it was, so what are the use case? What are the needs to exchange data in a secure way? So that's why, what Ville does and what NIIS does and why NIIS is there is so crucial, because you know it has to evolve. We have to basically also the core of X-Road also has to evolve to basically be something that actually brings use to the users and the agencies.
Siim: So, my point being for example, that is why now, I mean it's very much in the discussion and very much also in the product development pipeline for example yeah how X-Road can support bigger data, [inaudible 00:15:01] movement or exchange for example more. So, we have to catch up or even in a good way try to prevent this curve. If we don't prevent this, then exactly a bit of revolting happens and then you basically bring it back again with product development as well as a bit of assuring.
David: Yeah for my students again this is just a great example of kind of a worldly map system in play. Which is as you build capabilities, people want to immediately build new functionality on top of those capabilities. In order to do that they say well, now we're going to leave you to go build this new functionality then there's real question of is that new functionality unique, you should go build it yourself. Or no is that like an emerging core functionality that everybody is going to want and we need to pull into the X-Road or pull that into the work that NIIS does.
Siim: Exactly.
David: Moving from custom build to product commodity.
Siim: I'll just say one more thing. Actually, you're spot on one thing. Because obviously we rely on NIIS and Ville's team the most to build X-Road further. But at the same time we can do stuff on our end as well for the local ecosystem because we just run installation of X-Road in Estonia setting here. So we can do it both ways, but as I say it seems as if it's becoming more of a thing that we move it, kick it in a sort of wider world.
David: I would want to come back to that. Ville, sorry did you want to jump in?
Ville: Yeah I just wanted to add what Siim was saying I agree with this observations about X-Road. What we find interesting is that when X-Road is a strong concept, its old concept, its strong concept and people know the concept. The stronger the concept becomes, the more people start things, X-Road is like this and this and they remembered main concept. But actually how much X-Road has changed throughout the years, how much it has been developed further already.
Ville: So, we do not talk about the static X-Road which has been all the same all the time but it's really changing and it's quite big change what have been made in X-Road through the years. This is something I always want to underlying. As Siim said yes we have the future needs and we welcome those. But already it's quite a big change with X-Road.
David: So, let me come to you Ville because I think Siim talked about something that I think is so relevant to people who are watching this, which is, kind of someways the journey of Estonia is interesting but in some ways maybe it's not as relevant, because they were starting work they were starting from scratch, whereas now there's NIIS and there's an open source repository with the X-Road on it. So it's not like you are going to have to recreate all of the work that Estonia did.
David: So you're working with both the Estonians, the Finns and now Iceland as well. When Finland came in, I strongly suspect their databases are totally different than Estonia, their data standards are totally different. What's that challenge? Did you get involved in that? How do you manage these differences in the government to get them onto a similar platform?
Ville: Yeah when we talk about X-Road users, the countries, of course we have Estonia and Finland as NIIS members but we also have Iceland as partner country and so we have also Faroe Islands. Well X-Road, well it's known as Estonian story now we see it's already much more, it has been used in several countries already. Just yesterday we were talking with NIIS team that how many countries actually use X-Road nowadays? We found the latest number to be 18.
Ville: So, it's 18 countries with X-Road implemented and that's quite much already. We recognized 23 countries considering implementation of X-Road or having some sort of preliminary study or feasibility study going on or some sort of a project for X-Road. So yeah the user base is even wider than just NIIS members, but still it is our members who are making the essential decisions on how we developed X-Road further because our members also are financing the development. So yeah between our members we haven't seen any big challenges. When we started with NIIS, the common argument I was hearing is that let's see, what happens it's not going to be easy with having even two countries doing it together. Well now we have two, soon we have three.
Ville: But when I have been talking with different countries around the world, I find well people's lives are not that different, the needs of the societies are not that different when we talk about this kind of infrastructure. The essence of parts of it like in the example of e-Estonia, we have seen how the EID and X-Road are forming this fundament for the e-Infrastructure.
Ville: So I think this kind of interests of different countries, it is possible to align those. I don't see any like big challenges around it. Of course, we always will have questions like if we have to prioritize something or if we have certain areas of development and we have to discuss shall we do it together or is someone going to do it separately alone? So, yeah we have to have those discussions if any such topics emerge. But generally I have been positive surprised how well it has been working between the countries and with X-Road.
David: So, maybe come back to this again, but I want to jump a statement that Siim made and have you both talk about this. So, if I think of kind of a stakeholder map of who's really involved, we have NIIS which has software developers, product managers who are kind of building out this platform, then you have your member countries. So, let's pretend like Siim is the main point of contact who is kind of representing Estonia. But then Siim has a whole bunch of stakeholders that he's dealing with, he just mentioned there are ministries who are all complaining about bugs or things that aren't working.
David: Or inversely have employment functionality and now are already thinking about the next thing they want and are going off and building it themselves. How is NIIS dealing with all these stakeholders to figure out what the product roadmap is and who decides what gets build? Is that a conversation that happens between the Estonian and Finish government and they come and tell you hey Ville this is what we want to happen? Walk us through that and I'd love to hear from both of you.
Ville: Okay I'll explain a bit about the two different sides of it. One is that as I said X-Road is used around the world by different countries and many of them not being members of NIIS. So we always have users around the world and we want to develop X-Road in a user centered way. So, we are taking the users first and any user of X-Road is able to provide us feedback to make us any request for changes such as any features. So, we are open for discussion with any party using X-Road.
Ville: It's very beneficial for us because through open source and through wide used based we actually gain more benefit for NIIS members as well because we are getting lots of feedback, contributions, comments from around the globe and it's all really beneficial. But still [inaudible 00:22:01]
David: Ville can I jump in. Is there no free rider problem? What's the benefits of membership if everybody kind of gets to work with you, what's the benefit of membership?
Ville: Well that's the other side I'm coming to which is that-
David: Okay.
Ville: ... we primarily work for our members and we are making software for our member countries. It is our members who decide who we do it. So, when Siim was talking about the feature needs, the feature ideas what kind of things we are building on X-Road, this is something for our members also to decide. So, the members still have the decision making right, they are the ones who are actually deciding with us, the long term roadmap, deciding our strategy, making all this planing how we are developing X-Road systematically in the long term.
Ville: So we have different types of requests. We might have smaller requests from users around the world. But still when we think about bigger changes in X-Road, when we think about the long term roadmap or NIIS strategy or X-Road product strategy, those are areas which are decided by NIIS members. So, those are members of NIIS are also deciding on the essence of questions. Also, financing the development so that's a fair play for everyone. I would say that by open sourcing X-Road, it has been like a very fair step from our members to the rest of the countries who have this opportunity. Especially when we think about some maybe more developing countries areas in which digital public goods and open source solutions can actually do lots of good.
Ville: I think it's really important work from our members, a good decisions from both Estonia and Finland to be supporting this, and I think it's also important for the country reputation, it is seen positively. It's something which really makes an impact and I think it's very much appreciated. It's also building part of the fame of X-Road, how X-Road is seeing. I think it has own spirit which is built around open source and certain kind of values represented by our member countries too.
David: Siim, what's the experience like as a member country? Do you feel there's a lot of compromises that you're making or how do you go about advocating for your interests as part of the bigger entity?
Siim: Before I actually answer I just wanted to perhaps add one more thing that you may have picked up from your background or not and just a compliment Ville. From a member perspective it works on three levels. So if you start bottom up, then there's a working group level which is really where the sort of the most technical discussions are supposed to happen. Why would I point this out? Is that so obviously Ville and the team are organizing different events in those communities and stuff like that.
Siim: But fundamental it's our job as a member government to channel all our ecosystem request in to this pipeline now right? So, basically if our ministry are complaining it's then the job of my team and RIA our central IT agency to then take this on board, see what actually sort of prioritize a bit and then bring this list in a way to the NIIS the working group. Then the next level is a sort of advisory group which we are now also a bit sort of amending to basically have a bit more strategic say in technical discussion. Then the general meeting which is like a board, which I'm a member of half of the member of them.
Siim: That's basically just sort of meant to be the strategy or if you wish the business discussion. I think Ville we have never really done any technical decision, right? Technological decision. I mean we can if necessary, but fundamentally I mean it's always been more at the level of people where actually they know what they're talking about.
Ville: Yeah that was a good compliment from Siim and actually I should told it, but I forgot to jump into this subject. So, these are the three levels of what Siim mentioned of how we operate. So having the general meeting advisory group and working group, which is rather technical. Of course because X-Road as an ecosystem so [inaudible 00:26:06] has its operator organization, which is the case of Estonia is the state Information System Authority and in Finland it is the digital and population register agency. So these operators, also are a channel for providing feedback from the ecosystem. So, we also national ecosystem involved through them. So yeah that's-
Siim: So think about exactly with a pipeline or a funnel or pyramid or whatever way you want to right? I think that's the really context to answering you then David to say that, well there's different levels where we can basically exactly weigh in a way right? So we have to look at the countries as well. We're talking about the two countries still, so it's not like European Union 20 plus countries have to agree and [inaudible 00:26:53] debate sometimes although EU is a good thing. Secondly we're both founding members. I think that's also like a different dynamic we've seen in some of the discussions, we went in with a purpose, right?
Siim: So we still know why we're in, in a way, that makes I think many sort of these discussions easier. The third thing and this is perhaps, just my personal view, I don't know if Ville agrees with me, but so far there has not been the issue of resource constraints, yet. But I think if we look at [inaudible 00:27:24] next year's budget, we have to start prioritizing for the first time a bit more, right? So, in that sense I think if you ask me in a year or two, then I might have exactly like the next version of the answer.
Siim: But still, we are there as founding members right now. If more countries come in, obviously the dynamic will change, we have compromise and negotiate more, if resource constraints come in the game. That's not because we're funded less, but it's just because so far we were able to invest in and it was stacking up [inaudible 00:27:53]. So now are full force with NIIS really. Then basically we operate exactly at the budget constraint. So yeah, so far so good, because of all of that.
David: So, one thing that's for me is interesting is this case that Siim was talking about where the ministry in some ways, the challenge here is you can be the victim of your own success. Actually the more core the infrastructure becomes, the more people want to build on top of it, which means the more variation there is of the things they want to do on top of it. So, it seems like the ministry were running off in their own direction, this is a symptom of success. They're now leveraging it so well, they want to do more things.
David: So for me, there's this tension always of what is core, versus kind of what kind of remains an experiment or something that's bespoke that's specific to a ministry. Maybe the bigger question I have is, I can imagine, that the X-Road and the work of NIIS actually is creating more convergence between Estonia and Finland. So, actually the government start to think about the problems in the same way, and so actually the demands and the desire for what they want becomes more and more similar. Their views of policy and their views of problems actually start to harmonize.
David: Or conversely, is it the opposite which is actually as you standardize more there have been more and more new opportunities. So it's actually just this constant threat of divergence. Any thoughts about are you seeing convergence in how the countries think and what they agree are the core things that should be on the roadmap? Or are you seeing divergence that actually the stability creates desires to go off in different directions?
Ville:I could comment.
Siim: Do you want to start?
Ville: Yeah. From the NIIS point of view how we look into it. Because I think our scope is a bit more limited compared to the scope of what Siim and his team X-Road is having. Because Siim and his team are planing the digital future of their country which is a big more wider thing that what we are doing, actually around X-Road, so we have a limited part of it. So, with the limited part we go deeper into the code, the more I talk with the people who are deeper hands on the code the more obvious it comes to me that this 40,000 lines of code, sets us all for some restrictions.
Ville: So, when we talk about prioritizing things in the fourth coming years, it also means that we have to compromise between the wonderful ideas we have and between the reality we have in our hands with X-Roads. So it's like balancing between the two ends and finding the optimal point when we can go enough into inventing new, trying something what we have been planning for years maybe, but we have to just make it reality. Still keeping in mind that what we have with X-Road it is a product which is an ecosystem product planned for very limited used type originally.
Ville: So, it's not like a universal tool for everything. So, yeah it's finding the right balance between these different, and business different things and still keeping the core of X-Road optimal by providing what it has been built for. But considering how can we expand it into new areas in a way that it still remains safe, secure, trustworthy tool despite that we put some new stuff in. I think this is like the challenge also when it comes to the financing, if it comes to the scope, we always have to keep these things in mind. Yeah this is something we will be working in the next year.
Siim: I don't actually have a good answer to be honest, with diverging or converging. I think there's a few factors I can't really compute fully in yet. Let me see if I can explain this, on one level and I mean I'll take Estonia and Finland here now as part of the members right? So, diversion, so conversation is quite a bit down to let's see what sort of relative level of maturity you're at in terms of even let's say uptake of the particular platform. So, my point being for example, and by the way this relative majority pulls in both directions.
Siim: So, first of all if Finland basically still is somewhere middle way in terms of their government and their public sector in terms of full implementation and rollout of X-Road I would say, right? So, they're still learning the ropes in some parts of the government. What that means is that so, obviously in places, I don't know Ville would you agree, their demands for what X-Road does or needs to be is not elaborated, it's not thought out. I mean they're still working to implement what is there right now, okay?
Ville: Yeah I agree with this finding but it's still work-in-progress with X-Road in Finland and the final one is much longer than in Estonia for implementing it.
Siim: Fair enough. So, basically on the one hand, is my point here look I mean they don't really yet see beyond what's next on the horizon because they're still working so much with the current one. But as they sort of catch up, then basically the more, or also the [inaudible 00:32:48] and stuff visions in a way converge because then obviously we're looking from essentially a perspective of starting point than if they sort of catch up. Having said that, I think there's overall digital government material that comes to the game as well doesn't it?
Siim: So basically if you're always struggling to start digitalization of a public sector, you're working with some sort of problems. If you already have gone all over the place, digitize all you can and then try to take it to the next level like we are doing in Estonia, so basically it's about the next stage the next iteration it's different sort of problems.
Siim: So, in that sense, if you differ in maturity, you will look at completely different things as your needs. So for us as Finland the overall digital government maturity is not that different. So, we are in that ways what we're struggling with our challenges are very similar, it's a place for convergence, right? A third way of answering you, in a way what's a factor to consider, is that I mean in the end, we're talking about here more like government and governance maturity and divergence or convergence more.
Siim: I mean digitally it's just in one manifestation of this. So, my point being that if there's a lot of innovation happening, if there's a lot of sort of change happening in government services overall, then again there's more need for the tools to upgrade them, right? Whereas if for whatever reason, politically or otherwise, some government is stagnating a bit more, right? Then they don't look too far ahead again.
Siim: So, I hope I'm making sense, it's actually very hard to say because all these dynamics comes into the game, in terms of Estonia and Finland. If I take these factors in now, I will say we're definitely conversion because of the exact same thing I said before, we are quite similar in terms of digital government maturity overall, we are not that different currently again in terms of overall, government, I guess directional or maturity. X-Road maturity, roll up maturity wise they are catching up, so it's more convergent.
David: Interesting.
Ville: Yeah. I just wanted to add what I have also seen is that sometimes, when I look into Estonia and Finland I can recognize that Estonia has been maybe progressing more equally in different areas of the society covering the whole society with digital solutions, at the same time going on progressively. If I look into Finland and actually some other countries of cooperation too, I can recognize that maybe there's been some chomping like it has been not that equal throughout the society. But it has been rather like working on a few key projects or solutions and maybe chomping between the solutions a little bit more.
Ville: Which also makes the progress different. So, as Siim said like digital maturity overall you could measure it quite similarly, but you can see certain like areas which are not fully covered yet it's not the same thing what we have in Estonia and the whole society has been built up on it completely. Also, some of the process which have been built fully digital from the very beginning quite differently. Yeah there is this kind of difference. So, I agree with these findings what Siim was also describing.
David: So, I spent a part of my career providing, support to open source communities, helping them to think about how to manage disputes and challenges, really using negotiations theory to apply to the large collaboration spaces. I'm curious with NIIS, to what degree are you mediating and helping resolve disputes among the members and the community? Would you say, no we're purely technical, advisory and we have no opinion on basically anything other than very narrow, technical pieces? Or are you sitting there with say the Estonia's and the Fins and you're trying to help them understand their goals, how to reconcile them? How do you see your role in the governance there?
Ville: Well if there has been any dispute or different interest around X-Road it has quite often been related to some requests from countries not members of NIIS. Those have been requests for some features or functionalities in X-Road which might have been such that when the request has come to us, we have seen that yes it's a good idea, but it's not in the interest of our members. But instead it has very often been something which we see important in the longer term.
Ville: So, one day it might be needed by some of the future NIIS members or any future users or X-Road. So, instead of responding that yes we will do it now, we have been putting it in the backlog, we have been keeping it waiting until we come to the point that we otherwise make certain changes which enable this requested feature. So we are not forgetting it, we are not leaving it, we are really putting it into that same backlog put it like yeah to follow up what happens with it. Quite often luckily this has been exactly such requests that we can work on later.
Ville: A good example was request for language support in the admin backend for Spanish and for Japanese language this has been coming to us few times. We have seen that yeah it wouldn't make any sense if we started building separately Japanese language support for Estonia and Finland right now maybe. But we have put it in the backlog and in the next versions, we aim to build actually full language support for the admin interface. So, it allows any of the forthcoming in these member countries to make any localization if they will.
Ville: The same applies with the documentation which we have decided to keep fully in English because we don't want to spend resources in managing multi language documentation. But now when we make a new document, there's some platform we can also make it better for those countries who would like localize some parts of the documentation. Actually also including NIIS and partner countries who would like to keep their own local documentation. So, we have one master documentation in English and we provide an opportunity of adding the local documentation together with it.
Ville: So, again if we think it from a bit different perspective we can usually respond to the feature request and make it in a way which is beneficial for all and that's the way how we have been solving it. If it's needed, we escalate it first to the working group between the members then we may escalate it to the advisory group, if it would be needed up to the general meeting. So we have all these tools, available to solve these kind of disputes.
Siim: Actually I mean I just remembered, sorry I mean memories is coming to me now. We actually have talked technological choices also on general meeting or board level. But that's been exactly in the context of let's say, do we make the strategic move towards certain functionality? So Ville, the case and point the eDelivery stuff.
Ville: Yeah exactly.
Siim: [inaudible 00:40:00] so, basically the choice was so which way do we go. Because I mean what was the issue so how do we federate with pan-European platforms right? So difference of choices on the table. So, in the end because it's not just a technological question, like that it's [inaudible 00:40:19] of interoperability even like strategic governance question. So, that's why we had to sort of take it to that level even yeah.
Ville: Yeah.
David: I mean it's interesting even this question of localization so what is a side note from a student to others who want to watch this, localization is often a great way for new people to come into the community, so you localize into a language, that's a way for you to get familiar with the X-Road, with the governance and the code and how it works. So you localize into say Germany well suddenly now you know more about X-Road than most people in Germany that's makes you very useful. So, it's a great way to build community.
David: But even the question of allocating resources to allowing for localization either you could say well should we Estonia and Finland pay to make this extensible so that other languages could come in, versus building some feature that's serving our citizens? There's some real tension there. You're like, well longer term if we do this it could grow the community, it could create more resources that's helpful to us, but shorter term, we have to speak to our citizens and our tax payers, so there's really interesting interest that one needs to balance in that conversation.
Siim: Absolutely but if I can just sort of weigh in with two more sort of notes, the first note is that so, from at least a strategic direction of NIIS, so for us, as again the current founding members and our board has sort of realized this that well first of all, yes it's still the core technology. So in the end of the day it really comes down to making the choices, that should dominate. But until we reach that point really hard, right? A goal. Actually doing what we can and investing into that, actually the platform spreads is also okay as long as we are resourced. So, basically so it comes down to basically what's the resourcing, and how harsh these decisions have to come or not right? So far we've been able to sort of do quite a bit both, right?
Siim: My second point is just to say that, perhaps, I misunderstood your question Dave, so correct me then, but in way at least from a member perspective, we are really not in dialogue with community ourselves and I think Ville it will be fair to say that. Because, that's exactly why we have NIIS, we have delegated it out, to manage technology development and including manage the community for us. So, whatever comes from the community in a way sort of right? Basically is for these guys to then filter through, bring to us for choices if there need to be choices to be made.
David: But I'm assuming that there are Estonian public servants who are members of the community and contributing. So, you're sitting up at the board level but there are software developers or policy makers who are contributing or community contributors at the community level is that correct Ville?
Ville: Yes about the NIIS organization, how it is organized is that if we start from up to down in general meeting we have representatives from the ministries. We have the government CIO Siim and he's colleague from Finland under my career line. And in our advisory group we have also representatives of the X-Road operators in addition to represent these of the ministries. So, we already have some people who are working closer to technology in the advisory group. When we go to the working group we have the operators, we have the development team representatives, we have NIIS technical leads, so it is more of technical knowledge involved in the working group level.
Ville: So, that's the way how it is organized. But yeah when we talk about the community it's interesting question, we have a bit over 1,000 members in the community now from over 60 countries. Still, we need also to have local communications. So, the X-Road operators in Estonia and Finland are also community directly with the X-Road users. So, the involvement of all these different parties in our groups is very important to get all the user feedback and to get better visibility for us of what is happening in this ecosystems and to better understand what's going on.
Ville: So, far the most important tool for us for gaining better knowledge has been actually doing surveys, workshops, really involving the users and having this user centered approach utilizing service design and other stuff. So, yeah this is the way how we have been building it. I fully agree what Siim said about this question about making public good and working for our members but it also needs the balance, it's about our budgeting and how we have to align these things. So we have to be careful with it too.
Siim: But just as Ville sort of last point on this, so you're quite right [inaudible 00:45:06] that there are folks from the government circles who participate in the community or can participate of course. But I just want to reinforce like for us it's not a requirement. I'm sure Ville's team would like us to be way more active even in the community in some ways. But actually I'd say I don't even mandate that from our team. For us what matters more is so we work through the channel where we actually sort of have to work.
David: So this getting to our next question, Siim I'd love to kind of get your view and maybe this is sensitive, ask you be in front of Ville. I'm kind of curious how do you view NIIS? Does the government of Estonia see NIIS as a vendor? You know like this is just a vendor they were managing? Is it a treaty that we have that kind of involves the department of foreign affairs and carries a different type of view about the organization? How does Estonia treat NIIS institution?
Siim: Yeah no actually its not sensitive at all. I mean if I would say perceptive it's one of my teams okay? With just specifics of mandate and duty. If I would say a bit more officially actually it's built the same way. So, as governments you can set up Quangos or NGOs or even you can set up public owned company, not publicly traded but government owned company, okay? So my point being, whatever is the form actually we have chosen to build up let's say an agency, even if the agency is right now an NGO with another government, okay? Place a specific duty which is you know all tech development for X-Road in there. So, for us it's one unit, in the government CIO portfolio.
David: Interesting. Ville you have to serve your two member countries but I presume that NIIS would like to grow, that the idea is that it would be nice to have more member countries at a certain point. How do you see that growth happening? Are the kind of community members these other countries that have done implementations are they kind of junior? Are they on a trial on their way to becoming maybe members or is there no growth or is it up to the countries and you don't really feel like you have a say?
Ville: Yeah it's not a secrete to say that we are currently in talks with Iceland about their full membership in NIIS and we hope to realize quite soon. Also, we are working with the Faroe Islands but it is [inaudible 00:47:45] enough longer time to see how these partners will develop further we will have to have some talks with them too and see how they feel about growing with NIIS with X-Road. So yeah with the current members it's quite clear but we also have set our strategy to approach new countries to have talks with new countries and of course we would be very happy to welcome our Nordic members to the full membership of NIIS. So meaning Sweden, Norway, Denmark are definitely countries of interest that we would love to see developing with us.
Ville: We of course continue discussions with these countries as well. Similarly, we would like to collaborate with all of the European Union member states, this is naturally our like home field of operations. When it comes to NIIS membership and the interest from other countries, I think we did a first round after the establishment of NIIS approaching different countries and having discussions. I feel this round is sort of over and what we are doing now is building X-Road [inaudible 00:48:46] and that everyone should want to use it.
Ville: I think this is one of the ways how we can make the situation even better. Ours were different types of use cases. Even if we talk about eDelivery or other solutions in Europe, it doesn't necessarily mean that we have a solution for solving everything. So if we find more and more use base in Europe for X-Road it allows for a very quick implementation of cross-border use cases, because federations between two environments it's a built-in feature in X-Road. It's like something you can enable in an hour.
Ville: So, making cross-border services and use cases reality in a very fast and effective manner, this is a thing we could enable with X-Road. It is not domain specific it's not limited but it's really helping the countries to easily decide new cases and expert cases. So, we see lots of benefits in X-Road, we trust in it as a product and we would really love to see more countries onboard. But it is up to every country to make the decision and finally to see if X-Road is a perfect fit for them. But we try to make it such a good product that they really love to use it.
David: It sounds as though there's at least some vague criteria of what ... It's almost more geographic. We're definitely interested in Nordic countries, there's concentric circles, so Nordic countries Europe, maybe rest of world, what's driving that? Is that just the Nordic, countries, is it cultural affinity in that we solve problems the same ways? Or is it mimicry that these governments seem to be broadly structured the same, so it's easier for us to map the X-Road against them? Is it geopolitical? What's driving those kind of concentric circles?
Ville: I guess that Siim would also like to have a say in this. From NIIS side I could say that what we have found important in the operations of NIIs is that when we are close to and appropriately within the same time zones or plus minus two hours or so, it makes our collaboration quite easy. Especially before the COVID times it was exceptionally easy. So, being close to each others understanding very well how the societies operate, I think we have found it like a positive factor. But I wouldn't say it's like a prerequisite we should have but still yes, it has been a benefit for us.
Ville: Next it is about the use cases as I mentioned about the X-Road federation and cross-border services. I believe this is my assumption but Siim please correct me if I'm wrong. But I think our member countries have recognized many use cases with neighboring and close by countries. There's lots of like traveling work base travel and other things, despite the COVID but usually and all kind of collaboration across boarders in this region. So, this is probably one of the good reasons why X-Road would make it much faster and easier for the countries in the region to exchange data.
Siim: Yeah, look if I had to say this jokingly but it's not an accident then what's the first letter in need? N which stands for Nordic, so there you go, it's actually ... There's a reason for that. The philosophical underpinnings or if you wish strategic underpinnings that led to NIIS, go back to what Ville was actually finishing up with, is to say that, there's so much interest and potential to integrate Nordic countries especially digitally right? Because there's so much business and people moving back and forth relative digital maturity, similar stuff like that.
Siim: So how do you do that? One way to do that is actually if you share platforms or build together joint platforms. That sort of got us sort of going on that in a way right? Mind you, cross-border services are bloody hard to build out and I think that's completely another story, nothing to do with technology. But still that's been like the aim in a way. My last bit about this just to say that, yeah we haven't limited in any way, but exactly you're very spot on like the concentric stuff, makes so much sense because ultimately what we're talking about here is a platform for that exchange, like Ville said there's a federation opportunity.
Siim: Data sharing there has to be use case for that, just like you asked for the domestic purposes. Used cases, usually are between neighboring and close by countries more. So, it's very easy for us to build a joint digital prescription to get medicines with Portugal then the so few people back and forth but actually having the same data exchange in prescriptions with Finland is so much more important. If you can have a platform for that, perfect.
David: Yeah, it's interesting. I think it's just great for students also here even in the digital world, with the world's most digital governments, times zones still matter, the ability to sync up, the ability to connect humans this matters a lot.
Siim: [inaudible 00:53:41] still matter and just one last bit. I think what obviously you know so much more about in your work as well Dave is about it comes down to the fundamental constraints is the hours in a day, that the folks could drive and work on this stuff, you can put into stuff right? I mean even if you have all the money in the world there's only so much you can still do because given the talent and the pool and the people you have.
David: [Rajesh 00:54:06]
Rajesh: First Ville and Siim for joining us it's been great to see you talking here. My question is that, I mean what kind of strategic challenges you've seen coming like 5 to 10 years for this project, X-Road? I mean in terms of like cyber secure team, maybe data privacy? Scalability of course you little bit talked about expanding to other countries. Like new technology that maybe this technology may become relevant in come days. So what kind of challenges, strategic challenges do you face and how are you expecting to handle these things and prepare the organization?
Siim: Ville you want to start?
Ville: Well I can say for NIIS point view if I understood the question correctly like a forecasting, what is happening in the five years and what kind of challenges we foresee. If I think about X-Road and NIIS I think it's facing similar challenges with many other technologies related to E-governance interoperability and so on. One of the challenges I would pick is the compliance question. What we have also seen now during the times of the COVID crisis when new solutions have been built, it has been a question of compliance and understanding the different layers of compliance.
Ville: When we have multiple solutions in different regions by different organizations, the trust question and how we handle trust, how we handle compliance of the solutions. I think this is every a question within Europe despite of the decision would have been made like how we are building on single digital gateway or what is happening around eDelivery if we go more into technical details.
Ville: I still believe that in the future it's about setting all thee systems work together. So I'm saying development in interoperability is sort of causing the same challenges again. So, we are building something new to make things work together and next we have to again take the new round and think about how to be compliant under different frameworks and make things actually work. But maybe it's now not about technical interoperability that much in the next five years it's rather going to be about the compliance and trust, this is something I would pick up [inaudible 00:56:23]
David: Very interesting. [Katrina 00:56:27]?
Katrina: So you talked a lot about like coordination corporation and I was wondering if you've ever experienced trying to work with non-democracies and used X-Road or similar technologies or if you've seen any non-democracies tried to use them?
Siim: Well there are some in the list, I mean as a government, officially I can't sort of always make a distinction, but personally I can right? So, my point being that you know, there are countries that are not really considered democratic, that basically have some versions of that because we have [inaudible 00:57:03] list don't we, Ville? There's a few others like that. I'll be honest with you here, so we haven't had this issue with NIIS before in terms of some of them approaching us that wanting to be members and so forth. I think in some ways we would probably have to step, put the foot down in a way, because obviously it's not just the money game that they can throw in here.
Siim: Now from a different point of view as an open source we don't somehow limit the band that's spread, so we haven't brought the values and sort of whatever there, especially because there's one more aspect here which is about business dimension? So even if the goal itself is open source, that's still a community of companies, both in Finland, Estonia actually in some other countries too, that are eager to consult or coach or technically assist other governments in terms of implementation or even of the open source stuff right?
Siim: Obviously we don't need to fit in where they do their business for good or bad. So, I hope I'm giving you good answer in a way. But yeah we haven't limited the spread of technology itself but NIIS itself if it comes down it, we probably would have to have a hard discission and the idea is different there.
Ville: Yeah I think Siim answered very well this question about NIIS aspect and the NIIS membership questions so that it's quite obvious that what kind of countries are expected to be seen as members or partners and so on. Yes also as Siim said about X-Road we haven't been limiting, but I can just give an example we have been talking about with my colleagues this is more like a coffee table discussion and not like any serious question, but something to think about.
Ville: If we would have a country which would be generally recognized as a terrible dictatorship and it would be like a country full of human rights violations and whatsoever. If they would use X-Road for building better health care for their citizens, should we panic?
David: Could you?
Ville: And could we? Yeah.
David: I think this is a great ... What I like too is this question and how it links to the previous question or the previous answer [inaudible 00:59:14] you around trust and safety as being kind of core challenges for the next 10 years you actually can disentangle these. One challenge is by making it open source you can't control who goes to use the code. Ville can't stop an authoritarian regime from downloading and using the X-Road. They have no legal right by which to police them in doing that. But where they do have control is who can be a member of NIIS and probably some controls over their degree participation in the community.
Ville: Yes.
David: So I think that's the question that really [inaudible 00:59:50]
Siim: I think that's even a third level which is very practical. So, even if officially NIIS does not provide a service in terms for a country to install the version then, and do their own roll out, actually we give a bit of guidance at the very beginning of things, [inaudible 01:00:07] was promised for example to become a member down the line, right? That's the third level where we can make those choices and very clearly, I mean as I said honestly Ville issue or sort of authoritarian or democratic issue has not been on the table yest. But should it come I think yeah we will have a problem to make this call.
Ville: One additional aspect that I would pick up is that X-Road is a digital public good and it's open source, so we would like it to be used as such. But we have also seen examples from around the world that some companies, and some individuals have tried to utilize X-Road name and trademark, in making money in such a way that it can become very confusing. So, it has been actually fully against this principles of open sourcing and working for public goods.
Ville: So we also have it has a trade mark, it is restricted by the Estonia State Information System Authority and it has bene useful in such cases. Even though we cannot limit the use of X-Road as open source software we hae already have a few situations when we have had to jump in and say that sorry, but you cannot do this and that on using the X-Road trademark because it has been fully against these principles how X-Road is developed and delivered.
David: Yeah what I think is fascinating with this conversation too is, again, I think it's really important you cannot control who uses the code, but in some ways, that actually it allows for the statement about who you allow into the community and what levels of participation to have, be so more important to help drive the kind of challenges, that Ville said are coming in the next 10 years around trust and safety. So when you say, yeah this information exists in a country which has terrible human rights violations we can't stop them but we do control them in this way.
David: That actually can be a way to maybe even increase trust. Because now the trust is not necessarily in the code base, there has to be trust in the code base, but there has to be trust in the governance. So that's where you get a real opportunity to say this is where our governance is, this is what our values are. It's fascinating to hear Ville talk this way, because I think it's entirely appropriately. I think the demand to say, you should ban people it's just not plausible. But you do have a huge amount of power of what you allow and that's great opportunity.
Siim: That's actually one thing very briefly I wanted to say to Rajesh right? Who asked about whether issues of privacy will become a challenge. Well I would say in many ways no because I mean again, it's just like the example we had here, how do you manage for privacy when using X-Road is basically not a technological issue it's the governance around that, that's up to you, to chose as a country right? It's actually the technology allows you to be full privacy reserving or the other way around unfortunately.
David: I think that just raises a great question of like, you could have a democratic regime that uses the X-Road and does implementation, where they have no privacy rights. That could be in a country where maybe that's expected and everybody is comfortable, or in a country where people are still debating that, that could blow back on the X-Road brand. If this is one of these really interesting tensions in these types of communities.
Siim: Yeah but here I think in Estonia we kept things very simple in a way. I understand really actually the depth and the importance of this discussion. But in Estonia we've been very sort of clear in one sense that any tool you can use for good or bad, so think about an [inaudible 01:03:36] right? Whatever like that, code or platforms perhaps should not be any different, even though I know that we could make an argument, I think David and I have argued a bit about this devotion of scale of course right? How much bad can one [inaudible 01:03:51] to as opposed to one country with a platform, but still-
Ville: Yeah absolutely X-Road doesn't provide any such mechanisms, so it would be worse option for what already exists. So, when we think about privacy of cities and so any human right questions. So, X-Road isn't like generally used for any military purposes or it is not used for spying citizens but just the opposite. So, it is actually increasing the layers of transparency and making it much better for the citizen. So, I don't see any risks with X-Road here, but when it comes to many other technologies yes I do.
David: So, this is a great ... I love this fascinating conversation on governance. These are real challenging question that people have wrestled with. Let's go to [Cristobal 01:04:33] and then [Luciana 01:04:34] I may come to you next.
Cristobal: Okay, [inaudible 01:04:37] I am streaming a Little Finland in Malaga, well my name is Cristobal I work for the European Union in the General Direction of International Partnership. Now digitalization is high in the agenda particularly after Commissioner [inaudible 01:04:58] I know I am aware that you are collaborating with European Commission in some countries like Iceland and Armenia, maybe Kenya on supporting, because Estonia, particular Estonia but NIIS is coming like a mother for many countries. So, could you just give an example of how you are supporting these developing countries in their own process, thank you.
Siim: I think it's exactly more a question to me as a government of Estonia rep as to NIIS, I mean NIIS so far I think has not been involved like international development [inaudible 01:05:38] necessary right?
Ville: Indirectly only say that we are member of the Digital Public Goods Alliance and it is a very good channel for many developing countries to-
Siim: Exactly. But the question still holds so I mean to keep it short, we have as a government, we have very limited bandwidth to do like B to B or exchange or for lack of a better world consultancy or whatever right? We are always happy to share or like helicopter level what has worked, what not right? We don't really just even have men and women to go in, let's say to any country and just basically help you out build your government. If I would do that, then our government sort of development here would stop. So, it's a choice I can't make.
Siim: So this effectively means that yeah we try to open doors but effectively if we work let's say in development assistance with any country, then our private sector is the one who actually goes underground and the does the concrete work. So, we through development corporation we also open doors for the spread of know how solutions whatever, that then the private sector experts carry. Some of them works in NGO form or some of them freelancers some of them are full private companies who do that. These are all been guys and girls who have actually built the stuff for us. So, they have a hands-on experience in terms of building up the country anyway even if it might be domain based.
Siim: So, I'm not sure I'm answering you in a way, but so let's say you mentioned you Armenia and Kenya that's Estonia experts have done work in 100 plus countries around the world. Not just on X-Road but many different domains, solutions, policy, sharing whatever like that.
Luciana: Hi, thank you for sharing your experience with us. I found this collaboration fascinating. I was very pleased to hear your experience working with Latin American countries, it's very [inaudible 01:07:29] in your opinion what would be case structure or sources required to implement X-Road in countries where digital services are not properly delivered? Thank you.
Siim: Ville you want to start on Latin America?
Ville: Well yeah Latin America has really been an active spot in the X-Road so it's lots of development there. To the question, when we implement X-Road it's implemented as a national data exchange layer. It actually doesn't require much more than what would be required technically when implementing any data exchange solution be it point to point in the creations or any other medium used for data exchange. So, X-Road itself as a technology isn't setting like lots of that kind of limitations or requirements. But when it comes to the organizational side of X-Road it's about what Siim was describing the things around the technology and how to set up an environment and an ecosystem and how to operate it.
Ville: The operator of the X-Road ecosystem is defining the rules and policies for that. So, it has certain requirements for the administration around it. It's related also to how the processes in the society are generally operated or what is the major [inaudible 01:08:42] of the administration and how you are capable of setting up X-Road environment. But then otherwise I wouldn't say it requires anything like very special. We have seen many countries considering more like maybe in developing countries or so, being quite successful in implementing X-Road.
Ville: What we have been talking about with the Digital Public Goods Alliance and some of its members too is that, it's usually a good idea to involve some of the local companies and start building competency in X-Road. So typically the new countries that we have been following they have first found some of the X-Road technology companies from Estonia, from Finland, from Iceland. Some of these companies has gone and helped locally to build the competence.
Ville: So, I think one of the best things about open source is avoid vendor looking situations and have the possibilities of growing competence and finding new companies to work with you, so that's one of the benefits of X-Road. What we also recommend is that yes, to find good partners from the beginning to work on it technically and also with consultation and then to build the local competencies for it. I hope this answered the question, partly at least.
David: Yeah.
Siim: Just two bits of that, I make very briefly. First of all Latin American why it's so hotly on the map is a good example of where a community itself has sprung up in a way and taken care of just spreading themselves a lot right? So obviously Ville's team helped in the early stages quite a bit but that was exactly some friends from EL Salvador and then a few other places right? We just took you know free land, volunteer work in terms of putting some stuff in Spanish and so forth and so forth and it spread from there.
Siim: Secondly in Latin America a lot of digital government building is being financed by the IFIs, right the International Financial Inquisitions especially folks like Inter-American Development Bank. Especially the IDB have realized the importance of platforms and to basically scale faster the digital government roll out and move fast in an area. So, through them we've done a bit of evangelism in the region, quite a bit of evangelism in the last four or five years. Not just on X-Road on many things.
Siim: I think in some ways the community [inaudible 01:11:07] has also been part of that. They have very kindly invested in capacity building in different countries around that. Not [inaudible 01:11:15] as a solution as a product if you wish, right? But just for interoperability, for data sharing, for all these platforms more widely. But X-Road has been exactly one part of or you know beneficiary of that.
David: I've done some work with IDB too as well, they're definitely interested in this space, it's really encouraging. There are a number of implementations. I know there's a province in Argentina, that [inaudible 01:11:37]
Siim: Yeah.
Ville: Exactly.
David: So there's real appetite and interest there. I think one question too is, is at some point do you need a NIIS that exists for, again, geography, for the same reason do you have NIIS for geography for timezones, do you need a NIIS that maybe exists for Latin America? Is an interesting question, would be interesting to ask Ville about that at some point. Then for me the other piece is look at other places where this is really skilled. I think Ville's point about having local expertise and competences is so important.
David: I was somewhat involved in the open MRS open source medical record system community. Their ability to enable local developers and local contractors and local implementers was I think so important to building that technology and not relying on one big company that existed in a mature market to serve the whole world, proved to be instrument in the spread of that technology.
David: So I think there's a really interesting way that [inaudible 01:12:32] replicated. I know we're at time, so I just want to say a huge thank you, to get both Siim and Ville to agree to come at the same time, they're enormously busy, it's such a huge privilege, I just want to say thank you both so much. Having you bounce back and forth has been amazing to have them for us. I had an enormous amount of gratitude, so a big thank you from all of us.
Ville: No thanks for mine as well, David you know I can't say no.
David: I love you man, thank you so much it's so great.
David: You're always so generous, take care.
Presenter: You've been listening to AshCast, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovations Podcast. If you'd like to learn more, please visit ash.harvard.edu or follow the Ash Center on social media, @Harvardash.